The Unwanted

The Unwanted(Bree McKinley) "Jasmine."
She ignored the voice. HIS voice, to be exact. Her tall, abnormally buff stepdad who was engaged to her mother. 'Six months,' she thought. 'Until they get married... dear, God. Has it been that long already? Damn.' Her mind wondered on.
"Jasmine. Get down here. Now."
'Make me, you ass,' she thought snidely. Beside her desk was her violin-- stealth wood hand-carved and locked in it's black case. Jasmine got off of her bed.
"Don't make me ask you again--!" The voice cut off. Angry. And enraged--yes! Enraged...

The Man. He was at the bottom of the stairs. HIM. "Dad" as Jasmine had to call him. But he had different names..."Mark", "Mr. Clease," "Mark Lyonal Clease," "Sugar-pie"...
And, to Jasmine, he was mean. Very, very mean.
Jasmine looked down at her instrument, in which she had opened the case, and thought: 'Bastard. Bastard broke my last one. The acoustic guitar...'

Her mind fluttered. And she remembered. Everything; all the way from Day One.
"I don't like you," Jasmine said aloud into her empty bedroom.
Her mind went on: mom at work, Eddy asleep in his crib, the dog outside (possibly asleep) on his chain connected to the doghouse...
Stepdad. The Damn of Unholy Existence.
Jasmine turned her head back to the violin. In a combination of disbelief and shock, she looked down and saw that the strings were broken--
'Cut with scissors,' she realized.
--and her mind snapped.

"Mark!" she yelled. She picked up the violin with one hand. "I'm gonna get that no good pain in the ass, and I don't care if I get into any kind of shit..."
She reached the staircase, walked down, and her eyes scanned the living room. Dammit. He wasn't there. "I'm calling mom." Her eyes enlightened.
"You hear me, Mark? I'm getting ready to get your sorry butt into the craphole with my mom! Go ahead and stop me!" Nothing happened.

Jasmine turned around and went to use the phone that was in the kitchen.
Yeah. The phone with the cord. It was old; almost like a vintage. Older than 1994...
An unruly chill went down her spine. And a voice telling her to not do whatever it was that she planned to do within the next minute. As soon as the voice came to her, it was gone.


The Man was watching her.
Very closely. A few feet away, hiding in the shadows of the black hallway.
Jasmine picked up the white phone. She dialed her mother's number.
Her fingers, for some reason she couldn't figure out, shook nervously as she pressed the numbers. The phone was placed up to her ear. It rang once.
Twice. A third time.
But not a fourth time; the line went dead. Or maybe the phone had finally died.
Jasmine didn't even bother to try again. "Damn phone. Whatever. I'll wait another hour for mom to get back from the station. And then Mark will--"
She stopped in mid-sentence.
Something wasn't right.
Eddy... He was never this quiet. He cried almost all the time. Jasmine placed her violin on top of the kitchen table and ran down the hall towards the toddler's room.


The Man had killed him.
He suffocated the two-year-old with a blanket.
But that had been a half-hour ago. When Jasmine had been upstairs doing her homework.
The Man had moved into the toddler's room to wait for the girl.
He heard her. Footsteps. Coming closer. And closer...
But he was ready to kill her. Then his fiancé--the children's mother--would come home and then he would murder her as well. He'd dump the bodies. The evidence would be gone.
And then he'd---
Jasmine reached Eddy's room.
The light was off and she didn't even bother to turn it on.
"Eddy?" she whispered. Nothing. Not even a giggle.
That's when the knife came down.

Jasmine's last (and only) thought was---'I've been punched!'
She collapsed onto her knees. Blood trickled down her mouth and onto her chin, then dripping on to the floor. A cry withdrew from her mouth as the knife was pulled out of her back.
Jasmine made the mistake of turning around, because, when she did, a foot connected with her face. A CRACK sound echoed through the room as her jaw broke.
Now she was on her back.
Helpless like an infant--like Eddy and his awaited fate.

Jasmine didn't want to, but she opened her eyes to look up at The Man.
She saw the knife. She was scared. And a part of her told her that she was already going to die.
"Why?" she choked out. "Why?" Her throat felt like steel.
The Man looked down at her. Sadness was in his eyes.
But not regret.
The last thing Jasmine ever heard was his voice.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. It seems that I've missed your heart."