by Rose, Willow
In front of him, on the kitchen table lay his daughter Louise with her legs spread and someone was on top of her, yanking, pushing himself against her, raping her while someone else held her down with a glove of knives next to her throat. Around her stood what appeared to be three guys wearing the same masks and was cheering the one on top of Louise on.
Frederik growled, wanted to yell and scream, but realized he had been gagged with a pair of his own socks in his mouth and duct tape across his lips. He had the taste of blood in his mouth and his head hurt like crazy. His hands were tied behind his back with what felt like more duct tape. His eyes were fixated on his poor daughter being molested in front of him. He felt paralyzed, struck by shock and the terror of this situation.
Louise cried and screamed while the men laughed and beat her. Frederik Lucas felt helpless. Listening to her cries for help, made him cry as well. Tears ran down his cheeks as he watched his beloved daughter hurt by these monsters.
Frederik Lucas loved his daughter. He truly did. He truly regretted all the pain he had imposed upon her. Frederik Lucas had tried again and again to stop, but every time he had slipped and fallen of the wagon. It was a drug, really. He was addicted to her, to having his way with her. But he hated himself for it, every day he looked in the mirror and loathed himself for what he had done to her.
It had begun when she was no more than a few years old. Bathing her in the tub had become a special event for Frederik, being close to his beloved daughter was something he found difficult to live without. He would hold her naked body close to his and then put her in the water where he would wash her thoroughly. To his surprise he found that he liked it. He liked to touch her. The bathing continued for years but eventually she grew too big to be washed and he had to find other ways to be close to his daughter in the same manner as he had gotten used to, almost addicted to. He simply couldn't stop. So he had begun coming to her room to tuck her in at night and in the beginning told her that he needed to make sure she was clean, that she had washed herself properly. Soon he would tell her it wasn't good enough, and then he would use his own cloth to rinse her off. In time he got more and more comfortable with her and as she seemed to like it as well, he had continued. He had asked her if he could kiss her and then lick her places and she hadn't said no.
The rest was history. Now lying on this dirty kitchen floor looking at her being molested he felt the horrifying feeling of remorse and regret. He now realized what he already knew, but never wanted to admit, that he had in fact hurt his daughter in the worst way possible. He had damaged her for life and there was no way he could repent himself. There was no way to make it up for her.
Frederik Lucas felt disgust towards himself and at that point didn't mind if these intruders would just kill him right away. Preferably first so he wouldn't have to watch this scene of pure horror any longer.
At that moment Frederik Lucas wept for himself, his soul that was going to burn in hell and for his daughter who would never get to know life, what it would be like without abuse.
What have I done? he thought, whimpering to himself. What have I done?
Turmoil seemed to have erupted between the intruders, but Frederik couldn't focus enough to figure out what it was about. Then he saw one of the intruders lift the glove into the air. The blades reflected the light as lightening struck nearby. Then his daughter's scream changed from incoherent to sounding like an animal getting hurt, and Frederik watched in terror as the faceless men ripped her chest open with the clawed glove. He closed his eyes in agony while everything was screaming inside of him.
Oh God, please, please God, don't. Don't force me to watch this. Please sweet Jesus, have mercy on her soul.
12
Ivan hesitated. Peter looked at him expectantly.
"Come on, do it," he said.
Ivan's heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt. His hands felt sweaty inside of the glove. He had lifted it in the air and was ready to stab the girl on the table with it, but then he stopped. He didn't understand why. He wanted this. He had wanted to go on with this killing, to finally do this. But at the moment when he had lifted the glove, the girl turned her head and looked at him. The pain in those eyes had stirred something up inside of him. Some kind of empathy he didn't want to feel.
"Do it, Ivan," the boys kept saying. Even Michael who was still on top of the girl, riding her. "Do it Ivan," he yelled. "Kill her while I fuck her. Do it!"
Ivan felt intrigued, enthralled. He really did. He really wanted to do as they said. After all that was why they had come, that was why they had broken into this house. To take his virginity, to help him make his first kill.
But something in her eyes made him hesitate. Doubt was creeping up on him like a thief in the night, stealing his courage, stealing his will to fulfill his mission. Ivan felt drops of sweat drip roll across his face as he stared at the girl.
"Do it, do it, do it," his order-brothers chanted endlessly. Their eyes stared at him, light sparkling in them, mouths grinning.
Peter put a hand on his shoulder. "The first time is the hardest. After that it gets easier every time," he whispered.
"Come on, man. Just do it," Michael growled. "I can't hold back much longer!"
Ivan's hand was shaking, causing the blades to rattle. He was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. He looked down at the girl again. Her face was torn in agony. Michael was holding his hand over her mouth. Her eyes begged Ivan to not do it. Then Ivan looked at the parents on the floor next to them. The mother was still unconscious, but the father seemed awake. His eyes were open for a short second, then he shut them again, then he opened them again, like he thought it would all go away if only he woke up from this nightmare. He didn't seem to fully understand what was going on around him.
"You have to do it," Peter said with firm voice. "The longer you wait the harder it gets. It's now, Ivan. Just lift the glove and slide it across her chest, rip her open."
"Rip, rip, rip, rip," the brothers chanted.
Ivan bit his lip till it bled and he tasted blood in his mouth. The room was spinning now. The coke, the alcohol was wearing off; it was losing its grip on him. He heard the voices become distant and now there was nothing but him and the girl. He looked into her begging eyes again. Then he breathed heavily moving the blades back and forth, preparing himself for the sensation of them going through the flesh, preparing himself for the screams, the blood, trying to imagine how it was going to feel. Was he going to like it? Did he have it in him to like it? Or was he as weak and feeble as his older brother always accused him of being? Would he feel bad? Would he dream about it night after night afterwards? Was he going to be scared of her ghost coming to haunt him, or of getting caught? No, that wasn't why he hesitated.
Peter shook his head disappointedly. Ivan licked off more blood from his lip. He had always thought he would enjoy killing, that he would enjoy having the power of life and death in his hands.
"There is really nothing to think about, Ivan," Peter continued. "You just do it. That's it. Just do it and it's all over."
"Yeah, what are you afraid of?" Ole said.
Peter stared at him, then took a step closer to him and threw a punch at his face. "Don't mock him just because he's a first timer. As far as I remember you weren't such a big shot when you had to do your first kill either."
Ole withdrew like a beaten dog. Peter had broken his lip and it was bleeding heavily. Ole found a towel and held it against the wound. Peter grinned and turned to look at Ivan again.
"So what's it gonna be?" he said. "Are you in or out?"
Ivan licked off pearls of sweat from his upper lip. The salt mingled well with the iron taste from the blood.
Ivan pictured his father's and mother's face before him, and how disappointed they would have been had they seen him like this. If there was a life after death, were they looking at him disapprovingly now?
Only his older brother would understand, he would even be proud of him, when he told him
what he had done. Ivan's brother had never killed anyone, only raped the maids and their dad's secretary or an occasional girl he found at a local bar. That was his thing. To seduce girls and then rape them. But never kill. That far exceeded anything he had done. It would hopefully even impress him.
Ivan drew in a deep breath, swung the glove up high before he let all the knives come down in a shining arc and cut through the flesh of the girl's chest.
13
Marie Lucas opened her eyes when she heard her daughter scream.
"Louise?" she mumbled still in a daze, but the very thought of her daughter in danger made her come back to real life, fast. "Louise?" she said again a little louder and opened her eyes.
Then she screamed. Screamed in terror and fright. On the kitchen table, the very same they usually enjoyed their breakfast together before everybody went to school and work, lay her daughter. The realization of what she was actually looking at made Marie's stomach roll. She screamed till her lungs were burning. Her hands were tied up behind her back and she fought unsuccessfully to break loose. She had to stop screaming to inhale and being quiet - even if it was only for a few seconds - forced her to hear her daughter's half-choked screams. The sound of her blood dripping from the table onto the floor was so loud it threatened to burst her eardrums. Oh the pain, the agony of knowing, of watching this happen to her daughter and not being able to do anything about it.
So she did what she could do. She screamed again, screamed her daughter's name, screamed at the intruders to stop, and screamed to drown out every other sound.
"Oh, please, please don't hurt her. PLEASE!!"
A pair of legs turned around and walked towards her. A hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up. She was now standing on her tied up legs, and then dragged by the hair towards the kitchen table.
"Look," said the voice from the intruder holding her hair.
Marie Lucas did as she was told. Whimpering she stared at the two thousand dollar ellipse-table from Piet Hein and Arne Jacobsen that she had loved so dearly before this very night. It was now plastered in blood, red blood running in lines across the white table. Marie whimpered again and tried to turn her head away, but a hand forced her to face the atrocities in front of her.
The remains of her daughter's body didn't look human anymore. Her chest and stomach were ripped open and Marie stared directly at what she believed had to be her daughter's internal organs. The body continued to twitch and gasp as if she wanted to let her mother know that she was still alive.
Marie Lucas wasn't a woman who cried often, as a matter of fact she hadn't cried since the night her youngest daughter had come down from the attic and she realized it wasn't her daughter anymore.
Life had since then taught her to toughen up and close her eyes to things that she didn't need to know. Like the first time she saw blood in her eight-year-old daughter's underwear. Like the time when Louise came to her in confidence and told her that she thought her daddy was doing something wrong to her when they were alone. All those times, she resisted the urge to cry. She fought it with all she knew how to and closed her eyes to whatever might bring her to that place again, that place of sorrow where she found herself helpless and useless. Instead she washed the underwear telling herself that her daughter probably hurt herself on the playground and told her daughter seeking her help, that Daddy never did anything wrong.
Yes up until now Marie had closed her eyes to many things, in order to keep her marriage, to keep her life the only way she knew how to live. But not anymore. Now she lost the fight to hold back the tears. Marie was crying and not closing her eyes anymore.
"You like what you see, huh?" asked the faceless intruder holding her head.
"Please. Just kill her," she whispered. "Let her die."
The masked intruder placed a kitchen knife in her hand. Then he placed another on Marie's throat. "No, you do it," he said. She felt him cut her hands loose. The knife felt heavy in her hand. She was breathing heavily now feeling the other knife against her throat.
"All you have to do is stab her," the voice whispered in her ear. "Stab her in the heart, and then she'll surely be dead. It's either that or she can slowly bleed to death within a couple of hours, maybe less if she's lucky. It's up to you."
Marie felt her heart pound. She heard her husband's muffled screams behind her but didn't turn to look at him. She didn't want to look into his eyes just before she killed her own daughter.
Marie lifted the knife into the air, then as she was about to stab it into her daughter's heart she turned around and plunged the knife into the shoulder of the intruder holding her. As she did, he slit her throat.
14
Ivan was in a shock-like state. He hadn't thought he would be able to go through with it, but he had. He had lifted the gloved hand and cut straight through that girl's chest. The blood spurted everywhere. Even in his own face. He gasped once he realized that he had actually done it. The girl's body twisted and turned and the girl made a sound while gagging, like a half-choked scream while gulping up loads of thick blood. Ivan himself had remained quiet even when the mother woke and started screaming. He stared at the girl's body and as calm as a butcher filleting a piece of meat he pulled out the blades, lifted them again and sank them into her chest. That was what had shocked him. That he kept going. The first strokes left him feeling such a rush, arousal even that he had to keep going. He came back for more. Like a drug addict looking for that first rush that he'll never get back again, Ivan kept ripping her flesh open just for the thrill of it. He had expected that he would like killing someone for the first time, but he hadn't expected that he would actually love it.
That hadn't been enough for him. The fear, the agony in the girl's eyes had caused his arousal and he wanted more of that same stuff. But the girl's eyes soon went numb and the thrill wore off. Now it was more like just stabbing a lifeless plastic doll and it didn't take many seconds before Ivan got bored. But he was still excited and wasn't ready to stop just yet, so once he had stopped ripping the chest of the girl, he turned and looked at the mother on the floor. She was screaming, begging them to stop and unintentionally she had aroused him even further.
That was why he came up with the idea of grabbing her and dragging her to the table so she could better watch what he had done to her daughter. He wanted to watch it through her eyes; he wanted to look at her face as she stared at her lifeless daughter. And as she did, he closed his eyes for just a second and smelled the fear coming from her, drew in a breath of her smell and drank from her anguish. This was it, he kept thinking. This was what life was all about. Finally he felt completely alive maybe for the first time in his life. But it wasn't going to be the last. He had crossed the barrier, he had gone to the other side where his new brothers were waiting for him, cheering him on as he held the mother tight and enjoyed her torment.
When he gave her the knife he had known that she would try and stab him with it, but he did it anyway. He thought it would be fun to force her to finish off her own daughter and then he would kill her afterwards, and if she tried anything he would just kill her anyway. It was a win-win situation for him. In either outcome he would get to kill again. So when she turned her head and looked at his masked face just before she stabbed him in the shoulder, he laughed out loud, from the excitement of the situation, seeing the pain in her eyes, the same pain that drove her to action. He realized that he wanted that in a victim, he wanted them to fight; he wanted them to have that small light of hope in their eyes. And he loved being the one to put it out. That was the most fun part of it all, the second he slit her throat and she realized it was all over. Ivan stared into her eyes as life oozed out of her. Their eyes locked in those important seconds before she was gone.
That felt like nothing he had ever tried in this world.
While the mother's body fell to the ground with a plump sound, Peter came closer. He put his hand on Ivan's shoulder. Ivan could sense his grin behind the Freddy Krueger mask.
"Welcome, my brother," he said. "You are now truly one of ours."
Ivan panted and stared at the body on the ground, then at the other body on the kitchen table. Peter had been right, he thought to himself. The second time was so much easier.
"I'm glad to be in," he said.
Peter lifted his nose and sniffed in the air, pretending to be smell something. "Do you smell that?" he asked.
"Smell what?" Michael asked.
"Egg," he said.
"Egg?" Ole asked.
"I'm hungry, boys," Peter continued. "And I'm in the mood for egg."
All the boys nodded in agreement.
"But where is she?" Michael asked. "We searched all the rooms upstairs and didn't find her in any of them."
"She must be hiding up there somewhere," Peter said and pulled out his gun from the belt.
"What do we do about him?" Ivan asked and pointed at the father, who lay curled up on the kitchen floor, crying behind the duct tape.
Peter took one quick look at the man, pointed the gun at his head. The man stared into the gun with panic in his eyes. Then Peter fired.
15
Ella jumped when she heard the gun being fired. She looked at her younger brother Jacob who was exploring the many treasures of the attic in the same manner as Ella had the first time she had been up there. The sound didn't scare him. Probably since he didn't know what it was and maybe even didn't hear it properly due to the thunder coming from outside. Ella stared out the window under the ceiling; she could see the ocean beneath them. It was raging wild, the waves flushing further up on the shore than she had ever seen before. Some of them even licked their wooden terrace in the back.
Ella had reacted fast. She was sleeping when she heard the front door being knocked in. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Outside her window the wind whizzed and the waves sounded like they were calling her name, telling her to wake up.