Femgore Review

Photo by Catalin Pop on Unsplash

I can’t understand females despite being one myself. Sure, you’ve got a kid to take care of and all that, but why endure being beaten black and blue when you can just… feed your abusive partner some pills?

I can’t understand how somebody can be so stupid when ending the misery is so easy. So easy that I can’t phantom why anybody would rather endure the pain and agony than fight back in the most perfect way there is?

Or when you’re raped and lying next to your rapist, why not just take a knife and stab them when they least expect it? It’s so easy that I can’t understand why no female ever does it, why they choose to endure rather than to end it.

I’m no sexist, yet sometimes the very stupidity of my sex gets me worked up in ways no words can truly capture. At the same time, I perceive myself as a feminist at heart, for I’d rather see my sex fight the oppression and the abuse by giving right back to their abusers than stay idle, yet they rarely do.

That lack of action actually made me distance myself from my peers. Like, seriously, you’re just going to get raped and do nothing about it? Your kids? Your poor, poor kids? Well, aren’t they better off at some random orphanage than learning how to treat other people from that partner of yours?

But those kinds of things aren’t even the tip of my disturbing opinions about females and the growing trend of embracing masculinity, which is all about showing similar and violent tendencies as the very sex that puts them in so much misery.

Like, seriously? You think you have what it takes to take on an average man with that build of yours? Sure, steroids will help you get those muscles to look way larger than they are, but are they actually making you strong enough to fight back a man with natural levels of testosterone?

I’m not a man, but I think the answer to this question is pretty obvious, and yet… Nowadays, female authors seem to give my sex the false hope that we can take on an average man with ease, abuse them, and show just as much brutality towards them, as they have shown to us for ages. But just how detached from reality must someone be to actually believe this crap?

I’m not talking about transgenders but cis-people, by the way, even though when the transition has begun plays a subtle part here, like the density of the bone, the levels of testosterone before it was suppressed, and so on. Anyway, so what I am trying to say is that… I’m going to prove them all wrong.

Getting raped? Easy! As long as you have a hole somewhere, there will be dogs barking up across the country. What is hard, the hardest part in fact, is to turn the dog into a bitch and make it howl while you, as the female in this situation, make it immobile, cut off its testicles, and then grind the flesh with a proud smile.

Really, the only realistic way to do all that is to, well, knock out your rapist with a blunt object when they’ve finished their thing or, surprise, feed them some pills. But that would be too easy and wouldn’t prove the theory of how women are capable of doing exactly the same things to their abusers as they have done to them.

So, what do you do in that scenario? Well, the best outcome would be to physically fight off the rapist and then go from there. So… that’s what I decided to do.

Did it work? It did not. But I’m here, writing this, so something must’ve gone right… right? The thing is, I just did what any sensible female would in such a predicament: I tore my abuser’s ear off and then chewed on his nose. A tad too salty and metallic in taste, not to mention the acidic aftertaste of the byproducts produced by bacteria on the skin tissue. Yikes! Why do men never shower?

Overall, this method was a very unfortunate 3/10 – would not recommend. For my next attempt, if I ever should decide to push the limits, I’d definitely prepare more beforehand in case something goes astray during the review itself. And, well, I’d also practise my cutting skills so that the body parts are grounded to perfection before dumping them down the drain.

Also, for my next article, I’m open to new recommendations. So try your worst, and I’ll see you next time in another abysmal review!

Important notice: the procedures outlined in this article were performed under controlled settings and should never be replicated.

A Promise Kept

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
”Please reopen the case! My daughters have been hurting for too long,” Chung Mi-Suk collapsed to her knees and clasped her hands together in a relentless, heart-wrenching plea that twisted the onlookers’ stomachs with guilt. “Please! My daughters are hurting! Please help me put them to rest!”

The milling police station was on pause, watching the tragic spectacle of a mother pleading on behalf of her deceased daughters to the police. But no one could quench the fire burning within the poor woman, for the sexual assault case had long since been written off by the attorney in charge, and two decades had gone by in a heartbeat. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but watch. And as Mi-Suk realised that her prayers would fall on deaf ears today as well, as they had done so for the past decade, she staggered back up on her feet and exited the station.

The rain poured down ruthlessly and drenched everything in ice-cold water. She lifted her shoulders and chafed her arms from the cold yet did not try to flee from the rain or seek shelter somewhere where it couldn’t reach her. Instead, she stood her ground at the steps of the police station and watched the world go by before her in a rapid sequence. In those fleeting moments, while watching the common people go about their routine, she broke down and wept from the helplessness.

The evidence she so carefully collected over the years and put on pen to paper, an entire dossier with files upon files, now lay on the wet ground, the paper crumbling and eventually melting away like the seething fire in her heart consuming her resolve.

She was dying. A whole lifetime had come and gone in the blink of an eye, and before she realised it, she had become a mother, a widow, and now just an old lady whose only purpose was to seek justice for the twin daughters she raised so tenderly, whom she shielded from this cruel world, only to see them melt away just like how these papers now faded to the cadence of the heavy rain.

“Hey, ahjumma, you okay?”

She didn’t answer; instead, she looked on without moving as two young men rummaged through her pockets and ran away with the few coins she had, leaving behind her purse and an old photograph of her family before the tragedy took place and everything fell apart. With shaking hands, she picked up the photograph and smiled, wiping away her tears.

“I won’t leave this world until they’ve all paid. Umma, promised you, remember? Even if I have to keep on living and cheat death, I won’t break my promise to you, so sleep tight, my angels. Umma will soon join you and your appa. I promise.”

Rising back up on her feet, she trudged through the crowd of people from all walks of life as they fled the pouring rain, their movements in the background a blur of motion and their presence almost negligible.

The only thing Mi-Suk could see, the only thing that arrested her, was the large LED display with an award-winning movie director and his up-and-coming press conference and subsequent movie premiere for his newest blockbuster. And when she finally was close enough to it, staring up with hollow and detached eyes, her tears blended in with the salty rain and something in her expression changed – one that gave away nothing yet told a chilling story all at the same time.

Then, like the undead, she dragged her feet through the bustling capital, towards the studio where the press conference would be taking place later that night. She saw or heard nothing but the angelic voices of her beloved daughters, the way they called her umma, and those blissful days back in time when this cruel world did not blacken their purity and fill them with hatred and shame.

One and a half hours; the press conference was only one and a half hours away now.

Her eldest said the director was always the last one to arrive on time, that he would let all the filming crew and staff wait for him on purpose to relish in his ego. Such people never changed, only became worse over time. Their ego was so high, their sense of reality so low, yet they actually dared to believe themselves as nothing more than the filth they were, for they had become so used to tramping on and deriding those unable to fight back that they thought they were invincible, that they could stave off justice by paying those willing to accept the money thrown at them like the barking bitches they were.

And perhaps, they were right to think so, now that she thought it through, from where she lay in wait at the underground parking lot of the studio with a metal pipe tightly in her bony, wrinkled hand. Perhaps they were indeed right to think so….

Half an hour passed. Then, gradually, forty and fifty minutes. No one showed up in the parking lot, not even other people. Eventually, she decided to wait the entire length of the conference, approximately two hours or slightly more than that. She spent those hours just waiting and doing nothing else, counting the seconds, getting lost in thoughts and old memories, then restarting from the beginning on a never-ending loop.

At around 10 pm., things started to shift, and the solitude and harrowing memories gave way to other kinds of thoughts, the kinds that only a grieving mother could tolerate without losing her sanity along the way. She followed each person, tracing their movements, while keeping an eye out for the one she was looking for. But even as the minutes ticked away, the director remained elusive. Had he not come to his own press conference? But then she recalled the LED display she saw earlier tonight and knew that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps this wasn’t the parking lot used by the people who attended the conference?

Feeling the pressure of time, Mi-Suk hid the pipe in her bag, her youngest gifted her with her first pay through sweat, blood, and tears – and as she learnt after her passing – with her body.

She started for the stairwell leading to the lobby.

The entire place was filled to the brim with newspeople, overly zealous fans with no regard for their own or other people’s safety, and the few celebrities who were now standing at the centre of the red carpet posing for the paparazzi. Overwhelmed by the blinding lights and recurrent shutter of the cameras in the background, she noticed a young woman screaming her head off a few feet away and quickly made her way through the crowd, showing each one of them aside, and then grabbed hold of her.

“Director. Where is he?”

The young woman cast her a side-long look, judging and eyeing her down, before replying with a hoarse voice. “Director Kim? He’s still backstage, I guess. Why, are you a fan or something—”

Mi-Suk grabbed both of her hands—“Thank you, thank you!”—and slipped past security unnoticed, perhaps due to her old frame and those seventy years of agony that had hunched her back, turned her hair grey, and made her lose her teeth prematurely. After all, what harm could a seventy-year-old pose to anybody?

Only if they knew… only if they knew the fire burning inside her, the one that flared now and then, and ate through the deepest chamber of her heart, body, and soul like she’d entered the inferno even before shutting her eyes shut to this wicked, corrupted world.

Navigating the backstage was harder than she thought it would be. She passed by an entire corridor lined with doors for the third time by the time she heard what she could only describe as the sound of a muffled scream. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of a door with no label on it and perked her ears. She’d gone deaf once due to a vascular issue in her right ear, way before she lost her daughters so untimely, but had managed to get it back after treatment. She still had issues with that ear, but despite her hearing loss, those screams were so loud that she, for a few seconds, was stunned into silence.

Yet, as she looked around the corridor and the passersby, she noticed that no one even cast her a glance or inquired about the screams coming through all the louder with each passing second. She thus grabbed a crew member talking loudly over the phone, trying to bring his attention to the strange sounds.

“Young man, listen. You must call security!”

The young man tried to shake her off. “Ahjumma, how did you get in here? Huh?”

“Someone asks for help, in there, listen,” she tried, pulling the crew member closer to the unlabelled door. “I’m not lying. Listen! You must hurry and call—”

“Shibal!” The young man pushed her away so hard she hurled towards the walls, hitting her head. Gliding a hand through his sleek hair, staring her down with an annoyed look, he crept closer with a look that gave away that he indeed heard something but pretended not to.

“Hey, ahjumma, I don’t hear a damn thing, so stop the crazy act and leave before I call security. Do you hear me? Hey, I’m asking if you heard me? Shibal! Bitch, I said—”

“Always the same thing. It never stops. It never does. Why? Why doesn’t it ever—”

“Huh? What’d you just say? Never—what? You cursed me or something? Fucking bitch—”

Mi-Suk reached for the metal pipe in her bag. She didn’t hesitate, not even as the young man lay in a pool of his own blood, begging for mercy. Instead, she repeated her words, just as he told her to do moments ago, and kept bludgeoning his face until he stopped begging for his wretched existence and lay motionless on the linoleum floor. She then left his body to bleed and turned her attention to the unlabelled door, the pipe dragging at her side, as she twisted the knob.

A young woman lay naked, drugged, on the lap of the director whose wasted life she’d come to take. The filthy perpetrator stood up as he noticed her at the door, pulling up his trousers. She locked the door before anybody could intervene and save the director’s life.

Then… she took one step at a time. Slow and steady. Seeing nothing but darkness before her, hearing nothing but her angels’ voices in her ears, feeling no other emotion but that of a grieving mother who had gone without getting justice for far too many years.

“You want money? I’ll pay you! I’ll give you my entire fortune! I’ll do anything!”

Mi-Suk couldn’t help the smirk playing on her lips. “Then tell me, Director Kim, can you return my daughters to me? Let me see them one final time so I can ask for forgiveness?”

“…What? Daughters? Hey, ahjumma, you,” he pointed at his head, mocking her sanity, “you’ve lost a screw or something?”

“When I kill you, the world will know, finally, the monster you are… the things you’ve done… those horrible, horrible things you’ve done to such pure souls, who wanted nothing but recognition for their hard work, to repay their parents with their first pay, to give back to the world…”

“Huh? What’s this about? I’ve done nothing! Yah, ahjumma, you think I’m the only one who does things like that?” He paused, his eyes darting from the pipe in her hand and the young woman now getting back her senses. “Besides, you think fame at a young age comes at no cost? We all pay the price, in our ways, and bitches like this with their bodies. What’s so bad about it, huh? Nothing’s for free in this world, shouldn’t someone of your age know that the best?”

“That pay!” she snapped, her eyes turning wild with the anger festering beneath the surface, “has cost two precious lives! Tell me, Director, what kind of price tag requires forty counts of rape, derision, and sexual abuse by several men, of whom the majority are married and have kids of their own!?”

“This is just the way of the world! You think killing me will stop the system?”

“Then I’ll break the system, too, until none of it remains, if doing so I must until the very second I cease to exist! For killing people like you… it is not justice. It’s an obligation.”

The door behind them flung open as security entered. By then, however, the director had already succumbed to his injuries. They found Mi-Suk cradling the young woman, wiping away her tears and lulling her into comfort; her face and clothes covered in crimson, and her eyes wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. When she saw the security guards with their weapons aimed at her, she released the young woman and picked up the metal pipe on the table before her, advancing.

“Stop! Stop moving! Stop moving and put the pipe on the floor. NOW!”

But she didn’t stop, nor did she let the pipe fall. Instead, she let it down to the side, letting it drag on the floor, and then brushed past the security and the crowd of onlookers as she continued down the hallway aimlessly. Several people followed her, capturing her movements with their cameras and livestreaming. But the crowd didn’t stop her, not even as the security tried to step in. Instead, they became her live shields and blocked anybody trying to intervene.

She came to a halt at the centre of the red carpet, now directly facing the shutters, those blinding shutters that kept capturing her every single move and livestreaming. For a while, she just stood there and said nothing, not even as the crowd grew larger and the number of cameras only increased. Then she released her grip on the metal pipe, collapsing on her knees, addressing the nation and the police that failed her.

“I, Chung Mi-Suk, hereby plead guilty to the murder of Director Kim, the perpetrator in my daughters’ sexual assault case that was written off before the investigation could even begin. My daughters… my poor angels, when they heard of this, blamed by the authorities for being raped on several occasions by several men, including Director Kim, killed themselves before justice could be served. My husband died not long after, unable to live with the grief, and I tried decades – decades! – trying to make my voice be heard! Yet no one heard my pleas, bought for and paid with dirty money! So, what else could a mother do but kill her daughters’ abusers herself? To make sure they rested in peace, wherever they were, to finally be able to let go of the past, and say: “I did my best, the only thing I could, and kept my promise to you.” I do not ask for leniency but for my daughters’ case to reopen, as well as other similar cases the prosecutors wrote off in return for bribes and lavish gifts, or perhaps, buried secrets. I, Chung Mi-Suk, thus plead guilty to all charges against me…”

A delayed applause erupted through the crowd of people, of whom some couldn’t keep their tears in, while others, infuriated by the prosecutors’ failure to follow proper protocol and capture people like Director Kim, demanded justice and for all cases related to sexual assaults to reopen despite the statute of limitations.

While Mi-Suk never wanted this to be the case, spilling blood was her last resort, and she did not regret it. Not one single second of it. Even the inmates at the prison she was sent to broke out with cheers as she was escorted to her cell by two female guards, praising her strength as a mother and her unwavering love for the children she lost too soon and in such a short time, one after the other.

She died of old age only a few months short of spending a year in the prison, where she became the light of beacon for the inmates and the nation as a whole, recounting her twin daughters’ merry childhood as well as those harrowing years before the light in their eyes shut forever, bringing the whole court to break down and the prosecution to admit to their negligence and failure to follow proper protocol in front of the public, convicting those who deliberately took bribes and wrote off cases to hide their own skeletons in the cupboard.

But this was far from over. As with everything in this world, behind the scenes, new cases of exploitation and abuse occurred. Director Kim was right. There was no stopping the systematic abuse going on in plain sight; this was indeed the truth. But one thing was certain: every unpaid deed resurfaced and justice served sooner or later. No man was safe, and sometimes, all that was needed for that to happen, was someone like Mi-Suk who stared death in the eye with conviction and forced the world to open its eyes and see the ugliness behind purple-tinted glasses, even on the account of her own livelihood and health, for heroes needed neither fame nor comfort, only the will to force the system to reboot now and then.

Whether this deed was the unjustified murder of children, leaving them to rot from hunger, or the atrocities of barbarians with no empathy towards people other than their own, or the numerous world leaders watching a whole population burn yet choose to turn a blind eye like the cowards they were and would forever be as long as yet another innocent life was taken before it has a change to bloom like the flower they were meant to be – neither a terrorist nor a human animal living in open sewages…

 

 

 

 

 

The Taste of You

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

There’s something about the way skin tears that excites me; how it peels away as I put knife to flesh and bare the true face of its host. I can’t compare that feeling to any other, then again, have I ever felt this much and so many conflicting emotions at once before? To feel both mesmerised by Mother Nature’s composition, of what lies beneath the surface, made of several layers of tissue, to feel the edge of the knife gently unravel each layer, yet feel so… disgusted? So vulnerable? Beneath the skin, once it peels off and is gone, we’re all the same. Too similar, so uncannily similar.

I’ve always been an odd person. My obsession with the morbid, however, was not a result of this. You know those kinds of people, the ones who always seem kind and good-natured, yet are the most horrible beings? Only they’re good at hiding their true selves and fooling people into thinking the opposite. People always told me similar things growing up: “You’re such a kind person, so pure and innocent like falling snow.”

Just thinking of myself as “kind” and “pure” makes my skin crawl, especially since I know what I am.

I am a murderer. But not the kind you think of.

I don’t hate people, in fact, I’m not sure I’m capable of feeling anything. I just want to skin people, see what they look like beneath all that heavy, leathery tissue, to see their true forms and relish in the insight that only I have seen them, like really seen them. To stare into those hollow eyes once the skin is out of the way… how can I describe such a feeling? And the way that tissue feels on my skin as I place it over my face, and thinking for a moment, a fleeting moment, that we’re the same. Truly the same.

I like that part of the whole process more than anything, to put on my perfectly peeled mask and pretend I’m someone else. I’d wear the females’ clothes, craft wigs out of their beautiful, glossy hair, and put on some make-up. Then I’d dance the whole night, just dance away and pretend I’m the prettiest girl ever without being called a faggot or perverted loser.

Growing up in an all-boys school, I was used to being called all sorts of names and slurs, yet I didn’t mind any of them. I actually liked it; it made me feel like I was different, unique even. But I hated the idea of being told what to act like or look like. It wasn’t like I was overly feminine, either. Honestly, I received a lot of attention from females, especially in my twenties. They found my shyness cute, my awkwardness as some kind of mysterious attribution, and my effeminate features as a “pretty boy” trait.

Naturally, I chose a female as my first real murder. I’d killed animals before, practised on them to be more precise, and even murdered another human far too many times in my mind. Too many times, actually. And those vivid imaginations only made me even more eager to kill, to peel the skin off another human, and use it as my own.

Kayla was her name. Gorgeous thing. Despite looking so petite and feminine, she put up a real fight. I’d just taken off her bra and kissed her tenderly when I got the urge to taste her. Violently so. But not the kind of urge heterosexual males feel towards females; this was another kind of urge, one that was not sexual. I’ve never once felt sexual attraction to anyone or anything. Even this sudden urge lacked that sort of intimacy. I was just curious. What did this pretty thing look like beneath all those layers? Was she as pretty inside as she was outside? What did she taste like?

So, I pinned her down and punched her against the bed. She kept screaming. Kept telling me to stop. At one point, I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I couldn’t help it. Her soft, peaked breasts, the way her beautiful face distorted in horror, and the way she tried to push me away excited me in ways no words could describe. I guess I did feel some sort of sexual release back then, but it only happened that one time and only with her. I tried to replicate that feeling afterwards, always trying to mimic what I did to her with the others, but couldn’t.

Years later, I realised that I was in love with her, only I didn’t know it. I had never experienced love, and so I didn’t know how to express myself. I just wanted to be part of her and her to be part of me, and I was so sure that I only wanted to taste her, to see her real face beneath the skin, that I failed to recognise my own feelings. But at that point, I was too far gone to stop, too intoxicated by what Kayla had done to me and my perverted sexuality that all I wanted was to feel that way again in the most disturbing ways.

Sometimes, I’d wear her clothes and put on her face over mine, then I’d lie on the bed and slap myself repeatedly to relieve myself. It worked only half of the time, but I kept doing it. Over and over. Screaming, just like she did, then crying, begging myself to stop, saying “I’m sorry”, and then suffocating myself with her bra. It still smelled like the sweat of her soft breasts, which were now frozen solid in the freezer. I once cut up some of it to taste it, but they were so leathery that I just threw them away.

There are times when I look at her dismembered body and feel disgusted by myself, but other times I just use whatever I lay my hands on and try to relieve myself with her. But her hands are so cold that it never works. So, I stopped all that and just came to terms with the fact that I had to find some new hands – softer and warmer to the touch. No one would ever give me the sexual release Kayla gave me, I knew that, but I soon figured I just had to chop the head off and pretend those warm, cut-off hands were hers.

And so, my killing spree began in November of that same year I took this decision. Although I was still socially inadequate and it showed, I had managed to land a decent job at a chocolate factory, and women were still attracted to my pitiful personality, coupled with my above-average looks. There were days when I had two or three women over to my apartment, always of the same age as her, and took my time killing and dismembering them over the week. I didn’t like to rush things and was a perfectionist, and every new face and body required different tools and different care.

I liked especially the ones with some meat on them; that way, I could reserve some for supper and make soap with the fat. Did you know humans have yellow fat, by the way? I never knew until I chopped this middle-aged Somali woman. She’d given birth to six children and had fat in the right places. I must’ve used a great portion of her to make a whole course meal and several batches of fat. Which reminds me of something: she was the one who eventually helped me see my true potential and my innate talent for cooking and craftsmanship.

Long story short, I joined the cast of MasterChef – one of thousands and millions of home cooks, who were lucky enough to impress the judges and begin a new phase in life. Over the course of eighteen weeks, I became a fan favourite and earned the nickname “The Handsome Chef”, and when I came in second, I opened my own restaurant downtown and got people queuing for my dishes. My speciality? Sous vide turkey breast in vanilla and orange broth to enhance the sweet taste and give it a tang, served with a roux-based sauce made with a dash of cinnamon to double the effect of the vanilla without taking too much away from it.

You know, at first, I really wanted to start anew and make things the right way. But although I was making the bank, my urges were hitting an all-time low. Receiving attention from all those females, smelling their intoxicating sweat, seeing their soft and peaked breasts through their deep V-neck shirts, was getting to me. But, miraculously, I was holding on very well despite the temptation. Until a particular incident, that is.

As mentioned, I did not feel sexually attracted to anybody, and so I wasn’t particularly good at picking up the kind of sexual signals and tension people sent me. Not until it was too late. That was what happened on the evening of a party I was invited to by a celebrity couple who’d enjoyed my dishes. I was approached by many people, mind you, of all walks of life and sexes. But I didn’t really pay attention to anyone, in fact; I was actually planning on leaving the party early to keep myself in check, going as far as to avoid drinking altogether since years back.

But then he came. A young fella, no older than twenty. Good looking. He introduced himself as an up-and-coming actor and said that he was a big fan of mine. We exchanged phone numbers, and then I left. I didn’t realise just how big of a star this young man was, not until I looked up his name and noticed that he was a rising star in one of the most-watched coming-of-age, high school television series in recent years.

We kept in touch occasionally. I didn’t put any effort into trying to contact him as he wasn’t female and he wasn’t exactly what I liked to taste. Overall, not my type. But at some point, his messages overwhelmed me and would come at the most random of times. Each message started the same way: “Hey, I was wondering if you might be open to making some plans sometime soon?” or some variant of this. I usually ignored those kinds of messages, and honestly, I was slightly disturbed. That was a first for me – to feel disturbed by someone other than myself. And it was this fascination that eventually led me to accept his invites.

Of course, I knew what the guy wanted. I’d seen him give me those stares, the ones I’d given Kayla before I kissed her that night. But it wasn’t that I was sexually intrigued, only curious. The morbid kind of curiosity. I had never killed a male before. It never occurred to me that I could – or would. But lo and behold, as we made out in bed, I got that strange arousal I got with Kayla, and I just knew I had to take this opportunity.

He didn’t look much different from the others beneath the skin, to be honest. My expectations fell short. But he made me realise something about myself and those conflicting feelings of mine: it wasn’t the people themselves who aroused me, it was the fact that I did something I had never done before, something so perfectly disturbed, that it excited me.

I had to test this theory out, of course. So, I resumed my killing spree and used the flesh in my recipes. With each new dish, the sexual arousal was beyond anything I’d ever experienced, and when I received a two-star Michelin review from an acclaimed critic, I reached climax for the first time.

Today, I work as a judge in the newest season of MasterChef. Already past my sixties and my prime yet seeing those youthful faces look up to me and praise my craft triggers something deeply inside me. Had I the time and energy, especially the opportunity, I’d like to taste them and make a new dish out of them. Just imagining it makes me excited. But for now, all I can do is imagine and create the next best dish, imagining what each contestant would taste like in my mind.

I still wear Kayla’s face regularly and dance in the darkest hours of the night. She’s become some sort of comfort to me over the years. Her bra still smells of sweat, so salty yet delicious, that I sometimes scrape some of the fabric to infuse her sweaty breasts into my dishes. Serving it to customers gives me a kick, and once in a while, I reach climax – to her scent – and relive those beautiful moments of our bodies intertwining, her face over mine, her cold corpse against my skin, and me inside her rotting insides.

Merida Bell

Photo by Michael Matveev on Unsplash
Merida and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. From childhood crushes to the heartbreaks of adolescence, we went through it all together.

Back in the 1990s, when we were both roughly eleven years old, she and her family moved into the beige mansion across the street. I remember that day vividly and how the warm, sweet smell of baked apple pie wafted through the air as my late mum and I crossed the street to greet our new neighbours.

In those days, people had a greater sense of community and relied on each other for support during trying times. It was customary to welcome a new neighbour with baked pies and friendly conversation. This tradition, once cherished, was now only alive in the world of cinema.

I found the Bells to be reserved individuals who kept to themselves. While my family was very sociable and loved to engage in small talk, the Bells were the opposite. I still remember the way Mrs Bell’s voice trailed off after thanking us, and how she stood in the doorway as if to ensure we wouldn’t insist on getting invited.

My late mum, who was a housewife with traditional values, perceived Mrs Bell as rude and bad-mannered. In these parts of the countryside, it was common courtesy to at least offer a drink to someone who came knocking on your door.

Given the circumstances, my mum cautioned me not to get involved with the Bells. She believed they caught a disease that afflicted only city folk and made them think too highly of themselves. She was worried I might catch it, too. But like many other mischievous boys, I had a weakness for all things forbidden.

I rounded up my friends Dani, Mark, and Carlos after school, and we set out to pull a prank on the Bells. We couldn’t help but feel giddy with excitement at the prospect of what was to come.

We planned to ring the doorbell and then scamper away before Mrs Bell could answer. We’d made a habit of it – knocking on doors around our usually serene neighbourhood and then hiding from plain sight.

We crouched behind the bushes, feeling the dampness of the grass beneath us as we waited for the perfect moment to strike. Dani and I had a clear view of the front door and garden, but Mark and Carlos had to strain their necks to see the fun from their spot in the thorny bush.

Things didn’t go as we planned. No one answered the door. I could, however, see some movement through the window reflected on the curtain. The Bells were at home; I had no doubt. So, I rang the doorbell again. This time, I stood in front of the front door, nervously tapping my foot as my friends giggled from the nearby bushes.

The sound of the doorbell echoed through the entire house for several seconds. But there was no sign of anyone coming to answer it. I strained to hear any noise from the other side of the door to no avail. I couldn’t hear anything except the sound of my shallow breathing.

We presumed the Bells were out after all and played football in the nearby park instead. As the sun set and the sky turned dark, my friends headed back to their homes a few blocks away, leaving me to walk alone past the beige mansion.

The closer I got to the Bells, the more aware I became of the eerie silence that hung in the air. The mansion was cloaked in deep slumber, not a single light piercing the pitch-black murk.

The beige mansion weighed heavily on my mind during supper. I almost asked my mum about the Bells, but her piercing stare made me change my mind. I left my plate half-eaten and retreated to my room.

Although the beige mansion was barely visible from my bedroom window, I could still make out the intricate details of the architecture with a little effort. It was remarkable how such an old building managed to withstand the test of time – without a single crack, at that.

The wind howled that evening for hours. It carried the sound of creaking branches and rustling leaves as I stood frozen and stared at the imposing mansion. The darkness was absolute. I couldn’t even see my own hands on the windowsill. It was like a thick blanket covering everything and everyone – like a black hole swallowing the world.

I turned around and checked the clock behind me. It read fifteen minutes past ten in the evening. Where were the Bells? Returning my gaze to the beige mansion, I caught a fleeting movement out of the corner of my eye. A figure darted around the side of the mansion with such speed, they seemed to disappear into the shadows.

Scowling, I leaned against the window frame, frustrated that my view was obstructed by the overgrown bushes and the towering walls of the mansion. The cool breeze brushed against my skin as I leaned forwards.

Footfalls.

I whipped around and nearly lost my balance and toppled backwards. With my heart racing, I could literally feel the sweat on my palms as I turned around in a heartbeat. The heavy, rhythmic thud of footsteps grew louder and louder as someone climbed the stairs and drew closer.

My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest as I closed the ajar window and dived under the covers. The door handle twisted not long after and my mum stepped inside. She asked if I was asleep. I didn’t respond. She switched off the light before she left my room. I lay there for a few more seconds, eyes closed, before finally tossing the covers aside and opening the window.

The beige mansion stood empty and still as death itself, like a ghostly spectre haunting the night. The sheer beauty of it took my breath away. Something about it arrested me and I couldn’t explain what it was. I had to take a closer look.

I cracked open the door and listened to the quiet hum of the house before advancing. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I tiptoed down the hallway. My eyes were fixed on my mum’s bedroom door the entire time. Thankfully, she did not wake up.

I hurried downstairs, grabbed my jacket, and stepped out into the chilly night. The lampposts cast a soft glow on the deserted pavement. The only sounds were the chirping of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl at this hour of the night.

My house was just across the narrow road, so I could always retreat to safety if anything should happen. However, what I didn’t consider was the intricate nature of life, which my child’s mind couldn’t yet grasp.

It was a terrible idea. I knew that very well. Of course, I did. But something compelled me to act the way I did that night. It was like my mind was a tangled ball of yarn, and I couldn’t find the end to unravel it. Looking back on it now, I realise I was just a kid – a dull kid who didn’t know any better.

Turning around the side of the mansion, the rustling of leaves in the dense bushes startled me way more than I wanted to admit. Rooted to the spot and unable to move an inch, I perked up my ears. But whatever had caused the sudden noise faded away.

Something else caught my eye. One of the lace-curtained windows was slightly ajar—not a huge gap, but enough for a breeze to slip through and brush against me.

I was never one to snoop around, but my curiosity got the better of me. I took a glance in, assuming there was nobody at home. That one mistake set off a chain of events that led me down a path of ruin. If only I had turned around and returned home…

The drawing room was a sight to behold, with its opulent decorations and gold-dusted ornaments. A chandelier hung in the centre, its crystals catching what little light there was and sending faint rainbows dancing across the walls. Looking around, I couldn’t help but notice the oblong table across the cherry settee. The table was covered with china plates and gleaming silverware, and in the centre was a steaming turkey that looked mouthwatering.

Sensing a strange presence, I looked behind me. My heart raced as I scanned the area. No one was there – yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me. That was when I figured it was time to go back home.

But as I turned my back to the ajar window, a loud clatter echoed through the air, like the sound of silverware crashing to the ground. My initial thought was that a gust of wind had knocked the dishes off the table or something. None of the plates or silverware, however, were toppled over or shattered into pieces. Where had that noise come from?

As I let my darting eyes search every nook and cranny for an answer, they soon settled on the redwood door in the far-left corner. It was closed moments before, I was pretty sure, but now the door was gaping wide. I squinted to see it more clearly, intently trying to recall whether the door had been left open this entire time or cracked open just recently. That was when I saw it. The shadowy figure.

The ground slipped beneath my feet and I stumbled backwards. Panic gripped me as the shadow grew larger with every breath. Everything around me came to a sudden halt as if by magic, even time itself, and I covered my mouth to stifle a gasp. I didn’t even realise I was holding my breath. Not until the shadowy figure locked eyes with me and crawled out of the window.

I struggled to get up from where I had fallen on my buttocks, but once I did, I charged across the road like a maniac. Sprinting home with all that I had, I locked the door and collapsed.

I gasped for air, my heart pounding like it would tear through my chest. When my mum ran downstairs, she found me in a daze. No words escaped from my lips. It was like I had lost the ability to speak.

I cried my heart out, shuddering from the peril I’d just escaped, and my tears soaked into the fabric of her nightgown. But there was no reason for me to cry.

Yes, I saw something, at least I thought I did, but at the same time, I didn’t. Was it a person? A ghost? I couldn’t even tell. All I knew was that something really terrible would’ve happened had I not regained my senses and fled.

From that day on, I avoided the beige mansion like a pest. The boys stopped hanging out with me; they mocked me for chickening out, saying I was acting like a scared little girl. Maybe I was. A scared little girl, that is… All I knew was that I would never set foot there ever again. But my friends ditching me wasn’t even the scariest part.

No one ever laid eyes on the Bells after that night. They vanished without a trace. It was almost like they had been erased from existence – as if they had never been alive, to begin with. But that was hardly possible. My mum and I both saw Mrs Bell. I didn’t make all these things up in my mind. Everything I saw was real – even if I couldn’t prove it.

Time slipped by unnoticed, and before I knew it, several months elapsed. Little did I know, things were about to take a turn for the worse.

The world froze in time as the winter morning frost settled, and the only sound was the crunch of footsteps on the icy grass. The hills of powdery snow rose all around me, and there she was, standing tall amid it all and beckoning me to come closer to the beige mansion.

A wintry princess in black, surrounded by snowy hills – like a macabre painting from a distant past.

That was the first time I saw her. Merida. Merida Bell. Even after all this time, the mere mention of her name made me shudder. She haunted my mind like a parasite, feeding off of my memories of her. From sunrise to sunset, she consumed my thoughts.

I was on my way home from school when I spotted her for the second time. She sat on the porch. Her head was buried in her pale, slender hands. I recognised her immediately, but she seemed oblivious to my presence. I decided to watch her some more. Was she crying?

She lifted her head, and her eyes locked onto mine. But this time, I stood my ground instead of backing away. Surrounded by the hustle and bustle of people, I knew I had nothing to fear. She tilted her head to the side and her pearl-black eyes narrowed. I tried to be friendly and waved, but she ignored me and slipped back into the beige mansion.

The third time I saw her was at school. We were part of the same batch. But she ended up in a different class than me. She spent the entire day staring out of the window, lost in her thoughts and oblivious to her surroundings. My friend, Ryu, told me that her name was Merida Bell and that she had transferred to our school from a city that was a 40-mile drive away.

It didn’t take long before everyone was talking about her. The rumours spread like wildfire. It was blatantly obvious that she came from an affluent background, but no one knew why her family moved to the countryside. Hearing the nasty stuff the other kids came up with, I kind of felt bad for her. But who was I to butt in and make myself a target? And it didn’t exactly look like Merida cared for these rumours, anyway.

Leaving the classroom that same afternoon, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and made my way back home. It was then that I saw Merida’s curly hair bouncing in the wind a few steps ahead of me on the pavement. She dragged her foot as if she was too lazy to walk properly.

Some neighbourhood kids threw things at her, shouting insults, but she kept advancing without even once glancing at them. I chased the kids away and followed closely behind her, staying out of sight as much as possible while keeping a watchful eye on her. How could she be like this? So oblivious to those around her.

Halfway down the street, however, she paused and turned around. Embarrassed, I dropped my eyes and felt a rush of heat on my cheeks. Did she catch me staring? I didn’t mean to come off as a creep, but I think I did.

Taken aback and unsure of what to do, I looked up to see her making her way towards me. My heart skipped a beat when she called me by name. My mind went blank, and I was left stunned. How come she knew my name?

Her black eyes seemed to hold all the secrets of the world, sparkling like the moon reflecting off the surface of a shimmering lake. The colour of her plump lips was so vibrant that it was almost as if they were painted on – a perfect shade of cherry red. She was beautiful.

“What do you want?”

I stood there, searching for the right words to say, unsure of how to explain myself and not come off as a weirdo. I must have looked more confused than I thought I did – or wished – for she repeated her question and added one more.

“Why are you following me?”

“I think there’s a—”

“I saw you looking through the window that night. You’ve been watching our house ever since.”

“That night?” I racked my brain before the gravity of her words finally settled. That night! That meant she saw me? But I didn’t see her. How did she—I looked up.

“Why are you doing this? You do realise stalking can get you in juvie, right?”

 “I… I didn’t mean to go to your house, it just… I thought I saw something and I wanted to—”

“Saw something? You’ll have to do better than that to fool me!”

“I- I did see something! I swear! Or… at least I think I did.”

“Right,” she said, adding nimbly. “You seriously expect me to believe that?”

I resigned myself to the situation with a sigh. She wasn’t going to believe me no matter what I told her.

“Forget it; shouldn’t have said anything.”

She rushed up to me. “Are you being serious?”

“Never mind what I said…”

“What… what did it look like? The thing you saw.”

I looked at her, my mind churning as I tried to process her words. She repeated her question, each syllable clearly pronounced so that there was no room for misunderstanding. Seeing my bewildered expression, she looked around us before dragging me along.

“I know a secret place where we can be alone. Follow me.”

She’d just accused me of stalking, and now she wanted me to follow her. As I broke free from her firm grasp, she slipped away into a dark alleyway a few blocks away from our neighbourhood. Despite the bright daylight, a sense of unease crept over me as I approached her.

“So, what did it look like?”

She stressed the word ‘it’, drawing out the vowel sound as if trying to make a point. I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to recall the past I tried to forget. She repeated herself.

“Honestly, I have no idea. It… it was pitch-black. I couldn’t see a thing.”

“You said you saw it.”

“I said I thought I saw something.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Look, I don’t have a clue, all right? Can I go now?”

Just as I was about to leave, she clamped onto my arm with an unearthly force. I winced as her nails dug into my flesh.

“Just… just tell me what it looked like.”

“I told you – I don’t know!”

“Please, just say something – anything!”

My words caught in my throat as her desperate voice cracked. What was up with her? Why did it even matter?

“All I saw was a table full of food and—”

“Table full of food? What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean? You said you saw me! Then you must’ve seen the table as well!”

“No… no, I did not.”

By this point, my patience was wearing thin. The images from that night replayed on repeat in my mind and haunted me. I knew what I saw, and none of it was a hallucination.

I wrenched my hand free from her grasp and retreated. She shouted something, but the distance between us made it impossible for me to catch her words.

My jaw was clenched, and my fists were balled up as anger coursed through every fibre of my being. Being accused of being a creep was bad enough, but now I was being accused of being a bloody liar as well.

I lay in bed that night and listened to the sound of the rain tapping against my window. Her words echoed in my mind over and over again. I couldn’t tell if my memories were real or just a product of my mind any longer. But if they were real, then why did her words get to me so much?

Even though it was obvious she was lying, one way or the other, I couldn’t help but feel like there was some truth in what she said. Was I mistaken about everything? How? Why? Was my mind playing tricks on me? No, that couldn’t be it.

That night, I was completely awake and alert. The opulent table was right there in plain sight, I was sure. Merida must’ve seen it too, or at least, caught a whiff of the dishes. But she said I was wrong, she said there was no table. Nothing made sense. It was driving me up the wall.

With a grunt, I sat up in bed, feeling the weight of my thoughts pressing down on me. It was like I was losing my grip on reality, unsure if I was being gaslit or if my brain was meddling with my memories and showing me things that never happened.

When I arrived at school the next day, I was surprised to find a note on my desk. I snuck into the boys’ restroom to read it. The message used a strange mix of capital and lowercase letters. It was so short that it could hardly be called a letter.

I Know wHat yOu dId

Why did she feel the need to tell me this? I couldn’t wrap my head around the way her mind worked. I tossed the note, watching it swirl down the toilet bowl and vanishing from sight. With the note gone, I decided to invite Ryu over for a game night. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway.

We were so engrossed in playing games we lost track of time, and before we knew it, my mum returned from work.

The smell of exhaust fumes filled the air as Ryu’s mum pulled up an hour later to take him home. As much as Ryu’s presence helped me forget about the beige mansion, I couldn’t help but feel drawn to it again as I gazed across the road.

I stood in the doorway, listening to the sound of my mum’s footsteps as she went back inside, while Ryu’s car disappeared around the corner. The beige mansion loomed before me – its eerie grandeur impossible to ignore.

I squinted. What was that? A person? It moved closer to me, whatever it was. I blinked and stared down at my feet, feeling the weight of the world as I stood there in silence. My feet felt glued to the ground. Why couldn’t I move?

With each step, the shadowy figure moved more erratically, its body contorting in unnatural ways. I felt my body tense up as panic flooded my senses, leaving me gasping for air. I shut my eyes. The weight of dread settled in my stomach as I prepared for what was to come.

Then I felt the rough grip of two hands pulling me back into the hallway before the door slammed shut. Collapsing on my knees, I heard the click of the lock as my mum peered through the peephole. It was real. I wasn’t hallucinating. But the thing we saw couldn’t be explained by science or reasoning.

My mum yanked me up, and we dashed up the creaky stairs. She opened the hatch to the attic, and I reluctantly climbed up. She followed, trying to ascend as quickly as possible, but her efforts were cut short by a loud bang on the locked door.

She put a finger to her lips, warning me to be quiet before descending the wooden ladder. Peering through the gap in the hatch, I could see her fingers gripping the doorknob as she stood there, trying to keep whatever was on the other side locked. Not once did she turn around and look back.

I could hear my heart pounding in my chest as she finally twisted the doorknob and opened the door. The echo of her footsteps faded away, and I knew deep down that this was the last time I would see her. Tears streamed down my pale cheeks.

The sound of my mum’s screams reverberated through the empty hallway. I blocked my ears. I didn’t leave the attic. I couldn’t. That night, my mum disappeared without a trace. The police found no evidence of foul play. They believed she left on her own.

I lived with my grandmother afterwards. Ten years went by. Merida and I stayed in contact. She believed me, she was the only one who did. The tragedy that befell her family also affected mine.

The creature, she said, was fuelled by curiosity, and the more I tried to uncover its secrets, the more it yearned to be noticed. I summoned it, she said, and now my mum was no more. But it wasn’t like that. It never was. In the end, it was the moment I stopped grieving that made it angry, only I learnt this too late – far too late.

Night after night, I witnessed my mum lock me in the attic and disappear down the hallway. It was driving me mad. I couldn’t shake off the guilt that was eating away at me, and waves of shame kept hitting me time and again.

To break the vicious circle, I fell asleep to the image of her smiling face. It was the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay. Merida told me to stop dwelling on the past and to focus on tomorrow instead.

Try as I might, I couldn’t do it. It was always on my mind, the shadowy figure, and I couldn’t help but think about it. My heart yearned for its arrival. I wanted it to take me to my mum. But it never came.

Merida and I developed a romantic relationship in our twenties. She said she liked me since the first time she saw me but couldn’t confess her feelings until our late teens. I didn’t feel the same way about her. For a long time, all I felt was a sense of pity. But I needed her friendship and I couldn’t bear to see her leave me.

When she gave me an ultimatum – either her or no one – I chose her. She was in love, madly in love, which surprised me. I sort of always knew she had a crush on me but I never knew it was this deep and this persistent over the years.

Our first night… I couldn’t go through with it. I told her I couldn’t. I saw her more as a sister than a lover, and my complex feelings for her led us into this awkward position. She left in the middle of the night and didn’t return my calls for several weeks.

Without her, as strange as that was, I found myself in a more stable place. I was feeling better, much better. The heavy weight in my chest lifted, the nightmares ceased, and my mum no longer disturbed my sleep.

When Merida returned, I broke things off with her and decided to take a break and heal my scars. She didn’t take it well. A neighbour had to step in as she screamed and cursed at me. I had never seen this side of her – never imagined she could be so violent, so unhinged. It felt like I had dodged a bullet. A big one.

Soon afterwards, I landed a job as a butcher, just a short ten-minute walk away from home. Life started improving. It was the best decision of my life – at least while it lasted. But sometimes, I’d find myself staring too long at Gin, wondering if her laugh had always sounded quite like that. Or if the colour of her eyes had shifted. I chalked it up to paranoia. But was it?

Mr Jekeil was the one who hired me. We worked together most of the time, taking turns between the butchery downstairs and the counter.

Gin, the girl I fell in love with, was Mr Jekeil’s only daughter. She was out of my league in more than one way. Gin was a university graduate and had a 9-5 office job in a world-renowned investment bank.

It is kind of funny I think about this now, but she had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. When she beamed, time came to a halt.

I confessed to her on the day we strolled down the street aimlessly – young, reckless and madly in love. With her in her arms, I was another person. She was the drug I needed to heal, the calm after the storm, and she was real.

We kissed. The rest is history.

Mr Jekeil had seen it coming for he told me one night to take good care of her. I intended to do that. Gin made my past non-existent. All those miserable events that shaped my life and my personality vanished in a puff of smoke. Yet, sometimes, I’d wake in the night gasping for air – not from nightmares, but from the absence of them. Like something was missing. Something that had fed off my sorrow for so long it couldn’t stand my happiness…

And like this, another decade passed in bliss. I was now the father of a three-year-old daughter, Emma, and I finally understood what my late mum must have felt when she locked me in the attic and faced her demise. I felt the same way. I would do anything to keep my baby girl safe.

I had no father of my own but I tried my best to be a good dad for my daughter and the best husband for Gin who made dreams come true. It was a miraculous feat, and I was fearing its collapse.

The past no longer haunted me, I swear it did not, but sometimes I found myself looking across the street and shuddering. The paranoia eating my heart out hadn’t consumed me yet. But both Gin and I sensed it – growing deeper, bolder, with every passing year.

She suggested we consult a psychologist – a former friend of hers from university. We arranged a session just two weeks later. I never went to that consultation. I never had the chance to.

It was the dead of night. Gin slept with our daughter in the next room in the hallway while I was still wide awake. We went to bed early that day since Gin had to go to work at half past six to finish a report. We woke up three hours later to a bone-chilling scream. I was the first to find our daughter hiding under her draped bed.

The window was open, the whistling wind chilling the inside of the room and rocking the window like it was singing a sombre lullaby. We were on the second floor by the way and the window was secured just in case. I still can’t wrap my head around how it became unlocked. It shouldn’t have. Gin slept with our daughter that night and asked me to wake her up at five o’clock.

I lay on the side and hugged the pillow I rested my head on, watching the moaning wind from our bedroom window as it forced the crooked trees to sway in a macabre dance in the middle of the night. I must have dozed off not long after.

I awoke to the alarm I set up and noted that it was still dark outside. After putting on my clothes, I dragged my feet across the hallway and opened the door to our daughter’s bedroom.

I was still groggy, but I knew the gruesome sight before me wasn’t a dream. The wallpaper was shredded, the rug torn down the middle, the closets stood wide and empty, and the lamp was crushed into shards of bloody glass.

I stopped breathing and backed away. There was blood everywhere. I pulled the ripped covers down and frantically tried to find a sign of life. When I didn’t find any, I looked out through the open window and out into the darkness, which was about to turn azure. No one was outside.

A shard of glass cut into my feet as rushed out of the room and downstairs. My eyes grew wide. There, right there, in front of the cracked front door, I saw a grin I knew too well.

I took a step forwards, holding my breath. The shadowy figure carried my little girl. It was as still as the rigid mountains, lifeless and stiff like the undead, just like how I remembered it.

I stepped forwards, my hands reaching out, desperate to stop it. It grinned wider than before. Had I brought it here? No, I stopped being curious about it the day I met Gin. I just wanted to live. I just… How did it find me?

I glanced to the left and noticed a wooden block with a knife on top of the marble counter. It was a gift from Gin so I took care of it like a baby, so that it would never become stale and useless. But it was too far away from where I stood. It would be safer to charge forwards than seize the knife. Still, it was the only thing that made sense at the moment.

I snatched the knife and lunged at it. The figure didn’t budge. I raised the knife and drove it through its hollow chest. Its wolfish grin turned into a horror-stricken expression, and the dark and hollow eyes turned brown.

I pulled the knife out of my wife, who collapsed with our daughter in her arms. It was first then that I noticed the pool of blood beneath my feet and found my little girl stabbed more times than I wanted to count. Her tiny head hung by a thread from her severed neck.

I collapsed beside them.

The bloody knife fell through my trembling fingers and my laboured breath came in short, ragged bursts. As I turned my head and peered out of the open door, I noticed a dark figure amidst the downpour.

I couldn’t discern its face at first, but I knew who it was. It spoke to me. A wretched shriek escaped from my lips as I grabbed the blood-stained knife and tightened my grip around the shaft. Merida. Merida Bell.

Running into the brightening darkness, I stabbed her until she bled to death and the rain washed her away. Only a trail of blood on the pavement remained as evidence of her existence. Every fragment of her presence in my mind evaporated with the prattling torrent.

That was when I knew Merida lied to me. The shadowy figure didn’t feed on my curiosity, it fed on my grief. The happier I became, the more I forgot the past and the hungrier it became. Mrs Bell didn’t invite us in out of rudeness. It all made sense now. She acted the way she did to keep us safe. Because once grief took root, it opened the door. And once it opened, it never shut again. And I had kept it open, all these years, without knowing…

That night, when I went out to explore what was hidden in bushes, Mrs Bell had already been murdered. Now I knew she was also the one who took away my mum. She wanted me to be all alone and hers only – her prey. She fed on me like the parasite she was. In the end, it was my fault – all of this.

I covered my eyes, my hands trembling out of control. I was still holding the bloody knife. But the trail of blood was no longer in the current. I don’t know if it was really her I killed. Maybe she was just another mask it wore. Maybe she never existed at all…

A car door opened behind me. Someone yelled at me to put the knife on the ground and raise my hands. As the police handcuffed me, I looked over my shoulder to bid farewell to my family. Dejected. Without hope. In despair.

I frowned. My heart skipped a beat. The woman on the floor wore Gin’s robe, but it hung differently, shorter than I remembered. Her hair was parted the wrong way, too. The little girl’s socks were green, not pink. Gin would never have let her wear mismatched socks.

That’s when it hit me. These weren’t my family. I had never seen these people before!

I shoved the officer aside and frantically searched the deluge, trying to find a trace of my missing family. The officer shoved me to the ground. I turned my head and looked into his eyes, pleading with him.

“It’s not them! These people, I-I don’t know them!”

He followed my eyes, I think he could see the last bit of good in me, then forced me up and into the police car. Something in his gaze told me he knew I was telling the truth, but he feigned ignorance, or so I thought. I’ll never forget the terror in his eyes as he looked into mine. Never. Like I was some kind of monster…

I wasted away in prison for over a decade. I was placed on death row for the murder of my family. But I didn’t do it. I saw it – clear as day! Those people weren’t my family! I had never seen these people before – not once in my life! The officer knew I was telling the truth – I could see it in his eyes. But no one believed me – no one wanted to believe.

As the injection took hold and darkness crept in, all I could think about was my wife and daughter. Where were they? What happened to them?

Mr Jekeil was there too, watching me, although I couldn’t see him through the glass. He would never forgive me – nor should he. I failed to protect my family. I promised him I would, but I failed.

The last image that burned into my fading mind was her.

Merida. Merida Bell.

Merida and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. From childhood crushes to the heartbreaks of adolescence… we went through it all together.

I wish we didn’t.