Heart On A Platter

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

"Do you have any?" She ask me as It feels as if the world has gone dark.

"What do you mean?" I ask her, for once I need to hear what he has to say.

"Your feelings Dahlia!" She yells as I sigh. "Don't lie to me sugar" she commands as I feel guilty at trying to hide it, my conscience on the line. "We are two of the same" she says as she lights a cigarette, taking a puff of it and I can smell the overwhelming stench through the plexiglass. "You are my daughter after all" she justifies as I squirm at her saying that.

"I guess we are the same in that department" I say through a sigh. Was I really falling this low?

"Just like your mother" she admits as she inhaled more of the smoke. "A psychopath!" She remarks as she smirks, "This will be fun" she notes through a sinister laugh as I snicker.

As I uncomfortably laugh at her assumption. How could she bluntly assume I'm anything like her? Like a woman that had gone her whole life without seeing her own daughter? I am no psychopath! I couldn't be, I deserved better than that. My grandmother deserved better than to put so much faith in me if my only purpose was to take lives!

"I'm no psychopath!" I debate with her.

"Yes, you are baby" she explains as I chuckle, a burning sensation starting in my stomach and only growing by the minute.

"HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?" I yell the question through the glass. "You don't know me! I grew up in a different state, in a different home with different people." I explain to her as her smirk never quivers a bit. "You will never know who I truly am" I admit to her as her smirk only grows.

"I gave you up for a reason darling" she taunts me. "Your father loved me" she tells me, tipping off the ashes gathered on the butt of her cigarette. "A little too much. I didn't want that, he wanted a wife and I so desperately wanted to fill whole again" she admits as I listen to her. "No matter how many time I cheated, fought him and told him I didn't love him he would always stay. So when I got pregnant he didn't change, he choose to stay. The man wanted a family! And I wanted to kill!" She admits, with the same grimace on her face. "So..... he knew what I would do with a baby, he gave you up, he saved you. I would've killed you. After that your father angered me, so I took the knife and stabbed him in the neck." She describes the grizzly attack as I'm shocked, that feeling I felt when I found out my mother was a killer is exactly what I felt now, only worse. "There, stabbing him over and over I felt alive Dahlia! I felt something in my heart, I felt needed, whole again. I felt alive, much more than any of the twenty eight years before that. In that way and only that way did your father ever complete me" she says as the anger only rises.

"I'm still nothing like you, I don't kill! I-I live without feeling others pain, it not that hard" I explain to her as she flicks her cigarette to the ground.

"Your father let me name you, and I named you Dahlia Iris, you know that right?" She asks me as I nod. "I named you Dahlia after the black dahlia killer, not because you are this precious flower my darling. Because you are poisonous, a killer of the night without remorse. We were made like this for a reason, mother nature's natural exterminators." She tries to convince me as I sigh at her delusional thoughts, but a part of me believes her.

"You may have named me" I say as I stand up from the chair. "But I am not your Dahlia" I tell her as I put the phone back on the hook. Walking to the door to press the button, notifying the officer I wanted to leave. "I AM ROSE!!!" I confess to her as she angrily pushes her chair out from under her.

"YOU MIGHT BE A ROSE NOW!" She says as the door opens, my foot propping it open. "BUT ROSES ALWAYS WILT" she yells as I smirk at her insanity.

"Are you sure you want to leave?" The officer as as I nod.

"Yes" I say, looking back at my mother. "I've had enough of insane middle aged woman" I remark as she nods and I follow behind her.

"ROSES NEVER LAST FOREVER!!!!" Her last words to me before the metal door clanks shut behind me and I'm left to only decipher my thoughts.

"Rose?" I hear as I'm pulled out of the nightmare, hearing the door close behind me and seeing Declan standing in front of me I take a deep breath and nod to him.

Walking up to him, "Can we walk to your truck?" I ask him as he nods. Leading me to the parking lot, his hand on the small of my back.

"What did you want to talk about?" He ask me as part of my aches to ask him this question but the other part of me fears what he'll answer with. "Can we please just leave here, the prison, the town, the whole god damn state" I explain to him, looking directly into his green eyes. "Declan, please?!" I beg him as he sighs and just nods to my request.

"Anything you want" he says through a smile as I can't help but wonder what's wrong.

************* Three Hours Later ****************
"It's been awfully quiet" Declan breaks the silence as I roll my eyes at his awkwardness.

"I've had a lot to think about" I tell him as he nudges my arm.

"Does it happen to have anything to do with the prison?" He ask me as I hate that he guessed right. "You don't have to tell me" he combats his intrusion with as I smile.

"Maybe" I answer. "What did you first think of me when you say me?" I ask him as I can feel the confusion in the atmosphere around us now from his thought.

"What- why? Why do you want to know?" Declan asks as I can tell he's clearly uncomfortable.

"Because, I need to know what I look like from the outside." I admit to him, "So.... Can you tell me what I look like from the outside?" I ask him, my eyes peering into his skull.

"I thought-" he starts as he takes a deep breath, building the courage for a war. "I thought you were special" he admits as now I'm left confused as he shows no emotions, just blank eyes on the road.

"Like can't feel special or body in the basement special?" I ask him as he chuckles. "Just tell me!" I urge him

Seeing him tighten his grip on the steering wheel. "I thought you were....gorgeous" he finally caves as it makes sense now. "That's what I meant by special" he explain as I nod my head to his secret.

Maybe I should've known this whole time. He saved me, he knew lots about me but still I couldn't feel anything for the man in front of me that just admitted to me his feelings.

"I can't" I say as my world stops, going dark as I sigh. As the truck comes to a stop and I open the truck door and my feet grace the road for escapes sake.