A middle-aged woman sat behind the wheel of the car driving to her destination. Her black hair was short and messy, She wore a bright red long-sleeve dress shirt and a pair of blue jeans, and a pair of bunny slippers. Her hazel brown eyes would often glimmer whenever the sun could shine through the branches of the trees that passed during the car ride. She would repeatedly glance in the rearview mirror at the sight of her daughter Lyra in the back seat of the car humming to herself. Lyra was sixteen at the time. Lyra glanced out the window as light shined through the branches of the trees. She smiled softly to herself every once in a while at the sight of the new change of scenery.
Minutes went by and the small yellow car pulled into the bumpy driveway. Lyra and Her mother had moved into a new neighborhood when her mother got remarried last summer. Lyra had never been too fawn over the man her mother married, he always seemed too controlling and had a problem when it came to drinking.
Lyra got off the car and her long wavy black hair covered her back, her dark brown eyes glistened in the sunlight revealing a small mole underneath her right eye. She gently pulls her hair back into a ponytail and starts to unhook the leverage that had been tied to the roof of the car, later getting distracted by barking coming from the home. “Bo-” she pauses when a tall, lengthy, man emerges from the home with a cold smile.
“Mom,“ Lyra said, “ I thought you said that he wouldn’t be here until this evening?” She questioned while continuing unpacking. “Lyra you’re going to have to get used to him being here, he is your stepfather,” Her mother replied. “Whatever..” Lyra whispered to herself.
Lyra bent over to grab a suitcase but was interrupted by Anthony standing over her. “Let me help you with that” he demanded trying to grab the suitcase but Lyra gently pushed his hand away, “no that’s alright, I can mana-” before she could finish her sentence she was interrupted by Anthony “Don’t worry about it, it’s a man’s job to deal with this kind of stuff so how about you go inside with your mother and get yourself acquainted with everything,” He said with a smile as he grabbed the suitcase from Lyra’s hands. She forcefully let out a giggle and walked away into the home.
Lyra went upstairs and pushes one of the bedroom doors open to a small room. It had enough space in it to fit her bed, a dresser, and a television to mount on one of the walls inside the room. What stood out the most in the room was the giant window, it was placed in the center of the room with a full view of the backyard. The large trees had been perfectly aligned across the lawn. As Lyra gazed upon the tree line, she suddenly felt a cold sensation as if someone watching her. The calls of her mother snapped her away from her trance “Yes!” she replied, later turning away from the window and walking out of the room.
Later that night Lyra was in bed looking up at her ceiling as her loud ceiling fan spin uncontrollably. The light from the moon shined into her window as she pulled her blanket over her head and faced the wall trying to fall asleep. But the sudden urge for something kept her up. Lyra stood up, and faced the window, she looked up towards the sky and smiled peacefully at the sight of the moon glaring down at her face. She closed her eyes and sighed to herself but when she opened them, something ran passed the treeline startling the girl. “What was that? ..” she asked herself in concern, hesitant, she looked back out the window to see nothing. “Huh,” She said, with a chuckle “Maybe I just imagined it, I should get to bed...”
Months passed and Lyra’s 17th Birthday is a week from now. As she sat outside, the wind blew through her hair as she looked up at the sky daydreaming away while thinking about her life. Her happy state of mind constantly faded away throughout the time she had been living there. She’d gotten used to her mother and stepfather, arguing. Her stepfather had been drinking more than usual since he lost his job a month ago due to the lack of him showing up and her mother’s absence, at home from working overnight.
As she sat on the grass, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway came to Lyra’s attention. The car door opens to the sight of her mother, Lyra smiled and waved at her mother. Her mother waved back with a forced smile, then headed into the home.
Lyra had noticed the mood changes when it came to her mother, she knew she’d been exhausted from the lack of sleep, and working all those hours at her job. In a way, Lyra had felt bad for her mother but she knew there was nothing she can do to convince her mother to leave knowing the situation they were been in.
“I just hope things can get better…” she muttered to herself silently as she leaned back now laying on the grass.
The night before her birthday, Lyra sat at the dinner table, alone, fiddling with her now-cold food. She looks over to see her stepfather leaning over the rocking chair asleep while holding onto an empty beer bottle. The static of the television gets louder as the drunken man sleeps. Annoyed, Lyra gets up and turns off the television while her stepfather continues to nod off. She walks away, leaving her plate of food, and goes upstairs.
The sound of the stairs woke the man from his sleep, regaining his consciousness, Anthony noticed Lyra was no longer sitting at the table where he last saw her before he dozed off. He stands and drinks the last of his leftover beer and slowly began to walk up the stairs.
The next morning, Lyra came downstairs to Elizabeth cooking breakfast in the kitchen and her stepfather reading the newspaper. He looks up from looking over the paper at Lyra. She froze and gripped her shirt, tightly.
Her mother called. “Is everything alright?” She asked, concerned. Lyra didn’t respond to the question, she just simply nodded her head and sat at the table across from her stepfather. He lets out a slight chuckle and looks back down at the paper.
Lyra continues to look down into her lab while fiddling with her fingers, deep in her thoughts until her mother set a plate of flapjacks in front of the girl. It had been decorated with icing and diced with blueberries. “Happy birthday, I made you favorite” Elizabeth said with enthusiasm. Lyra still couldn’t find the words, so much had happened last night and she had forgotten about her birthday.
“Thank you” Lyra replied with a soft tone. Elizabeth smiled and walk back towards the kitchen to clean up the mess. Lyra glanced at the man sitting across from her and to not her surprise he was looking at her with those same eyes…the same eyes…
After the next few days, Elizabeth had taken a few days off from work. She figured that it would be nice to hang out with her daughter as they used to before they moved. But something had been wrong with Lyra for the last couple of days now, she hadn’t been smiling or speaking with the same amount of happiness, and she even started to isolate herself in her room more often… Even treating her to her favorite desserts wasn’t enough to satisfy the girl. “Something's off,” Elizabeth thought to herself.
Before Lyra went off to school, Elizabeth gently grabbed a whole of the girl’s hand.
“Lyra.. what has been bothering you? You’ve been acting strange and it’s bothering me.” Lyra stared at her mother and slowly started to cry when she gave in and tell her mother what her stepfather did to her that day. Elizabeth looked at Lyra in disbelief and disgust at what the girl had been telling her mother at that moment. Not knowing what to do, Elizabeth embraced her daughter when tear’s started to trickle down the woman’s face.
That night, Anthoney came home. He flung his bags onto the couch and took a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket along with a small red light as he calls the names of his family to no avail.
The man sighed with the flickering of his lighter. Elizabeth flicks on the light to the darkened kitchen when her husband turned around, “What? No welcome home? Look I don’t have time for your shit today.” The man said muffled by the cigarette in his mouth. Elizabeth didn’t reply to the man, she just stood there in silence and began to clench tighter onto the kitchen knife she had been hiding behind her back...
Lyra sits up from her bed to the struggles of her mother and father downstairs before hearing a loud BANG. Lyra desperately runs downstairs, her inner thought taking over the last of her insanity as it had gotten louder and louder the closer she got to the end of the stairs. She jumped down the last of the stairs and was directed to the commotion in the kitchen. She stopped and froze and placed to the sight of blood on the countertop, and floor.
Hesitantly, she slowly started to walk around the counter. “M-mom?” She said with a slight shiver, she held her breath as she began to cover her mouth in disturbance and disbelief. Her mother had been stabbed to death, and Her stepfather had been standing over her mother’s now lifeless body, breathing heavily and the sound of him mumbling to himself.
“I told you not to tell anyone…now look what you made me do” he turns towards Lyra holding the bloody weapon, “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!” That was enough for Lyra to quickly run out of the house in the direction of the forest, and her stepfather quickly followed behind her.
The echoes of Lyra’s name were being called from the darkened forest. Lyra had been running for what felt like forever, not realizing that her face had been getting cut by the sharp branches. The forest had been so dark that Lyra hadn’t know where she was going and by that she didn’t see the large stump sticking out of the ground and which caused her to trip and land face-first. The blood-curdling scream from Lyra had to lead her murderess stepfather right to her. Lyra tried to get up and run but Antony had caught up to the girl and quickly yanked her back to the ground.
Lyra kicked and scream as her weighted stepfather held her down. “This is all your fault,” The man said when he ripped the branch from her right eye, taking her entire eyeball from her socket. She screamed, the sharp pain in her stomach from the knife her stepfather plunged into her. She continued to scream and started to plead for someone, anyone to help her but to no avail. To silence the screaming Anthony held the knife and plunged it into the side of her neck. Lyra gargled on her blood and took her last breaths. The last thing she remembered was her mother, and how much she had been suffering and then everything faded to darkness.
This just in next door neighbor finds the bodies of Elizabeth Miller and her husband Anthoney Grayson in their home brutally slaughtered and the body of their daughter Lyra Miller was never found...
More tonight at 9...