Page 2 of Twisted Diaries of a Monster Groupie

Dear Diary,

Today the voices say I’m going to be a star. A real scream Queen.

XOXO—Roxy

The silence was earth-shattering, and she knew something wasn’t right.

“Momma!”

After running to the living room, what she found there was complete horror. Her stepfather was sitting in his chair chain smoking while her mother lay lifeless on the floor. The woman’s head was seeping blood onto the thick green shag carpeting, and her eyes wide open as if looking for Roxy to help close the open wound in her skull. The coffee table was broken, and a long shard of glass poked through the hole in the front of her forehead.

Slowly Roxy approached, kneeling without a word.

“She’s dead,” the man said casually, sucking down another puff.

“You killed her.”

“We’ll take care of it later. I have some old tarp out back so we can get rid of it. Go fix dinner.”

Roxy’s head turned to him as tears stained her cheeks, finding he didn’t have a care in the world that he’d just killed her mother. To him, she was nothing more than another body to butcher. The smug bastard didn’t even look remorseful as he puffed circles of smoke in the air.

Sure, the woman wasn’t the best at showing love to her daughter, but Darla sure didn’t deserve this. She was an abused woman with an alcohol addiction, and Roxy never blamed her for their problems. In fact, she always believed her mom had her own mental issues that she struggled with. When she was a child her mother was loving until the drinking started. Or maybe the issues started long before. She couldn’t quite remember.

When Roxy wasn’t moving away from the body, Hank pulled her up by her hair, shoving her to the kitchen. “I said fucking get dinner ready,” he snarled, switching on a dime. “Be a good girl, now. Get going. We’ll need to clean this mess up later. I have some guys I can call. We wouldn’t want the cops thinking you did this. We know you’d be the first one they suspected when I tell them you tried to turn on me next. I think if you do as I say we can get past this.”

Her heart sank. That sick son of a bitch would pin this on her. It was clear he was throwing threats she would be next if he needed to handle the risk of her ratting him out. He didn’t even have to say it because just mentioning his friends was enough for her to know her suspicions of the mob involvement were true.

Pulling away from his grip, she nodded, dropping her head as she entered the kitchen. It was clear she was in shock as the little tune played in her head that always seemed to soothe her. She began humming as a slow curl of her lips gave way to images of murder and revenge.

It was then thoughts of her father’s work crossed her mind, and she whispered to herself, “I can fix her. I can make her better, Papa. For you. For us.”

And she could… Better than ever. But at what costs?

As she began dicing the vegetables on the withered wooden cutting board, she saw her reflection in the knife she was holding. Was she her father’s daughter? Yes, she was. Death was just a temporary state in the science they shared.

A bit of a man who once loved his family was there speaking to her very soul. Fix her, Roxy. You know what to do.

As her heart raced at the thought of her mother in the next room murdered and discarded like trash, it filled her with rage. A protectiveness she never knew before washed over every inch of her consciousness and someone had to pay for the crimes she’d witnessed. This man just killed her mother in cold blood and now was forcing her to take on a role she never asked for. If she had her way, he’d end up with the same fate. She could stand there and take it or be her father’s daughter.

The fact remained that Roxy was off her meds, so the cops would only assume she went blind with anger from finding her mother’s dead body if she took matters into her own hands. That is if they came snooping around at all. Darla was nothing more than the town slut to most people, so who would care but her daughter if she went missing? No one. That’s who.

Hank was wrong. Roxy could spin this to her advantage. If not, she knew what would come next. He’d blame her, or worse, force her into some sick perversion of his idea of a sad life. He’d already tried to flirt with her onnumerous occasions, so it wouldn’t be out of the question he’d want to replace her mother with a young beautiful goth woman. Knowing she was mentally ill, he’d use that to manipulate her into being his wife, just like he did to her struggling mother.

She had to face it. He had the upper hand right now and she had to come up with something fast. Who would believe a woman who had an arrest record for violence over a well-known community business owner? Even so, he could just call his mob friends and dispose of her mother’s body, and no one would be the wiser, thinking Darla just ran off with another one of her men.

Or maybe that wasn’t his plan at all. As Roxy laid the knife on the counter she tilted her head thinking. Hank knew she was unstable. He also knew death was something his stepdaughter had a real fascination with, being she was a lover of horror movies and dark sciences. And she was smart—really smart. It started to make her wonder why he would send her to a room full of knives when knowing she had just stabbed a guy in the face not long ago for just trying to fondle her.

“That son of a bitch.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “Well, Hank. If you want to play the games and complete my father’s legacy, let’s do this.”

Straightening her shoulders she knew what she had to do. For some reason maybe he knew he was going down for this as to why he gave her time to think. He could have just killed her, too. His only way out was death or prison, and he wouldn’t go to jail. They both knew it. So, if he wanted a way out, she’d give it to him. Payback for the crimes commented on her, and a larger part, her mother.

Calming walking past him through the living room, she went to her room, turning on her record player to her favorite tune. His eyes followed her as she returned to the kitchen, but he didn’t move. He just sat there waiting for what would come next.

Maybe he planned to set Roxy up and kill her too, claiming it was self-defense. He could easily claim she killed her mother and then turned on him. Maybe he had a death wish and was ready to get out of his own life’s misery. Either way, they’d find out who had the upper hand when she returned with the butcher knife.

“What do you plan on doing with that knife, girl?” he asked as he took another puff of his cigarette.

“I think you know.” She smirked with an eerie grin.

When he saw the smile he’d seen before stretched across her lips, he sat up a little taller. When she was like this it was scary, even for him. “Roxy, put that knife down, girl. You don’t want to do this. I’m a butcher. You know I’ll end this before you can make a move.”

“Yeah, I know. But the question is if you want to. We both know you’re in a lot of debt, Hank. I bet those men who come in and out of your business have something to do with that. Every time you’re stretched for cash, you blame Mom for staying in the bars all the time. That kind of heat must put a lot of pressure on a guy. How much do you owe? Fifty, sixty grand? More…? One hundred K?”

He looked away proving he did owe those men, and she was on the right track.

“Damn, you are in deep. You know, you could just sit there, and I can make it all better. Or… you can fight me and hope you can stand to overpower me before I ram this knife in your skull.”

“I’d kill you before you could blink, girl.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you think you can bet on the chances that you might overpower a woman that you know has no impulse control and risk she might get the upper hand?”

She watched as he gritted his teeth while thinking it over. No matter what, he wasn’t making it out of this alive. He’d killed her mother, and he had to pay. The man she’d stabbed before was twice Hank’s size, so her small frame didn’t mean a thing in the grand scheme of things.

Sitting down in front of him on the ottoman, she played with the knife, unsettlingly calm. “Listen, you know I can turn this whole thing around for us all. I can offer you a new lease on life. Or an undead one, anyway. Who do you think was behind my father’s studies, Hank? It was me,” she said, twirling the knife before licking the blade.

“So that’s it. I let you kill me, and you get to play mad scientist with my body. Is that the deal you’re making?”

“Yep.” The little taste of blood on her tongue from a prick of the blade made her giddy. As she licked her lips, she leaned slowly toward him. “So, how do you want to do this?”

The man looked away shaking his head before glancing back at her. “When you bring me back, at least don’t put me through this hell. Let me have my shop and my work.” Looking over to the dead woman on the ground he added, “And make her happy. I sure as hell couldn’t.”

She nodded as she stood, graciously knowing what he meant. It was then Roxy bowed, extending her skirt with a dainty yet bone-chilling taunt. “Very well then, good sir. Say goodnight.”

With chin raised, he took his just deserts as the blade came crashing down, slicing across his throat, spilling his blood in a horrific display of horror that Roxy so dearly loved. The gruesome beauty of the splatter across her face was a melody of gothic retribution he fell victim to, much deserved.

To her, it was like all the movies featuring her macabre heroes in real-life display. Where she admired them on screen, she now was the special feature. She danced around the living room enjoying the song in the background as if she was the starlet of her favorite horror flick, swinging the blade like a conductor to the perfect concerto.

“Do you hear it, Hank? It’s beautiful. The perfect melody to the perfect ending.”

In the distorted images of her twisted mind, Acid was there, enjoying her rapture of blood and gore, dancing among the smell of death and the pot of soup that was boiling over in the kitchen. Red splatter became vibrant acid greens and hot pinks that seeped into the woodwork. The dingy room then became rows of flowers spilling over into fields of rainbows and sunshine where graveyards were places of play, and her father was there waiting to join in the dance.

Was she insane? Perfectly and completely.

Once the body of the man fell limp, she started to sing her favorite song as she grabbed his foot and dragged him to the garage, with little effort from the adrenaline pumping through her veins. After dropping his corpse on the cold hard floor with a thump, she dusted her hands.

“Get some rest, Hank. Tomorrow is a new day. I think I’ll go fix a bowl of that soup that Mom didn’t get to finish. Then maybe I’ll do some shopping. It’s okay if I use your bank card, right? You won’t need it anymore. Sleep tight, ya fat fuck. Tomorrow is a new day,” she said while pitching his cheek as blood smeared his face. “You know, you look good in red. It suits you.”

Into the living room, she went, pulling her mother into the kitchen and propping her into a chair. Her dead body fell limp, and her cold lifeless eyes stared into nothing.

“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll fix you right up. Tomorrow, you’ll be a whole new woman. Who knows, maybe even Hank will come around.” She smiled at her mother’s dead eyes. “We’re going to be happy now, just like you always wanted. One big happy family.”