Bodyguard |Michael Gray|

The Red House

Warning: this chapter may be triggering to some, it is quite sad but I needed to explain Scarlett's past
(Scarlett's  POV)

Sometimes when I lie awake at night or unfocus from reality I can see it, standing in the distance. It is a dark shadow looming in my memory and when it think of it I feel like all I'm back there again. In the red house, my childhood house. It was never a home to me and it never will be.

I remember it's immaculate gardens, perfect symmetry and halls that only the rich could picture. Embellished by lavish items my father would purchase or was gifted. He was a strong man, my father. I remember him as tall and lean, always wearing a suit with his hair perfect everything was perfect.

When he returned it would all unfreeze. The staff would come back to life again, they would talk to him, obey him. He stalked his hallways with pride and filled the house with his legacy. I spotted him in his office and I would purposely play outside hoping he would notice. Our relationship was brief, a pat on my head or a brush of my little red curls and he would return again, ignoring me, I would become a part of the house, like a doll child with a wind up cord.

That was when he was there. When he left it was another story. I would hide in the house everyday, a small creature in its empty shell. After my mother took her life the house haunted my dreams and forced me to relive her nightmare everyday, the one she had escaped. I remember the day she left as it sits permanently in my mind, a pool of blood, ruby red hair and a stained white dress. 

Big white marble halls with golden portraits that lined up as if it was their sole purpose was to amaze. I once skipped though the halls my curls bouncing on my frilly doll-like dresses. A living doll. A body Like a porcelain shell to fit inside the shell of the house, each echoing into the next. Then one day that porcelain shell broke.

At exactly 11:10 on a July evening a young man, new to the staff entered my room. Holding a gun to my head he repeated that it was because of Daddy's business he was there. After that the house was just a cage.

At the age of fifteen we had to hire a new chef. A once loyal employee poisoned a maid. I remember her lifeless body heaving and the sound of shattering glass. There was nothing I could do. She grabbed for a golden fox figure as she fell and it followed her to the floor. Death and misery lingered in the halls of the house like a bad smell. It was suffocating me.

The Red House was red because of its unique paintwork on the outside wall facing out to the lake. To me it was red because it had killed so many innocent people. I refused to believe that I was one of them was me but somewhere inside I couldn't shake that feeling.

The sounds of gunfire became as familiar as a firework. So much so that now I barely react to it. Daddy's visits home became less frequent after Mom's death. I do remember that when he did come home the laughter would follow him around the house. That parties, the women and the alcohol, but also the drugs, the gunfire and the bloodshed.

When I was eighteen I decided it was the last time I would sleep in the house. The silk pillowcase couldn't hold anymore tears and I had none left to give. I picked myself up off the soft fur throw and packed my trunk.

At exactly 11:10 I took in the red paintwork for the last time. The cold silver of my dagger stung my upper thigh in the winter chill. I remembered the feeling of cutting through the flesh of my intruder on a July evening. Hearing a porcelain doll fall off the bed and a ringing in my ear.