Diary of My Homicidal Sister

Note From Liliana

Hey guys! So, I was looking through my computer and found this story I started a while back. I decided to keep going with it, and hopefully I'll get further with it and maybe even finish it. Hope you like it!

 

My sister was never like other little girls' sisters. Riley was reckless and broken and everything in between. While my friends looked up to their sisters and wanted to be just like them, I feared mine. I feared the bloody pictures she drew and the dark poems she wrote, but I never once spoke up. And had I done that, could I have saved a few lives, maybe even Riley's? That question alone haunts me every single night, sometimes even rouses me from my slumber and causes me to spend the next falling hours just tossing and wondering “What if?”

 

Now, Riley wasn't all bad. Sometimes, usually after a fight with me or our father, she'd turn to me and say “Put your shoes on and meet me outside in five.” Those were the days we'd go to the park and buy an ice cream from the truck by the water fountain with money she'd taken from Dad. Riley wouldn't speak to me as we sat side-by-side on the swings, watching the other little kids scream and play pretend. Those were the times I thought that maybe Riley really did like me.

 

But I'd never forget the time when I was nine and she was thirteen, and our father had left her in charge of me to go to a meeting a couple hours away. I had been sitting in my room, occupying myself with some homework I had from that day. It was math homework, the kind that made my nose crinkle in frustration. It was basic multiplication, so it wasn't as hard as I was probably making it seem, but I hadn't memorized my times tables yet.

 

So there I sat, cross legged on my bed with papers strewn out all over my Disney princess comforter, not even glancing up from them as Riley entered my room.

 

“Lily.” She whispered, closing the door behind her. I still didn't look up; I was too caught up in the numbers swimming in my head to respond.

 

“Liliana!” Riley hissed, louder this time. Now I flinched at the tone in her voice and glanced up; she never used my full name unless she was angry.

 

“What?” I'd squeaked in my frustrated little girl voice. Riley had just simply laughed and moved her right hand from behind her back. In it sat a shiny, perfect butcher knife – as sharpened as sharp could be. She'd picked the lock on Dad's kitchen knife kit to get it.

 

I'd sucked in a shaky breath then, watching helplessly as she crossed the short distance from the door to my bed. I was so scared by this time that I'd forgotten how to move, and could only shake visibly from my perch. I didn't even dare to speak as she climbed atop my covers; crinkling my homework papers beneath her.

 

“Isn't this the most beautiful knife you've ever seen?” Riley crooned as she towered over me, legs on either side of my small frame. There was absolutely no way for me to escape. I remember the striking realization come to mind that I could die right here, by my sister's lethal hand.

 

Shakily, I'd mumbled that yes, it was a very pretty knife, and what are you going to do with it? This made her laugh, but not the normal laugh of a thirteen year old. Her laugh oozed melancholy and evil and something else that I didn't have a word for at the time, but I do now. Homicide. I truly believe that my sister would have killed me that day, had there been no interuption.

 

The knife that was still grasped tightly in her steady hand had come to rest blade-first against the soft, delicate skin on my throat. My eyes had widened, and I'd stopped breathing then. Her piercing green eyes had locked onto my own tamer ones, daring me to make a move. But I made none, only silently hoping for a quick death; I was never one to tolerate pain very well.

 

The blade hadn't been pressed into my throat with too much force, but I could still feel the touch of it on my skin. I knew that all she would have to do is rip the knife sideways, and I would be cut. Maybe not a fatal cut, but one that could possibly scar. And how would I explain that to those at school or those I passed by on the streets of our little town? For some reason, telling them that my sister had tried to kill me just didn't seem a sensible thing for a nine year old to say.

 

“Please,” I remember whispering, tears pushing at the corners of my eyes. What I had meant by that one little word, I could never recall. Was I asking her to make it quick? To cease the plan she must have had in her head to strike down her own sister? I never knew for sure.

 

Someone had to have been watching over me that day, because as the sound of a car door closing echoed through the thin walls of our ancient house, Riley released the hold she'd had on me and disappeared from my room so quickly, you'd have thought she'd seen a ghost. The tears I'd been holding back dripped from my eyes and down onto my wrinkled papers, my hand touching the skin on my throat; I could still sense the touch of the blade.

 

Dad had come into my room then and found me crying, surrrounded by ruined papers and messed-up bedsheets. He'd quickly taken me into his arms and asked me if I needed help with my homework. I suppose he thought I was stressed over my times tables.

 

I never told anyone about that day. I never even mentioned the nightmare I'd had that night that resulted in my waking up and clutching my pillow as I cried, feeling the phanton pain of my sister slicing my throat in the dream.

 

Long before the incident, Dad noticed that something was off with Riley, and he'd sent her to a counselor to discuss her thoughts. So every Thursday, Dad and I would sit in the waiting room reading old magazines to each other as my sister spoke to some woman a few rooms over. I never heard about what happened behind that closed door, but my sister had always carried a journal with her. I saw that journal every once in a while after that, usually clutched in my sister's hand as she left the kitchen angry at our father and stormed up the wooden stairs to her room. Of course, I'd had opportunities to read it at times, but I was always too scared to. After all, who knew what kind of twisted thoughts could rest beyond that brown, leather cover?

 

But, I did finally get to read it. It was several years later, when I was fourteen and my sister would have turned eighteen in a matter of months. Grief had stricken our house, but disbelief at everything that went on had completely destroyed it. And maybe I should have given up the journal to the police when they asked if there was anything that could be helpful to the case, but I couldn't bring myself to hand it over. That journal was the last thing I'd had of Riley, and though the entries were disturbing, they took me inside the mind of my sister and helped me to understand why she was the way she was. In a way, the journal made me feel closer to her.

 

 

Now, I could just come out and tell you what happened to Riley and a few other unfortunate souls, but what better way to tell the story of my sister than to take you inside her mind? My sister, who had been plotting murder behind a poker face, who I thought wanted me dead from the day I was born. My sister, who I still loved despite the things she'd done and wrote. And maybe I was crazy for still doing so, but she was my family, and you have to love your family. At least, I think you do.