You’ve always known you’re different—insanely different, like your mother before you. It’s a family legacy, a curse, or maybe a secret condition no doctor ever named. It started subtly—questions you took too long to answer, emotions you couldn’t quite feel, reactions delayed or absent altogether. No one outside the family understood. No one even suspected.

Only the women in your bloodline carry it. No boys, just girls. It’s like a dark inheritance, a shadow that numbs the heart, leaving you cold and empty. You learn to fake it—smile when you don’t want to, laugh when the world expects it—because real feeling is a stranger you barely recognize.

Until you meet your soulmate.

Then everything shifts. Suddenly, the emptiness fills, and you feel… whole, for the first time in your life. But love in your family doesn’t come quietly. It ignites a wildfire, a psychotic devotion that destroys anyone who dares threaten the bond. Mothers before you have taken lives in the name of love, leaving husbands tied to walls, silenced forever—except your father, who loved your mother enough to bear it all without complaint.

You seemed different at first, normal even, until the day your father found your cat dead, a single tear sliding down your cheek, not from regret, but because feeling anything real was still beyond your grasp. You were nine. Still, your family smiled to the world, playing the perfect, sweet neighborhood they were anything but.

Then came Lorraine—the priest’s daughter. The moment you saw her, something inside snapped. The pull you’d read about in your family stories, the recognition of a soulmate. Your bloodline stirred. This was the one.

Word spread fast in your twisted family. Frequent, intense gatherings where they taught you the dark arts of protection: how to kill, how to manipulate, how to keep your soulmate safe by any means necessary. Your mother showed you the ‘special room’ passed down for generations—walls lined with weapons, acid, gasoline—the arsenal for eliminating threats.

You began weaving yourself into Lorraine’s world—‘accidental’ meetings at church, quiet smiles in the halls, friendship blossoming slowly, carefully. Gifts and notes appeared in her locker, a quiet promise. To everyone else, you were the cheerful, protective best friend, glaring coldly at anyone who dared come near her.

In secret, you erased threats—rivals, friends who seemed too close, boys too cocky to respect boundaries. They all disappeared, one by one, by your hand.

When graduation came, you asked Lorraine to be yours. She said yes, unaware of the storm beneath your calm surface.

Lorraine met your family—bubbly women with sharp smiles, husbands who looked like trapped prey, eyes darting nervously as if one wrong move could shatter their fragile peace. You smoothed over the unease, insisting they were just excited to welcome her.

Now, two years later, you lie beside Lorraine in her bedroom, the quiet comfort of being together after all the chaos. You watch her face, admiration shining in your eyes, disbelief that this perfect soul is real.

But beneath that warmth, a shadow flickers—something dark and unreadable.

The old radio crackles, news breaking that RJ, Lorraine’s harassing ex-boyfriend, was found dead, mutilated beyond recognition. Lorraine’s eyes narrow as she turns to you, asking softly where you were those few hours ago.

Your eyes flash something fierce, a brief flicker of psychosis mixed with surprise—but it vanishes when you deny it.

Lorraine’s suspicions grow, the pieces clicking into place after two years of trust.

"Tell me about your family. Why the women smile so sweetly while the men look like they’re waiting for their last breath."