Slaughter Daughter by Eve Langlais
8
Technically,I didn’t have to attend the last week of school, but I had nowhere else to be. The group home insisted we go, and I did enjoy the French fries in the cafeteria. Although rumor had it they’d be axed the following year in favor of healthy vegetables.
I enjoyed my fries one by one, dipping the tip of each in ketchup. I kept eating, even as a gaggle of girls flopped onto the bench across from me.
“Well, if it isn’t Slaughter Daughter, eating her fries dipped in blood.” One of them, Bethany, did a bad imitation of a cartoon vampire.
“Such maturity for your age. What are you two?” I said sweetly.
“Ha-ha, funny girl. You going to tell jokes when your parents come to sacrifice you?”
It might have been a better barb if I’d not created the urban legend that spawned it. “Actually, I was thinking of telling them where you live. After all, they’re looking for virgins.”
Color spotted Bethany’s cheeks. “So, you admit it. You do talk to them!”
I rolled my eyes. “If I was in contact, do you think I’d be in this shitty cafeteria, talking to your simple-minded ass?”
“Guess you’ll be alone for graduation.”
Now that hurt. I’d always imagined the pride on my parents’ faces when I graduated. Instead, I’d heard rumors that the cops would be out in full force, hoping Mom and Dad would be stupid enough to come.
They’d better not. Even though I wished they’d give me a sign.
When they finally did, it wasn’t a great one. I found it tucked in my locker at the fast food chain place where I worked. The note— in my mother’s loopy scrawl on a French fry envelope with a few twenties tucked inside—simply said:
Never forgotten. Always loved.
I didn’t feel loved. I felt more alone than ever.
They were alive. They just didn’t want me with them.
The time I spent in the group home took forever and passed in a forgettable blur. I went through the motions, knowing I just had to make it to my eighteenth birthday.
I spent a lot of that time alone, going over every inch of my childhood. Things that had seemed normal, now made me question. I’d always assumed the ax-throwing and jujitsu lessons I took with my dad were because he enjoyed sports and wanted to expose me to several of them.
My mom was a whiz on a computer, and I knew my way around. But now I had to wonder about all those times I’d asked to see the Dark Web, and she’d laughed and said, “Honey, there is no such thing outside the movies.”
But all I did was wonder. I didn’t do any kind of searches on my parents. Didn’t go anywhere that might seem weird. Which meant I rarely left the house. The entire time I spent in custody—also known as the foster care system—I remained aware that my every action was examined with creepy thoroughness.
Everything I did was noted and reported. My exciting life of school, homework, work, and sleep. The third psychologist they made me see didn’t make the situation better, claiming I was repressing my natural urges and trying to fool them by pretending to be normal.
I laughed at him and asked if he had fantasies about teenage girls murdering people.
“Do you dream of killing people, Abigail?”
“No.”
“Take off your shirt, or I’ll tell them you do.” The bastard had the nerve to lick his lips.
“Go fuck yourself, creep.”
In retaliation, he tried to have me removed from school and placed in an institution for more individualized sessions. I then publicly declared that he was a pedophile trying to get in my pants. I got a new female shrink after that.
I graduated with no one in the crowd to clap when I accepted my diploma, and people unsure if they should cheer me. Next time I went in to work, I found an envelope of cash in my locker. I didn’t know how it got there, but I knew who it was from. It didn’t completely quell the anger I felt that they hadn’t taken me with them but showed they were paying attention.
It was the last direct contact they made. My mom always said that she wanted me to have a nice, normal life. Joke was on them. It would never be normal again.
