GUILLOTINE

Chapter 1: The Call

I was walking in the street, everyone kept staring at me all the time. I know anybody could be mad at this point, but I wasn't. After all, I was singing while my headphones played the music, the kind of music that nobody else could listen to except me.

Anyway, it was like four o clock or so. Just a few hours ago I was at college, having my usual photography class. I used to love it there when I was a freshman, but when you don't have any friends it becomes kind of boring after a little while.

I don't think I ever got used to live here in London, it was such a big city, and since I came from an island nearby called RedCliff, nothing really interesting used to happen there, so I wasn't used to all this city bustle. Nothing out of the regular, surprising or unusual can happen in a little island, well, except for some of the deaths that used to come every winter.

Winters in RedCliff were harsh and cruel, and the mountains surrounding the island were responsible for the blizzards that could make people's bodies slowly freeze all the way down to the bone, feeling the cold in every single vein, freezing their hearts and blood to solid, and making them die in a terrible agony. (Or that's how my grandpa always told me it was like).

I used to live with my mother Regina, and my little sister Diana. I never met my dad. When I was younger I had to deal with mom's stupid boyfriend living in the house too, but he left when Diana was born, and even though mom was really sad about it, I couldn't help but feeling happy.

When I graduated high school it was a relief for me to leave finally, to start my own life, but later I realized that I missed being around my family, since I don't see them as much as I did before. Even though this, I haven't regretted leaving. I never liked living in RedCliff. It just seemed like the place where you really do not ever want to live, a place you would run away from.

Before I could keep on singing I got distracted because of the wind, it was making my thick hair turn worse than it how it was in the morning. It got tangled with my headphones and I had to take them off before things got complicated. When the wind stopped I could put them back on, and I noticed I was now all alone in the street. People seemed to have vanished in an instant. I thought about it for a couple of seconds and came to a conclusion: I liked it more that way.

At that moment, the music stopped and my phone started ringing. I picked up the phone and answered the call. Strangely, there were background voices of police men, car alarms, ambulances and that kind of things, like if something bad had happened.

I had a bad feeling about this.

"Hello?" I asked a little bit nervous.

"Good evening, am I talking with Alan Pitch?" Asked someone in a low voice.

I swallowed. "Yes, that's me."

"It's him." I heard him say in a much lower voice than the first one.

He returned to the call, and I perceived he took a deep breath before speaking again. "I wanted to inform you that there has been an accident in your family's house."

"Wait, what?" My fingers grabbing the phone started trembling. "What do you mean by an accident?"

"Apparently there was a murder." He said. "I am afraid to inform you that your mother and sister have been killed."

All my blood got cold as ice. I stopped breathing. It was as if my life had been destroyed in just a few words. The cellphone slipped through my fingers and fell. This wasn't true. It could not be true. I kneeled down on the ground and covered my mouth with both hands. I couldn't see, I couldn't move, I was... frozen.

I felt like I was stuck in one of those blizzards my grandpa always used to talk to me about. I felt cold, completely cold. I could feel every vein of mine as if it was freezing slowly, turning my blood to solid. I could feel my heart shrinking inside my chest. I felt dead.

Then I cried.

I cried and could not stop. People started to fill the street once again and I could feel their eyes on me, but I did not care, not a single bit. I kept crying. I tried to concentrate, to remember where I was, what was I doing, who I was, but my mind was losing shape. I just couldn't.

"They are dead..." I mumbled for myself between sobs. "Mom... Diana... dead..."

And then, just like that, my shrinking heart broke, like a tiny, red balloon who had just popped. My gesture disengaged, the last bit of composure I had abandoned me and I screamed. I screamed and cried out loud without caring about anyone who saw me because the pain and anguish had dragged me down to the bottom of the blizzard to drown. It overwhelmed me and tore apart my heart and my stomach and my head and pulled me down, and I couldn't take it. I really thought I wouldn't be able to take it.

Inside me, I had the sudden sensation that I was running out of time. Not a sensation that felt as if I was going to die too, but as if I was running out of time to find it. To find the person who had took them away from me.

I had been left behind now for a reason, and in that instant I saw it clearly. I was coming back to RedCliff to find it.

I was going to make it pay.