Blood On Her Hands

Chapter 17

My birthday was coming up.

Twenty five felt far older than twenty four. It meant entering my mid-twenties. It meant it had been twenty years since my mother was killed and my father was imprisoned. It felt heavier than my last few birthday's and because of that, I was growing to dread it.

It felt eerie to imagine it. My family gathered around a chocolate ice cream cake with candles that drip with wax. The celebratory melody of Happy Birthday echoing against the wooden panel walls and confetti from the party poppers Julio loved to use falling into my hair. All of that happening in the shadow of a murder on what was suppose to be the happiest day of Adonis and Nancy's lives. I would celebrate another year of life with shady figures lurking and scheming in the hopes of cutting it short.

It was all wrong.

I sat on my bed with my legs crossed, staring at the planner in my hands. It had a floral design that made me excited about scheduling and making to-do lists. Only now, no amount of decorative stickers or colored highlighters made me excited about the passage of days. I took a black marker from my pencil case and scribbled over the date that was marked as my birthday. October seventh was covered in black ink.

Thunder boomed from outside. I jumped. Rain was pounding onto my window with tremendous force. It sounded like someone was tapping their fingertips on the glass.

It was beautiful weather to sleep in. I secretly hoped it would continue to pour as the evening progressed.

As I refocused on the dates on my planner, lightning struck. My room which had been illuminated by the warm, soft light of my bedside lamp was cast in a bright white. The contrast was stark but happened so quickly I nearly missed it by blinking. Then, instead of my room returning to its natural state, it became dark.

I sat in the darkness for a second, confusion paralyzing me. Then I heard the resounding sighs of my aunt and uncle and realized that it wasn't just my room that had gone pitch black. My bedroom door had been left open and the light that had crept in from the hallway had disappeared.

"Power outage!" Tìo shouted from downstairs. "I'll go get the generator started!"

I fumbled around for my phone. It was pretty difficult to locate it considering I couldn't see my own hands in front of me. Instead of landing on my phone, my fingers grazed the tip of a pen on my shelf. As I felt around it, I found a circular bump on the top of it. Pressing down on it, I realized it was a button.

It was the invisible ink pen from the wedding.

A purple tinted circle of light appeared. It only illuminated a foot in front of me but it was better than nothing.

I let the sleepy lavender hue guide me out of my room and down the hall. I treaded the stairs carefully, watching to not miss a step. It took me twice the time to descend the stairs as usual and even more time to navigate through the house without bumping into anything.

It was strange. I would have thought that having grown up in the same house almost all my life, I would have known it better. I should have had every protruding floorboard committed to memory. I shouldn't have been surprised by the corner table that shanked my side. Yet, the darkness had transformed the house into something it hadn't been before. It was a mirrored dimension, familiar but not predictable.

I turned every corner with caution though I wasn't worried someone would give me a spook. The house was almost devoid of sound. All I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps. I knew everyone was home with me but I couldn't shake the feeling of being alone.

The kitchen was harder to navigate through. I had chosen to enter it because I thought it was where I would find my aunt and Nancy but they were gone, probably to help Tìo with the generator.