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I just found out why the kids in my town are brutally killing their parents.
They called us the miracle generation.
It’s a well-known fact that our town has always struggled to have children. Nobody knows exactly why, but fertility problems have always been an issue. It’s not like our population is dwindling, people were still born from IVF, or shipped into town through a government program to create families. Mom had moved to the US with her parents when she was twenty years old, abandoning her Aussie family and starting anew. After finding the program, she was paid enough cash to put her into early retirement, and all she had to do was pick from several guys and make a family.
I know this sounds very dystopian, and you would be correct in thinking so. But what else were they supposed to do?
Children were seemingly not allowed in this town.
And when by miracle, they were somehow allowed to exist, they lasted maybe three or four days. Mom said I was a miracle baby. It wasn’t supposed to happen because women in our town were supposed to be barren. So, when an entire class of babies came out of nowhere, that is what our town named us.
Miracles. I was born first, followed by my twin brother, a day later, and then my sister, a whole year after. I think my mom wanted to stay safe with two kids before she tried again, and low and behold, she had Noa. We learned in school from an early age that we weren’t technically supposed to exist. Scary to a child, yes. When an adult is prodding a whiteboard and repeating the words, “shouldn’t” and “impossible” you are bound to get freaked out. Though the town was sceptical of us.
There were those before us, babies who were born and given names, and identities, and already had parents falling in love with their bundle of joy—only for each child to die one after the other from a mysterious illness no scientist could identify. It became pretty obvious that our town was cursed. Mom told me for the first few days after I was born, she wasn’t allowed to hold me in case I spontaneously combusted in her arms, or grew three heads. Yes, there is documented evidence that babies have spontaneously combusted or grown inhuman-like limbs before dying. Mom wanted to make sure I was actually real—and not some cruel illusion.
That went for all the babies in town. We were all taken to the hospital and placed inside a sort of quarantine room. They expected us to explode or die suddenly, but when we didn’t, we were given back to our parents. Mom used to regularly put in our birthday cards, “I’m glad you didn’t explode!” as a joke. She had an odd sense of humor, but I thought it was cute.
I have seventeen years’ worth of birthday cards all saying the same ridiculous passage.
“Happy [INSERT AGE HERE] birthday, Mara! (I’m glad you didn’t explode!)
Anyway.
This supposed curse came back to light several days ago, when out of nowhere, Seth Daniel’s killed his parents. And I don’t mean kill, like he burned the house down with them in it, or poisoned them in their sleep. I mean KILL. According to the town newspaper my mom is always feverishly reading, the bodies were mutilated. Like an animal had torn them apart. I knew Seth. I’ve known him since we were little kids. He lived across the road from me. Seth regularly invited me over to watch Power Rangers, and would enthusiastically sing and dance to the intro. Seth loved his mom and dad.
I mean, he did as a kid. I would see him playing with his father in their front yard—and when he grew up, yes, he distanced himself from his parents (because being cool with your mom and dad is like, so lame) I would still see him accompanying his mother to the town center to buy groceries, or sitting in the yard playing his Switch, pretending to laugh at all of his dad’s dad-jokes. Seth wasn’t a bad person, and he definitely wasn’t a victim of some supposed curse that apparently still had us in its grasp.
It didn’t make sense that he would just… kill his parents like that. There was no motive, no real reason for him to do that. Seth adored his mother and loved his father.
The town media were radio silent except for one measly article in the newspaper. I figured nobody wanted to say what everyone was thinking.
But it didn’t make sense. This curse had allowed us to live for seventeen years, and NOW it wanted to do something? And why would it lash out at parents and not kids? Why force the kid to kill their parents? There was one detail that jumped out at me. It was Seth’s 18th birthday. The exact day. I knew this because he was talking about having a party at school.
I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist, but what kid actively talks about having a birthday party the same day they’re planning to brutally murder their parents? I asked a lot of questions because nobody was making noise, and I refused to believe Seth had willingly done something like this. Mom said the Daniel’s case was too gruesome to tell me, so I did some digging myself. We’re a small town.
Finn Novak is the son of the sheriff, so it cost me twenty dollars and a promise to introduce him to my brother, to get into his dad’s office.
It was very cloak-and-dagger, I definitely felt like one of those TV detectives. The documents were still fresh in the top drawer under his desk. Daniel’s. I picked up the folder, motioning for Finn to keep a lookout. He just tossed me a pissed look but attempted to charm the receptionist into a conversation, while I studied the autopsy notes. After skim-reading them, I wished I could delete that information from my memory.
“Mara!”
I lifted my head, and the boy was making some pretty intense hand gestures worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon. “Are you crazy? Get out of there!”
Before I could answer, he pointed behind him, his eyes wide. “My dad is coming.” He mouthed.
Nodding, I stayed calm, despite my dancing gut. I took several photos of the notes, before swiftly leaving the room and closing the door behind me.
It’s not like Finn expressed any interest in what I was looking for, but he did sit with me on a bench in the middle of the town square, a Starbucks latte balanced on his lap. “So?” He leaned over, peeking at my phone, loudly slurping on his straw. “What’s the verdict? Did he kill them?”
I had a hard time answering without bringing up my meager breakfast. “Yes,” I said, staring at the photo on my phone’s screen. Mom was right, the autopsy notes were gruesome. Because there was barely anything to perform an autopsy on. In my mind, Seth had maybe stabbed his parents, but in reality, he had ripped them apart. In the notes was a detailed description of the remains which weren’t much—a single torso, and a head. That was it. Both victims were Sonia (38) and Oliver (39) Daniel’s. The images were black and white and I could barely see them, just two square photos at the end of the notes. But they wouldn’t leave my mind. A single head, and a torso.
That was what was left of Seth’s parents. Which meant somehow, he had the strength to rip them to shreds. I was already thinking it when I passed my phone to Finn, who hissed through his teeth. “Holy fuck,” he muttered, passing me his empty cup, squinting at the screen. “Crazy asshole actually butchered them.”
“He didn’t butcher them.” I managed to get out, despite knowing I was in denial.
I couldn’t defend Seth when the evidence was right there in black and white. Having not just killed them, but dismembered them in a way no human, even a genius serial killer, could. This was more animalistic. The more I was thinking about it, the sicker I was getting.
It wasn’t until my mouth was filling with barf, and I was on my hands and knees choking up my guts, that the gravity of the situation slammed into me. If Seth Daniel’s had killed his mom and dad out of nowhere, was that fate going to take me too? It must have been the curse. There was no other explanation. I didn’t dig into the rest of the investigation because I was terrified of finding something I didn’t want to. Murder motivated by emotion and motive is awful yes, but can be understood. It’s been studied since records began why we kill.
But when it comes to a separate force taking control of your will and forcing you to kill, that’s when there are no real answers, only questions.
Our town had been plagued with an invisible force that had taken away our children. Could it be that we had angered it? By being born, had we somehow pissed off this all-seeing god? It was only several days later when mom told me Seth had been taken to the juvenile detention center, and didn’t even get a court case. He admitted it automatically.
“Yes, I killed my mom and dad.” Were his words when he was forced from his house with his arms bound behind his back, a pair of raybans hiding his eyes from the world. His words were so cruel, so unforgiving, and yet spoken with an emotionless drone. He didn’t care.
Watching him being swarmed by town news crews from my window, Seth almost resembled a celebrity. The way he was shoved through flashing lights and microphones. Seth Daniel’s hated attention, usually. If he was picked to speak in class, his cheeks would go bright red, and he’d stumble his way through the passage, trying not to cry. The boy I saw was not my neighbor. This version of him held his head high, his movements swift and robotic as he calmly jumped into the back of an awaiting SUV.
Despite seeing all of that, despite seeing Seth seemingly uncaring in front of the cameras, I knew he would never do something like that.
I know murderers turn out to be the most unexpected people, friends, and family, those you grow up with and trust. But there was something about the Daniel’s case that I couldn’t get out of my mind. Mom told me to forget about it when I started asking her questions about this so-called curse, and how exactly I was born. Over dinner, I asked a few too many, before she dropped her fork onto her plate, startling my twin sitting across from me.
Electronics were not allowed at the table, but Freddie was the more… favoured child, so the rules didn’t apply to him. It stung a little, but I couldn’t really blame mom for being obsessed with her only son. Apparently, she had been told she had twin daughters, and out came Freddie. So, he was a surprise to her.
Freddie was such a surprise that he got what he wanted for birthdays, while Noa and I were stuck with the hand-me-down’s. His nickname was Golden Boy. Because, apparently he could do no wrong. I was sure if he murdered me in my sleep, mom would give him a candy bar. Freddie and I were fraternal twins and looked nothing alike, but that didn’t stop mom attempting to dye my hair when I was little, so I would have Freddie’s red locks.
I have natural brown hair, while he is a redhead, and Noa is blonde. Normal people would question that, but in our town it was pretty normal for kids to not like their parents due to the lengths people went to have kids. I had heard rumours that the miracle generation was created from witchcraft, but the person who spread that rumour also thought the earth was one giant tomato. It was the first time since learning about the curse as a kid, did I start to actually question it, much to mom’s disdain. Freddie had already told me to cut it out with the questions, kicking me under the table, but once I was asking them, I couldn’t stop.
So much was on my mind. Seth’s mental state seemed to be fine, he wasn’t suicidal or struggling, or having bad thoughts. At least, that’s what it seemed like from the outside looking in. “It doesn’t make sense,” I had said for the third or fourth time, well aware I was hyper fixating on this. “Why now?” I forked pasta into my mouth, ignoring my twin’s glare. “If we are cursed, why wait a whole seventeen years later?”
“Mara.”
Mom cleared her throat, her lips pausing on the rim of her wine glass. When dad worked late, mom pulled out the wine. We weren’t supposed to tell him. “What did I tell you about discussing business that is not ours?”
“But it is my business,” I said. “Seth was my friend.”
“He was my friend,” Freddie had already finished his dinner, occasionally glancing down at his Switch. “You didn’t even like him. Do you remember when you called him an asshole?”
This time, I kicked him. And from the way he jumped in his seat, his eyes widening for the fraction of a second, it hurt him. “We were twelve, and he stole my doll.”
“You still called him an A-hole,” Freddie said in a sing-song, his gaze flicking back to his game. “I actually played with him, and he only paid attention to you because he wanted to play on your DS.”
“You called him a big-nosed freak.” I spat back.
“So did you!”
Noa, our more well behaved little sister, ducked her head to hide her laughter.
“That’s enough.” Mom, who was halfway through a bottle of wine, slammed the glass down on the table. Her eyes found mine. “Mara, if you ask one more question about the Daniel’s case, I will take your phone for a week.” Freddie snickered, but she snapped at him too. “That goes for you too.” She stood up. “I’m going upstairs. Whoever is on the rota, please clean the dishes and make the kitchen tidy before your father comes home.”
Freddie huffed like a child, folding his arms. “What about Noa?” He gestured to her. “She was laughing.”
“I was not!” Noa squeaked.
I could tell by the sudden noise which escaped my brother’s mouth, our little sister had joined me in my assault.
Mom didn’t reply, taking her glass of wine, and the whole bottle, and slinking upstairs as usual.
We were used to it. Every night when dad was at work, mom abandoned us at the dinner table and did the same ritual she had been doing since we were little kids. Armed with nothing but wine and a candle, mom would lock herself in her bedroom until the early hours of the next morning.
When we were ten, Freddie and I attempted to sneak in and see what she was doing. But at that point, and that late into the night, mom had fallen asleep on the floor, the candle still flickering away. That night was the same.
Mom disappeared all night, and I took it upon myself to clean away the dishes. Freddie went to hang out with friends, and Noa practically goes brain-dead once she’s on Tik-Tok. Mom had a strict rule.
No matter what, we had to hand our phones in at 11PM every night.
That included all electronics including Switch’s. In fact, she went as far as switching off the outlets in our rooms, so that meant no late night games of Mario Kart. I thought we would eventually be able to grow out of the rule, but no.
We were sixteen and seventeen years old, and still had to hand over our phones like preschoolers. Freddie was of course the golden boy, so he had left his phone and Switch on the kitchen table before leaving for his friend’s house (which mom also said wasn’t allowed, but I guess that rule didn’t apply to him).
I was sitting on the kitchen countertop, frowning at my phone screen, reading and re-reading through the Daniel’s autopsy notes, when Noa let out a shriek. The time was 11:01 which meant Noa was already breaking the no-phone rule. I jumped off of the countertop, pausing to throw my phone next to Freddie’s before the thought hit me.
Why was my first automatic thought to put my phone down? I tried to pocket it, before a pulsing pain suddenly ignited between my fingers. It felt like an electric shock, only lasting a few seconds, maybe not even that. My phone slipped from my hands, but not before the lights above flickered before going out completely, leaving me in darkness. Fuck. The warm glow of the hallway outside confirmed just the kitchen had short circuited.
Mom had always been antsy about technology all-together. She only got us phones because we were begged, and Freddie had bought his Switch himself with cash from his part-time job. My gaze found my mostly okay iPhone, lying face down on pastel pink tiles.
I reached to pick it up, before that same pain, this time writhing up my index finger.
“Mara!”
Noa’s squeak came from the lounge. I found her sitting on the floor, her phone in her hands. Her eyes were wide, her lips stretched into a grin. “Look!” she whispered.
Following her gaze, my sister was grasping her phone. I saw nothing interesting. She was watching a YouTube video, some kind of video essay on serial killers.
“What?”
“It’s charging!”
At first, I had no idea what she was talking about. Before my gaze found the charging symbol at the top of her screen, a lightning bolt indicating the charger being inserted.
But when I followed Noa’s pointer finger, I glimpsed her iPhone charger on the other side of the room, still plugged into the outlet. Noa was shaking with anticipation. “Wait, that’s not even the best part!” she squeaked. “Look what happens if I let it go.” My sister dropped the phone, and the symbol disappeared. She picked it back up, and the charging indicator flashed.
Initially, I thought she was playing some kind of trick. But she did it again, and then again, and I realised I wasn’t seeing things. The phone was charging itself without a charger. Noa being Noa, automatically thought she had some kind of superpower. My little sister jumped to her feet and strode over to the television, prodding the screen, only for nothing to happen. Then she tried the lamp on the stand, and the PlayStation 4. Nothing.
I admit, I was kind of excited for maybe a full minute before I realized there was most likely a scientific explanation—and there was! According to an article I found online: “Yes, electronic devices can charge their batteries through various methods without being plugged into a source of electricity. What all the different methods have in common is that they absorb energy that is in some other form (heat, light, vibrations, radio waves, etc.) from the external environment and then convert the energy into electrochemical energy that is stored in the device's batteries.”
Still though, according to the author of the article, it usually wasn’t enough power to make a difference, so why had Noa’s phone been actually charging? I watched the percentage jump from 10% to 16. I put it down to a malfunction.
It made sense if I really thought about it.
The next day, however, did not make sense.
I was still half asleep when I awoke to my brother looming over me.
“What is it?”
Freddie waved the phone in my face. “Just read it.”
I did, skimming through the messages, each one sending my gut hurtling further and further into my throat. There was a sea of grey messages from the recipient, and only two messages in blue from Freddie.
“Skinned of flesh. It was gnarly. Mrs Caine fainted, and my mom had a fucking panic attack.”
“Skull completely pulverised. I can’t believe I saw this shit, man. wtf. There are ppl guarding the scene now but earlier you could just fucking walk in.”
“Animal.”
“Crazy fucking psycho. The living room was covered in blood, like a horror movie. My guy painted the fucking walls.”
“There was nothing left on the stretcher they brought out, just skin? There was like, blue sheets over the body, but there wasn’t even a body. I think I saw a hand or maybe a foot, but they definitely weren’t attached. Idk it was fucking gross. Mom wants to send me to therapy lmao.”
My brother finally replied in blue.
“Who was it?”
“Sheriff’s son.” Came the reply.
“That kid is going to hell, and I’m an atheist. I hope he gets his karma because who does that??? wasn’t he close to his pop? Jfc I can’t get my head around it.”
It took a moment for the messages to sink in, and I was out of bed before my brain could catch up with my body. Finn. In three strides, I was on my knees, choking up dust. Freddie dropped down onto my bed with a hissed breath. “Didn’t you know that kid?” He whispered. “That was Finn, right?”
His words weren’t fully registering. This time, I did bring something up, something sour and slimy spluttering from my lips, my stomach heaving.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Do you... want me to help?”
“No!” I swiped at my mouth, but it kept coming, this time bouts of stomach lining filling my mouth. “Did you check?” I managed to choke out, spitting out barf.
“Huh?”
“Did you check,” I said slowly, spacing out my words. “To see if it was Finn.”
“Oh, yeah, it was him alright. The cops already caught him. Apparently, he was trying to make a run for it.” Freddie sighed. “Maybe he was scared.”
It didn’t make sense! How could Finn kill his father? He loved his dad! I barely knew the kid outside helping me with getting into his dad’s office, but even then, I saw photo frames on Sheriff Novak’s desk. I saw photo’s of the two of them for Christmas and father’s day, on vacations and just the two of them hanging out. In kindergarten, a boy had loudly announced that Sheriff Novak was a pig, and Finn wrestled him to the ground, almost knocking the kid out. Finn was tiny, a lean kid.
There was no way he was strong enough to rip his father apart.
“Fuck.” Freddie groaned. He hung upside down off of the bed, twisting his head to look at me, blowing dark red hair out of his eyes. “Are we cursed?”
That was the first time I found myself nodding, my thoughts dizzy.
But that didn’t stop me trying to talk to him. According to mom, Finn was being shipped to juvenile detention at noon. Until then, he was locked up downtown. Sheriff Novak was dead, so the town’s law enforcement were at that point trying to find a new sheriff. The place was heaving for most of the morning before people started to disperse. I took my chance, sneaking in with a group of parents screaming about the safety of their kids. While the lady behind the counter was trying to calm them down, I took my chance, sliding through the door at the back, and into the cells. I expected guards, but they were nowhere to be seen.
I figured the mess with the parents had given me the perfect distraction. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside, was the flickering light. But it wasn’t the lights above.
In front of the cells was an empty desk with a laptop set up. Stepping closer, I realized it was the laptop’s screen which was flickering erratically. When the bulb above shattered, I jumped. “Mara.” Finn’s voice resembled Seth’s, an emotionless drone. When I twisted around, I glimpsed the boy standing with his hands wrapped around the bars. Very Silence of the Lambs.
Finn liked horror movies, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was jokingly re-enacting that certain scene. Though that would have required him having an ounce of emotion. I’m not sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it.
I thought Finn would be hysterical, screaming that he was innocent, that he would never kill his father. But what I was looking at was the face of a murderer. Or at least, half of one. His lips were curved into a small smile, and yet that smile held no emotion. Just like Seth, Finn’s eyes were shaded with a pair of raybans. These ones looked more expensive, clashing with a simple short sleeved tee and jeans, both of which were stained in his father’s blood.
When I opened my mouth to speak, his arms dropped to his sides. “Aren’t you going to wish me a happy birthday?”
The wriggling legs of a phantom spider crept down my spine, and I found myself taking a step towards him, my breath in my throat. “It’s your birthday?”
He nodded. “I turned eighteen yesterday. Wish me a happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday,” I whispered. “And…” the words tangled on my tongue. “Did you…”
“I killed my dad.” Finn finished for me, in the exact same tone as Seth. No empathy, nothing to suggest he regretted what he had done. I was seeing this identical expression in the sheriff’s son. He didn’t move, staying eerily still, his arms frozen by his sides. “I pulled out his lungs and cut off his head. I skinned him to the bone and dumped his guts in the toilet bowl to hide them.”
“But.” I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. “You didn’t… you didn’t mean—”
Finn cut me off, slicing into my spiralling thoughts. I felt faint. Like I was going to throw up again. “When is your birthday again? He asked, with no hint of curiosity. The question was simple, and yet it was enough to send me backing into cold concrete walls. “When is your birthday.”
“Why?”
His expression didn’t waver. “When is your birthday?”
“June 23rd.” I answered through a breath.
Finn didn’t move for a moment, before slowly slipping off his raybans. I thought he was doing some dramatic reveal, like he was some character in a noir film, and was going to describe in detail just what exactly he had done to his father. But instead, his arms slipped to his sides, the sunglasses dropping to the ground, and revealing where his eyes used to be, now twin caverns of pooling darkness, which somehow still held glitters of life. I couldn't stop myself. I was taking steps towards him, peering into the dim light of his cell-- and, yes. I wasn't seeing things. Finn's eyes were gone, plucked from his skull.
From the trauma around both of them, the removal had been forceful. "Happy birthday," he said in that same dull, toneless drawl. When I drew back, he bent down and felt for the glasses, grasping hold of them and sliding them back on.
"For the 23rd, I mean." Finn pressed his face against the bars, this time with a manic giggle which came out of nowhere. His expression was still vacant, yet his lips split into the grin of a man who had murdered his father in cold blood, and did not give a fuck. "I am looking forward to you joining me." That was when I left him.
But before I could shut the door, his chilling words followed me.
“And your brother!” Finn’s laugh turned hysterical, almost inhuman, and I could hear the sound of him slamming his head into the bars. “Don’t forget your brother!”
I was immediately dragged out of the sheriff’s office, and lectured by mom for a whole two hours. But sitting in my living room with my mother yelling at me, with half of the precinct surrounding her, I couldn’t get Finn’s words out of my head. It was when mom was gesturing to me, her lips moving but no sound coming out, when I snapped out of it, only to be slammed with another lecture on privacy and illegal entrance.
I ignored all of that, cross legged on the couch next to Noa, who was pretending to be on her phone, and decided to finally open my mouth.
“I think it’s the curse.” I said, cutting into mom’s third or fourth threat regarding my phone privileges. That was when the room went silent, and mom looked startled for a moment before shaking her head. “That’s not… that is not what we are talking about, young lady. Do you understand the severity of what you have done?”
“Yeah, Mara,” Freddie spoke up from across the room. Like Noa, he was doing a bad job of pretending he wasn’t loving every second of me being berated. “I can’t believe you would be so careless and stupid….” He drifted off. “Oh wait, didn’t you break in last month to steal documents on the Daniel’s case?” His smile pricked. “Now, I’m pretty sure that was also, like, illegal, but I mean, what do I know? I’m just a high schooler. I don’t sneak into the sheriff’s office when I’m supposed to be at school.”
I glared at him. “How do you even know that? You go through my phone?”
He shrugged, comfortably adjusting himself on the recliner. “Your passcode is four zero’s, a toddler could bypass it.”
I don’t know if it was the stress of what happened with Finn, or my brother’s dumb fucking grin, but I was already lunging across the room to—I don’t know? He’s taller than me, and more built. He could squash me if he really wanted to. So, what I thought was going to be a fight, turned into me trying to cause some damage with him and Freddie just shoving me away with a scoff. I did manage to hit him in the nose, but that was where mom came in, pulling us apart, and going into mom-mode.
“Mom-mode” was when she really got mad. Noa decided she no longer wanted to be a spectator and wandered into the kitchen. I was sent to my room, and Freddie was lectured for antagonising me. Several hours later, he appeared at my door with a half-eaten donut, a cup of hot cocoa, and a half-assed apology, which was his attempt at letting me know that he was scared I was going to get myself hurt. I took the donut and the cocoa, and told him to go away. He did, after a while of standing there looking like a kicked puppy. I closed the door on his face when he made a point of trying to make me feel sorry for him.
I wanted to talk to him about Finn, but he would just tell mom and get me into trouble.
So, I found myself with information which was driving me crazy. My 18th birthday was approaching, and more and more kids were turning on their mom's and dads. After Finn, it was Addie, and then Jason, Sara, and Kiara.
All of which had turned eighteen weeks between each other. I thought the town was going to start freaking out and calling those of us who were left monsters, insisting that we never should have been born.
But to my surprise, there was barely any news coverage, and it almost became normal to hear about yet another kid being sent to juvenile detention. June arrived, and the days crept by, faster and faster until it was the eve of my 18th birthday, and I had found myself standing in my bathroom, my trembling fingers wrapped around a razor blade.
Every time I thought about actually doing it though, slicing into my flesh until my wrists were dripping, pooling scarlet and I was struggling to breathe—I couldn’t. So, I dumped the razor in the trash and left the bathroom, only to run into Noa. Wrapped in her pink bathrobe, my little sister looked like a giant marshmallow, hiding behind scraggly blonde curls.
“Mara!” Noa was grinning ear to ear as usual. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them. “Do you remember what we did as kids?”
From the look on her face, I knew exactly what she was talking about. When mom was in bed or at work on our birthday eve, the three of us would scour her room for presents. We had grown out of it eventually, but every year Noa insisted on at least one search. It’s not like I could refuse when my sister already had a tight grip of my arm and was yanking me into mom’s room.
When I stumbled inside, I found our brother on his knees under mom’s bed, rifling through boxes and bags. I was surprised Noa had managed to drag Freddie into it, considering every other year he rolled his eyes and bid us adieu, calling Noa a baby. Now though, he was just as enthusiastic as he was when he was a little kid, and used to shush us and turn it into a game. I would take one corner, Noa would take the closet, and Freddie would crawl under the bed (because he was the only one who wasn’t scared of monsters hiding under there).
For a moment, I considered just walking away and saying they were being stupid and acting like children. But I did want to forget about the reality of turning 18 and possibly murdering my family. In a way, I guess I wanted to be a kid again. So, just like when I was five, I wandered over to the furthest corner to search for presents which did not exist. I knew they didn’t exist because mom gave us cash every birthday inside our card.
Still though, it was fun to search, and have that childlike magic come over me again, the thrill of pulling things aside and delving inside boxes for hidden treasures, dolls we wanted, or the newest games console. To make Noa happy, I shoved a few things aside, finding myself smiling. Mom was always bad at hiding our presents. I was about to make that comment, when Noa squeaked in delight. “I’ve found something!” When I twisted around, she was already partially inside the closet, one foot sticking out, her head buried in mom’s clothes. It looked like she was grasping into something. Freddie, who had crawled out from under the bed, straightened up, shooting me a look. “Really?” His eyes said. “Aren’t we a little too old for this?”
“We are.” I mouthed back.
His grin transported me back to when we were nine, and the two of us had collectively found five wrapped gifts, and had spent an hour shaking them to try to figure out what they were. But there was also that glimmer of excitement in his eyes, when he joined Nona in front of the closet, the two of them managed to heave out what looked like a large box. I joined them, hesitantly. “Any idea what it is?”
I frowned at the box the two of them were struggling to get a proper hold of. It was huge, almost the size of the closet itself. When Freddie and Noa had managed to balance it, the three of us stepped backwards to take it in. And immediately, something cold slithered down my spine. First, it was the state of the box. Old. The cardboard was rotting.
Noa shrieked when a mountain of bugs crawled out of the flaps. Looking closer, it looked to be a box for a toy or a doll. But when I squinted, the box was open. It had been open a long time, and the more I looked, I was feeling progressively sicker. There was something tainting the cardboard, an old red painting the flaps and inside the thing itself.
I was suddenly aware of things happening way too quickly for me to understand. A blur of movement to my right, which was Freddie dropping to his knees and barfing everywhere. And then Noa’s figure stumbling out of the room. I could hear her screams. I could see my brother retching, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the front of the box. Because on the front of the box was… me.
MARA.
I was seeing a photo of me smiling widely, and colourful words printed on the box saying, “NOW GROWS TO FULL SIZE" (Mom’s Net Certified)
The printed words on the box looked like a different language, though I was still reading it.
“CHILD™️. HAVE YOU EVER WANTED YOUR VERY OWN CHILD? WELL, NOW YOU CAN! JUST PULL OUT THE CHORD, AND YOU HAVE YOUR VERY OWN SON/DAUGHTER!”
I was stepping forward when something…. moved. Freddie yanked me back, but I was delving inside my mother’s closet, and finding a much newer box. This one was unopened, and occupied, a fully grown college aged guy peeking through plastic packaging. This time I saw the cord, like an umbilical cord connected to the thing inside the box, which was asleep.
Its eyes were shut.
“FREDDIE” it said. “THIS TIME IN COLLEGE!!!”
Before Freddie could see it, I shoved it back, stumbling, my heart in my throat.
I was frowning at where all the blood was on the second box, staining the bottom, when my brother grabbed my hand and yanked me back.
Before I could fully register what was going on, he was dragging me downstairs. I think he was trying to get me out of there, but then he stopped, sort of freezing in place. When I followed his gaze, I found two birthday cards set up on the mantelpiece.
They were labelled in our mother’s handwriting. The purple one was mine, while the pink one was Freddie’s.
I opened mine up, but instead of a twenty dollar note slipping out, I found myself staring at a countdown being reflected onto my face in red light.
59.
58
57.
Below that:
“My dearest Mara,
I am so happy I met you and was able to call you my daughter. I found you at the age of seventeen, but you have given me a lifetime of memories I will cherish. You will be running out very soon, and like the other mom’s, I don’t want to see you go. I am supposed to be giving you back tomorrow, but we have each made a pact. With every child we obtained, every mother and father agreed that sending you back to those people would be terrible. Giving you to another mother would break my heart, sweetheart. I have heard your biological mother has never stopped searching for you, and trust me, she won’t find you. So, I’m not going to give you back. I do not support the company I got you from, but I have always wanted a child.
And this town cannot have children. I have lost too many inside me to be hopeful.
Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.
And goodbye xxx
I’m not sure what emotions I felt at that moment, but I finally understood why Finn, Seth, and the others had killed their parents.
I was wrong. There was a motive.
Rage.
“What the fuck?” Freddie dropped his card, his eyes wide. “We need to get out. We need to fucking get out of here, because whatever this thing is, it’s going to blow.” My brother shook me. “Are you listening to me?!” We need to get Noa, and get the fuck out of here!”
Going to blow, I thought dizzily.
Had mom planted a bomb? There was no time to find it, no way to get out….
I was nodding along with my brother, trying to find Noa, who had disappeared, when it hit me like ice cold water. Finn, standing in the cells with his eyes carved out of his skull, and Seth wearing raybans to cover his eyes. Every other kid I saw always wore sunglasses, always hid their eyes…. With the countdown reflecting onto the wall, and Freddie screaming at me to find our sister, I wandered into the kitchen, pulled open our mom’s prized knife drawer, and picked out the sharpest I could find. It had been driving me crazy since seeing the sheriff son’s mutilated face, why he would do that to himself. Why he would kill his father, and then carve out his own eyes. Part of me thought it really was a curse which had taken them as some kind of reward. But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. Finn Novak didn’t scoop out his eyes because he was fucking crazy.
He carved them out because he had gotten that exact birthday card,
That exact countdown.
And somehow, he had known, just like me, as I stuffed my sweater sleeve into my mouth, that the bomb was part of us. Digging the blade into my eye and jerking it at an angle to sever it, I screamed into my sleeve, managing to choke out through sobs, begging my brother to do the same.
The countdown was still in my head, and if I concentrated, I could hear it, the beep, beep, beep of the thing sandwiched inside me.
It could have been either eye or both but I didn’t have time to guess. I was on my knees when I managed to scoop out my eye, with the teeth of the knife and then my fingers. When the beeping stopped, I pressed my face into the kitchen floor and breathed in and out before using my sleeve to staunch the blood pooling down my face. My vision was severed and I was pretty sure I was going to be blind, but it was better than being blown to pieces. Freddie was already in front of me, his eyes wide and confused, already clumsily grasping for the knife to do the same. “We’re okay,” my brother said in a hiss. He was already following my lead, biting into his sleeve and hovering the knife in front of his eye. Noa was in the doorway.
I could see her shadow, and just seeing her I knew she was trembling, too scared to come near either of us. I opened my mouth to try and reassure her, while helping Freddie sever the thing inside him.
Before… pop! I heard it first, an audible popping in my ear. Noa screamed behind me,
Before something warm hit my face, warm and red, and coating my eyes and cheeks. When I swiped startling red from my eyes and face, I found myself staring at glistening scarlet dripping from the walls and slick on the floor, the countertop, everything. I reached out for my brother, who wasn’t there anymore. The birthday card which I had opened was still on the ground, and I could still see my mother’s message, and eighteen years (?) worth of birthday cards came over me, each one all saying that exact same ironic message. “I’m glad you didn’t explode!”
Whatever my fake-mother did to get me, I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m some artificially grown freak who was born at seventeen years old.
I have already raided my kitchen for the best knives I can find.
So, I can find my mother (and father)
And fucking kill them 😊
They called us the miracle generation.
It’s a well-known fact that our town has always struggled to have children. Nobody knows exactly why, but fertility problems have always been an issue. It’s not like our population is dwindling, people were still born from IVF, or shipped into town through a government program to create families. Mom had moved to the US with her parents when she was twenty years old, abandoning her Aussie family and starting anew. After finding the program, she was paid enough cash to put her into early retirement, and all she had to do was pick from several guys and make a family.
I know this sounds very dystopian, and you would be correct in thinking so. But what else were they supposed to do?
Children were seemingly not allowed in this town.
And when by miracle, they were somehow allowed to exist, they lasted maybe three or four days. Mom said I was a miracle baby. It wasn’t supposed to happen because women in our town were supposed to be barren. So, when an entire class of babies came out of nowhere, that is what our town named us.
Miracles. I was born first, followed by my twin brother, a day later, and then my sister, a whole year after. I think my mom wanted to stay safe with two kids before she tried again, and low and behold, she had Noa. We learned in school from an early age that we weren’t technically supposed to exist. Scary to a child, yes. When an adult is prodding a whiteboard and repeating the words, “shouldn’t” and “impossible” you are bound to get freaked out. Though the town was sceptical of us.
There were those before us, babies who were born and given names, and identities, and already had parents falling in love with their bundle of joy—only for each child to die one after the other from a mysterious illness no scientist could identify. It became pretty obvious that our town was cursed. Mom told me for the first few days after I was born, she wasn’t allowed to hold me in case I spontaneously combusted in her arms, or grew three heads. Yes, there is documented evidence that babies have spontaneously combusted or grown inhuman-like limbs before dying. Mom wanted to make sure I was actually real—and not some cruel illusion.
That went for all the babies in town. We were all taken to the hospital and placed inside a sort of quarantine room. They expected us to explode or die suddenly, but when we didn’t, we were given back to our parents. Mom used to regularly put in our birthday cards, “I’m glad you didn’t explode!” as a joke. She had an odd sense of humor, but I thought it was cute.
I have seventeen years’ worth of birthday cards all saying the same ridiculous passage.
“Happy [INSERT AGE HERE] birthday, Mara! (I’m glad you didn’t explode!)
Anyway.
This supposed curse came back to light several days ago, when out of nowhere, Seth Daniel’s killed his parents. And I don’t mean kill, like he burned the house down with them in it, or poisoned them in their sleep. I mean KILL. According to the town newspaper my mom is always feverishly reading, the bodies were mutilated. Like an animal had torn them apart. I knew Seth. I’ve known him since we were little kids. He lived across the road from me. Seth regularly invited me over to watch Power Rangers, and would enthusiastically sing and dance to the intro. Seth loved his mom and dad.
I mean, he did as a kid. I would see him playing with his father in their front yard—and when he grew up, yes, he distanced himself from his parents (because being cool with your mom and dad is like, so lame) I would still see him accompanying his mother to the town center to buy groceries, or sitting in the yard playing his Switch, pretending to laugh at all of his dad’s dad-jokes. Seth wasn’t a bad person, and he definitely wasn’t a victim of some supposed curse that apparently still had us in its grasp.
It didn’t make sense that he would just… kill his parents like that. There was no motive, no real reason for him to do that. Seth adored his mother and loved his father.
The town media were radio silent except for one measly article in the newspaper. I figured nobody wanted to say what everyone was thinking.
But it didn’t make sense. This curse had allowed us to live for seventeen years, and NOW it wanted to do something? And why would it lash out at parents and not kids? Why force the kid to kill their parents? There was one detail that jumped out at me. It was Seth’s 18th birthday. The exact day. I knew this because he was talking about having a party at school.
I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist, but what kid actively talks about having a birthday party the same day they’re planning to brutally murder their parents? I asked a lot of questions because nobody was making noise, and I refused to believe Seth had willingly done something like this. Mom said the Daniel’s case was too gruesome to tell me, so I did some digging myself. We’re a small town.
Finn Novak is the son of the sheriff, so it cost me twenty dollars and a promise to introduce him to my brother, to get into his dad’s office.
It was very cloak-and-dagger, I definitely felt like one of those TV detectives. The documents were still fresh in the top drawer under his desk. Daniel’s. I picked up the folder, motioning for Finn to keep a lookout. He just tossed me a pissed look but attempted to charm the receptionist into a conversation, while I studied the autopsy notes. After skim-reading them, I wished I could delete that information from my memory.
“Mara!”
I lifted my head, and the boy was making some pretty intense hand gestures worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon. “Are you crazy? Get out of there!”
Before I could answer, he pointed behind him, his eyes wide. “My dad is coming.” He mouthed.
Nodding, I stayed calm, despite my dancing gut. I took several photos of the notes, before swiftly leaving the room and closing the door behind me.
It’s not like Finn expressed any interest in what I was looking for, but he did sit with me on a bench in the middle of the town square, a Starbucks latte balanced on his lap. “So?” He leaned over, peeking at my phone, loudly slurping on his straw. “What’s the verdict? Did he kill them?”
I had a hard time answering without bringing up my meager breakfast. “Yes,” I said, staring at the photo on my phone’s screen. Mom was right, the autopsy notes were gruesome. Because there was barely anything to perform an autopsy on. In my mind, Seth had maybe stabbed his parents, but in reality, he had ripped them apart. In the notes was a detailed description of the remains which weren’t much—a single torso, and a head. That was it. Both victims were Sonia (38) and Oliver (39) Daniel’s. The images were black and white and I could barely see them, just two square photos at the end of the notes. But they wouldn’t leave my mind. A single head, and a torso.
That was what was left of Seth’s parents. Which meant somehow, he had the strength to rip them to shreds. I was already thinking it when I passed my phone to Finn, who hissed through his teeth. “Holy fuck,” he muttered, passing me his empty cup, squinting at the screen. “Crazy asshole actually butchered them.”
“He didn’t butcher them.” I managed to get out, despite knowing I was in denial.
I couldn’t defend Seth when the evidence was right there in black and white. Having not just killed them, but dismembered them in a way no human, even a genius serial killer, could. This was more animalistic. The more I was thinking about it, the sicker I was getting.
It wasn’t until my mouth was filling with barf, and I was on my hands and knees choking up my guts, that the gravity of the situation slammed into me. If Seth Daniel’s had killed his mom and dad out of nowhere, was that fate going to take me too? It must have been the curse. There was no other explanation. I didn’t dig into the rest of the investigation because I was terrified of finding something I didn’t want to. Murder motivated by emotion and motive is awful yes, but can be understood. It’s been studied since records began why we kill.
But when it comes to a separate force taking control of your will and forcing you to kill, that’s when there are no real answers, only questions.
Our town had been plagued with an invisible force that had taken away our children. Could it be that we had angered it? By being born, had we somehow pissed off this all-seeing god? It was only several days later when mom told me Seth had been taken to the juvenile detention center, and didn’t even get a court case. He admitted it automatically.
“Yes, I killed my mom and dad.” Were his words when he was forced from his house with his arms bound behind his back, a pair of raybans hiding his eyes from the world. His words were so cruel, so unforgiving, and yet spoken with an emotionless drone. He didn’t care.
Watching him being swarmed by town news crews from my window, Seth almost resembled a celebrity. The way he was shoved through flashing lights and microphones. Seth Daniel’s hated attention, usually. If he was picked to speak in class, his cheeks would go bright red, and he’d stumble his way through the passage, trying not to cry. The boy I saw was not my neighbor. This version of him held his head high, his movements swift and robotic as he calmly jumped into the back of an awaiting SUV.
Despite seeing all of that, despite seeing Seth seemingly uncaring in front of the cameras, I knew he would never do something like that.
I know murderers turn out to be the most unexpected people, friends, and family, those you grow up with and trust. But there was something about the Daniel’s case that I couldn’t get out of my mind. Mom told me to forget about it when I started asking her questions about this so-called curse, and how exactly I was born. Over dinner, I asked a few too many, before she dropped her fork onto her plate, startling my twin sitting across from me.
Electronics were not allowed at the table, but Freddie was the more… favoured child, so the rules didn’t apply to him. It stung a little, but I couldn’t really blame mom for being obsessed with her only son. Apparently, she had been told she had twin daughters, and out came Freddie. So, he was a surprise to her.
Freddie was such a surprise that he got what he wanted for birthdays, while Noa and I were stuck with the hand-me-down’s. His nickname was Golden Boy. Because, apparently he could do no wrong. I was sure if he murdered me in my sleep, mom would give him a candy bar. Freddie and I were fraternal twins and looked nothing alike, but that didn’t stop mom attempting to dye my hair when I was little, so I would have Freddie’s red locks.
I have natural brown hair, while he is a redhead, and Noa is blonde. Normal people would question that, but in our town it was pretty normal for kids to not like their parents due to the lengths people went to have kids. I had heard rumours that the miracle generation was created from witchcraft, but the person who spread that rumour also thought the earth was one giant tomato. It was the first time since learning about the curse as a kid, did I start to actually question it, much to mom’s disdain. Freddie had already told me to cut it out with the questions, kicking me under the table, but once I was asking them, I couldn’t stop.
So much was on my mind. Seth’s mental state seemed to be fine, he wasn’t suicidal or struggling, or having bad thoughts. At least, that’s what it seemed like from the outside looking in. “It doesn’t make sense,” I had said for the third or fourth time, well aware I was hyper fixating on this. “Why now?” I forked pasta into my mouth, ignoring my twin’s glare. “If we are cursed, why wait a whole seventeen years later?”
“Mara.”
Mom cleared her throat, her lips pausing on the rim of her wine glass. When dad worked late, mom pulled out the wine. We weren’t supposed to tell him. “What did I tell you about discussing business that is not ours?”
“But it is my business,” I said. “Seth was my friend.”
“He was my friend,” Freddie had already finished his dinner, occasionally glancing down at his Switch. “You didn’t even like him. Do you remember when you called him an asshole?”
This time, I kicked him. And from the way he jumped in his seat, his eyes widening for the fraction of a second, it hurt him. “We were twelve, and he stole my doll.”
“You still called him an A-hole,” Freddie said in a sing-song, his gaze flicking back to his game. “I actually played with him, and he only paid attention to you because he wanted to play on your DS.”
“You called him a big-nosed freak.” I spat back.
“So did you!”
Noa, our more well behaved little sister, ducked her head to hide her laughter.
“That’s enough.” Mom, who was halfway through a bottle of wine, slammed the glass down on the table. Her eyes found mine. “Mara, if you ask one more question about the Daniel’s case, I will take your phone for a week.” Freddie snickered, but she snapped at him too. “That goes for you too.” She stood up. “I’m going upstairs. Whoever is on the rota, please clean the dishes and make the kitchen tidy before your father comes home.”
Freddie huffed like a child, folding his arms. “What about Noa?” He gestured to her. “She was laughing.”
“I was not!” Noa squeaked.
I could tell by the sudden noise which escaped my brother’s mouth, our little sister had joined me in my assault.
Mom didn’t reply, taking her glass of wine, and the whole bottle, and slinking upstairs as usual.
We were used to it. Every night when dad was at work, mom abandoned us at the dinner table and did the same ritual she had been doing since we were little kids. Armed with nothing but wine and a candle, mom would lock herself in her bedroom until the early hours of the next morning.
When we were ten, Freddie and I attempted to sneak in and see what she was doing. But at that point, and that late into the night, mom had fallen asleep on the floor, the candle still flickering away. That night was the same.
Mom disappeared all night, and I took it upon myself to clean away the dishes. Freddie went to hang out with friends, and Noa practically goes brain-dead once she’s on Tik-Tok. Mom had a strict rule.
No matter what, we had to hand our phones in at 11PM every night.
That included all electronics including Switch’s. In fact, she went as far as switching off the outlets in our rooms, so that meant no late night games of Mario Kart. I thought we would eventually be able to grow out of the rule, but no.
We were sixteen and seventeen years old, and still had to hand over our phones like preschoolers. Freddie was of course the golden boy, so he had left his phone and Switch on the kitchen table before leaving for his friend’s house (which mom also said wasn’t allowed, but I guess that rule didn’t apply to him).
I was sitting on the kitchen countertop, frowning at my phone screen, reading and re-reading through the Daniel’s autopsy notes, when Noa let out a shriek. The time was 11:01 which meant Noa was already breaking the no-phone rule. I jumped off of the countertop, pausing to throw my phone next to Freddie’s before the thought hit me.
Why was my first automatic thought to put my phone down? I tried to pocket it, before a pulsing pain suddenly ignited between my fingers. It felt like an electric shock, only lasting a few seconds, maybe not even that. My phone slipped from my hands, but not before the lights above flickered before going out completely, leaving me in darkness. Fuck. The warm glow of the hallway outside confirmed just the kitchen had short circuited.
Mom had always been antsy about technology all-together. She only got us phones because we were begged, and Freddie had bought his Switch himself with cash from his part-time job. My gaze found my mostly okay iPhone, lying face down on pastel pink tiles.
I reached to pick it up, before that same pain, this time writhing up my index finger.
“Mara!”
Noa’s squeak came from the lounge. I found her sitting on the floor, her phone in her hands. Her eyes were wide, her lips stretched into a grin. “Look!” she whispered.
Following her gaze, my sister was grasping her phone. I saw nothing interesting. She was watching a YouTube video, some kind of video essay on serial killers.
“What?”
“It’s charging!”
At first, I had no idea what she was talking about. Before my gaze found the charging symbol at the top of her screen, a lightning bolt indicating the charger being inserted.
But when I followed Noa’s pointer finger, I glimpsed her iPhone charger on the other side of the room, still plugged into the outlet. Noa was shaking with anticipation. “Wait, that’s not even the best part!” she squeaked. “Look what happens if I let it go.” My sister dropped the phone, and the symbol disappeared. She picked it back up, and the charging indicator flashed.
Initially, I thought she was playing some kind of trick. But she did it again, and then again, and I realised I wasn’t seeing things. The phone was charging itself without a charger. Noa being Noa, automatically thought she had some kind of superpower. My little sister jumped to her feet and strode over to the television, prodding the screen, only for nothing to happen. Then she tried the lamp on the stand, and the PlayStation 4. Nothing.
I admit, I was kind of excited for maybe a full minute before I realized there was most likely a scientific explanation—and there was! According to an article I found online: “Yes, electronic devices can charge their batteries through various methods without being plugged into a source of electricity. What all the different methods have in common is that they absorb energy that is in some other form (heat, light, vibrations, radio waves, etc.) from the external environment and then convert the energy into electrochemical energy that is stored in the device's batteries.”
Still though, according to the author of the article, it usually wasn’t enough power to make a difference, so why had Noa’s phone been actually charging? I watched the percentage jump from 10% to 16. I put it down to a malfunction.
It made sense if I really thought about it.
The next day, however, did not make sense.
I was still half asleep when I awoke to my brother looming over me.
“What is it?”
Freddie waved the phone in my face. “Just read it.”
I did, skimming through the messages, each one sending my gut hurtling further and further into my throat. There was a sea of grey messages from the recipient, and only two messages in blue from Freddie.
“Skinned of flesh. It was gnarly. Mrs Caine fainted, and my mom had a fucking panic attack.”
“Skull completely pulverised. I can’t believe I saw this shit, man. wtf. There are ppl guarding the scene now but earlier you could just fucking walk in.”
“Animal.”
“Crazy fucking psycho. The living room was covered in blood, like a horror movie. My guy painted the fucking walls.”
“There was nothing left on the stretcher they brought out, just skin? There was like, blue sheets over the body, but there wasn’t even a body. I think I saw a hand or maybe a foot, but they definitely weren’t attached. Idk it was fucking gross. Mom wants to send me to therapy lmao.”
My brother finally replied in blue.
“Who was it?”
“Sheriff’s son.” Came the reply.
“That kid is going to hell, and I’m an atheist. I hope he gets his karma because who does that??? wasn’t he close to his pop? Jfc I can’t get my head around it.”
It took a moment for the messages to sink in, and I was out of bed before my brain could catch up with my body. Finn. In three strides, I was on my knees, choking up dust. Freddie dropped down onto my bed with a hissed breath. “Didn’t you know that kid?” He whispered. “That was Finn, right?”
His words weren’t fully registering. This time, I did bring something up, something sour and slimy spluttering from my lips, my stomach heaving.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Do you... want me to help?”
“No!” I swiped at my mouth, but it kept coming, this time bouts of stomach lining filling my mouth. “Did you check?” I managed to choke out, spitting out barf.
“Huh?”
“Did you check,” I said slowly, spacing out my words. “To see if it was Finn.”
“Oh, yeah, it was him alright. The cops already caught him. Apparently, he was trying to make a run for it.” Freddie sighed. “Maybe he was scared.”
It didn’t make sense! How could Finn kill his father? He loved his dad! I barely knew the kid outside helping me with getting into his dad’s office, but even then, I saw photo frames on Sheriff Novak’s desk. I saw photo’s of the two of them for Christmas and father’s day, on vacations and just the two of them hanging out. In kindergarten, a boy had loudly announced that Sheriff Novak was a pig, and Finn wrestled him to the ground, almost knocking the kid out. Finn was tiny, a lean kid.
There was no way he was strong enough to rip his father apart.
“Fuck.” Freddie groaned. He hung upside down off of the bed, twisting his head to look at me, blowing dark red hair out of his eyes. “Are we cursed?”
That was the first time I found myself nodding, my thoughts dizzy.
But that didn’t stop me trying to talk to him. According to mom, Finn was being shipped to juvenile detention at noon. Until then, he was locked up downtown. Sheriff Novak was dead, so the town’s law enforcement were at that point trying to find a new sheriff. The place was heaving for most of the morning before people started to disperse. I took my chance, sneaking in with a group of parents screaming about the safety of their kids. While the lady behind the counter was trying to calm them down, I took my chance, sliding through the door at the back, and into the cells. I expected guards, but they were nowhere to be seen.
I figured the mess with the parents had given me the perfect distraction. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside, was the flickering light. But it wasn’t the lights above.
In front of the cells was an empty desk with a laptop set up. Stepping closer, I realized it was the laptop’s screen which was flickering erratically. When the bulb above shattered, I jumped. “Mara.” Finn’s voice resembled Seth’s, an emotionless drone. When I twisted around, I glimpsed the boy standing with his hands wrapped around the bars. Very Silence of the Lambs.
Finn liked horror movies, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was jokingly re-enacting that certain scene. Though that would have required him having an ounce of emotion. I’m not sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it.
I thought Finn would be hysterical, screaming that he was innocent, that he would never kill his father. But what I was looking at was the face of a murderer. Or at least, half of one. His lips were curved into a small smile, and yet that smile held no emotion. Just like Seth, Finn’s eyes were shaded with a pair of raybans. These ones looked more expensive, clashing with a simple short sleeved tee and jeans, both of which were stained in his father’s blood.
When I opened my mouth to speak, his arms dropped to his sides. “Aren’t you going to wish me a happy birthday?”
The wriggling legs of a phantom spider crept down my spine, and I found myself taking a step towards him, my breath in my throat. “It’s your birthday?”
He nodded. “I turned eighteen yesterday. Wish me a happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday,” I whispered. “And…” the words tangled on my tongue. “Did you…”
“I killed my dad.” Finn finished for me, in the exact same tone as Seth. No empathy, nothing to suggest he regretted what he had done. I was seeing this identical expression in the sheriff’s son. He didn’t move, staying eerily still, his arms frozen by his sides. “I pulled out his lungs and cut off his head. I skinned him to the bone and dumped his guts in the toilet bowl to hide them.”
“But.” I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes. “You didn’t… you didn’t mean—”
Finn cut me off, slicing into my spiralling thoughts. I felt faint. Like I was going to throw up again. “When is your birthday again? He asked, with no hint of curiosity. The question was simple, and yet it was enough to send me backing into cold concrete walls. “When is your birthday.”
“Why?”
His expression didn’t waver. “When is your birthday?”
“June 23rd.” I answered through a breath.
Finn didn’t move for a moment, before slowly slipping off his raybans. I thought he was doing some dramatic reveal, like he was some character in a noir film, and was going to describe in detail just what exactly he had done to his father. But instead, his arms slipped to his sides, the sunglasses dropping to the ground, and revealing where his eyes used to be, now twin caverns of pooling darkness, which somehow still held glitters of life. I couldn't stop myself. I was taking steps towards him, peering into the dim light of his cell-- and, yes. I wasn't seeing things. Finn's eyes were gone, plucked from his skull.
From the trauma around both of them, the removal had been forceful. "Happy birthday," he said in that same dull, toneless drawl. When I drew back, he bent down and felt for the glasses, grasping hold of them and sliding them back on.
"For the 23rd, I mean." Finn pressed his face against the bars, this time with a manic giggle which came out of nowhere. His expression was still vacant, yet his lips split into the grin of a man who had murdered his father in cold blood, and did not give a fuck. "I am looking forward to you joining me." That was when I left him.
But before I could shut the door, his chilling words followed me.
“And your brother!” Finn’s laugh turned hysterical, almost inhuman, and I could hear the sound of him slamming his head into the bars. “Don’t forget your brother!”
I was immediately dragged out of the sheriff’s office, and lectured by mom for a whole two hours. But sitting in my living room with my mother yelling at me, with half of the precinct surrounding her, I couldn’t get Finn’s words out of my head. It was when mom was gesturing to me, her lips moving but no sound coming out, when I snapped out of it, only to be slammed with another lecture on privacy and illegal entrance.
I ignored all of that, cross legged on the couch next to Noa, who was pretending to be on her phone, and decided to finally open my mouth.
“I think it’s the curse.” I said, cutting into mom’s third or fourth threat regarding my phone privileges. That was when the room went silent, and mom looked startled for a moment before shaking her head. “That’s not… that is not what we are talking about, young lady. Do you understand the severity of what you have done?”
“Yeah, Mara,” Freddie spoke up from across the room. Like Noa, he was doing a bad job of pretending he wasn’t loving every second of me being berated. “I can’t believe you would be so careless and stupid….” He drifted off. “Oh wait, didn’t you break in last month to steal documents on the Daniel’s case?” His smile pricked. “Now, I’m pretty sure that was also, like, illegal, but I mean, what do I know? I’m just a high schooler. I don’t sneak into the sheriff’s office when I’m supposed to be at school.”
I glared at him. “How do you even know that? You go through my phone?”
He shrugged, comfortably adjusting himself on the recliner. “Your passcode is four zero’s, a toddler could bypass it.”
I don’t know if it was the stress of what happened with Finn, or my brother’s dumb fucking grin, but I was already lunging across the room to—I don’t know? He’s taller than me, and more built. He could squash me if he really wanted to. So, what I thought was going to be a fight, turned into me trying to cause some damage with him and Freddie just shoving me away with a scoff. I did manage to hit him in the nose, but that was where mom came in, pulling us apart, and going into mom-mode.
“Mom-mode” was when she really got mad. Noa decided she no longer wanted to be a spectator and wandered into the kitchen. I was sent to my room, and Freddie was lectured for antagonising me. Several hours later, he appeared at my door with a half-eaten donut, a cup of hot cocoa, and a half-assed apology, which was his attempt at letting me know that he was scared I was going to get myself hurt. I took the donut and the cocoa, and told him to go away. He did, after a while of standing there looking like a kicked puppy. I closed the door on his face when he made a point of trying to make me feel sorry for him.
I wanted to talk to him about Finn, but he would just tell mom and get me into trouble.
So, I found myself with information which was driving me crazy. My 18th birthday was approaching, and more and more kids were turning on their mom's and dads. After Finn, it was Addie, and then Jason, Sara, and Kiara.
All of which had turned eighteen weeks between each other. I thought the town was going to start freaking out and calling those of us who were left monsters, insisting that we never should have been born.
But to my surprise, there was barely any news coverage, and it almost became normal to hear about yet another kid being sent to juvenile detention. June arrived, and the days crept by, faster and faster until it was the eve of my 18th birthday, and I had found myself standing in my bathroom, my trembling fingers wrapped around a razor blade.
Every time I thought about actually doing it though, slicing into my flesh until my wrists were dripping, pooling scarlet and I was struggling to breathe—I couldn’t. So, I dumped the razor in the trash and left the bathroom, only to run into Noa. Wrapped in her pink bathrobe, my little sister looked like a giant marshmallow, hiding behind scraggly blonde curls.
“Mara!” Noa was grinning ear to ear as usual. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them. “Do you remember what we did as kids?”
From the look on her face, I knew exactly what she was talking about. When mom was in bed or at work on our birthday eve, the three of us would scour her room for presents. We had grown out of it eventually, but every year Noa insisted on at least one search. It’s not like I could refuse when my sister already had a tight grip of my arm and was yanking me into mom’s room.
When I stumbled inside, I found our brother on his knees under mom’s bed, rifling through boxes and bags. I was surprised Noa had managed to drag Freddie into it, considering every other year he rolled his eyes and bid us adieu, calling Noa a baby. Now though, he was just as enthusiastic as he was when he was a little kid, and used to shush us and turn it into a game. I would take one corner, Noa would take the closet, and Freddie would crawl under the bed (because he was the only one who wasn’t scared of monsters hiding under there).
For a moment, I considered just walking away and saying they were being stupid and acting like children. But I did want to forget about the reality of turning 18 and possibly murdering my family. In a way, I guess I wanted to be a kid again. So, just like when I was five, I wandered over to the furthest corner to search for presents which did not exist. I knew they didn’t exist because mom gave us cash every birthday inside our card.
Still though, it was fun to search, and have that childlike magic come over me again, the thrill of pulling things aside and delving inside boxes for hidden treasures, dolls we wanted, or the newest games console. To make Noa happy, I shoved a few things aside, finding myself smiling. Mom was always bad at hiding our presents. I was about to make that comment, when Noa squeaked in delight. “I’ve found something!” When I twisted around, she was already partially inside the closet, one foot sticking out, her head buried in mom’s clothes. It looked like she was grasping into something. Freddie, who had crawled out from under the bed, straightened up, shooting me a look. “Really?” His eyes said. “Aren’t we a little too old for this?”
“We are.” I mouthed back.
His grin transported me back to when we were nine, and the two of us had collectively found five wrapped gifts, and had spent an hour shaking them to try to figure out what they were. But there was also that glimmer of excitement in his eyes, when he joined Nona in front of the closet, the two of them managed to heave out what looked like a large box. I joined them, hesitantly. “Any idea what it is?”
I frowned at the box the two of them were struggling to get a proper hold of. It was huge, almost the size of the closet itself. When Freddie and Noa had managed to balance it, the three of us stepped backwards to take it in. And immediately, something cold slithered down my spine. First, it was the state of the box. Old. The cardboard was rotting.
Noa shrieked when a mountain of bugs crawled out of the flaps. Looking closer, it looked to be a box for a toy or a doll. But when I squinted, the box was open. It had been open a long time, and the more I looked, I was feeling progressively sicker. There was something tainting the cardboard, an old red painting the flaps and inside the thing itself.
I was suddenly aware of things happening way too quickly for me to understand. A blur of movement to my right, which was Freddie dropping to his knees and barfing everywhere. And then Noa’s figure stumbling out of the room. I could hear her screams. I could see my brother retching, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the front of the box. Because on the front of the box was… me.
MARA.
I was seeing a photo of me smiling widely, and colourful words printed on the box saying, “NOW GROWS TO FULL SIZE" (Mom’s Net Certified)
The printed words on the box looked like a different language, though I was still reading it.
“CHILD™️. HAVE YOU EVER WANTED YOUR VERY OWN CHILD? WELL, NOW YOU CAN! JUST PULL OUT THE CHORD, AND YOU HAVE YOUR VERY OWN SON/DAUGHTER!”
I was stepping forward when something…. moved. Freddie yanked me back, but I was delving inside my mother’s closet, and finding a much newer box. This one was unopened, and occupied, a fully grown college aged guy peeking through plastic packaging. This time I saw the cord, like an umbilical cord connected to the thing inside the box, which was asleep.
Its eyes were shut.
“FREDDIE” it said. “THIS TIME IN COLLEGE!!!”
Before Freddie could see it, I shoved it back, stumbling, my heart in my throat.
I was frowning at where all the blood was on the second box, staining the bottom, when my brother grabbed my hand and yanked me back.
Before I could fully register what was going on, he was dragging me downstairs. I think he was trying to get me out of there, but then he stopped, sort of freezing in place. When I followed his gaze, I found two birthday cards set up on the mantelpiece.
They were labelled in our mother’s handwriting. The purple one was mine, while the pink one was Freddie’s.
I opened mine up, but instead of a twenty dollar note slipping out, I found myself staring at a countdown being reflected onto my face in red light.
59.
58
57.
Below that:
“My dearest Mara,
I am so happy I met you and was able to call you my daughter. I found you at the age of seventeen, but you have given me a lifetime of memories I will cherish. You will be running out very soon, and like the other mom’s, I don’t want to see you go. I am supposed to be giving you back tomorrow, but we have each made a pact. With every child we obtained, every mother and father agreed that sending you back to those people would be terrible. Giving you to another mother would break my heart, sweetheart. I have heard your biological mother has never stopped searching for you, and trust me, she won’t find you. So, I’m not going to give you back. I do not support the company I got you from, but I have always wanted a child.
And this town cannot have children. I have lost too many inside me to be hopeful.
Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.
And goodbye xxx
I’m not sure what emotions I felt at that moment, but I finally understood why Finn, Seth, and the others had killed their parents.
I was wrong. There was a motive.
Rage.
“What the fuck?” Freddie dropped his card, his eyes wide. “We need to get out. We need to fucking get out of here, because whatever this thing is, it’s going to blow.” My brother shook me. “Are you listening to me?!” We need to get Noa, and get the fuck out of here!”
Going to blow, I thought dizzily.
Had mom planted a bomb? There was no time to find it, no way to get out….
I was nodding along with my brother, trying to find Noa, who had disappeared, when it hit me like ice cold water. Finn, standing in the cells with his eyes carved out of his skull, and Seth wearing raybans to cover his eyes. Every other kid I saw always wore sunglasses, always hid their eyes…. With the countdown reflecting onto the wall, and Freddie screaming at me to find our sister, I wandered into the kitchen, pulled open our mom’s prized knife drawer, and picked out the sharpest I could find. It had been driving me crazy since seeing the sheriff son’s mutilated face, why he would do that to himself. Why he would kill his father, and then carve out his own eyes. Part of me thought it really was a curse which had taken them as some kind of reward. But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. Finn Novak didn’t scoop out his eyes because he was fucking crazy.
He carved them out because he had gotten that exact birthday card,
That exact countdown.
And somehow, he had known, just like me, as I stuffed my sweater sleeve into my mouth, that the bomb was part of us. Digging the blade into my eye and jerking it at an angle to sever it, I screamed into my sleeve, managing to choke out through sobs, begging my brother to do the same.
The countdown was still in my head, and if I concentrated, I could hear it, the beep, beep, beep of the thing sandwiched inside me.
It could have been either eye or both but I didn’t have time to guess. I was on my knees when I managed to scoop out my eye, with the teeth of the knife and then my fingers. When the beeping stopped, I pressed my face into the kitchen floor and breathed in and out before using my sleeve to staunch the blood pooling down my face. My vision was severed and I was pretty sure I was going to be blind, but it was better than being blown to pieces. Freddie was already in front of me, his eyes wide and confused, already clumsily grasping for the knife to do the same. “We’re okay,” my brother said in a hiss. He was already following my lead, biting into his sleeve and hovering the knife in front of his eye. Noa was in the doorway.
I could see her shadow, and just seeing her I knew she was trembling, too scared to come near either of us. I opened my mouth to try and reassure her, while helping Freddie sever the thing inside him.
Before… pop! I heard it first, an audible popping in my ear. Noa screamed behind me,
Before something warm hit my face, warm and red, and coating my eyes and cheeks. When I swiped startling red from my eyes and face, I found myself staring at glistening scarlet dripping from the walls and slick on the floor, the countertop, everything. I reached out for my brother, who wasn’t there anymore. The birthday card which I had opened was still on the ground, and I could still see my mother’s message, and eighteen years (?) worth of birthday cards came over me, each one all saying that exact same ironic message. “I’m glad you didn’t explode!”
Whatever my fake-mother did to get me, I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m some artificially grown freak who was born at seventeen years old.
I have already raided my kitchen for the best knives I can find.
So, I can find my mother (and father)
And fucking kill them 😊
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