"Wow, you're burning up!" Caroline gasped as she double checked the thermometer that had been retracted from her darling daughter Milly. "My poor baby!"
"My head hurts," Milly groaned in response.
"Oh, I know, baby, try and get some rest."
Milly had been called home early from school as she was beginning to feel unwell. Nobody was more distraught than Milly herself who, unlike most six year old girls, loved school. She babbled on for the entire twenty minute duration home every day without fail, until today. Today she had trudged along, dragging her feet as if they weighed a tonne.
Caroline was terribly worried. Her darling daughter was never ill, and she had only missed one day of school in the two years she had been present, and that was because Daddy had won a free holiday in a snooker competition which required them to leave on a Friday. Milly had been furious. But now she was horribly weak, shivering under her duvet despite her soaring temperature.
Milly moaned again, re-adjusting herself in her bed. She was too cold, too hot, too uncomfortable to sleep, but closed her eyes and winced again in pain. Caroline patted her on the head and took a few paces to the corner of the room, gazing worriedly out the window. She pulled her phone out of her cardigan pocket and dialled Greg.
"Greg," she muttered. "No, she's fine. Well, I don't know, she's got a massive temperature. When will you be back?"
Milly clutched her ears; even the hushed tones of her mother made her head pound. She wriggled around in her bed, feeling worse than ever. She very nearly called out to her oblivious mother, before she felt a change. She suddenly didn't feel ill at all, but angry. She didn't feel weak, she was stronger than she ever had been, perhaps for the first time ever. She peeled the duvet off of her, and stepped out of bed, disregarding her precious teddy bear that she never went to bed without. She stepped towards her whispering mother.
"Right," she continued to Greg. "Be as quick as you can." She caught her darling daughter in the corner of her eye, and turned her head. "Milly darling, what are you doing?"
Milly said nothing, just stared. A cold, steely stare that went right through Caroline. She turned herself around fully, already slightly uneasy.
"Are you OK, darling?"
Nothing.
"Are you thirsty? Do you want a drink?"
Nothing.
"Milly sweetie, come on, back in bed."
Nothing. No movement.
"Milly-"
She reached out her arm towards Milly's, with a view to lead her back into bed. That was when Milly came alive, perhaps for the first time in her tiring existence. She grabbed her mother's arm and bit it, hard. Caroline gasped, then looked down at her arm. Skin was missing. She turned her attention back to her darling daughter and spotted the severed skin between Milly's teeth.
"Milly!" she whimpered, in a horrible mix of disbelief, pain and fear.
But Milly wasn't in the mood for conversation. In a strength she could've only ever have dreamed of, she pulled her mother's battered arm again and tugged it, flipping it and her right over, sending her crashing to the floor. She grabbed the nearest object she could find (the lamp on her stupidly innocent desk) and smashed it in her face, smirking as the broken shards of glass embedded themselves into her mother's features. The tears and blood were interchangeable now. Caroline couldn't even bring herself to say her daughter's name. She cried pathetically on the floor, clutching the phone that in fact was still live. Perhaps her only chance of escape, which Milly realised.
She snatched it from her, held it up high and, like a dagger, threw it back down, right into her mother's mouth. She liked the sensation as it ripped past the lips and went right to the back of her throat. She pulled it out ready for a second go, but heard the dull cries of her father on the other end. She quickly hung up and returned to the matter in hand - the phone re-entered the spluttering throat of her lovely mother.
Milly stood back up, pleased with her progress, but not quite done. She surveyed her room and looked for a grand finale. Circling the room at a controlled pace, she dismissed her fairy wings, her tablets, her colouring book, as these would not do enough damage. But the very thing that was right in front of her eyes the whole time - the desk itself - was suddenly what she had always wanted. She yanked the remaining rubbish from it and pulled the wooden structure hard, right on to her snivelling mother's head. It was good material - Greg and Caroline had paid a fortune for a top-of-the-range, only-the-best-for-our-darling-daughter work space. And it was certainly top of the range. Caroline was no more.
Milly was satisfied. She stepped over her mother's pitiful carcass and left, now running, faster and faster, as far away as she could imagine. As the fury began to wind down, she didn't know what to think, except that she knew that she wasn't her mother's darling daughter anymore.
