*WARNING* Severe blood and gore; might not be suitable for some readers. Reading discretion advised.

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Sometimes, I still get nightmares of that night. That night when Mother beat Alex to death with her own hands and I just watched, unable to do anything but scream and cry. But all my screaming and crying only seemed to make mother more satisfied as she hit harder and harder until my screams turned into silent sobbing and my brother's chest stopped moving.

I don't think she realized what she had done until morning, because that night, all she did was laugh with that terrifying smile on her face as she drank my brother's blood out of a chipped wine glass.

Honestly, I think when mother woke up that morning was scarier than the night he died.

When she saw her own fists holding his heart, her wine glass full of his blood, his corpse in my arms...

Her smile was gone by now. She didn't look sad, like what you would expect a mothers' expression to be when her son died.

She didn't look angry at herself, nor confused at her actions. Her face was blank. Expressionless. Not a hint of regret or pity in her eyes. Well, at least she didn't look happy.

She glanced over at the heart in her hand.

After a moment, she got up and sealed it in a plastic container.

She shook her head at all the blood on the ground and said, "tsk tsk, I really got carried away last night. Look at all this blood I've wasted."

She tied her long black hair up into a ponytail and took my brother's body from my arms. I had no strength to fight back, from all the beating she had done to me yesterday and all the fruitless yelling I had done, only resulted in a sore throat.

"You won't be needing this anymore, will you? It might be enough to cover your fathers debts if I do this right." Placing him on the dining room table, she picked up a pair of pliers that was already laying there. I wonder if she had prepared it yesterday. Had she planned to beat Alex to death? Had she been looking forward to beating her own son to death and having her daughter watch?

I cannot breathe properly when I see her ripping off his fingernails one by one and placing them aside. When she pulls out her son's teeth and puts them in a pile. How the blank, uncaring look on her face never changes as she gouges his eyes out and puts them into two separate bags. When she uses an axe to cut through his skull, ripping the curving horns out of his head, blood splattering along the walls and onto her face.

She licks her lips and ties his foot from the kitchen lights and places a large bucket underneath him and lets him bleed out.

She looks longingly at the heart sitting in the container at the side, before sighing and putting it into the refrigerator for preservation.

My brother no longer has a head.

At least now, I don't have to look at it so guiltily.

Guilty for not taking his place. Guilty for not being able to do anything but cry. Guilty for convincing him to stay, when we both knew we should have ran away when we got the chance.

Alex and I were special.

We were half-bloods of the dragon type. Our mother was the daughter of a powerful human clan but was kicked out for things she never bothered to tell us about. All I know was that she got captured by a full-blood dragon which had recently gotten his human form, raped, and forgotten.

There, she met our father, who is not our father by blood, he saved her for the exchange or her hand in marriage, to which she readily agreed while hanging on by an inch of her life.

And so, here we are. Our mother cut by brother up to sell his horns, nails, blood and bones because pieces of dragons were quite valuable. She hoped to use it as a means to pay off fathers debts.

I believe she would have long left father for another man if it weren't for the marriage contract that the two of them have. To break such a contract, you had to have a fourth grade priest and the consent of both partners to the unbinding of companionship.

For one thing, there was only one grade 4 priest in the Orange-Level city, and we were in the Red-Level city anyways. Plus, asking him to do something came with a hefty price. We were already drowning in debt, how could we possibly fork out hundreds of silver coins for such a thing? And besides, father would never agree to that. He saved mother because she was beautiful, not because he was kind.

She can't kill him either, because damage of any kind is negligible when it is from the person on the other side of the contract. She never seemed to think I could do it. She never seemed to think I could do anything except sit here and look pretty, in fact.

I know she was saving me for when I became a marriageable age, so she could sell me off to some rich man who would surely take me for how beautiful I am.

Whenever she beat me, she never dared hit my face, for fear she would leave damage upon it that couldn't be healed. If that were to happen, she might not get enough money from selling me off.

I reckon that she wanted to sell me to the Harrison family from the Yellow level city, they surely would have taken an interest in a beautiful half-blood dragon like me.

I was beautiful, perfect for relieving any young master's pent-up desires. I was valuable- in more ways than one. They could extract some of my blood daily to use for potions or to sell for a decent sum of money. Having a dragon, even a half-blood, would bring you prestige and respect.

A sign of your wealth and prosperity. The Harrison family only had one dragon. It was a male, almost 80 years old but still looked 50 years old. He only had about 10% dragon bloodline as well. They would likely start looking for another one soon, and a 50% bloodline like me would definitely fit the bill.

They might even take me into a green level city, possibly even into a blue blue city and sell me for a higher price then they got me for.

And so, as I sit there and watch as a river of blood flows from his severed neck and into the barrel, mother picks up his mutilated head and takes a bite, eating it like an apple.

I'm not sure how her teeth can do it without breaking, but I can hear her crunching on bones, grinding them to dust and swallowing.

She is a detestable human, I tell you.

Killing her own children, eating them.

Should she even be called human anymore?

She reminds me of the stories I heard the children talk about on their way home from school.

The stories of the forest where animals in their true form roam, where they can do as they please. Many of them are mindless, living only on their instincts to find food for themselves and to survive. Animals that can eat their own children without batting an eye. Just like mother.

Maybe that's where mother belongs. The forest for mindless beings.

After all, that's where father supposedly found her.

But I think, even if I were a mindless animal, I would have never eaten my children for the fun of it.