One
Two
Three
She opened the door of the house, her eyes peeled the room she had seen for the 1000th time and yet still hated. She walked into the house calmly, passed the dining room, the kitchen and then into her room.
A sigh escaped her lips as she set her bag down and undressed herself into a tank top and trackies. She fell backwards into her bed and closed her eyes to block the sight of the grey murky world. To slow the time of the world even for a second.
"Zylith, go wash the plates right now" A lady with a stern face opened the door to the room and stood there. She was on the plump side.
"Stand up now, I have food to cook" Tomorrow was Thanksgiving day and it would be a busy day today. Hmm very busy.
With a hunched back and slow blinking, she stood up from the bed. She had just come back from her volunteering after closing from school at 3, she immediately headed to her place of work to help out for 3 more hours. From there, she went to cadets her mother had enrolled her brother into. "It would do you good" She had said to Zylith. Zylith didn't understand why it had to be air cadets. She thought it would have been sea cadets. She was a swimmer after all but she didn't question.
Saying she was tired truly was an understatement at this point.
"Stop acting tired and go wash the plates now, don't be lazy" The plump lady continued.
Zylith sighed and straightened her spine as she headed to work.
One 'One'
Two 'Two'
Three 'Thr-'
"And make sure to clean the countertops, and the stove and throw the green bin out" Her mother added and walked into the kitchen where Zylith already was. The woman splayed her hands out as she demonstrated what she wanted Zylith to do for the 1000 time.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes, mom" 'Mother'
Zylith was tired, she had rushed the washing and cut down the usual 1-hour scrubbing to a 35-minute one. She didn't know how she did, she even had to check to make sure she didn't do it wrong. She hadn't and she wasn't complaining.
With steady steps she walked to her bedroom, her aunt was already there. Aunt Linda. She didn't like her aunt nor did she dislike Aunt Linda. They simply existed in their own two worlds. Aunt Linda had lost her child when he was at the meagre age of 1, it was a car accident. They had said. Zylith didn't care about a child that could barely walk. But it seemed the incident of 18 years still affected her 43-year-old aunt.
Aunt Linda had her eyes glued to her phone, as soon as she heard the sound of the door open in the dark room, Linda turned her red eyes to stare at Zylith. She let her eyes linger for seconds.
Zylith stood still but forced herself to walk forward. She swallowed her gulp. Her aunt was looking at a photo of Bruce, her cousin. Zylith knew this because she had snooped around her mother's old pictures and saw them.
'Weird'
Her aunt stood up slowly, the bed sheets she had on her hugged her small frame.
When had she become so thin?
Zylith stopped to look at her aunt. Her aunt had been crying? Her eyes werebloodshot, and her fingers grasped around her phone. A feeling settled itself in her stomach. A feeling of bad luck. Zylith already had bad luck, at a young age was very clumsy, tripping over a small rock, tripping over her legs and even tripping on air. Choking on a drink all the time, choking on water she was slowly drinking, choking on air, choking on her spit. But she still pushed her luck every single time. She didn't follow the three-time rule and always did something she was sure would land her in trouble. Why? Perhaps it was for the thrill of it 'How many times can I stick my fingers in the hole in the basket before it gets stuck?' 'How much mess can I make before mum comes back' and so on.
But not this time. This time she didn't dare move, didn't dare breathe.
She didn't even realize she had stopped breathing. All her attention was trained on the 5'4 woman who shared the small room with her, the woman who slept on the same bed with her.
But this wasn't her.
Where is Aunt Linda?
This certainly was Aunt Linda.
Linda snarled and lunged for Zylith, dropping her phone to the ground. Zylith ducked and scrambled into the bed. A confused expression on her face. An expression.
Aunt Linda turned back slowly like a ghost in those horror suspense movies. This is when the ghost turned to reveal its face. Linda turned and her mouth was opened in a gasp. The shrink in her pupils as she set her eyes on Zylith. A snarl came deep from her throat
'A real-life growl' She thought in amazement. Zylith picked what was nearest to her as she dared not release her hold on Linda. A pillow was what she used to hit Linda in the Jaw.
'Oh great, I remember Mother saying assassins used anything as a weapon, maybe I could be one' She quickly runs to the door and as she opened the door, she felt the hair on her neck jump
'Duck' She ducked and Linda grabbed Gabe.
'Sorry bro'
Zylith stepped aside as her brother Gabe punched Linda in the nose, out of reflex. Linda's face whipped to the back and a crack popped at the sound but then Linda whipped her head back in place, headbutting Gabe as she scrambled on top of him. 'Oh wow'
Zylith rushed to get her phone out to call the police but then the power went off. The power had been acting up unexpectedly today, and there was no sign of a snowstorm, or a flood or anything that could warrant this.
She tried calling but there was no Wi-Fi signal. 'Damn'.
Her brother struggled as he pushed Linda to the floor and held her down. Linda tried biting into his hand but he caught on and applied more pressure on her while keeping his hand a safe distance.
"Zylith what the fuck did she take?"
"I don't know...she just-"
A heart-wrenching scream escaped Gabe's throat and he let go, stumbling backwards. It was loud enough to wake the woman called mother in the house and she soon came with a torch in hand, her eyes wide in panic and fear. She had just woken up.
"Get out of here" Gabe shouted at Zylith who was watching everything. Wide-eyed. Not out of fear more, it was in the way you wouldn't want to blink when watching a really good show so you won't miss any details.
Not waiting for another second, Zylith ran to the bathroom and locked herself in it. The screams were enough to wake the entire street. The battle outside continued at some point, and Zylith tuned out. It was utter chaos and she didn't know what to focus on.
The sound of silence was what brought her out of the trance she had forced herself into. The sound of silence was deafening. Like a microphone when it went out of sync. That staticky sound buzzed in her ears.
One
Two
Three.
She stood up with clenched thighs and her shaky and reached for the bathroom knob. The thrill.
*Thump
A bang hit the door. And she nearly jumped. Her outstretched hands froze and she stood still.
She didn't breath.
Didn't blink.
Didn't move.
Her heart stilled. It knew.
*THUMP
The bang shook the door, rattled the knob.
Zylith's eyes were trained on the door.
Whatever that is outside isn't humane.
*KRRR
The sound of a scratch on a door, echoed in the apartment. Another thump was made but not on the door. The living room.
Another scratch that seemed more distance. The kitchen.
A sounds like someone singing a throaty song with their mouth wide open. It was deep and eerie. Like a sound from the deep ocean made by an unknown creature.
'Fudge' Zylith couldn't stop the tremble that went up her legs to her neck. Her hands shook and she had to collapse silently for fear of being heard- on the bathtub behind her. Her heart was beating eerily slowly. It felt like it was literally in her mouth.
She sat at the edge, buried her face in her hands, and took deep breaths. Her shoulders trembled and then a sound like a stifled laughter broke from her lips.
*GRRR
Zylith raised her head but what was on her face wasn't the expression of someone in fear. Not of confusion. Not of defeat. A smile that reached her ears was splayed across her face and she had to put her hands over her mouth to stop herself from laughing her head off. Her shoulders trembled more as tears spilled down her eyelids. It was the first time in years she had laughed.
'I'm I being too detached? NO! I just love it right now. If the police ask, I'll say it was self defense. That I couldn't see anything. What to do? What to do?'
Zylith spent the next 10 minutes thinking of a way out of there. As much as she loved the thrill of spending the night here. She was pressed as she knew she couldn't relieve her self without alerting them outside. That was no fun.
Dying while taking a dump. That's boring.
She slid down the bathroom door and brought her phone to check the time. It was dead.
'Mom had her phone in the bedroom, from the sound of outside, one is in the living room and one is in the kitchen. I don't know where the last one is. I just have to go to the kitchen and get the knife but I also need to lock the bedroom door.'
This was tricky. Her aunt had overpowered Gabe in less than 30 minutes, and she had definitely changed in some way.
Her height?
The number of teeth she had
Her demeanour?
It was her demeanour. Linda looked scared, frightened, she looked angry. Not like she was crazy. But none of that mattered to her.
***
The hallway went silent and on the ground lay her aunt Linda. Blood sprayed all over the dim apartment walls and blood soaking the white tiles Her guts laid bare on the ground but her blue dry lips- or what was supposed to be a plump tissue now as thin as paper formed a smile as the colour in the woman's eyes spilled forward and onto the tiles.
In a 16-year-old's hand was a knife and a smile.
43 cuts all over-courtesy of her age.
A knife lodged deep in the middle of her chest- she had always wondered what was in the middle of a person's chest. Now her curiosity was satisfied.
A skull cut open, letting its watery mass spill out.
That was the painting Zylith painted in her dining room while her brother clawed at the toy she set in her mother's room.
"Linda Klover, time of death:11:10, cause of death... self-defense" She looks disinterested at the corpse. She could often tell the time just by her feelings and it was eight times out of ten correct. Unless I wanted to mess with her sometimes.
Speaking of her mother, the old woman was just a pile of blobs that lay lazily on the bed. 'Bummer'
But Zylith still wanted more, she didn't care if this came back to hunt her, she wanted more. More! More!!
Turning around in a puddle of blood and saliva, she headed for her brother, she had to take that one out. Couldn't risk someone taking cover in her house and then getting eaten by her brother, now could she? She certainly wouldn't appreciate that. Family or not, she won't let violence happen without her watch! But as she headed to decide the fate of her brother, or herself, she halted.
Being a die-hard fan of horror movies meant she constantly talked about and fantasized about them, so she would ask her brother what he would do in emergencies. It went from Tsunamis to tornados even as far as a zombie apocalypse. Gabe had boasted how he would be the one to survive and how he intended to do just that but had then said,
"If you survived Zee, I'm sure you'd kill all of us haha, but can you not do that? I-I mean you don't know if there might be a cure and you killed your sweet sweet handsome brother" But Zylith couldn't understand his thought process. What if she had killed her family? What was wrong with that, she might kill other zombies and they were all a brother, a sister, family to someone out there! Eventually, everyone was going to die, why did it matter if she killed someone just a few years earlier than their possible pre-ordained time? And now the universe had given her a gift to thank for, it was Thanksgiving day tomorrow and she had been presented with a deliciously wrapped gift. Zombies.
But now Zylith interpreted his message as "Don't kill me so that I can have some fun even after I turn and can have another chance at life, I wouldn't want to be killed knowing there could have been a vaccine that could save me" She could understand that feeling.
Grumbling, Zylith stepped away from the door and went to get a piece of paper and marker, she scrambled down on it and then hung it silently on the door.
"This is fine" She whispered to herself and got a snarl from the other side of the door.
Upon, turning around to go clean herself up, Zylith stared at the dead corpse on the floor of the dining room, "This is fine"
With the world now thrust into a world of chaos and the government not having woken up yet, a small darkness had begun to flicker amidst the sea of darkness to come. And here Zylith is, taking a nap as she listens to the screams drowned by the unexpected rain. Too bad she couldn't get the therapy she much so needed.