THE HERO'S SON IS A MONSTER-Chapter 66: My front
There is that one song from the 80s about a woman with revolver eyes. The man in it describes how he fell in love with a woman with just one look from her.
She has the killing gaze, he said.
She shot first, he said.
And with that single shot, he was doomed. Quite a poetic way to describe what could just be called love at first sight.
I am not particularly fond of music especially when it belongs to what people would describe as normal – albeit old – songs. I am not even fond of poetry either. In fact, I was never able to finish a single poetry book because just the thought of reading one would trigger an instant sigh.
However, I did admit that poetry could be good. Maybe. At the very least, it made me reflect on how twisted I truly was.
The name is Dawn Riftwalker. Sixteen. First-year student at Eve’s Anathema and back from her very first day of school.
It seems I met a girl with revolver eyes.
But I shot first. Literally.
After all, I did have a true revolver.
One shot just between the eyes. I didn’t want to brag, but I was a skilled marksman. Either way, the girl was dead. Lying lifeless on Dawn’s bed, her blood staining her white sheets.
(I knew I should’ve thrown them away way back then. Blood is a hassle to remove and white textiles are just a nightmare to wash. I don’t even have a machine to make it easier and so on.)
Those were my first thoughts. It might sound weird but I didn’t really feel any guilt or horror after doing that. At least that’s what I wanted to believe. Actually, I was terrified but I couldn’t even understand that. My mind was running through mundane topics again and again in a desperate attempt to run away from what I just did.
In this world, there are uncanny beings known as vampires. They are easy to spot – glowing scarlet eyes, white slit pupils, pale skin, and, of course, the oh-so-needed fangs. Can you guess what the girl lying on my bed looked like?
Yes. She was a pale-skinned beauty with long dark braided hair and red eyes. For some reason, she also had glasses on which made me doubt she was a vampire. They don’t usually need them, do they?
Besides, I hadn’t seen the girl’s fangs yet, so with my luck, the girl could be a normal human who just somehow happened to get inside my locked home. She could have closed her bedroom windows because - let’s be crazy - she didn’t want to be bothered by the sun’s dying light while reading? Also, she could just happen to have glowing red eyes. It happens.
That was a lot of coincidences, but believe me – my luck is sometimes so bad it could be considered a statistical anomaly at this point. I could have killed a human being and, even if this girl wasn’t one, killing a living being was not something I could do without unplugging my mind for a few seconds.
That’s when my twisted self usually takes the lead. I looked at the girl’s eyes. They were red. They were lifeless. Yet, I couldn’t stop looking.
"Beautiful..." I thought for a moment. She was beautiful. Even in death, she was beautiful. Her skin was smooth and cold, her hair was soft and dark, her eyes were bright and red. She looked like an angel, a fallen angel. She looked like she was sleeping, dreaming of something better. But then, my ’moral’ self surfaced.
Beautiful? A corpse ? That... That couldn’t be...
I always knew something was wrong with me but I never thought it was THAT wrong. I tried to shake the thought out of my head but it was too late. The funny thing about the human mind is that the more you want to forget something, the more you think about it.
Well of course. How do you know you forgot about ’x’ without thinking about ’x’?
That is usually funny to think about when ’x’ is a really annoying jingle that you can’t help humming. Less so when it’s your heart skipping a beat for a dead person. I wasn’t disgusted with herself so to speak, but what I felt was quite the opposite of being proud.
Thankfully, my brain came up with the perfect excuse: I must just like red eyes. They are uncommon. I usually liked uncommon things. A simple reasoning but that helped me to avoid falling into self-loathing.
"..."
After hesitating for what seemed like hours for her, I decided to check for myself. I approached the body, lifted her head gently and opened her mouth. There they were. Two sharp fangs, hidden behind her lips. She was definitely a vampire. I felt a surge of relief and guilt at the same time. Relief, because I didn’t kill an innocent person. Guilt, because I still killed a person. I was somewhat uneasy. I needed to explain it to someone. Tell them it wasn’t my fault. I repeated to herself the story she would tell to the authorities.
"I came home from school. My front door was closed but I found an unidentified red-eyed individual in my room. I panicked and shot them. It was an accident. I came home but I found an unidentified red-eyed individual in my room. My house was closed, so I thought it was a vampire and shot. My home was closed and I found a red-eyed individual inside. I thought they were a vampire so... Wait, she didn’t attack me so does it count as self-defense? They say vampires are evil but are they legally? Will I get in trouble? Oh no. Why did I panic? What if they find the body? How can I explain what I did?"
There was no explanation at least in her mind. She felt trapped. She was going to be condemned for shooting a vampire in her own house. Well, she had to admit that she acted a bit too hastily but the idea of being put in jail because she protected myself was unbearable.
