Isabella

Suspense Stories | Dec 19, 2012 | 4 min read
60 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Gerard lay awake in his bed, listening to the slow beat of his wife's heart. The night sky was the purest black, and only a sliver of silver moonlight shone through the crack between the silken curtains. A lone branch scraped the windowpane softly as a gentle breeze rustled the trees. Gerard heard a small noise from outside his room, in the hallway. He felt the sudden urge to check on his four-year-old daughter, Isabella. He rose out of bed, careful not to wake his peaceful wife, and crossed the hallway to her room. The little girl slept silently, thumb in her mouth, curled around her stuffed animal. He smiled softly, and left the room. The black of his shadow against the wall separated from him and dissolved into the floor beneath it. Brushing it off as a half-asleep hallucination, he padded softly back into his room. His wife's steady breathing lulled him sleepily back into his dreams. As his eyes closed, a midnight shadow moved across the doorway, pausing to observe the sleeping couple, then continuing down the dark hallway.

"Gerard. Gerard, wake up. Please!"

Gerard was being violently shaken awake by his wife. She looked stricken, her pale face dotted with beads of sweat.

"What... What? What is it?"

His wife did nothing but motion for him to follow her. He got up slowly, his hear tbeating faster with every new thought registering in his brain. He remembered the shadows last night. He began to panic, following his wife quickly down the hall. She turned at the entrance to Isabella's room, with a terrified look on her face. She entered the room slowly.

"Is... Isabella, Daddy's here to see you. Are you okay, sweetie? Do you need anything?"

Gerard turned the corner, and at first saw nothing wrong. Isabella sat turned away from them, playing with her dolls at a little table.

"No, Mommy." she sighed impatiently. "Have you brought me more things to play with?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on it-"

"Mommy, I told you I wanted more toys. Am I going to have to punish you?"

Gerard wakled over to Isabella, determined to end her little game.

"Now, Isabella, you do not talk to your mother like that. You know-"

Isabella's head whipped around. All the way around. She was facing all the way backwards. Gerard gasped and stumbled backwards. Her eyes were midnight black, shadowb black. Her face was almost white, and her teeth came to a jagged point. Blood trailed down the side of her mouth. Gerard then took in the scene behind Isabella's bed. The two family pets lay in bloody piles, their entrails neatly separated from their bodies in categorized piles. Isabella smiled, revealing even more of her uneven, dagger-like teeth.

"Isn't it pretty, Daddy?" she giggled. "Dissecting is fun."

She jumped down from her bed and stroked her dog's pelt. Gerard grabbed his wife and tried to back out of the room.

"Why are you trying to leave, Daddy?" Isabella asked. She turned around, her head following. The door slammed shut behind the couple, trapping them inside. Gerard's wife tried the doorknob. She jiggled it violently, but to no avail.

"Mommy!" Isabella cried. "Don't you love me?"

"Yes, Mommy loves you very much, Isabella, but-"

"Don't lie to me, Mommy." Isabella took a step forward. She picked up the butcher knife from her little table. Turning toward the corner of her room, Gerard noticed there was an unnatural black shadow suspended in the darkest part of the corner. Isabella turned to it.

"Aren't you proud? See how scared they are? I did a very good job. Isabella did a very good job..."

She turned back to her parents.

"Mommy, you don't love me. You wanted to leave me."

"No, Isabella, I was going to get you more-"

"Mommy! I told you not to lie to me!"

Isabella let out an ear-splitting scream, and Gerard's wife flew toward Isabella. Gerard couldn't do anything but helplessly watch as Isabella's knife slide entirely through his wife's body. She dropped to the floor. Blood started to pool around her.

"Mommy, you've been very mean to me."

Isabella drew a thin line down her mother's abdomen, through her shirt, into her skin. She drew another line across her stomach. Her mother gasped, incapable of speech, trying to stop Isabella. Isabella lifted up her mothers shirt to reveal the bloody lines in her mother's body. She smiled.

"Perfect," she laughed. She turned to Gerard. "Sit! Sit, Daddy," she commanded, still laughing. She pushed a miniature chair over toward him. He sat, terrified of what would happen if he did not obey her. She returned to his wife's dying body, giggling softly to herself.

"I knew I was going to have to punish you." She grinned, and cut into her mother, following the lines she'd drawn before. Her mother tried to scream, but all that came out was a strangled gargle, choking on her own blood. Isabella peeled back the layers of skin, revealing her mother's still beating heart. She reached in and ripped it out in one swift motion. Her mother stopped breathing.

"The heart's the best part, Daddy." she hummed softly to herself as she drew the blade along her mother's skin, drawing blood all over. Gerard couldn't move. He was half paralyzed, half afraid of what would happen if he tried to move.

***

It was days later, Gerard was still sitting in the little pink and yellow plastic chair, stiff from lack of movement. Flies buzzed around his head, like miniature vultures, waiting. His eyes never left Isabella, he never slept, never ate or drank. She had completely skinned his wife, and separated her organs and entrails into piles. Every once in a while, she'd pick out bloody bits of fat and throw them at him. "Are you hungry, Daddy?" she'd ask. The answer was always "No, honey." She was peeling the last bits of flesh off of her mother's skeleton. The room reeked of death and decay. She stood up, and cleaned off her bloody hands on her pink nightgown. She laughed.

"All done!" She turned to Gerard. "Isn't she pretty, Daddy? Didn't I do a good job?"

"Yes, you sure did, sweetie. Beautiful." He held back what little was left in his stomach to regurgitate. He half-heartedly smiled, cracking his chapped lips.

She kicked her mother's picked-clean skeleton to the side. She turned to the shadow in the corner.

"...What? But you promised! ... Okay. Fine. If you need him."

She turned back to Gerard. She smiled, wiping off her butcher knife on her blood-soaked dress.

"Daddy, do you love me?"

***

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