First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella Read Free

flecked with so much gore
that it looked like modern art.
    My mother sat on the floor in the
pool, her back against the bed-frame. Her blue eyes were open and
they stared at the wall. Her mouth hung open. Her dark hair was
soaked with blood and sweat.
    And her throat was gone.
Jagged bits of flesh had been removed, unevenly, and I knew that it
had been done by something with sharp teeth. Her wrists had been
opened, too, and the arteries high on her legs. I stared at her for
a moment, my brain refusing to process what I was seeing: My mother
was dead. No matter where I looked in the room, my eyes were drawn
with directional magnetism to her face, her perfectly unmarked face
and I wondered, stupidly, Why would
someone do this?
    I vomited the vodka I’d drank at the
honoring ceremony. It burned coming up as much as it had going
down. I blinked back tears and realized I could no longer stand. I
fell into the pool, the puddle of blood and sick. I dry-heaved,
because my gorge was empty, and buried my face in my hands,
uncaring that I was covered with blood and puke.
    The curtains were open and the last of
the day’s sunlight shone through, illuminating my mother with an
angel’s halo.
    I threw back my head, and I howled
like an animal.
    Everything went black, and I don’t
know what happened until a strong hand landed on my shoulder. I
looked up to see a woman in a police uniform. She pulled me to my
feet, murmuring something encouraging, something that I don’t
remember. As she led me from the room, I noticed for the first time
the blood on the wall above the bed.
    Everywhere else in the apartment, the
blood was splattered with no apparent regard for pattern. Here,
though, the vile liquid had been used as paint, paint to create a
single character, one single letter. Five feet hight and two
across, above my mother’s bed was painted a capital letter
D.
     
    Chapter 3: Nate
     
    The tears finally came while I rode in
the back of a police car. I sobbed and wailed. Snot ran down my
face. My cheeks turned white from salt. My hands were covered with
blood. The two cops, tough, battle-hardened veterans with severe
haircuts and precise mustaches, looked at each other. No doubt
they’d seen a lot of strange things in their careers with the NYPd,
but they’d probably never had a banshee of a sixteen-year-old boy
covered with blood and puke in their backseat.
    A large-bellied Hispanic cop with a
salsa stain on his shirt led me to a conference room inside the
precinct. He looked at me sympathetically, coughed, and said,
“Sorry about your mom, kid.”
    I blinked at him. Everything looked
blurry—I put that down to the tears in my eyes.
    “What happens now?” I
asked.
    “Well,” he said, “I guess
the detective’ll wanna talk t’ya. Not that anybody thinks you
did… that to your
mom, but y’know, you might know who did.”
    The cop seemed nervous to be talking
to me. I guess he wasn’t used to dealing with something so savage
as what happened to my mom.
    “They’ll…we’ll figger out
who did this, kid. We’ll find this monster. I guess I promise you
that.”
    And then he was gone, like he couldn’t
wait to get out of my presence, and I was alone. Other cops milled
this way and that, going about their business like they couldn’t
see me. Occasionally I’d catch one of them looking in my direction,
but they’d hurriedly look away without eye contact. These officers,
I guessed, weren’t used to this level of brutality—and they didn’t
know how to deal with it. I understand their problems, I do—but I
was sixteen and I’d just found my mother butchered like a hog. I
needed someone to comfort me. I needed someone to tell me that it
was going to be okay.
    Instead the cops averted their eyes
from my face like I had some kind of mind-control
powers.
    “They’re not gonna look at
you,” a voice said.
    I jumped in my seat, drawing some
momentary attention from a nearby desk jockey, but he immediately
went back to