The reason we kill

Chapter 1

She was sitting on her chair at the dining table, a plate of steaming food set in front of her. She wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t eating. She was staring at her parents. She couldn’t believe what they had just told her. They had told her she was going to get a little sister, in less than four months. That would explain why her mother was getting so fat in the last time. She had never seen them so happy before. Never, really never. That was when they had started with all the baby fuss. First they had made Cara move from her old room into the new one. Her old room had had a huge arch window with cream framing, beige walls and a carpet the colour of the beach sand. Against the wall right from the door there had been a desk of white wood, and across the room there had been a huge white canopy bed covered in pillows and blankets. She had had a walk-in closet filled with fancy designer clothes and shoes. After making her move, they had sold all her old stuff to buy expensive baby-furniture. Her mother had quit her job, and her father had started to erg her to pregnancy gymnastics and mother-to-be clubs. Her mother had stopped talking to her; when she was at home, she didn’t allow Cara to come to her with her problems because she said it would just stress the baby. Since Cara could hardly talk to her father either, she found a new reference person in an old lady who lived only a few houses down the street in the same court.

She was six. She sat on the counter of the kitchen, waiting for her parents to return. Next to her on the counter stood a radio playing loud 80’s music. Her grandmother was wearing an apron and holing a pot of tomato sauce in her left, and a wooden spoon in her right hand. She was singing along with the music and dancing in circles. There was water boiling in the kettle and spaghetti in a pot on the oven. She heard keys jingling in the lock, and a moment later the front door opened, and her parents entered. Her mother held a carrycot in her hand. Cara jumped off the counter and ran towards her mother with outstretched arms. Her mother wasn’t looking at her though. She had picked up the cot and was smiling at the little baby in pink and white that lay inside. The girl stopped dead and let her arms sink. All the joy that had cooked up inside of her at the site of her mother drained from her like water leaking from a sponge. She bit on her lip and tried to keep from crying. Her father had just entered. He looked so happy. She had never seen him this happy. He wrapped his arms around her mother and looked over her shoulder at the tiny baby girl in pink. Now her grandmother came running from the stove. She bumped against Cara, and the little girl stumbled and fell. The old woman didn’t bother to stop. Under many “Ohh’s and Ahh’s” she bent over the baby.

“Mommy?” The little girl asked.

“Shhh!” All three of them went and turned their angry faces towards Cara. “She’s sleeping, Cara. Can’t you see that?” Her mother said. Then they all turned their faces away again. She couldn’t stop herself from crying now. She turned around and ran up the stairs to her room, slamming the door. She threw herself onto the bed and cried into the pillow, which was still wet from the call they had gotten a few hours ago: her mother had talked to her grandmother for two hours straight. Cara had waited patiently next to the phone, but when her grandmother had asked if Cara’s mother wanted to talk to her, she had simply said there was no need and hung up. After a while the little girl stopped crying. She sat up on the small bed and looked around the room. She still wasn’t used to it. It had one small window covered with dark curtains, a narrow bed with dark sheeting, a small desk made of dark wood and a metal closet. The floor was tiled in a cold grey tone, and the walls were an empty white. She had though it would all get easier after the baby was born; she had thought it would all be the same again. Out of the pocket of her jeans she pulled an old photo. It showed a group of three people, her father her mother and herself, newly born. Her father had the same dark-dark brown glossy hair that flowed from her head down almost to touch her hips, just that his was cropped short and straight as a ruler. He had a pale even face with warm, dark, chocolate eyes. His long-sleeved arm was around her mother’s shoulders. Her mother was the opposite of him. A not particularly attractive woman with board shoulders, tan skin and dull blond curls to her shoulders. Her face was plump and her cheeks were red, her green eyes the colour of apples were watery and without the slightest glint of intelligence behind them. The baby between them looked fair in the pink and white suit it was wearing, with very dark hair that stood up off its head, showing that it would one day have curls. The baby she knew resembled her, though she failed to find any similarity in the big green eyes that stared at the camera, and the dark lime coloured ones the mirror reflected from her face now.

She listened to the laughing voices downstairs. She smelt food. She leaned against the cold wall and felt her hair tickle her back. When she heard the baby start to scream downstairs she knew she had to get out. She threw open the window and jumped off the seal onto the roof of the porch below. For a moment she listened, but all she could hear was her mother singing and her father laughing. Then she jumped off the roof to the ground. She crept along the side of the house and ducked under the living room window. There she sat down in the moist grass. Carefully, without making a sound she turned onto her knees and peered through the window. Right inside the room, close enough to touch, sat her parents and her grandmother eating huge bowls of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Next to them on the table in the little carrycot was the baby. A girl- Abigail her parents had told her. Cara looked in to the child’s face, and decided within an instant she did not like it. The face was a tan colour and the hair was a flat lifeless dirty-blonde. The child in the cot had uneven features, the nose was too big, the mouth too small. The eyes were only slits in the swollen, fat, pink face. She had the impression a spoiled, ugly bastard had just been born. In that moment her mother got up and Cara ducked as not to be seen. She felt her stomach growl, and she noticed how hungry she was. She carefully crawled away from under the window and then got up and walked down the alley to the house of the old lady.