Pretty Deaths

They said she was crazy... So she killed them.

She didn't mean too, but the rage that was boiling in her just made her give in to the sweet burning fire. The voices in her head told her to do so too, and she never goes against them. It was the best decision she had made.

They died rather prettily too. She made sure of that, she did.

The child tried to scream. She smiled. She had grabbed the child's neck and slowly twisted it, crushing it, and it turned a rather unique purple colour and she stood there, admiring her handiwork, admiring how it her red fingerprints stood out of the bruising purple. She would have to do this again sometime soon, she told herself. It was just so much fun.

She had to admit, that the child didn’t call her crazy, but the small boy would grow up to be a monster too, so killing it now would do much good to the world. After all, he was the child of that infuriating woman and man. He was only a small boy of five, with a nice blue coat and snug jeans. The purple stood out too, with the red marks against the blue of his coat and his face was pale, mouth wide open, unable to scream now.

There was no blood when she killed that child. Bob. Just the pretty colour of purple and red and blue. No blood on her hands too, pity, she thought. Blood had such a nice feel. Warm and wet and red. Red’s her favourite colour. She liked the taste of blood too, metallic and smooth.

She placed the child carefully on the bed, picking up his blanket from where the floor, and tucked him in. He was a rather cute child. And she has preserved his beauty. Such a fine thing to do. She continued up the stairs, where she knew the woman would be.

The woman, a creaky woman, with a brittle smile and snobby eyes always got on her nerves. She always had something to say about the way she dressed and how she always said, "Beastly thing." But not today, not today indeed.

She reached the room. And she saw the woman. And she knew the woman noticed the knife and rope in her hands.

She took her time in killing the old woman, that woman screamed and screamed and screamed when she first came in the room, she was dressed in her best dress, a torn frock stained with her mother's blood, just to please that old lady. So that when she died, she would have a fond memory of this beastly thing.

She held out the rope she brought along and smiled. The rope was yellow, a strong rope used to tie up the boats that dock along the shore. She carefully unrolled the rope, and was delighted that it matched the woman's dress that was also yellow in colour. She would also have a wonderful death, she decided.

And she smiled as she advanced towards the woman cowering under the table, attempting to hide. The woman suddenly threw a glass at her, she moved away, agile on her feet but it sliced through her cheek, a long cut appearing, before shattering into pieces as the glass met the wall behind her.

She frowned, and lifted a delicate finger to wipe away the droplet of blood seeping through the wound. It stings a little but she popped her finger into her mouth and the taste of blood was just so good that she instantly decided that the woman would have a bloody death instead. She would use the rope on the man. He wouldn’t mind the change of plans.

Layla. That was the woman’s name wasn’t it. Such a pretty pretty name. She would have a pretty pretty death to go with it. A blood red one.

She skipped towards the woman, grinning and laughing and the woman could not scream anymore and only stared with wide eyes at the girl that was advancing towards her.

“No… No, please, no…” the woman begs, the tears sliding across her face. “I’m sorry… Don’t do this... Please…”

The knife glinted. The girl, smiled, her eyes wide, her first pale, her hair red like the blood on her hands they soak and she’s trembling excitement is flowing through her body and the woman feels a chill suddenly and she’s turn cold like the dead she is dead and the knife descends.

Her voice is a whisper, “You asked for this…”

The scream echoes through the huge house.

The sound of a door slammed, and footsteps thundering up the stairway were the only signs that indicated that the owner of the house was back.

He comes to the room in which he heard the scream and he stands there in silence as his mind slowly absorbed what he has just seen and is seeing.

The girl is upon his wife, blood on her hands, staining her dress further, the red on the white dress plain, and it reminds him of roses. The girl turns, and he sees the devil. She smiles, a slow smile, her eyes of purple the eyes of the devil widening with glee at the sight of him, and he wants to run, run away from this girl. Barely twelve she is weak and he is strong but she kills and he is afraid.

She stands up from where she was on her feet; examining his wife’s corpse she has painstakingly moved to make his wife appear that she is sleeping, sleeping in a pool of blood. He turns and runs, and he goes to his son’s room, praying and hoping that that mad thing has not gotten his son and that he would be able to escape and inform the police of this mad thing in his house, killing his wife but as he reaches the room, he screams and tears come pouring. He is a man, but he is not ready to see this.

He screams in anguish. He sees his son. His beautiful son, he looks like an angel, lying peacefully on the bed, but he knows that his son is dead.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” She turns, and her eyes sparkle beneath her long lashes. Her face is bloodied, Layla’s blood.

He backs away, and his breaths come in short gasps. His wife was stabbed to death; his son was strangled to his death. And she will kill him too.

“Why... Why are you doing this?” He asks desperately, wanting to know why. He does not understand.

The girl pauses. This man, George, he is her most favourite person here. But he too is bad. She heard him call her crazy, and she knows he always has a fake smile on his face.

‘Why? Why? No reason.” She says and smiles again, and a fear strikes him. This is the devil, a child with red, red hair, and purple eyes and a white dress with blood red roses. And a smile. “I just like blood.” And there is nothing he can say before she walks to him. The look on her face is one of death.

“Don’t worry.” She whispers, and he wonders how angels look like if this is the devil. “You will have the prettiest death ever.”

And he does not struggle as he feels the rope tightening around his neck and she laughs and laughs and laughs like musical notes and that is the last thing he hears, and the last thing he sees is the red of her hair, the purple of her eyes, beautiful eyes, and her dress of white with red.

He closes his eyes and he does see his life flash before his eyes and he wonders if anyone will believe this tale of his even if he does live to tell. He wonders if he has done the right thing. But then again, he cannot do anything anymore. Why? Why did it have to end this way.

She smiles as the man goes limp. The voices are cheering now, and she laughs loud and clear. And she thinks that he did die rather prettily, she makes the effort of tying him up, straining and sweating, but she succeeds in the end and he hangs from the lights, feet dangling from the second floor. And she goes down the stairs, humming and skipping and smiles as she stands and looks up to where he is, hanging by the pretty yellow rope. His neck a nice purple.

She is satisfied, but she turns suddenly and starts crying as she sees men of blue and guns coming up the road. She falls to her knees crying and crying and crying.

The police come up the doorway, and they take a look at the young child crying in the floor, her dress red

with blood and they see the man dangling and they make a swift decision.

A woman, with soft brown hair and kind eyes comes to kneel before the girl and asks in a gentle voice. “What happened here little girl?”

She doesn’t answer and keeps on crying, the voices are silent now, and shakes her head repeatedly.

Her dress is torn, and her red locks has dried blood on them. She has a cut on her face, and her hands are bloodied and trembling and shivering.

The woman frowns and picks up the child and she clings on to the woman, falling into a faint. The policewoman walks out and asks for an ambulance for the child to be carried away. And then the woman carries the child to the ambulance and she sits beside the girl. She has a duty towards this little child now. Such a young girl should not be exposed to such violence. And she sighs as she thinks of the world today.

And the other men comes in. They raid the house and the gruesome deaths made them sick to the core. The boy is only five and the woman is young.

They look at the corpse of the man with distaste.

“Looks like he attempted suicide after killing his wife and child.” One says, disgusted.

“The child’s neck broke too; he must have had one hell of a grip for it to break.”

“How could he? That was his son for god’s sake!”

“His wife had multiple stabs on her front and both the kills were positioned so that they looked as if they were sleeping.”

“He must be a psycho.”

“The girl must have escaped.”

“Poor thing. She would be traumatized for life.”

A policeman flips through the papers on the desks in a room in the big house. He frowns and calls his men over.

“Well, look here. Records of the girl’s history. “They crowd around the brown file. “That little girl, her name’s Nery Anne Evans. And she was adopted two months back.”

“I know this girl! I was in the team investigating the murder of her parents as well.”

“What happened?”

“Her father had abused her mother and her mother filed a police report, and they got a divorce. Then, her father, a brute of a man, came to where that girl and her mother stayed and he murdered the poor woman. Apparently the poor girl witnessed the deaths, and then her father killed himself in front of her.”

“She’s suffered a lot of deaths hasn’t she?”

Another policeman rushes through and they all look questioningly at him and he says all in a rush, “The neighbors said that the owner of the house, Mr. Burns only reached home after they heard the woman scream.”

The other men turn in shock. The policeman continues as they gape in shock. “And they said... They said that the child, that girl, that girl’s crazy and that they suspect, that she... she was the one who killed them.”

The sudden fear overwhelms them and their blood runs cold. The silence in the room is deafening. And suddenly, there is a voice, a whisper, “It’s not possible…”

And miles and miles away, the little girl wakes up, and the voices are back and she hears them calling her crazy again and she’s angry and she feels that burn in her again.

Screams surround her then, and blood and fire and she laughs and laughs and smiles that smile of her’s. They called her crazy, and they would pay.

And moments later, a couple stops by the road, seeing a little girl crying, her white frock torn with blood at the sides as they see an ambulance, rolling down the slope before bursting into flames. They could have sworn that they heard screams of someone burned to their death and they carry the girl, the only survivor, and they put her in their car and they drive off. She is a beautiful child, they think, her hair red like roses, her eyes a unique colour and they are glad they found her for they are childless.

And the little girl, she smiles and smiles as she hums in the car, no longer crying now, and she sees the blood on her hands, mother’s blood, Layla’s blood and that policewoman’s and that doctor’s and she smiles and laughs and the couple looks at her and they see the devil.

And it starts to rain little droplets of red.