Shadow Of the Past

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GENRE : FLASH FICTION
WORD COUNT : 668
AUTHOR: @khojo

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She was lithe and graceful. She was tall with chestnut skin and long black raven which sprawled flawlessly about her. She had the most alluring deep-set eyes. A beguiling feminine air hovered about. But she was a killer. She was a sangfroid killer and an utterly apt one at that. She possessed the perfect arsenal, and it made her an unpredictable enemy to men.

Her first kill had come at a tender age. It would be a mistake she would live and relive for the rest of her life. But she would only remember how much she had enjoyed it, despite the overbearing reluctance she had had to fight. She had dreaded what would become of her once she took another person’s life—the future spiritual implications and the present emotional and psychological implications. But she had lost no sleep over what she’d done. Instead she had found solace in it, a delicious aroma sprouted from the foreboding halo which encircled her kills. The look of utter bewilderment on their faces was priceless. She loved every single one of them—especially her first—because it was her father.

She could still hear Mama’s voice in her ears—the only vestige she still held of her mother, inalterable by time. Mama’s shrieks as Papa plunged into the room like a wounded soldier still resonated in her ears like drumbeats from ancient times. Papa’s unannounced all-out attack on Mama had scarred her eternally. But on that faithful night, amidst the storm, she had found something incomparable, a pearl she would hold to the grave.

She had found love.

Papa had pitted Mama to the wall, his hands up her throat, squeezing the life out of her. Papa’s villainous eyes bore into Mama’s as though she were a scourge he had been relishing to obliterate. Mama’s voice was frozen from the pressure exerted on her throat by Papa’s unreasonably large hands. Mama’s beautiful eyes turned bloodshot and sunken. Her black hair which was always perfectly pulled into a ponytail sprawled haggardly about her. Mama’s shrieks only seemed to spur Papa on.

She was seven. She sat behind one of four couches in the living room, shivering—her body was awash with fear. She watched as Mama tried unsuccessfully to wiggle free. Mama had almost broken free when Papa landed a heavy blow across her face, causing her head to spin as though she had been struck with a heavy metal. She saw traces of blood on Mama’s lips…they seemed to be oozing from Mama’s nose. Quickly the smell of blood would dominate the air as Papa kept on trouncing her amidst a torrent of cusses.

The subsequent happenings were nondescript. She didn’t know how she got the knife or how she was able to walk up to her father’s back undetected. She didn’t realize it when she fought the overbearing reluctance. She didn’t pick up on Mama’s gestures of NO-NO-NO! But she knew it when she plunged the knife into his back. His agonizing moan was music to her ears. She felt a stray of tear on her face and then another, until her face was soaked in a torrent of tears. A barrage of emotions took reins of her body but she plunged him in difference places until he gave a last moan in agony and staggered to his death.

Mama was bewildered. There were traces of blood on her face. Her hands were matted with blood. Mama tried to take her to the bathroom to wash her up but she wiggled free and sat on the couch staring at Papa’s lifeless body. Mama was saying, “Baby I am so sorry. You need to go to the bathroom as soon as possible. This is so terrible.” There was a hint of regret in Mama’s voice. But she didn’t regret it at all. She was laughing inwardly. Opening up to the growth of something she wasn’t used to, something inexplicable. She was opening up to the love of being a killer.

The End.

IMAGE CREDIT TO PIXABAY
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