TW for violence and murder. 

Humans are scary.

Laurie comes to this conclusion when she is 7, hiding behind a sofa listening to her parents screaming at each other. She can hear clearly what they are saying but she doesn’t understand it, the logic behind it.

She wonders why her parents were married to begin with, marriage was supposed to be a happy occasion when two people in love seal their union. Laurie tries to imagine her mother and father in love, on a date and running through fields. But she can’t, she finds it really hard to believe her parents were ever in love.

Ever.

After all, if you love someone how could you hurt them, throw things at them and shout cruel words.

Laurie doesn’t know, she doesn’t understand. She knows she doesn’t understand and that there is something about her family situation she is missing out on but she’s too young to understand. She puts her hands over her ears and hums very quietly, trying to keep the noise out her mind, vaguely she contemplates the idea of escaping out the room but decides she wouldn’t get very far before getting dragged into the fight.

The screaming is piercing. The shouting is deafening. The sound of hands slapping, fists punching and feet kicking racks up a din. The angry, angry fight creates a tumultuous sound that makes Laurie feel like her ears are bleeding.

Heedfully she peeks around the sofa to watch the dual.

Her heart stops.

In her mother’s hand is a kitchen knife. The woman is shrieking and thrashing about with tears ruining her face, makeup smeared and blotchy, she brandishes the knife at her husband.

Laurie’s dad doesn’t take this too well.

In a fit of blind rage and fury he strides across to his wife and slams her into the wall. Wrenching the knife out her hands, he cuts himself. Blood drips and smears everywhere. He pummels her with his fists, shoving her to the floor. He stamps on her, blood trickles out of her mouth. Then, abruptly the tables are flipped knife back in hand she cuts up his hands. A gruesome battle begins.

Laurie is crying, she doesn’t know what to do anymore.

Her parents have turned into demons. Demonic entities born to terrorize each other until one bloody winner emerges victorious and after that they’ll come after her too.

She had witnessed bad fights before, where blood splatters, bruises form and the racket makes her brain throb and she wants it desperately to stop.

Then her tongue slips, a heart wrenching sob tears free from her throat and it pierces the sound of unrest like an arrow tears into the body of its victim.

The two adults cease their sprawling to take in the sight of their child.

Tears streaking down her cheeks, snot smeared across her face, her eyes red and puffy.

She looked disgusting.

Suddenly a wave of rage surged through Laurie’s mother, cursing the wretched child she grabs Laurie and shakes her, poison spewing from her mouth.

Laurie grows still as abusive, hateful words invade her ears, scraping and scratching she can feel blood dripping down the side of her face.

It really hurts.

Her father grabs her mother, pulling the monstrous woman off, he glares at his wife. He bellows at her, insults tearing out his throat.

Laurie collapses, legs numb, head pounding and heart dry and empty.

She really wants this to end. Then with a hazy mind and uncertain hands she finds and picks up the long discarded knife, gently turning it over she thinks about what she should do with it.

Fear and paranoia wash over her, trembling she watches two wild, insane monsters try kill each other. When they were finished would they kill her too, eat her, burn her, hurt her?

She doesn’t really know, Then, quietly, she clasps the knife with an iron firm grip and walks across the wrecked room, carefully avoiding shattered glass, long dried blood, rubbish from centuries ago. She clears her throat and her parents look at her.

Hatred, bitter resentment and revenge course through her, they’ll pay for the agonizing years of her life.

She’ll make them pay.

Her mother opens her mouth but Laurie cuts her off before she can say anything.

“I won’t let you kill me.”

The movement is quick and brutal, a sharp slice through soft flesh and the job is done. Laurie brings the knife down across her mother’s face for good measure and to complete it she smashes a hole in her eye. The woman turned demon collapses to her knees, blood running down her shirt like a river down a mountain.

Crimson flows and flows. It’s a little bit beautiful.

With a gaping hole in her throat, a missing eye and split face Laurie’s mother hits the ground with a sickening splash.

Laurie turns to her father. Unsure of what to do, she brings the knife out before her and approaches him.

Her father is very still, eyes wide open and mind completely overrun.

She kills him.

It takes a few blows, her young, scrawny arms don’t possess much strength. His surprise over his wife’s death prevents him from striking his daughter down. She tears rips in his flesh, piercing through his clothes into the vital organs beneath, his guts poke out and his blood stains her hands. She lets her internal demon flow out her heart through her arms and into her blade.

And with a gruesome thudding noise his corpse plummets down, his blood mingles with the drying puddles of what remains of his wife.

When Laurie is seven years old she has a revelation.

Humans are monsters.

And she’s one too.