The person turned its head.
“Yes dear?” A cold, firm voice replied.
Karen let out the breath she had unknowingly been holding. “Are you alright?” she asked.
“Sit down dear, we need to have a talk,” her Mum answered bitterly. Karen pulled a stool next to the lounge chair and rolled her eyes. She knew what was coming.
“I forbid you to see him anymore,” her Mum told her calmly, her voice brimming with anger. Karen gritted her teeth and felt her temper rising.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she retorted, narrowing her eyes. There was a pause.
“Oh yes I can, I know what’s best for you, and that fool is just going to ruin you!” barked back her mum.
“I am seventeen,” Karen yelled, “and am in complete control of my own life, thank you very much!”
“Karen. I am your mother. And what I say GOES. Now stop being such a child and make your own logical decisions for once. I don’t want to hear anymore. Go up to your room, you spoiled brat,” Karen’s mum hissed spitefully, her veins popping out of her neck. Karen gritted her teeth in anger and cried out in frustration, knowing that it was no use arguing with her mother when she was in this state. “She cannot keep me from seeing him,” Karen whispered through her teeth. She mopped her red forehead with her hand and stormed up to her room, slamming the door shut.
“Where is she?” Drake said on the other line of the phone. Karen darted her eyes around the sunlit living room.
“She’s out” she replied moodily, “Argh, I swear Drake I can’t take this anymore!”
Drake listened with silence as Karen poured out the scene yesterday between her and her mum, and how she forbade Karen to see Drake.
“She can’t tell you that!” retorted Drake angrily. Karen nervously regretted telling Drake the Story. When he got mad it was quite hard to calm him down. However Karen was too angry to care.
“I know, Drake I know, and I got so furious, she sent me into the room like a little kid,” Karen continued heatedly, “I swear, Drake, I could kill her, I really could.”
There was silence on the other end. “Drake? Drake?” Karen called out over the phone. She could still hear him breathing, but why didn’t he answer?
Karen called out his name a couple of times more, irritably, until finally he showed some sign of presence.
“Mmmm? Karen?” Drake mumbled absent-mindedly.
“Where were you?” she snapped angrily.
“Here,” Drake replied, “Listen, babe, I gotta go. Work to do.”
Karen rolled her eyes and said goodbye to Drake. She then hung up. “Why is he acting so weird?” she thought, annoyed.
Karen stormed out in anger and slammed the front door behind her. “Another fight with my so-called mother,” she thought furiously. And on Valentines Day too! Karen was distracted from her flood of thoughts by a rustle in the bushes. She stopped in her tracks. What was that? Karen shrugged carelessly and started running to her car. “I could really do with another long drive this time,” she mumbled to herself. Some Valentine’s Day. Drake had been too busy to spend time with her the whole day, so she was stuck moping around the house. And thanks to her mother, her day just got worse. Karen jumped in the car and stepped on the pedal. The car left the driveway with a soft screech.
Karen yawned loudly as she stepped onto the curb after her drive. ‘That was nice’, she thought. Karen’s Eyes absent-mindedly focused on the front door. They then slowly wandered down to her hand. She snapped into reality as she took a long look at the red and blue wrapped present in her hand that she had brought for her mum. Karen didn’t seem to be angry with her mother anymore. She took a deep breath and rehearsed in her mind how she was going to give the gift to her mother as she stepped inside. The house seemed empty. ‘That’s strange’, thought Karen, ‘she should be home’. Karen peered around the living room, and frowned. Clearly she wasn’t downstairs. Karen raced up stairs in a hurry, and squeaked open the guest room door. Her heartbeat was fast and abstract. Karen’s eyes scanned the room. “Not here” she thought aloud. She walked quickly to her mum’s bedroom and examined the spacey red velvet suite. “Hmm…no luck,” Karen sighed.
“I’ll just give it to her when she gets back, I guess,” she said to herself. Karen stretched her back as she headed up to her room door. ‘I haven’t done that in a long time,’ she smiled. She strode into her room and carelessly shut the door behind her. Karen jumped on her bed, and lay down in content. Although physically, she was tired, inside she was happy and smiley, almost the same as before. She yawned and blinked hard. ‘I’d better get changed for bed,’ Karen thought. There was a deadly silence as she paused on the bed motionless, and then got up and moved toward towards the closet. She flung open the doors.
She staggered back in shock and after a second, covered her mouth as tears streamed down her face. Karen heaved and bent over as a rush of puke poured out of her mouth onto the Persian carpet floor. “No…” she whispered, gurgling through her bulging eyes and pale white face. She darted her eyes to the door, and then slowly gazed back to what was in the closet. It was the body of her mother, slashed at the throat, and hanging with red rope. The flesh hadn’t started to rot yet and the blood, Karen could tell, was warm and fresh. She grabbed at her heart, as if trying to stop it from pounding so much. Karen noticed that her mother’s body was covered in cuts shaped in a peculiar way, dripping with blood. The tears poured down faster and faster nonstop and she grasped her hair, in hysterics and confusion. Karen spotted a putrid yellow card stuffed in her mother’s mouth. Shaking, she started to move toward the corpse. Her trembling hand reached out and tugged at the dry card. Whimpering unsteadily, she read it trying to focus on the scrawled handwriting. The card fell from her hands as Karen began to scream.
Happy Valentines Day
