Bloody Red Roses

Chapter 1:  Bloody Red Roses

          It was his anniversary.  His first anniversary.  She had tracked him to a jeweler’s store, where he was picking up a beautiful heart-shaped pendant of emerald and diamond. 

By she, I mean the me that takes over when I’m on assignment for Them.  Cold, heartless, ruthless- she was everything that They needed me to be.  Oh, and lets not forget obedient.  When she took over, I was a slave sitting in the back corner of my mind, our mind, rocking back and forth and trying to ignore what was happening.  Her name was Amenti.

          Where was I?  Oh yes, the pendant.

          It was gorgeous.  The stones were set in twenty-four karat white gold, with vines of yellow gold snaking around it.  It must have cost him a fortune, but I doubt he minded.  He was a richie, and a newbie richie at that.  His type had plenty of money to burn, and they loved to blow it.  He was spending it on his doubtlessly gorgeous and wonderful wife.  How romantic.  And here I was about to ruin his life forever… Or Amenti was.

          He left the jewelers with the pendant safely tucked away in a box hidden in his coat pocket.  Then he headed for the nearest floral shop.  After about ten minutes of me/her waiting on the sidewalk, leaning up against the shop wall with a cigarette lit, he came out with the most beautiful bouquet of crimson roses, framed by lilies of the valley.  His wife was very lucky.  Well, she had been.

          As he started walking back to his car, which he’d had to part two blocks down due to all the lovely tourism in that damn town, he never even noticed the tall, dark-haired teen tailing him.  She crept up behind him, silent even in the killer black five inch stilettos she wore.  Her black skinny jeans and black jacket over a midnight blue cami blended in well with the dark, as did her blue-black hair falling to the middle of her waist.  It was the perfect veil for her pale skin and remarkable grey-blue eyes in times like this.  She was tall, with a long torso and long legs, so her strides were quick and lengthy, and if she didn’t give off such a bad a*s leave-me-the-hell-alone vibe, she would have been turning the heads of every guy walking down the street that night.  It was a gift and a curse, our beauty was.  It usually made it quite easy to lure in our prey, though it never failed to draw a few pervs.  In the end, they just became another name on the list of people she killed.  These, though, I might help with…

          We made it to the spot where he had parked his car, and waited for him to get in, and then we watched for a moment as he turned on the engine.  He began to drive away, and still we watched for a moment, and then we jumped into our own car to follow him. 

          He drove then to his house, to pick up his wife.  He gave her the flowers at the door, but the necklace he kept in his pocket.  We stayed a safe distance away from them, knowing they wouldn’t see us, and they didn’t.  They began to drive to the restaurant where they had planned to have dinner, but they would never make it there.

          Amenti lit another cigarette.  She had work to do.  I just wished I didn’t have to see it, didn’t have to be a part of it, but we were one and the same…

          She slowed the car to a stop, then waited a few moments, and threw a handy little throwing star.  It was specially made to destroy itself when it hit its target.  In this case, the target was the man’s back tire.

The tire popped on impact and the car swerved.  The throwing star disintegrated, and Amenti ran for the man’s car, dragging me along with her.  As she reached the man’s vehicle, she donned a mask of concern; her acting skills were flawless and neither the man nor his wife would have ever suspected this teenage girl of being a murderess.  But that was what she was, and she was about to prove it.

“Oh my God, what happened?  Is everybody alright?”  Amenti called to the couple through the man’s open window.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “we were just driving down the road, and then all of a sudden, the back tire popped I think…  Honey are you ok?”  The man turned to his wife, his concern solely for her now.

“I’m fine,” she answered, “at least, I think I am.”

“Can you get out of the car?  We wouldn’t want to take the chance that the tire was the only thing ready to explode.”  Amenti said, looking extremely worried.  “And you can make sure you are ok much better if you’re standing up, plus the fresh air will help if anybody feels dizzy or faint.”

The woman nodded, turning to her husband with a plea for help in her eyes.  He quickly jumped out of the car and ran around to his wife’s door to help her out.  She was weak with shock, and for this, Amenti was thankful.  It would be even easier to take her out this way.  “Maybe you should sit down ma’am.”  Amenti’s voice oozed false concern.  “Sir, maybe you two should go sit in the grass instead of on the road, just in case someone else comes by.  I’ll call a tow truck for you.”

“Could you maybe call an ambulance too?” the man asked.  “I think my wife might have a concussion.”

“Of course!  Don’t worry about a thing sir, just relax and stay calm and I’ll take care of everything.”

The man nodded his head at her reassurance, said a quiet yet reverent thank you, and guided his wife to the grass by the roadside.  There they sat as Amenti pretended to call a tow truck and 9-1-1.  She was really calling Them to say everything was going as planned, and then she called the clean-up team to tell them they would be needed soon.  I screamed and screamed and screamed, but trapped as I was in our mind, Amenti was the only one who heard.

It was useless.  I stopped screaming as she laughed at me, then headed towards the happy couple, where the wife leaned against her husband and looked up at him with the slightest of smiles on her face.  I quivered in guilt and fear at what was about to happen.  But Amenti just strode quickly over, a confident and caring smile masking the murderous grin she hid so well.  “An ambulance is on it’s way, and a tow truck should be here within the next fifteen minutes,” she lied.

“Great!”  The man was quite enthusiastic about this.  Perhaps he hoped to salvage their anniversary when everything else was done or fixed.  But it was not to be.  Amenti walked around behind them as she put her phone back in her purse.  Knowing what was next, I tried to close my eyes, tried not to see the two syringes she pulled out of her purse, tried not to see the poisonous green liquid that filled them.  Amenti was in control though, and I couldn’t escape it.  I watched, trembling, as she hugged them from behind, a loaded syringe in each hand.

“I’m so glad I could be of assistance,” she whispered as she injected a needle into each of their necks.  The effect was instantaneous.  The couple fell to the ground convulsing, their bodies rejecting the substance invading their systems.  But they were no match for the quickly moving poison which stole its way into their hearts and brains in a matter of seconds.  Once it shut down those two most vital organs, it too, disintegrated into something untraceable, into chemicals regularly produced in the body.  It was a special secret formula Their scientists had cooked up for killing those who were high in society, those the world would avenge if anyone suspected murder.  And it never failed.

Amenti walked back to the car and drove back to our apartment, but not before reaching into the man’s pocket and taking the necklace he had meant to give to his wife.  When we made it home, she threw the keys on the table jus t inside the door as she shut it, and then she gave me control of our mind again.

It was all I could do to make it back to the bedroom without bursting into tears.  Then, as I fell on the bed, sobs wracked my body and I gave in to the misery.  Amenti stayed silent, for which I was immensely grateful.

I, Ember Hallows, was once again an accomplice to first degree, premeditated murder, if not the murderess herself.  But if you have no control, if it’s someone else inside of you doing these things, saying these things, and you can’t stop them, are you really the one to blame?

An hour later my tears began to slow, but I was not done wallowing in my sadness.  I curled up into a ball on my bed and lit a cigarette; it was a nasty habit Amenti had started and I’d found that I couldn’t stop even if I’d wanted to.  It relaxed me somewhat, helped me to breathe more freely ironically enough.  I puffed on my cigarette until it was gone, sinking into my pillow as exhaustion took hold of me.  I was slowly slipping into a deep sleep, too tired to care when Amenti took over just long enough to slide the necklace out of our pocket and put it on.  Then she was gone, and I was out like a light.

 

…………………………………….

 

            Usually my sleep is full to bursting with images of the people she has killed.  One never forgets such horrid scenes, whether she used poison or far worse.  But that night I dreamt of a young man that neither of us had ever seen before.

            He was probably only a year or two older than me and he was quite handsome.  Coal-black shaggy hair framed his pale face; his piercing green eyes stared at me and he began to smile.  He was six-foot-two of my kind of guy, from his hair, to the black leather jacket and Avenged 7x t-shirt, to his dark skinny jeans, and all the way down to the black AirSpeeds with the skull and crossbones on the side.  I smiled right back at him.

          I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back to see my parents standing there, smiling approvingly and urging me on.   But how could they be there?  I wondered.  My parents are dead.

          Just like that, they faded away.  Sorrow engulfed me for a moment, and then I turned back to the boy.  Still smiling, he pulled a bouquet of the most beautiful red roses I’d ever seen from behind his back.  “Happy birthday, Ember.”  Delighted, I laughed and said, “One would have been just fine.  But thank you so much!  I love them!”

            He laughed then, and we ran to hug each other.  He kissed me on the forehead, then handed me the roses.  I took a step back to admire this man I’d never met in reality.

            Another tap on my shoulder made me think that maybe my parents were back.  I turned around with a grin stretching even farther along my face. But it wasn’t my parents.  It was Them.  “You know what to do,” They said in unison.

            I was filled with dread as my head nodded of it’s own accord, that smile still plastered across my face.  No!  I screamed inside my head.  Amenti just laughed and turned back around to face him.  She pulled a pocket knife from our jeans pocket , keeping it hidden in our hand as she gave him another hug.  I’m so sorry I whispered.  He jerked back as if he heard it, but I was trapped in the back of my mind, the words never left my lips.

            Amenti was still smiling as his face turned questioning.  “Ember?”

            “Nope,” Amenti grinned.  “Goodbye.”  Then the sharp-edged blade was slicing across his throat.  His blood spattered all over us, dripping a rich crimson from our lips and the roses.  He fell to his knees, choking on his own life-blood.  He looked up at us in horror.  Amenti bent down to kiss his forehead, then turned and walked away.

            I felt more than saw him reaching out towards us, and then he collapsed and I jerked awake.  Someone was knocking on the door of the apartment.

Author's Note

Still far from finished, but what do you think so far?