Midnight Stalkers

April's Boutique

It was an ordinary night in the small, quaint town of Summerstone, the streets were bustling with people doing their usual late-night shopping on a Thursday evening with the flickering street lights illuminating their content faces, greedily eyeing what each other had bought as though it was a competition to see who had bought the latest and greatest. A sense of great nostalgia hit me as I took in the cold crisp air around me, it was almost Winter, which meant it would start to snow any day now. My hands started to tingle from the cold so I shoved my hands into my coat pockets to get the feeling back into them. Winter time in Summerstone used to be my favourite time of year especially when snow began to fall and cover the town in blankets of white snow. The fond memories of building snowmen with my little sister and brother, making snow angels until we couldn't feel our faces anymore.

It had been exactly ten years three months and twelve days since I had been back here but it was if nothing had changed. This town is still full of the same hungry, vicious vultures and what do vultures love? Dead bodies so that's exact what they will get. A group of girls walked out of a florist holding a bunch of crimson red roses giggling, whispering secrets to one another with devilish smiles plastered on all their faces. I forced a smile upon my face as they noticed me watching them and took in the fresh smell of the roses as the wind drifted the sickly-sweet scent towards my nose. They went back to their giggling but I looked down to see my hands clenched so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. Good I thought, my feelings towards this place that held so many miserable memories are exactly the same as they were when I was exiled from this town I once called home. For years, I have been picturing this time, which has finally arrived and even though it had only been a couple of years I still felt like a lifetime ago but I'm not a person who can forget the past. The florist bell ringed again as a couple walked out of the frosted glass door snapping me back to reality, I realise that my positioned stance in the middle of the street is odd and I can't be drawing to much attention to myself...yet so I decide to see this seemingly busy store for myself.

You see the trauma from the early stages of my early childhood, not knowing what it's like to have a family to come home to and being sent away at such a young age has really messed with my mind. Especially as a child who just wanted to be loved has led me to being called dare I say 'psychotic' one to many times but I know if I don't get the redemption my family deserves I will never be at peace, the thought of what I could have had has loomed upon me my entire life. That's why as soon as I escaped from that retched orphanage house I made sure to give my dear grandparents a visit to tie up any...loose ends because after all, they abandoned me at that prison the day they found out my parents had sent me to them, so it was only fair that I locked them up in their very own basement to make them feel at home because unlike them I actually have a heart. The only difference between their prison and mine was that theirs's was lit on fire because you know what happens when you play with fire, you get burnt. But first I have a few stops to make before I endure in this grand scheme of mine, starting with my dear family. I wonder if they will even remember me.

I take a deep breath in, my lungs filling with the warm air of the store as my eyes lay on a bunch of red roses, just like the one's those bumbling bunch of bimbo's that were busy trying to distract themselves from their miserable pathetic lives. I pluck a single rose from the bunch, slowly caressing the stem of the flower with my index finger as the thorns tear at my skin. The familiar liquid crimson drips down my finger, I draw my finger towards my mouth and the aroma of metal fills my taste buds. My eyes meet at a little girl standing a few feet away from me at the cash register with her mother who was buying a bouquet of lilac's. The little girl's eyes widen as a malicious smile pulls at my mouth, my finger slowly tracing down my mouth, leaving a trail of red.

"Can I help you sweetheart?" A small elderly lady with a white puffy shirt and an apron that read 'April's Boutique' in large pink cursive writing asked in an unusually gleeful voice for someone working at this late at night.

My tongue erased the last evidence of blood from my lips. "I found these gorgeous roses of yours and couldn't help but admire them, my mother loves roses." I recounted remembering my mother always had a vase full of roses centred on the dining table, they've always been my favourite flowers as well.

"They are beautiful aren't they if I don't say for myself. I do pride myself on my flowers, best florist store in town." April giggled to herself, blushing with pride. Narcissistic bitch.

"Oh sweetheart you missed a spot." She fished around in her apron pocket before pulling out a handkerchief. She closed an eye and stuck out her tongue as she rubbed the blood off my face that I had missed.

"My bad, how absent minded of me. I was just too mesmerised to remember how... tricky roses can be." I perplexed picking up the bouquet of roses as April chuckled just waiting for me to hand over my money like another one of the greedy vultures in this town.

"Now dear, is there anything you would like me to write in the card?" April asked propping on her glasses that were hanging from a silver chain on her neck, pulling out a small card and a black pen with the same 'April's Boutique' printed in cursive pink writing.

"Yes thank you. Write, To my dearest mother, love from-"