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Yet all that time has done—aside from tormenting me with conflicted feelings of longing and disdain for the very person who gave me freedom and gifted me hell simultaneously—is make her more picturesque than she already was.

The scene before me is like watching a goddamn Staind song unfold. Candles line the floor around the bathtub. Their dim light offers an ominous glow to a very naked and very unconscious Araceli.

How many pills did you take this time, sister?

Clearly not enough, because even with the minimal light I can detect breathing. Shallow and staggered, but it’s there and relief only finds me because I know that’s not what she wants, and what I want is the opposite of her desires.

I want her to suffer for how she left me. If she wants to end iton her own, I hope each time she comes up empty-handed. Her time will come, not when God says so, but whenIsay so.

As I crouch down to get a grip on the window so I can go inside, something strange dawns on me.

The water… there is none.

I heard water running, yet there isn’t any.

Slipping through the window, I navigate around the candles. My vision, glued to the floor, to make sure I don’t knock one over by accident.

The closer I move to the tub, large muddy footprints mar the tile floor. As I drag my gaze to Araceli’s bare body, the mud continues its trail onto her skin. Painting her like a canvas. Muddying her curves and making her look filthy…desirable.

That desire quickly morphs into intrigue when I close the gap between me and the tub where she lay.

Despite her consciousness hanging by a thread, her hand remains firm on something as equally filthy as her. Something that she shouldn’t have access to. Not anymore. Dad made sure of that with the additional security measure he’s taken to keep the property free of her grubby hands… or so he thought.

“Would you look at that?” The rasp of my own voice breaks the silence, my hands reaching for hers. The undeniable spark our fingertips make brushing against each other is hard to ignore, but I need to see what she’s doing with that notebook—hernotebook—the one my dad made a point of burying on our property. Same property I now live on, and the one I thought she’d never return to, but it looks like I was wrong.

Which angers me more because that means she came home and didn’t have the fucking decency to go see me. Nothing. All she wanted was that creepy book. As if this thing holds the key to what she needs in life.

I take it from her hand and a shiver runs down my spine as I touch it. The image from years ago, of the bloodshed, the absolute mayhem, back at the forefront of my mind. When I flip the page it isn’t there, well, a picture is there, but it’s no longer the horrificscene that I remember. It’s calm. Serene even. A depiction of a man holding his hand out, placing a coin in a woman’s mouth. Suddenly, the beauty that Araceli spoke of that day in the bathroom at home rings true. It’s not the horrid scene I remember it being. This is beautiful, but what isn’t beautiful are the words written next to it.

I lower myself beside the bathtub and rest on my knees. Licking my lips, I ready myself to read out loud.

“… with features defined by scars and dried up blood. A horror to others but a savior to me.”

Anger seeps into my veins, clouding my head with delusional fantasies that I want nothing more than to fulfill.

I lift my head from her notebook, her bare breasts tempting me. I reach a hand out, squeezing one into my grip. Her erect nipple now caught beneath my thumb. Becoming one with the dirt and grime that covers her skin, my fingers trail her sternum, taking their sweet time until they graze the mound above her pussy.

Her legs are already bent at the knee, spread wide and waiting for me.

It’d be so easy to slip one, maybe two… or possibly three fingers in. Too easy.

She’d like that. Having my fingers in her while she’s off in druggie dreamland.

She’d love waking up with a satisfied yet aching cunt, courtesy of her big brother that she’s too good for.

Fuck that.

I leave my hand hovering on her slit and reach over to the pen on the floor, scribbling down a message for her below this piss-poor story she’s writing. By hand too. Who does that anymore?

“You can run from the truth, but you can’t run from me.”

Leaving the book open, I carefully place it on her pussy and remove my hand, which is now slick with her wetness.

She stirs at the impact, a faint hum leaks from her lips. The blonde side of her hair shifts ever so slightly, falling from overtopher breast, revealing her precious pentagram necklace with a new addition to it.

Sitting alongside the pendant that belongs to her is one that belongs tome.

You bitch, taking things that don’t belong to you.