Family Vengeance

CHAPTER ONE

All Sally heard were screams. Not the kind of screams you hear from little girls, but loud resounding roars that could shake a building's foundation. Sally rushed to the door and kicked it open. She needed to find where those ungodly sounds were coming from.

As she ran through the corridors, she could hear her own heart pounding. Sally's irregular heartbeats did not arise because she was running, but because she was scared. Whatever was happening outside, she somehow knew it would affect her forever.

As Sally approached the door that led outside, she slipped and fell down. She hit her head, but she didn't feel the pain. The nerves in her body were too busy to process pain. The sounds from outside intensified and in one motion, Sally got up and attempted to continue running. Again, she slipped and fell back down. She finally allowed herself to take a breath and figure out what was on the floor. She turned her face away from the door and looked at the ground. There was a pool of blood as red as the rising sun. Sally gasped as she allowed her fingers to run through the red pool. It was thick and slimy -- absolutely disgusting. Sally looked around and saw that the whole corridor was covered in blood. There were bloodstains on the walls and on the ceiling. Sally had been so focused on getting outside that she didn't notice that everything around her was red. Even her own body was covered in blood.

The screams from outside intensified.

Sally decided to ignore the catastrophe around her. She got back up, but this time, she didn't run. She walked, and with every step came the eerie feeling of a human being's blood on her feet. As she approached the door, she squeezed her face in disgust. Whose blood was she walking on?

Sally was at the door, but she didn't open it. She could hear men crying for help. They were pleading with their attacker to stop. Sally burst into uncontrollable tears. She wailed in a manner she didn't know was possible. Even without seeing what had happened, she knew her precious life was over. Everything she held dear had been stripped away. She looked back at the corridor and took one final glance at the horrific scene. That image would haunt her forever. She turned back around and opened the door. She was greeted with the very stench of death itself. Like sand on the beach, bodies were littered all over the ground. Some of the bodies had no heads attached to them. The ones that did have heads were covered in stab and gunshot wounds. And nobody was moving. They were all dead.

Sally approached the bodies to see whose they were. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. They were all her family members - her mother, aunts, and siblings. Sally let out a loud scream, hoping that her own life would also end. But it didn't. She dropped down beside her mother's body. It was one of the ones that still had a head.

"Mom? Mom, please wake up," Sally cried. But she knew her mom would not answer. She pressed her mom's lifeless body to her chest and cried some more. In the midst of her tears, Sally continued to examine the chaos in front of her. Her once beautiful green lawn had now been reddened. It all seemed too ironic. The green color of the lawn had been replaced by the red blood of Sally's relatives. And the beautiful flowerpots had now been replaced by the heads of Sally's relatives. The sweet smell of nature that danced around her home was gone.

It was summer but the air felt very cold on Sally's skin. As the Goosebumps appeared, she got up and walked around the lawn, trying to avoid stepping on people's heads. She found her father, who thankfully, still had his head attached to his body. Sally wanted to cry again, but she couldn't. The pain was just too much, so she burst into laughter. The kind of laugh you have when you no longer know what to do. The kind of laugh you have when all hope is lost.

Sally bent down next to her father. Even in death, he remained as handsome as ever. But there was a gaping hole in his forehead; a bullet must have gone through. The once mighty and proud man she knew laid there like a vegetable. The man who had sacrificed everything to give her a future laid there like a vegetable. Sally covered his wide-opened eyes with her right hand. She tried to close his mouth but it wouldn't keep shut.

"Whoever did this to you will pay," Sally whispered into her dad's ears. "I will find who did this, and I swear, I will revenge. Even if it takes the last drop of my blood." And she meant every word. In that moment of pain and despair, she decided to find whoever killed her family. She imagined it would be a long and daunting task that would take her to the ends of the earth. But she was wrong. The killer was right there, behind her.

"Sally," a man's deep voice called. Sally knew that voice all too well. She let go of her father's body and turned around. The man who called her was standing by the door she had just come through. He was wearing a white shirt that was covered in blood. He carried a machine gun in one hand and carried a sword in the other. His eyes were filled with compassion but Sally knew it was a mirage. That man meant no good.

"Lyon, what happened here?" Sally asked.

"Things got ugly. Come on inside. It's getting cold out here," he answered casually. Sally walked towards him.

"Things got ugly? All of my family is dead, and all you can say is things got ugly?"

"Come inside now," Lyon shouted. His voice made the hairs on Sally's skin to stand. That compassionate look he had a few seconds ago was gone. Now, Lyon looked like the monster she knew he was. She had no doubt he was the one who killed her family. But that was not even the worst part.

She had to spend the rest of her life with him because they had just gotten married the day before.