It was oddly beautiful: the sight of her mother laying, as she always did in her sleep, so still and calm on her back while beneath her a red viscous pool soaked into her favorite linens. She would hate that, for her favorite sheets to be soiled so rudely. Alice stared, her eyes wide and unblinking as they followed the gentle flow of the blood as it violated the perfect order that her mother had been trying so very hard to maintain. Oh yes, the mess was something beautiful and blasphemous that would not be accepted in the Morgan household, and Alice made sure to burn the image into her mind so that it would belong to her forever. She wished so dearly to freeze this moment, to crystallize it in amber like the insects from the garden she'd used to collect as a child. She'd just carry it always, tucked away in her bosom as her private shining thing that her parents would be unable to rob her of. No, Alice thought with a smile, mummy and daddy couldn't steal this from her.

There was a feeling running through her veins, an almost electric type of heat that was strange and new to her. The feeling was nothing too perverse of course, she certainly wasn't getting off on this, but she understood her own mind and what emotions the flood of neurotransmitters in her head was creating to understand the mood as excitement. How silly of her, wasting time being so very moved at this sight. She still had work she needed to do.

Daddy dearest sat where he always did during mummy's naps, with his headphones packed tightly into his wrinkly little ears, blasting whatever orchestral piece best suited him today loudly enough to compensate for his increasingly poor hearing. Alice leaned against the doorway of his office and allowed the feeling of excitement to once again fade into the feeling of calm. With each slow breathe that she took all obstructing emotions faded into oblivion. The gun in her hand still felt warm as she aimed it.

She'd read many accounts of what serial killers and soldiers and the occasional drunk felt when they ended the life of another and it was always something very dramatic. Fear, rage, ecstasy, righteousness, sexual excitement. But when she ran her finger across the trigger, preparing for the moment when she'd pull it, all sensations were gone. Her heartbeat was wonderfully slow as she allowed her mind to go over every step she would go through to ensure this entire affair went off without a hitch. Alice took a step forward so that she stood only a few feet away from where her father sat with his eyes closed, utterly engulfed in his music.

His hands moved slowly back and forth to the beat of his music. The old fool hadn't even heard the sound of wife dying. Alice held the gun firmly in both hands, keeping everything steady and still. Her father's ignorance to it all was almost laughable.

Alice pulled the trigger and as the sound echoed through the house she once again watched the most perfect thing she thought a person could ever see: a moment of pure, unadulterated evil. The crushing of a person's existence, their thoughts, and memories, their very future into pure nothingness leaving nothing behind but a cold, dead shell to rot. The sound of the gunshot faded and a silence fell so thick it coated the air and mixed with the smell of blood and gunpowder until Alice could almost taste it on the her tongue. It wasn't entirely unpleasant.

She took no pleasure in the murder its self because, well, it hadn't really been about the murder anyway. The kill was unimportant. Her parents and any feelings of hatred she may have harbored for them were completely irrelevant. All that mattered was everything that came after. They way she would cry in the arms of people who would promise to find her parents killer. The way she would stare at them with her eyes full of crocodile tears as the would try to console her. That would be where her pleasure came from, Alice thought as she stared at her father's limp body. That was what she craved.

With the disassembled gun hidden away and the police on their way, Alice sat herself down and focused on making the tears flow down her cheeks. It was perfect, she knew it was, so all that mattered now was telling her story to the police, the best part. She'd lie directly to all their faces and then go home to enjoy the peace and quiet now that her parents were dead. Until, of course, the next time which she knew would come. It all been too perfect, too wrong, too evil for her to leave it at that- but that was unimportant for now. All that mattered was pulling the wool over the eyes of the investigators.

Whoever they might be…