"Adeline?" A voice says from down the hall in the kitchen. A small child runs at me and jumps onto my leg, clinging to it. Who the hell is this kid? "Adeline, oh my goodness it's you!" My mother says as she walks down to me. She stops just a short distance away. "Where have you been? Actually here's a better question, how did you get here?" My mother asks. She hugs me tightly. "You need to leave now" She whispers into my ears. My mother steps away quickly. My father answers her previous question for her, "There's two cars outside filled to the brim with people, food and weapons." My mother looks at me. Pleading me almost.

"It's only been a day and your family is already betraying you" Someone says from upstairs. A tall, ill-boding figure walks down the stair, scratching the walls with a machete. My mother without missing a step, faces the figure and say, "Richard, it's fine we can just kill the ones outside you don't need to do anything drastic." As the figure steps closer and closer to me light slowly shines on their clothes. Torn clothing, tattoo sleeves, cigaret in their mouth. It just screams trouble. 

Mother always said not to judge a book by it's cover, but the smell. The aura, the feeling, the emotions coming off of him wasn't right. Blood on the tip of his ear. Slight tinge of pink on the face.

It's clear to see my family won't help to protect my friends.

I don't think I want to be any where near my family who will murder someone just because someone said something slightly threatening.

It's family instincts though.

Family comes first, they won't care for the others unless your safe first.

"So, you must be Adeline. The Morrow's daughter." The person says walking straight at me. Practically breathing down my neck. The smell of burnt hair enters my nose. That's not normal. In what situation would that be? What makes it more un-natural is that it's coming from his breath. "Yes, that's me. What of it?" I say, holding my position on the floor, attempting to show the confidence I didn't have. The man takes a lock of my hair and breathes it in. 

The weight previously on my leg disappears. The sound of the door shutting behind me distracts me. The concentration I had on the man in front of me, shifts to the door. That was way too fast. How did the kid shut the door so fast? Wait, where the guy I hit and trapped under the door?

In the split second it took me to look at the now close door, a sharp sensation erupts from the back of my left leg. A knife, sat in the centre of my pain. Connected to it the child that was clinging to my leg a second a go. A sickeningly sweet smile on their face. I kneel to the ground, dropping my previously loaded weapon. The bow sliding a distance away and the arrow imbedding itself into the mahogany wood next to me. Facing the door and the child, the "Burns" pulls at the locks of my hair again. Breathing it in, he whispers into my ear, "mea kumakaia means family at this point. I'm part of the pepehi ahaaina. You know what those words mean means princess?"

Mea kumakaia as in Traitor?

Pepehi, Kill?

Ahaaina meaning Feast?x

My family had been caught by a cannibal cult. That would mean, the burnt smell. The only person missing. Vanessa is dead. No there's still a chance the smell is one of their past victims. This still makes no sense though. The gangs were said to be moving from the west side of the city not the east.

The gangs are moving from all the edges of the city inwards. Not from one side to another. Or maybe the are moving like 2 walls meeting in the middle. Like two sides. That explains the mayhem on the streets. Here I was thinking, it was just people fighting each other for things. When really it was them fighting gangs to gain freedom. Of all the houses to survive though. It just had to be mine.

I slowly reach for the arrow in the floor of my past childhood home. I can feel their eyes on me. The cannibals. Their eyes lingering on my hand. They must have a slow reaction time. Anyone would be able to see what I'm doing.

Like lighting, I snatch the arrow out of the ground, Stab 'Burns' in the stomach. He crumples to the ground in a second. The child, snapping out of the trance, jumps, attempting to claw at my eyes and hair.

Then finally the guy that had opened the door previously, jumps on my back. With the air knocked out of my lungs and the weight of a child and a man on my back, I fall to the ground. Something within me clicks. You know that feeling, your going to lose a game or die, and you muster some hidden strength to save yourself. That's what it felt like. Except stronger. Like my life force was draining and being put into, what may be, my last moves.

Adrenaline rushing in my blood, I waste no time, pushing myself off the ground, grabbing the child off my back and flinging them into the stairway post. The child falls limp on the ground. I crumble a little from the knife still in my leg and the guy still trying to push me back on the ground. I turn to face the man fully. I reach down for the knife in my leg and pull it out.

Note to self, stop the blood before you bled out.

I raise the knife above my head. Slamming the entire blade into the guy's head. I pull the bade out like Arthur and the sword in the stone. I then proceed to face "Burns", still on the ground like a pathetic child, crying. So I though any way. He tilts his head to look at me. Tears running down his face from the pain, but a sickening smile on this face. "You know," He says, pausing to cough out some blood, "I was just as weak as your sister." He laughs a petty laugh. "I stabbed her once and she collapsed just like me!" My sister was the strongest person I knew. 

I've seen her break her skull and still live to see another day with no issues. I slap Burns across the face. Causing him to slam onto the ground. He emits a groan of pain. It only last a couple of seconds though before he starts laughing again, except harder. "Ah, I probably look just as pathetic as your sister did. The look on her face as I cut her hair and started a fire with it." He screams a loud, agonising scream. The knife which was only a couple of centimetres into his stomach was now tearing through him and out the other side.

I had swiftly kicked him, directly where the arrow was. He doesn't stop though. He continues his monolog like there was an audience watching him and that his last words would actually mean anything.

"I then cut her limb by limb and used the pile of hair-fire to cook the limbs. It took a while though." He laughs, coughing out more blood. I turn his face with the knife in my hand. "You act like a super villain that will have a large impact of a story. Wanna know the difference between you and the antagonist?" I ask him. He finally pauses his monolog and looks me straight in the eye.

"The antagonist survives the protagonist's final blow." I say before stabbing him over and over again. A rage in my head blinds me. I stab for what felt like eternity. The colour red was the only thing I could see. I had pretty much sliced every part of his body. I couldn't see what I was doing.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had killed the only person protecting me in this house. I then proceeded to pick up the bow and run at my now deathly pale, father. In the short distance between the two of us, I loaded the bow and shot him. Clean through the skull. I would never erase the look of their face from my mind. At least back at the store and so on, I couldn't see who they were.

I walk out of the house. Drenched in blood. Tears streaming down my face. Jack, the first one to notice me, jumps out and runs to me and catching me before I pass out. I feel my legs collapse under my weight. My mind floating on air. I have no family no because of the blood lust I had.