1999: A Fictional Narrative

1999.

Angela pressed her ear to the door. The sound was muffled, but she heard Bianca clearly. “Didn’t you hear me, Donnie? I’m pregnant! Don’t you see what she’s doing to you?”

She pulled back at that and felt a sick heat in her stomach. She heard her father laugh and heard him slurring his words.

“You stupid bitch. We’ll take care of that.”

Angela heard a noise like a hard smack and what sounded like throwing up. She heard Father chortling under his breath.

I’ve gotta stop this, Angie thought.

Facing her fears, Angela opened the door and stepped into the basement.

She tiptoed down the steps, trying not to make a creak. Not that it mattered, by the beating it sounded like Bianca was getting. Angela neared the bottom in time to see

“I’m so sorry, Angela.”

“So am I,” Angela said. And then she brought the bottle up and stabbed it into the side of Bianca’s throat. Bianca staggered wildly, looking at Angela with confusion, and then dropped to the earth floor, blood spraying from a wound in her neck. The bottle lay in pieces across the babysitter’s head. Glass embedded itself into the hairline and face of the beautiful teenage girl.

“It’s better this way. You were infected,” Angela said. Her face split into an evil grin that she had just seen on the face of her father. It was the face of the old woman. Angela began to cackle crazily as she went about her work.

What no one knew was there were two versions of Angela. One when she was away from this place, and one when she was home. Home where she belonged.

This was the real Angela. This was the sweet girl with her mask off, the innocence shed.

No one knew about her two sides, her light and dark. No one knew her secrets. Lillian suspected these things, but she was only six. She didn’t have an adult’s understanding of what the sudden shifts in Angie’s behavior ultimately

It found the smallest traces that might give her away and eliminated them. It wouldn’t do to get caught. That was how stupid people did things. And the thing inside Angela had been around for a long time, and had done a lot of killing. It was clever.

It buried Bianca in the garden, among the heirloom tomatoes and patches of strawberry vines. The girl would spend eternity in the cold embrace of the earth. Her good looks would disappear as she rotted and worms ate her flesh, but the earth would still find her beautiful. That was the best a whore could hope for. Even with her beautiful blue dress.

Father was dealt with after, an alibi needing to be established. And so the seed was planted in young Angela’s mind that she had seen a man murder her father. Not enough details to cause suspicion. Just enough to make it real. She was an innocent ten-year-old girl, after all. Father deserved this.

In her mind, Bianca had left after helping Angela clean up. She felt as if the girl was simply on her way home to her family, albeit broken and frightened.

And it wasn’t as if she needed a strong alibi. Just something passable. The witch who lived down here would take of the