The Secret Of Us

Prologue

The only negative thing about murder is that when you kill someone, they can no longer suffer.

Quote: by Verg Vikernes

Note: the protagonist (I) is a girl called Lily.

1.

It was at the end of that dying autumn month when I killed him. That year, when the cold breath of pre-winter gusts awoke the lifeless landscape, I was only the age of seventeen.

Those who knew me saw into my blistering wounds, saw how it tore through me like a sharp thorn through oozing flesh. They saw my empty fear, the one that constantly kindled the darkness in my eyes, constantly threatened to rip me apart. They thought I was frightened, that I was heartbroken.

Others thought they saw the raw truth. I was a terror, a monster, a villain, in their cold, distant eyes. When fear sprung alight in their features at the sight of me, I would laugh at their innocent terror with icy contempt. Oh, I loved it when they were wrong.

Except they were right this time. I was a murderer.

I was a murderer, and I had killed the man I loved.

I closed my eyes, letting the fear clench me like the Arctic cold. I was used to this kind of fear, this spasm of trepidation. It was the iron shroud of terror that coursed through me when I had realized that he was now so distant from me, that there was no going back. It was the kind of fear that drew tears.

Darkness swelled around me, summoning me into its icy depths. With every breath, I was being hurled into a familiar world of heavy memories, losing myself in their impenetrable clutches. I slowly let myself recollect the months leading up to the brutal murder, so that the vision became no longer a cold and distant memory.
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It all began with the end of the summer season. Fall approached, and so did the terrors of my familiar nightmare. The autumn wind, breathing cold and fast in the orange haze outside, seemed to ooze out my every dismal terror. I was afraid, and afraid of my own home. I didn't go back to my house until nightfall. I never wanted to see the sight of him, with fire and hatred hot in his eyes, waiting for me.

I hated him.

I hated my father.

Every evening, I could not bear to take those hushed and dismal steps that led to the door of my house. For I would still always see his cruel, towering figure wrench open the entryway, eyes cold and bloodshot. With hands reeking of heavy wine, he would drag me into the mirthless darkness where I would, again and again, yield to his bitter resentment.

Since the day of my mother's death, my father never halted this torment. My family was torn apart, never to be fixed again. And I was the blood in that deep wound gushing in its wake. After all, I was regarded as the sole reason she was dead. I was the vile culprit under the shine of menacing lights; the quiet murderer blamed for her demise. Yet no one truly knew what happened on the day of her death. The truth was all clouded and blurred, neatly concealed beneath countless layers of fabricated lies.

My life was infused with too many secrets. Secrets that I barely know myself.

As for my mother's death, I was never forgiven. On those cold, excruciating nights, my father would remind me of my atrocities, over and over again. He would whisper frenzied words within my ears, ones that made me succumb to humiliation and hurt. He would hiss coldly, 'It was you... you killed her...'

Then I would faint against the fuming grips of his bloodied hand amongst my hair, or collapse against broken fragments of wine bottles that had been thrown against my brittle frame. My life, very much like those shattered fragments penetrating my flesh, was broken, vanquished, loveless.

But it was on that stinging night, when a harsh beating awaited me, that everything began to change.

That evening, I was deepened with more wounds; the trophy of his detestable resentment. The lights of his room were glaring fiercely, and he was hauling me into the brightness of that terrifying radiance. Before I knew it, accursed punches and flogs were shattering my body, and my breathless cries resonated about the interior of the room. There and then, faintness assailed the depths of my mind, and I began to drown under the weight of unconsciousness.

But before my eyes were about to flutter close, I glimpsed a ghost of a shape looming outside the dim window. It was the figure of a young boy. The fading flicker of the moon wove through the curves and contours of silhouette, every inch of his body raw with forbidden power.

A burst of fear raced through my veins, threatening to break through the surface. Even in the mist of night, his gaze was so deep, so scalding, that I trembled beneath its frosty touch. How peculiar, to have someone staring at you with such expressionless intensity. The next second the curtains were slung shut by the angry gale, and that strange form vanished from view. Perhaps at that time, I never would've thought that this would be the boy who would shape my future forever. And that he would be the only person I would ever learn to love.

That nightfall, when the first cold winter storms gusted angrily across the remorseful town, was the first time I met him.