THE MONSTER INSIDE ME (#ONC2024)

CHAPTER TWO: A TERRIBLE CRIME.

I was not in the closet anymore.

I was eighteen, lying in my own bed, listening to the familiar sounds echoing through the house. My father was not alone that night. Two women were with him. Their voices rose and tangled together, climbing toward the inevitable conclusion I had learned to anticipate with mechanical dread.

Then—silence.

Not the ordinary pause between movements. Not the satisfied exhaustion that usually followed. This silence was wrong. Heavy. As if the house itself had stopped breathing.

Whispers drifted down the corridor. Female voices. Low. Urgent. Then nothing at all.

After fifteen minutes, I left my room.

The smell reached me first. Metallic. Thick. Blood.

I followed it into the living room and found my father sprawled naked on the floor, his body twisted unnaturally. A knife jutted from his chest, driven deep into his heart. His eyes were open, unseeing. One of the women was gone. Both were gone. There was no sign of struggle—only the aftermath.

I did not cry.

Perhaps the darkness in me was already too well fed. Perhaps I was simply exhausted from surviving him. Whatever the reason, grief never arrived. What I felt instead was relief.

The police came. They asked questions. They searched. They never found the woman who killed him.

My grandmother, Liv, offered to take me in. I refused. To me, she was a stranger with shared blood and no shared history. The house was mine now. The place that had once been my prison became my inheritance.

For the first time, the silence belonged to me.

I stayed. I cleaned. I slept without fear of being dragged into darkness that wasn't my own. His absence lightened the air. The memories lingered, but they no longer pressed down on my chest. I could breathe.

Still, I was cautious. I hid a knife beneath my pillow. Old habits die slowly, especially when fear has raised you.

Then one night, a man appeared in my room.

I had no contact with my father's former friends after his death. They vanished as completely as he had. This man was different. He emerged from the shadows as if summoned by them. Moonlight traced his features, softening them, lending him an unnatural calm. His eyes held something I did not recognize at first.

Compassion.

"Please," he whispered. His voice shook—not with fear, but with urgency. "I'm here to help you. Don't be afraid."

Every instinct screamed at me to protect myself. My hand closed around the knife. Fear and suspicion collided with something weaker, more dangerous—curiosity.

I did not hesitate long.

I stabbed him.

I don't know where the strength came from. When I pulled the blade free, his blood spilled out, glowing faintly in the dim light. It was warm. Alive. Instead of disgust, desire surged through me, sharp and undeniable.

I lowered my mouth to the wound and tasted it.

Metallic, yes—but soothing. Exhilarating. The blood shimmered, pulsing with a quiet power that settled into my veins like a promise.

Then he changed.

Light fractured around him. His wound sealed itself before my eyes. He rose, and wings unfurled from his back—vast, radiant, impossible. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

Horror struck too late.

"I wanted to save you," he said softly, sorrow trembling in his voice. "Now you have condemned yourself."

He vanished, leaving behind silence—and hunger.

Only later did understanding come. He had been sent for me. Chosen me. For reasons I still do not fully grasp. Redemption, perhaps. Or mercy.

But mercy had arrived too late.

The taste of his blood ignited something dormant within me. Power awakened, coiling eagerly around my thoughts. The darkness I had carried my entire life no longer hid. It rose to meet me, offering strength instead of fear.

I embraced it.

With every passing day, the hunger grew. The world felt smaller. Weaker. I explored what I had become without restraint, without remorse.

I was no longer surviving.

I was becoming.