anger she holds against my father is magnified tenfold
against herself. Zack and I might forgive her weakness,
but she won’t ever forgive herself.
In the kitchen Missie struggled against the
ropes that bound her to the chair. Zack had placed a
gag in her mouth for good measure. The last thing we
needed was Missie hollering for the cops. It was also
my idea to kill Missie. Mamma’s face took on a grim
expression when I told her of my plan, but she didn’t
try to stop me. I’ve taken charge of this family now
and that’s a good thing, too. Quite a responsibility for
a sixteen-year-old, but I’ve never felt like much of a
child anyhow. We’ve never been a real family
anyway—Father drunk and out of work most of the
time, Mamma not over the effects of her ‘nervous
breakdown’. Zack hasn’t been right since Father
smashed his skull in two places. And Missie, well….
It was really Missie’s own fault that she had to
die. She was always Father’s favourite, spared the
beatings and the blows that Zack and I regularly
suffered. Maybe because she was his first child he
developed an attachment to her. She was Father’s pet,
always sticking up for him. Missie could do no wrong
in his eyes. She’d deliberately set up Zack and me so
Father would be angry at us, never at her. The thing I
can’t forgive is the pleasure she took at doing this, at
seeing us suffer. She actually laughed when Father beat
us, treating these painful incidents as though they were
a spectacle engineered for her entertainment. And who
knows? Maybe there is a twisted sort of truth to that.
As I grew so did my hatred for Missie. She
drained all of Father’s love so there wasn’t even a drop
left for Zack and me. I was convinced that if Missie
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