Page 110 of Reaper and Ruin

The TV blared from the front room, light flickering around a shadowy corner.

But the kitchen, where we stood, was in darkness.

The smell hit me hard. I wrinkled my nose, covering it with my arm. Flies buzzed somewhere around us, though it was too dark to see them. Rotting food sat out on the counters and the tabletop, dirty dishes and pots and pans stacked up in the sink.

The house was as disgusting as I remembered it.

But the smell. I fought back the urge to gag and was glad I hadn’t come in here with X because he and his weak stomach wouldn’t have stood a chance.

I did not remember that smell. It had never smelled good, but this was next-level revolting. We crept toward the living room, me sticking close to Levi, the rustle of chip packets and the clinking of beer bottles giving away exactly where Travis was, even if his shouts at the football game hadn’t.

Levi reached the corner first and peeped around it.

He recoiled so fast fear jumped into my throat. I waited for gunshots to ring out, Travis realizing we were here.

I gave Levi a questioning look, but he just shook his head, motioning for the back door.

I frowned at him, trying to understand what he meant.

There was no time. A shotgun cocked in the darkness. “Come out and say hello to Mommy and Daddy, Violet.”

There was no chance to run. He knew we were here.

I flipped the light on.

Travis sat on the couch, football on the TV, beer in one hand, shotgun in the other.

And two dead bodies sitting either side of him on the couch.

I gasped, horror clawing its way up my throat, a sick realization that the smell in the house wasn’t just moldy food and unwashed clothes.

It was the decaying bodies of my foster parents, with bullet holes in their foreheads.

There was dried blood everywhere. More of it than I’d ever seen in my life. Sprays of it across the walls behind them. Pooled on the floor where they’d dripped blood until they’d bled out. Seeped into the couch where Travis sat like he’d just dropped by to have tea and a chat.

The scene was so bitterly gruesome and horrific that it took me a good minute to even register that he now had that shotgun trained on me.

“Well?” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Don’t be so fucking rude, girl. Say hello to your parents.”

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop staring at the bodies of the two people who’d haunted my childhood and teenage years.

They hadn’t been good people. I would cry no tears over their deaths. I wouldn’t mourn them.

But the way Travis sat between them on the couch, despite the stench and the flies, the way he’d killed them then left their bodies there as some sort of sick decoration while he continued to live around them…

All of that was too much for my brain to process. Too much for anyone to comprehend.

He’d completely lost his mind.

“Say hello to your parents, Violet!” he screamed.

I whimpered, cringing away from the shotgun aimed at me. “Hello,” I whispered, giving him what he wanted.

I gave myself another long moment to feel the fear. To feel the disgust and the shock and the horror.

And then I let it go.

This house wanted me to be that scared teenage girl who’d had to lock and barricade her door at night to keep out the monsters living beneath this roof.