The house stands at the end of the street, nestled in the shade cast by the large momiji tree planted in the lawn. The garden is bursting with the blooms that first appeared during the milder spring, which now take on a dream-like quality in the height of the summer heat. Sunflowers grow in a row in front of the porch, as if guarding the house, bobbing their heavy heads each time a breeze rolls down the porch. A few flowerbeds drink in the bright sunlight on either side of the garden. The floorboards of the porch are uniformly tidy and whole, no splintering or cracking at all. the front of the house is similar; the paint shows not a single sign of weathering, the windows are polished clean and clear, the screens on the door are spotless.
This is the envy of every homeowner on the street. Fathers on their way to work pause to imagine the expensive car shut up in the garage and wish the one they drive was equal –or better. Mothers doing the school run pause to admire the garden, the tasteful arrangement and overall perfect quality of the house and regret their marriages- if only he were richer. Children riding their bikes spare it a glance on their way by and wonder about the surely spoiled children inside- how many toys do they have?
The girl who approaches the house late that night thinks about none of these things.
Ponds of yellow light are cast on the pavement by the streetlight.
The girl shirks the darkness, letting it wrap her like the jacket she wishes she had. Although it is summer, and a very hot one at that, the nights are just as cold as they were in the spring. Her clothes are thin; a simple top has been gradually dyed another colour from the original white and a pleated red skirt with no stockings. She is aware of the stink. Sweat and rain and trash and…blood.
Saturated in blood. Drying in her hair, already matted with dirt accumulated from two weeks of sleeping rough. Staining her grubby skin. Stiffening in the folds of her skirt and down the front of her top in a bib-like shape. She is filthy.
The house caught her eye because it was the exact opposite.
Clean, so clean it is almost medical. As clean as the sick room back at the orphanage where she spent so much of her time delirious with a fever. Spotless.
She pauses by the tree. A shaft of light is reflected from the streetlamps into the leaves of the momiji when a window is closed at the other end of the street. For a second the girl is standing in a red spotlight. She doesn't notice.
She is transfixed by the house. Two stories. A single light is on in the room at the far right of the second floor, muted by the curtains. A shadow passes in front of it, making the girl on the street jump. There's another little girl in that room, she thinks.
She is so lucky.
The voices begin to chatter in her head.
What are we waiting for Lucy?
Go in.
Yes that's right, go in.
You can have that house if you want.
And you do want.
Go in.
Let's take that house.
We can have it as easy as 1-2-3.
Go in.
Before someone see you.
She might have stood there for much longer, shivering in the night, shivering from the crescendo of the voices, shivering at the thought that there is another little girl just like her (but not at all like her) behind the curtains enjoying the light the sense of safety and security if it hadn't begun to rain.
But it did. The sky splits open its grey belly and releases a downpour of cold rain.
The flowers accept the rain as gratefully as the took the sun. Lucy looks upwards and feels the lash of the cloudburst on her raw face.
Lucy wonders if some of the rain might be tears yet.
Now she can't stay out here. Shelter is in short supply for small diclonius girl. Even if she dared remove the one clean piece of clothing she owns from her pocket and cover her horns, her eyes might clue someone in. And the blood of course. Always the blood.
So there really is no other course of action for Lucy; either she takes this house or she staggers off to freeze to death.
Lucy doesn't want to die.
Take the house it is.
O0O0O0O0O0O0O
Two hours after Lucy stumbled up the porch steps, used an arm to destroy the lock and slide the door open undamaged, lurched inside and went to dispose of the family sleeping in their beds, the walls have been painted a new colour.
The paint is the superlative of crimson, splattered like the walls are the canvas of a modern-minded artist. The paintbrushes were the force at which the paint was flung in all directions.
Over the mattress and sheets the parents lay upon and between, the nightgown of the mother, the pyjamas of the father, the pages of the paperback the mother read, the glasses the father wore to read his own book.
And in the other little girl's room over the nice toys the children on bikes wondered about, the nice neat bedspread she was tucked into and the folded, ironed pyjamas she wore.
Pyjamas. And slippers too near the foot of the bed. Lucy hates her.
But Lucy likes the paintjob she gave the house.
The effect is pleasantly familiar. Lucy likes the look of her special type of paint wherever she spreads it; it always confirms something for her.
This confirmation has put her into a good mood. Good enough to sing as she showers in the strangers' bathroom.
Under a hot stream of water she pivots on her heels to make sure every angle of her body is washed by the water, which she has turned up to a scalding temperature. Steam rises off her battered skin. As the dirt is rubbed away by the soap she borrowed from the cabinet, every cut, scrape, bruise and nick Lucy gathered in the past fourteen days is revealed.
Huge quantities of blood is dripping out of her hair while the dirt and filth is going down the drain, collecting in the base of it if it's too large to go down. She feels good. She feels better!
"I deserve this," she reflects out loud, reaching for a towel.
Her pinked skin smokes at the sudden change in climate, but she doesn't mind.
Lucy wraps the first towel around her body, frowning at the bruises, then takes a second and rubs her hair frantically. She laughs for the first time in a long time when she tries to whip the towel off her hair and is caught on one of her horns instead.
Turning off the shower, Lucy goes to the washing machine where she has placed her clothes for their first wash in an embarrassing length. The top and skirt spin dizzily in reddening water inside.
The sight brings a smile to Lucy's cracked lips. She's going to be clean too.
The only part of her wardrobe she neglected to wash is her hat. The one Kohta gave to her…she'll wash that by hand. Slowly and carefully so that every fibre gets a good scrubbing, but isn't mistreated.
Yes, she'll do that now.
She sits down at the kitchen table with the borrowed soap and a wet washcloth. Just as she is sitting down and re-arranging her towel to be less tight across her legs, her stomach rips out an alarming growl: incredible hunger.
When was the last time she ate?
A day? two?
Soon the table is strewn with food wrappers, fruit seeds and soiled plates. Lucy is dressed in her dyer-fresh outfit, finishing her work on the hat. Her stomach is satisfied and the voices are silent.
All is well…or it will be as soon as she takes care of those foot prints.
Coming into the kitchen, she tracked some of her confirmation with her. The footprints of her small shoes are obviously marked all over the kitchen and hall floors, and she surely got some in the stretch of hall between that hated little girl and her parent's room.
She would leave it if she could. To show that she could have nice things too. And all she had to do was take them from the people who had too much and didn't care enough that they did.
She could do that easily.
She wants to leave her footprints as a warning. But the police, she knows they have been tracking her from the gossip she hears passed in worried housewives' voices outside the allies where she roots through the trash, they will find these prints. They will know their mysterious serial killer is a little girl.
Then it's only a matter of time until she is caught and imprisoned. Killed maybe.
She saw a mop in the closet on her way up to the stupid people's bedrooms. She'll use that to wipe away her confirmation, for having seen it just once has been enough.
The confirmation that she is still alive, living, breathing and killing.
The confirmation that she can still draw what the proof itself is inked in.
Blood.