Ghost Flowers

Vengeance

She laughed with her friend as they walked side by side in the school hallway. She looked at the lockers and saw Damian leaning against the locker, his tongue down another girl’s throat. She was shocked and horrified as she watched them kissing, completely unaware that she was watching. Damian was her boyfriend! He wasn’t supposed to go around kissing other girls! His hand cupped the girls face, and she had seen enough. 
“Damian!” she screamed, storming towards him. “How could you?”
He swore under his breath and pushed the girl away. He was faced with two choices: run, or try to explain himself, convince her that it wasn’t his fault, that she had thrown herself on him. But, as he saw the sorrow in her eyes, he could only manage to whisper a single line before he walked away.
“I’m so sorry, Layla. You weren’t supposed to find out.”
The look of betrayal was only there for a minute before she replaced it with anger. She punched the locker, causing her friend to jump back. Her friend put her hand on Layla’s shoulder, attempting to calm Layla. She shrugged it off, determined to stay strong. Her life had already gone to shit. This was nothing new. She was used to everything in her life going wrong. She was used to everyone in her life leaving her. She took a few deep breaths and cleared her head like the guidance counselor had taught her to do when she was angry. She looked at her friend, who had a worried look on her face, and smiled.
“Don’t worry, Lilliana, I was looking for a reason to break up with him anyway.”

Day 1

Putting on a brave face was second nature for her. Hiding her true emotions was easy. She had been doing it her entire life, after all. No one knew just how broken she was inside; no one knew that every day after school, she drank herself into oblivion; no one knew about the cuts on her thighs; no one knew that she cried herself to sleep each and every night. Everyone thought that she was just a happy, cheerful girl who got along with everybody. Everyone thought that her father was a respectable young man. Everyone thought her mother was in Vegas with a male stripper. No one knew that her father beat her mother to death a few years earlier; no one knew that he would beat her if she was out of her room when he was home; no one knew what she did in her room when she wasn’t drinking or cutting. No one knew that she was constantly planning her revenge. One more name to add to the list, she thought. In her notebook, she added another name to her list of future victims.

Damian Torres

Day 2

School the next day was by far the worst day in a long time. All day, Layla was forced to ignore the whispers and fingers pointed in her direction. Word had spread faster than wildfire. She supposed it was partly her fault for dating the football captain when she wasn’t a cheerleader. When Damian had asked her out, she was overjoyed. Finally, after everything she had done, he finally noticed her. She didn’t know that he asked her out because of a dare. They were together for 6 months before this happened. Now, she walked past a group of cheerleaders, who sneered at her. 
“Damian finally broke up with you, huh?”
“It’s about time too. He and Ranae have been going steady for 5 months now.”
“You little slut. You never deserved Damian.”
These words cut deeper than knives as she walked down the hallway and for the first time in a long time, she didn’t bother to put on her mask. She decided to eat lunch in the bathroom since it was the one place in the school that she didn’t have to deal with people. She didn’t say a word to anyone, not even her friends as they tried to comfort her. At 3:00, she walked home and slipped into her room. She pulled out the box that she kept under her bed. It had three bottles of vodka and three bottles of wine in it. She pulled out a bottle of each and mixed them together in her glass. She drank that mixture and sobbed, drinking herself deeper into oblivion than she had ever drank herself into before.

Day 3

She felt hollow and empty as she lay in her bed. She couldn’t be bothered to get up and go to school. Instead, she lay in bed and pondered how she wanted to kill Damian. She didn’t want to kill him like people usually kill, face to face. That would directly connect her to his death. No, she couldn’t risk that. Instead, she thought of a spell. A simple revenge spell just wouldn’t cut it. It had to be a torturous, painful death. She racked her brain, trying to remember a curse that she had found online, when she thought of it. That’s it, she thought. Not one, but a thousand deaths, each more painful than the last. It’s perfect for Damian. She rose from her bed, having finally found a purpose. She pulled a photograph off of her wall and scratched Damian’s face off of it, smiling all the while. She would have her revenge.

Day 3, midnight

She lit the two black candles and set Damian’s picture on the counter. She cut her hand and let the blood drip into the flame of each candle then proceeded to rip Damian’s photograph in half, putting each half of the picture into the flame of the candles. Layla watched the picture burn; she brought all of her anger to the surface and channeled it into the chant.
“Te mihi iniuriam, iniuriam te universum. Sic fiat semper, infinitum temporis. Et sic fieri, quod non aequo iudicio adflixerit me!”
She laughed, and said one more chant.
“Speculum hoc parvo usque ad hanc me mori proditorem… Damian, ostende mihi faciem tuam dolore.”
The mirror in front of Layla clouded up, then an image of Damian appeared, dying the first of a thousand deaths. He writhed in agony, clawing at his body.  After a few minutes, he collapsed and fell still. His body floated up in the air, then he gasped a breath and began screaming. This process was repeated until he died his final death. Layla chuckled at first, but the laughter had escalated so that by the time Damian died his final death, the laughter was a chaotic, mad laugh. As she had watched Damian dying over and over again, she could feel her sanity slowly slipping away, slowly dying along with Damian. When Damian died his final death, it was as if Layla’s sanity had never existed. All she knew now was that she had a list, and it was time to start checking off names. She failed to recognize that there was a price for everything. In this case, the price was her sanity. She walked downstairs where her dad was sitting on his chair watching football, a beer can in his hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing out of your room?” he roared.
She laughed and said, “I just wanted to see you one last time before you die.”
She moved towards him, knife in her hand, grinning the whole time. Her father didn’t even have time to scream as Layla lunged forward with the knife, slitting his throat. Shock masked his face as he gurgled and choked on his own blood. Blood dripped down his body, pooling on his chair. Layla watched as he died, his heart beating its final beats. Layla laughed and walked out of the house, the beer can clattering to the floor behind her. She went through her list, killing off the names one by one. She always killed them the same way as she did her father, almost like a ritual of hers. When she got to the bottom of the list, she realized that there was a final name that she had added before her sanity and memory drained entirely.
Layla Summers