Her photos (sequel to my list)

They came around 2am; they came to tell me my baby was dead. I thought know that isn’t possible. She’s save tucked up in bed where I kissed her goodnight. Rushing upstairs i swung the door open and found an empty bed. It hit me. She was gone. How could she be gone? There was just this numbness my eyes stung from the emptiness of tears that wanted to pour out but just couldn’t. The police brought me into my living room and told me how she had died, multiple shots to the chest. I wanted to rip those guys apart when I found out they had shot her. I wanted to scream at them to get out of my house! But curiosity kept my tongue still. So far I had managed to believe what they were telling me, just about. But then came the blow, they told me why they had shot her. She wasn’t my innocent daughter, they didn’t tell me of how the Alex I thought I knew had come to an end. They told me the tale of a monster, a monster who held onto a bloody knife right to the end. Right till the last beat of her cold stone heart. How could my Alex kill anyone, this wasn’t her, surely they had made a mistake surely she had been framed! This was when the tears came this was when I found myself screaming at them salty water pouring down my face.

“GET OUT!!” I stood up pointing towards the door. How could they come in here uttering such lies hours after they had shot my baby to death!

“But madam...” Whispered a police man trying to keep calm.

“NOW!” With that they decided that it would be best to leave me.

“We will be in touch” With that they strode out the door their lack of emotion considering they had shot my only daughter that very night insulted me.

I slammed shut the front door and ran up the stairs back towards Alex’s room. All tiredness that had been in me before had disappeared and reappeared as pain and confusion. Surely there would be things in here that I could show the police to prove to them that my Alex was no cold blooded killer. I stumbled towards the closet and carefully trying not to disturb anything looked through it. I inhaled deeply into a jacket that hung up there smelling Alex’s scent wishing it was really her, imagining her warmth against mine. As cliché as it sounds, I wanted her to tap me on the back and ask me in her annoyed tone what I was doing looking through her things. But that never came because she was dead, she hadn’t even died naturally, she had died at the hands of our so called “protectors”. I looked down at the bottom of the closet and found an old notebook. I bent down and grabbed it, flicking through it quickly I saw it was full of words, maybe reading things she had written would give me comfort, wondering over to her bed I sat down on the floor beside it not wanting to disturb the sheets that had been made so neatly by her. I opened it at the first page.

“Hey notebook (seems a bit stupid to call you a diary since you’re a notebook really).

Well I’m really really bored so yeah thought I’d pass the time by writing a few random words in here-

Drip drop drip drop.

There you go a few random words that’s what I saw today when I went to meet a person, who was on my list. I have a very special list where I write down very special people who get my personal attention. “

These words on the first page confused me greatly. The list must be some kind of list of people she fancies. I smiled sadly at this. Looks like I had found a journal of the random teenage ramblings of my daughter. All through the night I read page after page of her diary until I finally drifted into an uneasy yet strangely comforting sleep of lists and dripping noices.

I woke up at a start as I saw an image of blood dripping from my daughter’s corpse. Once again I opened the journal and began reading, as each page passed I becam increasingly confused it seemed normal enough except with each page it became less about ordinary teenage life, full of emotion and more like a twisted fairy tale, a tale of dripping blood and the blank eyes of the dead. It had become page after page of the graphic descriptions of murders. They seemed so real. My daughters imagination was so vivid yet so emotionless. I wanted to stop reading so badly but my eyes carried on staring fixedly at the pages and my finger kept moving unwillingly flicking each page over when I had finished reading more horrifying tales of murder. My eyes reached the next page-

“Hullo again,

Ashley Flipper “disappeared” yesterday and today there was news at my school that she had been found dead in her pond at the bottom of her garden. I of course acted as surprised as everyone else. But obviously I let myself have a smile when no one was looking one day they would thank me for the removal of this obnoxious plastic but for now I would have to keep quiet as they did not understand the meaning of humanity just yet maybe one day I will MAKE them understand.”

I had heard about her at the time I had thought what a tragic death that was now it just made me sick to think my family were responsible. I read on...

“I’m sure your aching, if that’s possible for a notebook to feel pain, to find out how she ended submerged in a pond. I feel it is one of my more creative removals. I knocked her out and then hung her upside from a tree above the pond using rope, I then placed a burning candle leaning onto the rope and watched the rope slowly fray. Thank you cartoons for your many bright ideas. When the rope finally gave way she plunged about 3 meters into the pond and quickly reached the bottom from where I heard a crack. I’m guessing that was her neck and that it had pierced through her skin because I saw a steady stream of diluted crimson liquid float up to the surface of the pond. Yet another Successful extermination. I am also particularly happy for the fact that having it been my birthday the day before I had in my ownership a small digital camera and I if I may say so myself I did take some delightful snaps of the scene. I shall upload them onto my laptop in a minute I think.

Goodbye for now."

At this my blood run cold this was the last I could take, my hand dropped the notebook on the floor. My daughter is, was, insane. An insane emotionless monster. How could this be had I brought her up wrong? What was this about photographs how sick was she? I logged onto the computer in her room using the password she had never bothered keeping a secret under me. I had never looked on her computer I had never doubted before that she had such chilling disturbing secrets hidden from me. I started searching through my documents for photos and scarily didn’t have to look too long to find a horrific image that physically made me sick. The detail of it was too real. Too graphic, it wasn’t right no sane minded person would take that in calmly. She described the photographs as “pleasing”. Each photograph had a story of its own a chilling moment stuck on a photo forever. I clicked onto the final photo and saw Alex smiling back at me, a hollow smile, insane wondering eyes. In her hand she clutched a knife a knife that dripped blood and in the background hung a dog, the dog I recognised as the one that had been found slaughtered a few weeks ago.I finally knew then that my daughter had not been killed last night my daughter had died with the first stroke she made.  I had lived so long with a dead girl yet I’d never thought to check her pulse, to find her smile and to record her laugh. I had failed her. I had failed my Alex I hadn’t even notice when she’d left the world of the sane. Goodbye Alex. Goodbye.

I slid into the kitchen stumbling into a chair and grabbing the nearest knife and a bottle of alcohol that lay on the shelf. I didn’t look at what it was. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered. I flicked of the cap and downed it in several mouthfuls. This made the world spin a little. Good. I was fed up of seeing everything so clearly now. I stood up and made a grab for random pills on a shelf I quickly downed them with more alcohol. Silent tears slid down my face as memories of what I had thought had been Alex slipped in and out of my head. I felt the knife revolving round my hand and I ran the sharp edge gently along my arm, not enough to break the skin though. I did this repeatedly each time with added preasure until it finally bit into my skin but still I continued. I felt warm blood trickle over my flesh as the wound became deeper and deeper. The pain was so much but I held my tongue and wiped my tears. I moved the blade further up my skin feeling its teeth rip into my flesh it felt oddly refreshing. By now the world was spinning I’d soon be able to ask Alex the questions I wanted to ask. Or if not I would be at pease away from pain in a wooden coffin rotting somewhere. I was the last one, all alone it had only been me and Alex who would be there to visit our graves. No one. My eye sight was becoming dimmed as I plunged deeper into the darkness, the darkness that seemed so accurately described but somehow so much vaster. I would say goodbye but is there anyone to say goodbye to.