It is an ordinary night.
We are sat around the table, as we usually are, as a family. We are happy.
There is Mom and Dad at the head of the table, and opposite them, Grandma and Grandad. Ryan to my right. Sadie to my left.
Dad is telling a funny story from his day at work, and everyone laughs as Mom ladles more meatloaf on to Grandad’s plate.
In response, Grandma makes a snide remark under her breath, which sends everyone again into fits of giggles as Dad feigns exaggerated anger.
Outside, the night is dark, but it in this kitchen we are bathed in gentle orange light, and we are warm and safe.
I look down at my meal, ravenous after baseball practice earlier today, forking a crispy potato and wolfing it down.
Sadie is just beginning to talk about her irritating new professor, when I happen to look up at the sliding glass door which leads into the backyard. Into the woods.
There is a large silhouette pressed against the glass, illuminated only by the pale moon behind it.
I am suddenly staring into a pair of deep yellow eyes. Cold. Predatory.
Before I can even register what I am seeing the door shatters, glass buckling and rippling as it explodes into tiny fragments.
The figure bursts inside; a man. He is tall and broad-shouldered, with a scraggly beard. In the light, his face looks mad, animalistic, unhinged.
He is wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, with a black tracksuit, and thick black steel-toed boots. The kind of thing you wear when you want to go unseen.
Around me, I feel my family shift and cower backwards in response, instinctively.
The man surges towards us, waving a long, stainless steel machete.
Everything goes into slow motion.
I see Dad rise from his seat as Sadie screams.
Grandad, who has his back directly to the man, stares at the rest of us in fear and surprise, beginning to turn around.
The machete is swung downwards and smacks into my Grandad’s skull with a solid thwack.
Blood splatters across the dinner table.
Grandad makes no noise, simply tips out of his seat onto the floor. We are all screaming in horror now, all except Dad who stands silent, as if he is bracing himself. Ryan falls to the floor and scrabbles backwards against the wall, shouting ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit’, over and over again.
The man yanks the machete free from Grandad’s head, and stalks around the table. Grandma falls to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, shaking her husband of 50 year’s body. Trying to wake him up.
The man latches onto his next target: Mom. She begins to plead with him, speaking almost indecipherable gibberish in her terror, but I make out ‘You don’t have to do this.’. Her arms are stretched out in front of her, as if to ward away the 24 inches of sharpened, gleaming metal.
The man grabs my mother by the hair and tugs her forward into his own body; at the same time running her through with the machete. As she shrieks in shock and agony, he tears it out and repeats the action, furiously lacerating her abdomen and belly five more times, until she collapses, insides ripped open, splattering her favourite carpet with chunks of gizzard and intestine.
I shut my eyes, still frozen to my chair, weeping silently, praying.
I hear grunts of anger and exertion and open my eyes; my Dad is grappling with the man, having pinned his weapon hand against the fridge. Dad headbutts the man in the nose, and I hear a stomach churning crack as the intruder yelps in pain.
Then, Dad receives a fist to the groin, sending him sprawling back on to the dining table. His elbow goes into the gravy.
Dad dives for the man again, but slips in the slick blood which coats the floor, losing his balance; the man swings the machete back down, slicing clean through Dad’s hand. Dad cries out as the fingers of his left-hand are separated from his body, but adrenaline pushes him on. He shoulder barges the man back into the fridge.
Now, I see Sadie leap to her feet; she is in fight-or-flight mode. She runs around the table and begins to help Dad, grabbing the man’s leg and tugging him down, on to the ground.
Grandma still weeps next to Grandad’s corpse, beginning to wail loudly. The sound is soul-destroying.
I realise that the machete is imbedded in the balsa wood table, stuck in place next to the amputated half of Dad’s hand. The man is unarmed.
I seize my chance and grab on to the handle, desperately trying to tug it free.
Sadie has taken over from Dad, pummeling the mans face as they roll around on the floor. Dad leans back against the kitchen drawers, clutching what’s left of his hand, face ashen white.
The man latches on to Sadie’s waist and hurls her upwards with unbelievable, freakish force; she flies through the air, smacking into the ceiling fan before hurtling back downwards, crashing into the floor. I realise just how strong this man is, and I begin to shake.
The man gets to his feet, panting, breathing heavily. He looks at my Dad, who is now a pitiful sight, groaning, tongue lolling. He slowly ambles towards him. He grabs on to my Dad’s shirt colour and drags him across the floor. Dad kicks and squirms, but it is no use; in his weakened state, he is powerless against this beast of a man.
I dive around the table and grab on to the man’s waste, trying to pull him away from Dad. The man elbows me in the ribs, swatting me away. I gasp for air as the oxygen is blown clean from my lungs, and I writhe on the floor, suffocating.
I watch in anguish, unable to help, as the man forces my Dad’s throat onto the shards of broken glass which litter the floor, viciously twisting his neck from side to side, so that his windpipe is shredded. I see bubbles of crimson swell and pop from the jagged tear in his larynx, and stare into my father’s eyes as he gurgles and chokes on his own blood.
Still grandma weeps on her knees, face in hands. For the first time, the man seems to notice her there, and he grins a cruel and sadistic grin. He picks up a fork from the now-gore-covered dining table.
He lifts my Grandma’s head by the hair. I can see her begging him silently to spare her. Suddenly and quickly, the man stabs upwards under her chin and into the bottom of her jaw. He forces the fork further, impaling her tongue and skewering the roof of her mouth. I close my eyes again and wish for her to die quickly.
She moans in pain as her mouth fills with blood. In the end, she suffers the same fate as the son-in-law she loved to hate; drowning in a pool of blood.
I scan the room in despair. The corpses of my grandparents and my parents litter the kitchen. Ryan is in a corner, knees clutched to his chest, catatonic, rocking. I want to scream at him to be a man, to fight.
Sadie has risen from the floor and is staggering back at the man, now carrying a frying pan. With the machete still buried in the middle of the table, the man is unarmed, and the two circle each other warily. Sadie swings at him, and he dodges out of the way with surprising speed for a man of his imposing size. He attempts a kick at her, but she jumps back, following up with a forceful blow with the man into his collarbone.
I see the shape of his shoulder shift and bend, and he lets out a low groan, falling backwards into the kitchen counter. He is clutching his probably broken shoulder, but he never lets out a sound apart from the frequent groans of pain. It unnerves me, how he never says a word.
Sadie runs at him, screaming a battle cry, and I cheer her on within my mind. I feel my own strength coming back, and for a single second I think that we might actually beat this monster. I limp towards the man, following Sadie.
The man, for the first time, looks afraid as Sadie bears down upon him; I can see him searching desperately around him for a weapon. Then, I see his eyes light up as he spots what his next to him. A large meat mallet. The kind for tenderizing steaks.
He grabs it just as Sadie is about to bring the pan down on his head. He blocks the blow with his new tool, and Sadie’s own momentum flings her backwards. The man seizes the opportunity and cracks the meat mallet down onto the Sadie’s face. She doesn’t make a sound; she just goes suddenly limp, limbs quivering like the jelly we were supposed to have for dessert. She crumbles to the carpet.
I stop in my tracks, resigned to what is coming.
The top right quarter of Sadie’s face is gone, a rigid square imprint dug deep into her head.
Her skull seems to have caved in around the impact; where the slopes of her nose and cheekbone should be, there is only a wrinkled and bloody hole, descending down to a flattened eye, leaking yellow fluid. The pupil has burst; black slime oozes across my sister’s face. Shattered teeth jut out of ruptured gums.
I lock eyes with the man, and I swear he seems to smile at me before lifting one of those big black steel-toed boots, and stomping down on Sadie’s head.
He turns her visage into a puddle of meat paste and mushed brain.
I do not utter a word, I simply rush at him, punching any piece of him I can, biting, scratching, kicking, clawing. He smashes my knee with the mallet, and my vision explodes into red sparks of agony. I feel the metal glance off the top of my head, and I am falling.
I wake with a start on the floor, biting my lip so hard I start to bleed to stop myself from screaming from the onslaught of pain which hits me. I cannot decide if my knee or head hurts more, as if they are both competing to see who can drag me to a deeper circle of hell.
Across the room, Ryan is still in his catatonic state, still wordlessly rocking back and forth.
The man approaches him slowly, knowing he has all the time in the world. I can see those horrible eyes analyse my brother, deciding how to toy with him.
The man approaches the sink and turns on the hot tap, twisting it as far as it will go. He dips a finger into the water and withdraws it quickly, wincing, sucking on the scald. He wait for the sink to be full, then turns off the tap.
Ryan does not protest as the man lifts him. He makes no sound as his face is positioned above the boiling water.
No, my brother only starts to writhe and flounder as he is submerged in it.
I close my eyes and do not watch, too numb to cry, praying he drowns.
I hear a thump as Ryan’s body hits the floor, and rapid footsteps leaving the room, going down the hallway.
I begin to crawl across the kitchen floor, passing the corpses of my family as I do so. I wince as a floorboard creaks, expecting any minute for the man to sprint back into the room and finish me off. But he never comes; I can hear him making his way through the house, slamming doors. There is always a commotion in each room he enters, as if he is tearing each room apart. As if he is searching for something.
I reach the kitchen counter and brace myself. I use the drawers as a ladder to slowly, agonizingly pull myself up to standing. Instantly, my head erupts into burning pain, and I throw up onto the counter. There are flecks of blood in the viscous fluid.
I stay like that, hunched over, silently retching, until the pain begins to subside.
I reach out for the knife rack and withdraw the longest blade, serrated, shining wickedly in the light.
Slowly, I limp out of the kitchen, whimpering every time I put weight on my shattered knee.
I am looking for him, making my way along the central hallway of our house.
Is he in my bedroom? No, but the bed is flipped over and the contents of my closet is strewn across the carpet.
Is he in the bathroom? No, but the pills from the medicine cupboard are spilled across the ground, and one of the floorboards as been pried up.
Then, I reach a closed door. My parents bedroom. I can hear him in there; a loud crash as he shoves over the grandfather clock which has been in our family for generations.
I wait outside the room, to the left of the door, hardly daring to breathe, clutching the knife tightly between both hands.
You have the advantage. He thinks you’re dead.
I try to reassure myself, try to work myself up.
He thinks you’re dead. You can gut him like a fish.
Suddenly, the door swings open. In a flash, I jam the knife directly into the man’s chest, up to the hilt.
He falls backwards with a cry, and in another second I am on top of him, straddling him. He gasps with shock, face white as a sheet, eyes round like saucers.
I yank the knife free, revelling in his second shriek of pain. He is hyperventilating. We stare at each other.
I begin to trace the knife across his face, following the curve of his ear and cheek.
It is so beautiful, like a marble statue. I want to mold it for myself. But I wait.
‘Where shall we start?’ I giggle.
The man opens his mouth to speak:
‘You’re sick. You’re all sick. You got what you fucking deserved, every single one of you’.
He tries to appear tough, but I can smell his fear. He reeks of it.
I slice the knife deep into his cheek, angling the blade as my parents showed me. He gives up on his macho act, beginning to sob.
‘Please, just let my daughter go. Please’.
I throw back my head, and laugh.
‘Please. Please. Just…just tell me where my daughter is.’
Tears stream down my face as I shake with mirth. The man continues to beg.
‘Please. At least tell me where she’s buried. Let me have that, won’t you? Let me know what you monsters did with her.’
I press my face down until it is right up against his, smiling so wide that my lips ache. I whisper to him:
‘You want to know what we did with her? Why don’t you go back in there….’
My saliva drips onto him as I drool with anticipation.
‘…and take a closer look at that meatloaf.’
He begins to blubber as I lift the knife.
My body courses with primal pleasure as his screams fill the night.