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PROLOGUE the kin killer
WHEN BERNADETTE BLANCHARD was taken in to custody under the suspicion that she had murdered every last one of her sisters, it was impossible to tell if she feigned the shock of seeing them be lugged out on stretchers, or if she was genuinely disturbed by the carnage painted on her house walls. By the time the Virginia State Police arrived at the scene to handcuff Bernadette and promptly discard her in the back of a cop car, they already knew where the knife draw was in the kitchen, where the bathroom was that possessed a bathtub deep enough to hold a bleeding eleven years old girl, and where the lavatory compartment was positioned that contained a six pack of razor blades sharp enough to tear flesh. The youngest five Blanchard daughters were removed from the household, rolled over the threshold shrouded in virulent black colored bags, proclaimed dead on sight. Bernadette peered hysterically from inside the police car, her forehead smearing against the glass so that her breath fogged up the window and wept for the loss she was going through. Mrs Wilhelmina Blanchard sat on the second step on the front porch, scrutinizing at the fluorescent lights before her with a vacant expression. She had been the one to call the police, it was Bernadette's own mother who told them that she had murdered them all and meticulously staged their suicides.
Philippa Blanchard, eleven years old, had originally meant to be the only daughter to take her own life, and as the evening of October 15th rolled on, Pippa was the first to go. During the summertime, when the dandelions had not yet pulverized to fluff, and the bees still sung the anthem of gentle buzzes, Pippa was found floating eerily in her bath of crimson water, the blade marbling the water at the end by her feet. Agatha, just two years older than Pip, had been the one to find her. Pippa had been staring emptily at the ceiling awaiting the second that her life would finally trickle completely out of her wrists, and Agatha had walked into Bernie's room with a face ghostly pale, like she had contracted frostbite on her skin. Bernadette howled for their mother to alert the paramedics, and when Philippa was pulled from her bath swirled with an ungodly amount of ichor and blood, they stood hypnotized at how silently peaceful the youngest Blanchard girl was. Nascent and young, Philippa had tried to go out like a Stoic, endeavored to escape the desolate and bitter life her austere parents had made unbearable. She lived. That was in June, now that October came, she was dead.
This time, Philippa was found blue-lipped with yellow catlike eyes, staring at the same ceiling next to Constance, who lay submerged under the water with her eyes shut. Pippa had poisoned herself, and fourteen year old Constance had drowned. The police department had arrested Bernie on the witness that Wilhelmina had seen her draw the knife out of her eighteen year old daughter, Anne's, heart and assumed she had slaughtered the others, too. Bernadette was speckled in a spray paint of Anne's blood, and the stain of Anne's oozing insides seeped into Bernie's jumper, handprints and amorphous shapes alike bedecked her clothes. Lastly, there was Primrose, sixteen, who was extracted from the oven that murdered her by asphyxiation. Her cascading flow of rich, chestnut hair was matted and flat, and her lips were crusted in sick from where the smell had made her throw up down herself. Sweet Prim was found with fresh tears streaming down her face, and nail marks in her wrists.
