Lavender bath salts mingled with the scent of warm sticky blood. It rose with the steam clouding the glass, blotting out the outside world. Lucy inhaled deeply, drawing it deep into her lungs. This had been her best yet. And the most satisfying. She had fooled herself into thinking that it would end any other way. She didn’t want to find her mother. She wanted to end her. And once was never enough. She had to pay her whore of a mother back ten times over for abandoning her as a child. Trying to recreate a happy ending was a façade. She understood that now. But every cloud has a silver lining… The nearer she came to perfection, the more exquisite the payback. Her body shuddered from the afterglow of her satisfaction. Who was she to deny that part of herself? Deep down she had known, even as Anita recited the lines, word perfect, that it would never work. How could Lucy live a normal life when everything about her was an aberration?
At first she turned the blame inwards. She was a freak who had committed crimes in the eyes of society. Her happy ever after was never going to come true. But who wanted normality if all it brought were rules and boundaries? It was easier to give into the longing rising within her. Inflicting pain on others made the horror go away. And the reward… oh what a bounty that had been: wave upon wave of ecstasy as she purged herself in a bath tinted with blood.
But now she had another problem to deal with. Sophie. The little girl was still sleeping on her bed. Now Anita was gone she was just a stranger: no longer a competitor for her mother’s affections. Like her she was motherless; cast adrift in a cruel world for wicked men to do what they would. And there were plenty of wicked men. She pulled the plug, allowing ribbons of blood to swirl into the void. What was she going to do with her indeed? She was not a child killer. But Sophie had to be disposed of. And there was no way she could return her home. She knew from the start that was never going to happen, despite her reassurances stating otherwise. If only she could just make her go to sleep: a deathless death, never to awaken. She was only a little thing, soft and pliable, free of the threat of rigor mortis. A slow, thin smile spread across Lucy’s lips. She thought about the final death note which lay on her dresser. Sophie would fit nicely into the suitcase. And Lucy knew just where to take her.