Anne

When Anne got home, she didn’t notice anything different at first. As she stepped through the house, she noticed. The house was lonely. The atmosphere in the air made the house feel cold, empty.

When she left this morning, the house was filled with the smells of breakfast and the sounds of sleepy children busying to get to school on time. John, her husband, would already be on his way to work. The rising sun would be illuminating the rooms, curtains of gold filing through the windows. When she would get home at night after work, the house would be warm and inviting. The light fixtures imitating natural light, brightening the rooms enough to find your way through the house. The smell of dinner just getting done. Her family would be gathering around the dinner table, ready to spend time with one another after the day apart. Hero’s claws heard clacking around on the wooden floors as he sat under the table, awaiting the stray scrap that found it’s way onto the floor.

Today was a different day. The emptiness and silence throughout the house dazed Anne as if she had been hit by a truck. The mystifying change that happened in the 12 hours of her absence confused her. Finally her mind shifted, she was now thinking about where everybody could be. Hero hadn’t even greeted her at the door. Her mind instantly ran to the worst possibilities. Things like her husband packing up and taking everybody with him to a far off place or some sick stranger coming into her home and taking her loved ones. Once she started thinking about these horrible things she couldn’t stop.

She stepped through the kitchen and into the living room, calling out for anybody. Desperately hoping for an answer. After a minute, she realized nobody was there so she started walking through the house. She checked bedrooms and bathrooms and after coming up empty handed she headed to the basement. At the top of the basement stairs, she clicked on the dim basement lights and waited a few seconds before the lights popped on. She stepped down the stone stairs, her shoes clacking at each step.

As she turned the corner into the main portion of the basement something fell over. A box full of metal junk had fallen from the top of other boxes, creating a commotion of noise for just a second. Moments later a rat raced from behind the boxes and through a hole near the stairs. All this sudden activity startled Anne and she had backed herself against a wall with a frightened expression on her face. After the rat ran past her Anne let out a large sigh, only then noticing she hadn’t been breathing during all of that.

The eeriness of the silence freaked Anne out. Her mind ran a million miles a second. Only stopping to think about the worst possible situations that could have happened. She dropped her things and started around the house in search for any life. She was panicked at this reality her horrible brain had created. When she couldn’t find anyone in the normal everyday rooms, she headed for the attic.
When she got to the attic door she remembered they had a door on it that they usually kept locked. She wiggled the door knob up and down, but it wouldn’t budge. She took a step back and rammed her body into the door. Thankfully the door was about 80 years old and almost completely rotten through and through. It broke. The hinge and knob were stayed where they should, but the wood of the door collapsed at the weight of Anne, leaving a human shaped hole in the door.

Inside the room, what she saw horrified her. Ema and Hero had been slaughtered. Their bodies roughly butchered. She could identify the remains by the bloody scalp that still had tufts of white blonde hair attached to it. The white blonde hair ran through the family as if it were a disease. If you were even remotely related to them, you would have white blonde hair. All that was left of Hero was his fur, skin, and eyeballs. It was laid out is if it were a bearskin rug. The missing intestines were nowhere to be found. Even the fish was butchered. In a pile sat the golden outer of the fish, mixed with organs so small that they would only fit inside a fish of it’s size.
Anne stood there horrified. She didn’t notice the dark figure in the corner because she had been so focused on the horror that was laid in front of her. When the figure stepped forward, she jumped.She could only assume that it was the monster that did this. She tried her best to identify the man, but she couldn’t. All that she saw was darkness. The thing had no shape to it. She could only assume it was a man by the size of it. It stood a good two feet taller than her. It was as wide as a bear. Immense fear crept up in her as she stood examining this creature. She had never been more afraid. The mere sight of this thing could make her forget about the gore strewn about. All she could think about was how afraid she was.
Suddenly the thing started speaking. As the creature spoke so suddenly, Anne felt it draining her. She felt it stealing her consciousness, she was terrified. She couldn't move to protest against the creature. She had to endure the pain of it. The pain was excruciating. It could make an elephant tremble. All at once it stopped. All of it.

She opened her eyes to her husband standing over her. The worry in his eyes was clear to her. Over the years of being married they had learned how to recognize different emotions in each other. A millisecond of a brow furrowing could be caught by their eye. The worry in his eyes wasn't alone. He was afraid. Of what? She didn't know. She looked around the room, taking in her surroundings that she had laid in the night before.
She noticed she was soaked in sweat. The cold morning breeze swept against the damp skin making her cold. She sat up, shivering at the thought of the nightmare. Her husband looked at her as if he was asking a question. She just sighed, "I had another nightmare." He had suspected as much. She had been having frequent nightmares for the past two months. They were usually much more timid, but lately they've been getting horrible. She's been keeping herself awake to avoid the nightmares, but sometimes when her body couldn't take it sleep took over and she would wake to this.

Her husband was a stay-at-home artist, following his lifelong dream of creating art for a living. Anne was a lawyer that specialized in business disputes. When a customer or another company was suing, she would be called to defend her client in court. She'd always been an excellent lawyer, but as the nightmares took over, the quality of her work began to decline. Her clients started losing cases at her expense. The firm that she worked at noticed and she was told to get it together. When she didn't they put her on paid leave even though most her payment was from clients. She was the best lawyer there so they needed her.

Nobody had any idea of why she had been having these nightmares. It was like they appeared out of nowhere. She had been to numerous therapists and doctors and all came to the same conclusion; there wasn't a reason. She was just having them. She slowly got to her feet, careful to not collapse like the mornings when she first started having them.
Her husband placed his hand on her hip for cautious support. He didn't fully understand what was happening, but he stood by her anyway. When she was standing, he left her to get the children ready. They had two children. A beautiful little girl with golden brown eyes and white blonde hair was sitting at the table, ready for school. That was Ema. She's about 6 and a half years old. Her other child, Nathan, too had white blonde hair and golden brown eyes. They look so similar that many have thought they were twins, even with the 3 year age gap.
Once he had left the room, Anne walked over to her mirror and stared at her reflection. These dreams where killing her. Her once youthful and beautiful face was now drooped and aged like she was 20 years older. The truth was she was only 2 years older than that beautiful version of herself that she no longer sees. She hadn't realized how long she had been staring until she heard her husband and kids yell a goodbye to her. She kept silent and quietly made her way through her morning routine; a shower, dressing, and breakfast.
On her way out the door she looked around the house, hoping that her kids would be there when she came back. Her day was uneventful at work, nothing happened.
Once she got home, her nightmare came true. Nobody was there. Her mind started to race like before and she hurried up to the attic. When she opened the door, her husband was there, laying on the floor. He noticed her sudden appearance in the room and sat up, "Hello dear. You look frightened." He said in an eerily calm voice. Her breathing was still quite accelerated, but she spoke anyways. "Where are the kids?" Her voice had worry all throughout it. He chuckled and looked at her with sinister green eyes, "They are in a room, scared to death from what is happening." He stood up slowly, "I believe that you are a danger to them so I took them before you could do anything to them. I will take care of them by myself from now on." He brushed off his shirt and fixed an askew button.
Her eyes widened as she heard what he did. She became wild and crazed with rage, she ran over to him and screamed and shook him, "How could you take my babies away! They need me! Give me my children!" He tried to push her away, but she was persistent, "You're not getting those children back. You're too dangerous to be around them. What if you had hurt them? You don't even know what you do when you sleep walk! You tear things up!" Anne didn't care what he was saying.
She started to push him back towards the window. He tried to stop her, but he couldn't get his feet under him. She pushed him back against the window and pushed his head back against the glass. The windows glass cracked and shattered all across the floor around them. His face contorted as his head smashed through the window. There was now blood dripping down his neck and back. He was stunned and out of it when Anne picked up a piece of broken glass. He finally saw what she had in her hand and is eyes widened at what she might do.
She spoke up in a voice that he had never heard before, "Where are my children? You better tell me or I'll kill you!" He shook his head, refusing her offer. She put the piece of glass up against his throat, a dribble of blood flowing gently down his throat from a nick from the glass as she held it against him. "Tell me!" She yelled at him. He shook his head and spoke up in a broken voice, "No, you'll have to kill me because I'm not going to tell you where they are." Madness flared up in her eyes and she pushed the glass up into his throat and slid it across, slicing his throat open.
Blood started pouring out as his life slipped away from him. His body became limp and heavy as she let go of him. It slid to the floor in a pile of flesh. Her rage boiled down and she calmed as a breeze of air pushed through the newly made cracks in the window.
She started to think again. Where could he have put the children? She looked down at the blood soaked floor and didn't feel a smidge of remorse for what she just did. She had never killed anyone before but the rush she got from watching the life drain from somebodys eyes made her feel whole. As her mind wandered to the subject she caught herself and started thinking of possible locations her children could be. She grabbed her husband's body and shoved it into a nearby closet.

Once she caught her breath she hurried downstairs and standing in the middle of the living room floor was herself. She was confused at first but then she saw her children sitting quietly on the couch. Their faces twisted in pain and horror, but no sound came from them. She watched as the anne in front of her turned to the children. She tried to step forward but she couldn't move her feet. The anne in front of her grabbed the children by the throats and the sound from their mouths burst through the invisible wall previously holding back their cries. The screaming and crying stung her ears so she covered her ears and shut her eyes, crouching to the floor with tears streaming down her face.

Suddenly the children stopped and she cautiously looked up. The anne was gone and sitting where her children were was 2 dolls, covered in blood and gore. Suddenly she woke up.
The white room felt like someone surrounded the walls with fire. She was dripping in sweat and the room was dark except for the moonlight peeking in from a cracked and barred window on the other side of the room. As her breathing slowed she remembered where she really was. She was admitted to a mental hospital.
Two years before this night she came home from work normally and went to bed. Snuggling with her husband. Around 2 a.m. a loud crash came from the living room. She woke up and crawled into her closet without thinking. Her husband was still asleep and her two children were in their rooms down the hall. She muffles a scream when a dark figure entered the room. She couldn't move. She was scared half to death. The figure walked over to her husband and started strangling him. Her husband fought but the figure slammed her husband's head against the headboard and quickly cut his throat with the knife that he had. Anne was muffling her sobs and looked around the closet for anything to help if he came for her.
She sighed in relief as the figure left the room. She slowly crept out of the closet and peered through the doorway. She saw as the figure entered one of her kids rooms and murdered her baby. She could tell that her children weren't going to make it by the screams she heard coming from them. The figure stepped out of the room as her little boy tried to run out. He caught the kid and pushed him into his room and hideous screams came as he died. Once everything was silent, the figure strolled out of the room more silent than he came in.
She ran into her little boys room and cradled his body as the little bits of life drained from him. She heard sirens in the distance coming closer to the house. The neighbors must had called the cops. When the emergency vehicles stopped at her house and a police squad came into the house they saw her and assumed she was the one who killed her family since she was the only one alive after the horrible murder.
She kept blaming herself for what happened and was arrested and wrongly convicted. She believed she deserved this treatment. In prison she was repeatedly abused and treated horribly by many other inmates, enforcing her blame. After about 2 years in prison, the court found the real murderer and released Anne. She was given a hundred thousand dollars in compensation, but she gave all of it away. Half a year later she was committed into a mental institution after someone found her rambling on about how she killed her family.