A throaty laugh filled the air breaking the silence in the house. Eric’s mood immediately turned sour. His aunt was back along with his father whom he resented. Eric decided to sneak out of the house undetected. He achieved this by jumping out his bedroom window which was large enough to let a tall, lanky boy like himself through.

He immediately dashed into the street and took off running in the direction of his best friend’s house. He arrived at the small house which was almost hidden in the pine trees that surrounded it. The house had no wall or fence around it. Only the tall pines and maybe the strong scent kept unwelcome visitors away. Sweat stuck Eric’s shirt to his back as he walked up to the front door which opened as he was just about to knock. Mrs Arden’s eyes glowed an almost supernatural green from the darkness behind her. She gestured for him to come in and sit. He gladly took the offer and found an armchair.

Once she had shut the door, light could hardly seep in and Eric only closed for there was no purpose in keeping them open. To Eric’s surprise a light was switched on. At first, he thought it was his own mind playing tricks because Mrs Arden never stayed in the light too long because “Nothing good can be found in the light,” she had once said to him. So when the light was switched on, Eric’s anticipation grew.

This was too exciting a temptation to resist. Eric’s eyes opened. He looked around the room glad to see the pale pink walls of the living room once again until he saw Mrs Arden, a large gash across her thin face and in that moment the fury the sixteen-year-old boy had towards his father was summate in a teardrop. One became two and two became too many to count. It had been three years since he saw her face completely in the light. He had full of mystery but looking at her face showed him that he lacked that complexity which was his mother’s main trait.

His mother who seldom spoke was the wisest and most beautiful person he knew and yet still, here she was, newly assaulted by a man fresh out of prison for the same crime. The first time it was her arms that were forever changed but Isabel Arden, queen of deception, covered it up with makeup only to be found three months later unconscious and bruises around her neck that looked suspiciously like handprints. The police arrested the offender, her husband and in court he was sentenced to twenty-five years without bail but of course money has never failed to tamper with the scales of justice and so three years later Jacob Arden was out and about fraternising with the sister of his victim.

Isabel stood across the room until Eric regained his composure.

“I told you to file for a divorce, Mum!” Eric shouted.

“I did,” was her response and gesturing to her face, “He signed them.”

The blood in Eric’s veins boiled and seemed to be heated by the presence of his father within him. He stood up, went to hug his mother and told her he would be back. “Like father, like son,” people like to say and Eric was about to make it so. His rage flew him to the house he was never going to see again. He headed straight to the kitchen and found the sharpest knife he could find. He headed to the third floor of the house which had the master bedroom. He stormed in to his father drinking a glass of whiskey and his aunt reading a Jodi Picoult. His father dropped the glass in alarm and after that came a blur of red. His aunt’s screams only adding salt to the wound, fuelling the fire as Eric could only think of his mother’s suffering. The pool of Jacob’s blood seemed to cool him down and before him lay the worst hell Eric could ever know.