KATHY MONTGOMERY
Year 2014
(Summer, The U.R.T., Aresmore Estate)
Her legs were jelly so they had to lift her up and drag her feet across the floor. They were inside the house, and Kate could barely breathe. All she had was her heart pounding on her back, her ribcage, her skull. Just when she thought she was going to faint, they slammed her down on a chair.
Before she could react, thin plastics strapped around her ankles to the wooden legs of the chair, then python ropes came around her chest to strap her to the chair. She was completely immobolised. And then, she broke.
"P–Please…why are you… doing this?" If it weren't for the hollowness of the place, she probably wouldn't hear her tiny whisper.
She's afraid. Very afraid. She thought that the years had wisened and toughened her up, given her strength. But now she realised that the doctor was wrong again: she was still that useless girl who had caused her father's death.
"They told me you were dead." Another voice spoke.
And Kate stopped breathing entirely.
"So I cried. I cried for you, sweetie."
Her throat gulped down the lump so she could breathe again. Her body was taking over because she couldn't do anything. She knew who it was. She should be glad that they're finally meeting. But there wasn't a shred of happiness inside her.
Only fear.
The doctor had trained her for this. How to escape. How to get help. But she could use none of it. That voice wiped out everything from her living memory. The only thing she remembered was what she had wanted to say to her.
"I–I'm sorry," she said, fresh tears streamed down her face.
"Oh, so you know who I am?" The voice was trying to hold back its anger, and the result was sarcasm. But then the blinds snatched off her face.
Right in front of her was she.
Kate wasn't sure which startled her—a face suddenly an inch from hers, or that face being her mother's.
She looked slightly different from Kate's memories. Older. Edgier. But her smile was ever so beautiful. "Hello, sweetie. You look surprised to see me." Her head tilted in an innocent puzzlement, her brows concerned. "I wonder why?"
Her body gave a nudge, and Kate remembered to breathe. She swallowed to find her voice and repeated, "I–I'm sorry."
Those curious brows relaxed to their true colours, and then a monstrous rage distorted the face into an unrecognisable one. "What are you sorry for?" She snarled. "For killing your father? Faking your own death? Or for planning to kill me?"
Kate was aghast. Why would her mother even suggest that? That level of cruelty! "I wouldn't! I would never do that to you!" She cried out, wanting very hard for her mother to believe her. I'm not a psychopath, Mother, please!
Her mother blinked and her smile returned, as though a second ago had never happened. "It's hard to tell, Kate. After all, you are a psychopath."
Tears of resentment gushed down her face. "I'm not! I—I'm not a psy–psychopath." Her hands balled in desperation. "I didn't kill anyone! Why won't you believe me?"
"Then what are you doing with Jill?" Those angelic eyes glowered.
Kate blinked in disbelief. "J–Jill?" What has Jill got to do with—.
"You really need to stop lying, Kate," said her mother, in a calm tone she'd always use when Kate did something wrong, and Kate shrunk into her seat, her voice shrivelled. "Good girls don't lie, Kate. But you keep lying, over and over and over…. You've been lying so much, I can't even keep track of your lies. What does that make you?"
"A bad girl," came the timid voice. She belonged to the filth on the ground; the ground that was covered with her father's ashes. Her view was misty again. Words were spilling in mechanic obedience. "I'm a bad girl…. I lied." She was back in the hospital again.
Say what they want, and nothing will happen to her.
"That's right, sweetie." Her mother was satisfied. "You found out that Jill was my daughter, so you enrolled yourself in the same school as her and became her roommate."
Wait.
Kate's face shot up in shock. "J–Jill's my sister?"
The second the words left her lips a slap crashed into her right cheekbone. The pain of a shard pierced through her skull, and her mother's blood-curdling scream stabbed her ears. "SHE'S NOT YOUR SISTER!"
Kate drew back in horror. The face she'd seen the night her father died was back. She expected a deep, monstrous voice coming out of its moving red lips, but instead, her mother's angelic voice demanded. "What are you up to now?"
What can she be up to? She didn't ask to be brought here!
"OUT WITH IT!" Her mother screamed. "You were trying to get me, weren't you?"
"What? No!" Kate cried out, her frustration loud and clear for the first time.
"You went near Jill to get to me!"
"N–No! I didn't even know that Jill's your daughter—!"
Another slap crossed Kate's cheek. This time, she thought her eyeballs would fall out of their sockets. Her face felt shattered, and she had to fight through the pain to put the pieces back together. Sniffing deeply but rapidly, she tried to quickly recompose herself for what was to come. She knew in her gut it would be something crazier.
But the second she swung back and came face to face with her mother, her anger betrayed her and vanished.
She stammered timidly "I didn't kill anyone, Mother. I didn't kill Daddy, I swear." Kate put on her best good-girl smile. "I'm really sorry, Mother, that Daddy died. But I didn't kill him."
Finally, her mother came around. She reached out to brush Kate's fringe—the way she always does when putting Kate to sleep—and a huge boulder lifted off her baby girl's chest.
"I really…didn't kill Daddy…." A wave of nostalgia hit Kate, and the tears returned. Everything is alright now; she can let go; she can say it all. She'll say it all, and mother will understand.
The doctor's advice kept drilling in, holding her voice, but she pushed it behind her. Why won't she understand? She's my mother, she thought firmly. She was upset that Daddy died so she got angry with me. When she knows the truth, she'll forgive me.
Kate sniffed. "I lied about my death. I shouldn't have…but–but I really can't stay at the hospital. It was really horrible! And they were wrong, Mother. I couldn't have killed Daddy. I didn't use the toaster that day. I didn't use it at all. I don't even know how to use a toaster—you know that don't you?"
"I know," her mother whispered and pulled her arms around those sobbing shoulders and hugged her.
Kate let it all out. The hard times are over now. Her mother has forgiven her. She'll have her family back.
A gentle hand rubbed the back of her head. "I know, sweetie…I know you didn't kill him. Because I did."
Her tears froze. "W–what?"
The angelic voice grew louder, firmer. "I killed Daddy, sweetie." She withdrew to smile into her daughter's beautiful green eyes, round with disbelief. "And I was about to kill you too."
Kate must've heard wrong. "You didn't because I was your daughter, and you love me." Right?
"Oh, sweetie. You need to grow up. You're not Daddy's little girl anymore." Her head angled with motherly concern. "I didn't kill you because it wasn't time yet."
Anger rose in her. "I'm your daughter! You love me, don't you? That's why you didn't kill me!"
Her mother chuckled, her eyes glowing as though she had heard a good joke. "Oh, God, Kate. You really are like Frank." In her bedtime storytelling voice, she added, "Frank was living in his own world all the time. He thought he was a genius—."
"Everyone said so." Kate was utterly confused.
"Everyone was wrong, obviously." Her mother gave her the smile of a teacher who forgave her student for interrupting her speech. "Because I am the genius. I married him. I told him to start the company. I gave him the courage he didn't have." The cheer in her eyes dissolved to a vengeful scowl.
"I even gave him a family. Bore him a daughter. If only you had more of my genes. But you don't. Obviously, the world is unfair. The useless and stupid get everything. Even the stronger genes."
Her words stabbed Kate right in her heart. An image of her mother laughing along with Jill popped up, and Kate realised that aside from reading her bedtime stories, she had never spent a single waking second with her mother.
Fresh tears fell as the truth dawned on her. "If you hate me that much, why didn't you kill me?"
"Oh, someone has to pay for the crime, sweetie. No matter how useless and stupid you are, one must take full responsibility for what they did, don't they?"
"But I didn't kill him! You did!"
Her mother widened her smile into a satisfying grin. "No, Kate. You did. You set fire to the bushes in the garden. You killed birds, lizards, and cats. Remember?"
Kate opened her mouth to protest but her mother beat her to it. "I know, I know." She stood and turned from her. "You didn't do all that."
"Then, why did you tell the police that I—?" Kate cried at her mother's back when it turned, cutting her off, and the object in her mother's hands gripped her with terror.
The older woman sighed in exasperation. "Stupid and useless as always. Why indeed." Her gloved hands plucked the cork out of the bottle. "I guess your ears are as stupid and useless as your brain. Don't blame me, sweetie. It's your Daddy's genes." She moved over to Kate and tipped the bottle contents all over her.
Cold water ran down her. Kate was too stunned to speak or move. The only thing on her mind was the pungent smell that stung her nostrils.
Kerosene.
It was then she knew what the men in black suits and shades were casting into the depths of the shadows. And the second truth struck her like lightning:
She's going to die.
Her mother observed the lighter in between her fingers like it was a masterpiece, and Kate decided then and there to put her resentment aside and begged for mercy.
Save herself first.
She won't tell anyone. She'll quit college and disappear. She'll continue to be the psychopath who killed her father in cold blood and ruined her mother's life. No one will ever know the truth. She won't tell a soul. Not even the doctor. Just let her go, and she'll do all that she promised.
Kate opened her mouth, ready to spill out the entire speech. Ready to take the oath. But all that came out, in the tiniest whisper, was "P–Please…."
"This is all your fault, Kate." Her mother glowered at her. "You shouldn't have messed with Jill."
"I'll quit college! I'll leave her alone! Please, mother!" Her frightened wrists wriggled desperately out of the cable wire.
Her voice was ignored. "You shouldn't have been born. You shouldn't have ruined my life."
"Please, mother!" Kate's body started to squirm along with her wrists, but the ropes were too tight. "I'm sorry! It's all my fault! I'll leave. You won't ever see me again!"
Her mother was too mesmerised by the pretty orange flame to hear her. "The beauty of life is best appreciated with loss. The leaves are dead anyway." She shrugged with acceptance. "So the trees had to take over. It's their fault for being so.... green... so full of life." She raised the flame to the dark ceiling and admired it like a 20-carat diamond ring. "That was the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. And it's all mine."
Now, Kate understood why her mother could describe them so well to the police. All those acts of cruelty; that penchant for arson—they were hers, not Kate's. They weren't spun from a creative imagination nor taken from hearsay; they came from her personal experience.
Her mother's the real psychopath.
"You set me up," Kate murmured under her breath.
And her mother stared at the beguiling flicker. "You set me up first, Kate."
"But I didn't do anything! I was only twelve!"
Rage distorted her face once more. "YOU TOLD YOUR FATHER TO MAKE YOU HIS HEIR!" The flame shoved into her face, and Kate let out a cry as she jolted back in pure fright. Her mother's voice continued bursting her eardrums. "YOU TOLD HIM TO GIVE EVERYTHING TO YOU!"
"I did not!"
"SHUT UP, YOU DEVIL!"
Heat from the flame burnt the tips of her brows and Kate squeezed her eyes tightly, panic burst through her lips. "I don't want any of it! Father was wrong—I was wrong! Please, mother! Let me go! Please, please, please…."
"But someone must pay for the crimes, sweetie." There was a smile of relief in her voice. "And death is the ultimate honesty."
Kate watched frozen as the flame fell from her fingers.
The second it struck the ground, the spark of hope was the last thing she saw before the angry, vengeful blaze engulfed her.
*****
RAY HOOK
Year 2014
(Summer, The U.R.T., Aresmore Estate)
The woman came out—Ray shoved himself back behind the tree to evade notice. The clicking of heels on concrete told him that she was leaving, and in a hurry, which gave him relief, and he waited for the car door to close before checking the coast for clearance.
Indeed, much to more relief, the men in black rushed out after the woman—Ray slipped back into his hiding and checked his phone for texts or a call from Rox.
There was none.
He rolled his eyes in nervous frustration and, upon hearing the last car door closed, slid out from his hiding and checked again.
Blackness quickly swallowed the red glowing circles of the black van and its vile rumbling, and then it was silent once more. The soft rustling of leaves felt settling and peaceful.
But it was short lived.
Something doesn't add up.
Where's Kate?
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