A brand new fanfic... this is still being semi-developed, so please let me know what you think!

Prologue

"Mom?"

The wooden door to our renovated Victorian home creaked open with an eerie squeal. The entry hall was dark, almost as if the shadows were clawing out to me. I frowned into the lack of light, somewhat frightened by it and the lack of response. Not a sound echoed throughout the historic building where I was born and lived for five years, not even a distant creak or groan of the dark wooden floors.

I was instantly curious- and worried. Mom was always home when I got home from school, usually making eyes at my father, who returned them with a passion. A lot of kids my age said that their parents were divorced- a real fancy term that meant they weren't together anymore. But anyone could take one look at my parents and tell that they were still completely in love with each other. Even me, at the young age of five. So hearing no response was something to be concerned about, indeed.

I stepped through the threshold, kicking off high black shoes. I poked my head around the wall that separated the living room from the hallway, seeing nothing but more darkness, and a shadow of the twilight sun peering in through the large bay window. Swivelling my head the other way, I did notice a figure: a long-haired woman sitting alone on the couch, her locks covering her face in a shadow. It was surely my mother, though I had never seen her this way before- without my father, and very downcast.

So, being the young and oblivious child I was, I automatically trotted up to her with a large grin on my face. "I'm home, mom," I sang, trying to get under her curtain of dark hair so she would look at me. She didn't. She barely even acknowledged my presence.

My brows furrowed in worry. "Mommy? Are you sick?"

She did look at me then. Slowly she lifted her head, completely eclipsed in shadow, and even a child like me could see that the look on her face was not pleasant. Her eyes were filled with such an intense, hollow devastation that suddenly my next words became strangled in my throat. Those aqua eyes, usually so filled with cheer and life, were completely void of any emotion.

Considering that she still wasn't talking, I waved a hand in front of her vacant face, though it was trembling. "Mom?" I asked again, my voice shaking. "Are you okay? Where's Dad?"

After a few long, painstaking moments of silence, my mother barely whispered two words that changed everything: my normal life, who I was, who she was to me. She stared at me, that same empty look in her eyes, and simply said, "He's gone."

My heart, usually the pace of a hummingbird's wings, suddenly stopped and was dropped into the endless pit that was my stomach. As expected, my first reaction was denial; my daddy wouldn't go anywhere, not without me and the woman he desperately loved. But then I realized with horror that Mom was telling the truth. The vacant look in her eyes, his notable absence- my father had left.

"Where… did he go?" I asked, struggling hard not to cry.

My mother's eyes flashed with something I had never seen before in my life: insanity.

"They took him," she growled, fisting her hands in her long black skirt. "They took him from me. No…" She turned those mad, mad eyes on me, completely wild and darting everywhere like a frightened chameleon. "You took him from me."

Tears did start rolling down my cheeks, then. Big, fat tears that coloured my cheeks red and made snot drip out of my nose. "What do you mean?" I demanded sorrowfully, following her as she suddenly shot up from her spot and swiftly glided to the kitchen. "What do you mean 'he's gone'? What do you mean by 'I took him away'?!"

Mom didn't answer; she was a statue in the diner-tiled kitchen, the only thing that proved she was still aware the mad darting of her eyes. Something caught her attention, and she made her ways to one of the many drawers that created a sort of barrier around us.

"Mommy, you're scaring me," I whimpered, broken sounds of distress escaping my lips even though I tried to prevent them.

She wasn't listening to me; she was rummaging through the large, white drawer, completely focused on her task. I was about to start screaming at her when she finally found what she was looking for, and my voice completely died.

She brandished a large, deadly-looking kitchen knife, the one I had seen her use multiple times to cut meat and cook it like an evil mastermind. She inspected it with a scrutinizing eye, like checking for any imperfections that might hinder her task. Then, very, eerily slowly, she turned her head around to look at me, with a wide smile on her face that was not at all pleasant.

"Muh… Mommy…?" I asked again, my voice rapidly becoming more of a rasp. I backed up as she suddenly began striding towards me, the knife hanging from her side in an iron grasp.

Mom lifted the knife, and it glinted like flames in the twilight sun seeping through the window like bloody tears. That's when I began to run, bolting through the house while dodging any pointy surfaces that would jut out in my way and try to disrupt my path. Even as I ran through the living room and down the hallway, I could always hear her calm footsteps behind me, a rhythm that was much slower than the pounding of my heart and the tears streaming from my eyes.

The fatal error occurred when I tripped, just one little screw-up of my sock foot, against a triangular flap sticking out from the carpet that Dad always tried to fix by stepping on it firmly. Apparently, it never worked. Mom was suddenly right above me, that wide grin on her face creating ugly, unnatural lines that made her seem like a completely insane stranger.

A coppery taste was pooling in my mouth; the jarring sensation of my head thudding against the floor had caused me to bite my tongue. I opened my mouth, to call her name, to scream for help, something- and I choked back on it, coughing up red and staining the carpet.

My mother- the woman that loved me, raised me, adored my father- rose the deadly blade high above her head, a menacing snarl replacing the creepy grin. My eyes widened in horror just before she slashed it down and hurt me, cut me much beyond physical repair.

Just before she brought it down, I let out a cry and she said some words, so casual and clearly stated that they cut me even deeper than the knife.

"No one will miss you."