PINK

21

'Like father

Like son.'

"He is the town sherif, as if they would think he would do such a thing." Dante says.

Iara clutches her stomach as she realises there is no way to escape.

"Don't worry." He speaks, but she could detect the hopelessness in his voice.

They sit there, for a while waiting for their inevitable demise. Dante though, had mapped out a plan in his head, ensuring safety and survival for her.

Iara lifts up her top and the cold air nips at her bruised skin. Dante's eyes widen.

"What are you doing?" He asks.

"This wasn't just from an accident." She says, deadpanned. Tears start to well in her eyes.

"He hurt me." Iara's voice breaks and her cheeks burn as her eyes leak salty tears.

"Stephen?" Dante questions raising from his seat. Iara shakes her head, eyes shut and tears building up behind them. Her whole face burns and a painful lump grows in her sore throat. Dante gets up and rests next to her.

"Braden, my ex." Saying his name sent cold shivers down her spine, her body quakes with the fear that the memory brings. That night flashes before her, literally, the time where the room flashed white when she was undressing, and like the last jigsaw puzzle everything fell into place and Iara saw what had happened.

"He took a picture of me while I was undressing." She chuckles, in disbelief.

"And he posted it just to get back at me." She breathes, trying to calm her aggravated nerves. She can't believe that weasel would go to that extent for leaving him.

"Revenge is terrible isn't it?" Dante says nonchalantly whilst his light eyes fixate onto one of the dark brown paintings. Iara admires how his lips protrude from the side of his face and how red they could get; how soft they would feel. She quickly shakes that thought, it's definitely not appropriate in their circumstance.

But she can't stop herself; she wants to curl Dante's little blond strands that dangle around her pointer finger, maybe even braid them.

A hostile thought enters her mind, one she has never welcomed. Stephen is Dante's son, that means all his twisted DNA is in Dante too. She could envision, in this beautiful boy, nuclear green stands entwine themselves with his healthy ones. Iara grimaces at this, she doesn't want to like someone who is a psychopath's son - 'like father like son'.

She inspects him closer, examining each bone's position, the width of his eyes, the breadth of the bulb on his nose, looking for something that is at the slightest in resemblance to either Stephen or Addy. All she can pin point was his blond hair, that was about it.

She sighs in disappointment. She wanted to find the slender fingers of Addy or the malevolent emittance of Stephen, just so she could prevent herself from falling for him.

"How are you so perfect?" She mutters, a tone flat of hope. Dante chuckles eyebrows raising in surprise and disbelief.

"Perfect? If this is what you call perfect, no offence, but your impression is pretty fucked." He chuckles, one eyebrow raised as he holds out his torn flesh.

Iara laughs. "No." She cooes, prolonging the 'o' sound.

"I mean like, you don't look anything like your parents, which is good but-" Iara stops herself from talking not wanting Dante to know what she thought.

He turns to her, expectancy in his eyes. "Yeah?"

"Nothing, it's okay." She replies, wanting him to think it's a trivial matter.

"By the way..." Dante starts as he pushes himself from up the floor. He turns around, and looks at Iara, a glimpse in his eyes.

"... I look exactly like my real parents." He says, a cheeky smile playing on his blushed lips.

Iara just stares in confusion, his words conflicting her vision. He briskly walks away and into his room. Iara decides to follow him, walking faster to catch up. The same red light invades both their spaces and bodies. This is the first time she has entered his room, it has a slight smell of metal to it but overall smells like the laundry powder Iara uses to wash the sheets - lavender.

She turns her head to take in a panoramic view of the room. It is bland, it does not have any trinkets like hers does. The walls have leftover paper dangling from them, it looks like what remains when someone pulls a price sticker off a product but not all the sticker comes off, but the sticky white bit stays.

As Dante rummages in his top draw, Iara sees two needles rested on his scarlet bed sheets. They are knitting needles, nestled in a knitted scarf. She can't tell the colour, the room was as bright as a the red on a traffic light; blinding but attention-seeking.

The room was exactly how she had envisioned it to be, which meant that under this mattress before her was a weapon for self-destruction. A piece of metal used to cut one's flesh.

"Found it." She heard him say, a hint of pride evident. Iara looks down to the ratty carpet and sees dark blotches of brown. Her heart sinks to the bottom of her stomach and the air is punched out of her lungs, just to imagine this innocent and cute boy harming himself the way he does makes her want to vomit. Her eyes water, stinging the arid surface.