Until Midnight

Home Is Where The Heart Is (Literally)

Chapter Five

3:00 PM, Monday, November 15th, 2014

 Blood.

That's the first sign when I arrive home that something's amiss. I can smell it, coppery and in stark contrast againt the usual scents that cling to my home. The bus dropped me off a half-a-mile down the road, so I wasn't aware of anything then, but the second I began to ascend my porch steps I could smell the blood. 

A rush of fear intertwines with the familiar sense of adrenaline, and without hesitating, I yanked open the front door and darted inside. 

My home is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that associates with the fact that the house is vacant when it shouldn't be. My mother and father would've been home by now, as would Darius too. 

Mustering as much courage as my body will allow, I begin to stalk through the house, examining every nook and crevice, every confine and space. The upstairs is barren, as the downstairs seemingly is. My heart starts to beat at an irregular pace, and I feel as if every pound of the organ is ten times louder within my head. 

While searching my own home, I also try and locate the source of the blood I smelled when outside. But it seems as if there is no blood at all. Could it have been my imagination? But no, that smell was distinctive, I was sure of it. 

I stop my search and focus, willing all my five senses to hone in on the blood scent. I don't think it'll work, standing here like an idiot, trying to locate the odor, but shockingly, in no less then ten seconds, I follow a trail of the smell, and, slowly, I follow the odor to the one room I neglected to check: the downstairs bathroom. 

Terror rising in my throat as if it wants to claw it's way out and emit a piercing scream, I open the bathroom door and (you knew it was coming) I let out a scream. 

My mind wavers between fiction and reality as I try to process the gory, unthinkable scene laid out before me. In the sink, in stark contrast to the white of the sink itself, is a heart, red and dead, yet still letting out blood profusely. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is the bathroom mirror itself. Smeared in blood are the eerily small, delicate words:

Dear Kate,

Before you freak out as teenage girls do, the heart in your sink is not from any member of your family. It's Zachariah's, recovered from the staked mess you made back in those woods. Your family is safely out grocery shopping, and your probably wondering how I got in? They let me in. They thought I was the cable repairman. Stupid, I'd suffice to say? Anyway, this is a warning. 

This game you and I have been playing? It ain't over. Not by a long shot. 

With Love, (See The Heart:)?
Fabrir

I can't decide whether I should run out screaming or stay and gawk at the mess so delicately displayed in front of me. I decide I can't just leave it here. My parents will freak out when they see it, and that will lead to question after question which will eventually lead to them finding out I'm in transition and changing into a vamp by midnight. Best course of action: clean it the hell up. 

I run to the kitchen and grab as many hand towels my hands will allow to hold. After safely extracting the hand towels within the bathroom, I grab Miss Mindy's Surface Cleaner Pro and begin to scrub away fervently in the bathroom, hoping to whatever high power lay above that my parents don't arrive too early from shopping. 

While doing so, I dwell on the fact of how creepy it is now that Fabrir, now being invited in, can enter my home whenever he sees fit. The thought sparks anger, and anger ignites determination, and soon I'm scrubbing the bathroom like a madman, no matter how arduous the blood stains are.