Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.
The girl had done it.
He'd come downstairs to find his daughter holding a bloody knife and standing over her mother's body.
The girl had done it.
That was the story he told the police when they showed up to find his dead wife and the knife - conveniently covered in too much blood to get fingerprints from - and the inconsolable husband.
The girl had done it.
That was the story he told the friends at the funeral. How his daughter - psychotic, possibly schizophrenic, obviously very unstable - had snapped and grabbed a knife. How he had heard the screams too late.
The girl had done it.
His wife hadn't wanted to hurt their daughter, he explained, otherwise she could have stopped the girl. But she was caught off guard and didn't want to accidentally hurt their daughter. She was too kind for that.
The girl had done it.
Where was the other twin? the police wanted to know.
He explained that in her psychotic state, the girl had taken her twin with her. He wasn't sure why- after all, who could understand why crazy people did the things they did? The girl had just killed her mother. She wasn't thinking straight.
The other twin was probably dead, he explained sorrowfully. Since the girl was capable of killing her own mother, she was probably capable of killing her sister.
The girl had done it.
That was the story he told himself as he stared at himself in the mirror and watched his murdered wife standing over his shoulder, blood dripping from her chest.
She was there a lot. Standing behind him.
He chuckled softly under his breath. “Still here? Can’t leave me, can you. Never could. Even when you tried. You couldn’t leave me, and you couldn’t leave your precious children.”
She didn’t reply, as always. She stepped forward, cold, insubstantial fingers tracing up his back to rest on his shoulder, sending chills down his spine. She didn’t move again for a moment, then rested her chin on his other shoulder. She felt… disturbingly real, although he knew she wasn’t.
After all, he’d made sure of that.
“Y’know, I did love you at first,” he said, reaching up to caress her face and sighing as his fingers passed through her cheek. “When we first met, in that bar- what were you doing there, anyway? You never drank anything. You were just… there.” He laughed and shook his head a little. “Just there. It seemed like you were looking for something. Maybe someone. And you got me instead.”
She blinked at him, purple eyes cold and dead. The sight sent a small pang through him.
“I always liked your eyes,” he said. “They were sparkly. Like gemstones. Something that I could display on a shelf.”
He smiled. “I dreamed about taking your eyes, you know. At night, when you were asleep beside me, I’d dream of prying your eyelids open and taking your eyes out. Only your eyes. I loved your eyes…”
She blinked slowly at him again.
“I’m so glad you come back to me. Night after night. Day after day. Do you visit our daughters as well, or just me?”
She remained obstinately quiet.
His eyes hardened and he whipped around, but she was already gone.
He cursed quietly. “Bitch.”
The phone rang, startlingly loud, and he sighed softly before going to answer it.
“Hello?” He listened for a few moments. “... really? You’ve- yes, okay. Okay. I’ll be right there.”
He set down the phone and a cruel grin twisted the corners of his mouth, a quiet laugh bubbling to the surface as he strode toward the front door.
His wife’s ghostly fingers wrapped around his shoulders and he laughed louder.
“What? Don’t you want me to get our daughters back?” He knelt to slip his shoes on, ignoring the frantic fingers trying to pull them away from him.
No witnesses. Finally, they’d found his daughters. One of them - one of the twins - had stolen something and the cashier had recognized her as the little girl who’d killed her mother a year ago. He didn’t know if it actually had been Yamren or if it had been the other one, Kamea, but it didn’t matter. They’d be together.
No witnesses.
He stood up and his wife’s fingers wrapped around his throat, frighteningly real and choking for a moment. His hands flew to his throat.
“Let go of me!” he snarled. Her fingers dug deeper, until they tore through his skin, sending red-hot blood coursing down the front of his jacket, burning and spilling and draining and-
He closed his eyes, counted to ten, and looked down at his jacket.
No blood.
He smiled and looked behind him, finding only empty space.
“I’ll be back soon, darling. And I’ll have our daughters. Don’t worry.”
End of chapter
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139,558 Literary Works • 672,608 Reviews
I'm baaaack c:
How are youuu??? It's been ages and ages and ages since we've last talked!!! <3<3<3
c:
Moving on from my explosive hello XD
The girl had not done you, you babbling, blundering, blithering baboon.
This guy is creepy, not gonna lie. Also, I gotta ask-- are they in America or Meretica, not sure what you were going for-- cause if he's alive and in Meretica I'd love to watch this guy suffer and die c:
Nah, you're dead meat, dude c:
BAIIIIII
LUV YOU
<3<3<3
HAVE A NICE {[*insert time of day here*]}!!!
HI <33333 I'M DOING OKAY
hlksjdlfkd don't tell anyone but I may have ever so slightly forgotten to decide where this is set so I mean it's plausible that he's still hanging around in Meretica and you can watch him suffer and die later cause I'm not planning to kill him off during the course of No Witnesses
although I'm murderous so we'll seeBAI LUV U TOO HAVE A GREAT DAY
Hi AcessainOfTheMoon,
Mailice here with a short review!
The story has really escalated. I like how it has developed and how the perspective has now changed. I like that you get to know a bit more about the father and Kamea's mother through his monologue. You build it up incredibly well. I was waiting until the end to see how it would end and I was also pleasantly surprised that you wrote it in such a way that the murdered woman didn't speak. You could have given her a voice that the father would have heard in his head, but I think it comes across much better that you show her in silence. It reminds me of the beginning there, where you keep repeating yourself with the "The girl had done it." It gradually works like a spell that turns to madness. One can definitely feel a kind of tension and nervousness through the interruption and insertion of this short sentence. I really like that and how you also gradually describe more of what has happened in the year since the mother died. It's a good summary.
The question mark is unnecessary in this case because you don't use inverted commas. A comma is sufficient. The sentence is dynamic and good because it does not have the classic "The police wanted to know where the other twin was." In this case, it also gives the paragraph this feeling as if this is a point where the father always hears / sees the loudest in front of him and also thinks that he could blab or that the police don't believe him.
I would add a "too" at the end of the sentence.
I always find characters like that, who see other people, very fascinating.
I think you portrayed the father fairly good. After all, one only know him from the day of the murder and a year later. You can already see a development that he has gone through, which probably hasn't been very positive. He seems to have fallen into a kind of delusion. From the monologue, I noticed that he really loved the woman, or at least her eyes. He seems to be obsessed with her and will probably have realised in the course of the past year that he killed the one he actually loved and since then has had delusions that plague him at night and at the same time make him happy.
My question that remains now is how towards the end, the "no witnesses" will be put into action. He has already told the police that it was the girl who killed the mother. How does he now want to go about killing her? Of course, there is still the danger that Kamea and Yamren will tell the truth at some point, but he has already forged a strong bond with the police through his actions and statements, and he wants to cut that bond so quickly in order to have no more witnesses. I don't know if you have already thought about this, but I see this as an important point for the course of the plot and how the sequels build on it. In the end, the father seems like a choleric, obsessive man, and if something like that happens to him again, like the day he murdered his wife, it can end badly for him.
It was a very intense chapter. I didn't think it would leave such an impression on me because of the severity. It was a good chapter. I liked the way you set it up.
Have a great time writing it!
Mailice.
Thank you for the review!!
This is chilling, I mean, I won't be able to sleep tonight. The husband is an emotional and physiological mess, he is terrifying. I like the part where he talked about taking her eyes out, that was chilling. Really, really, really chilling. The beginning is nice, I like the repetition. The flow of the whole piece is very nice. The limited dialogue is nice. The flow, I'll go back to it, is flawless. Calling it nice would be an understatement. The feeling this text invokes is chilling. I know I said that already, but I can't stress it enough. Invoking a feeling, or making your audience feel the emotion, the fear, the pain. That is the hallmark of a good writer. So, that will be it for this review. I love this story so far, and can't wait for the rest. Until next time!
Thank you!!!