'Kunai' Teaser

 For anyone interested in what I've been working on, I present the prologue for my - hopefully - debut novel. Enjoy!



Kunai

Prologue

Asha’s 11th Birthday


Asha stands over the body of her father. The blood on her hands quickly becoming sticky as she waits for him to strike her with heavy hands, just as he always would. A large kitchen knife stands erect from his chest with only the wooden handle visible, blood already seeping into the steel pins. She reaches out for the knife and pauses, holding her hand suspended above her father. Examining the sticky, drying blood, she turns her hand over and then over again. Slowly she turns off the gas lantern on the bedside table and drops her hand back at her side, her eyes falling once again on the knife.

Pain pulses from between Asha’s legs and it takes everything she has left to remain still. She’d always been told about the monthly bleeds women get, the cramps that could come along with them. This was different from what she’d always heard. This was sharp and throbbing - the feeling of being ripped apart from within. 

“You did this,” she whispers, shifting her steely gaze from the knife to her father, now only a silhouette in the bed. “You deserved this.”

Asha looms in the darkness for some time. It seems to welcome her, almost to whirl and envelop her, masking everything that had just happened. Hiding her pain, hiding her anger. Finally she leaves for the front door, burying her father forever behind her in darkness. 

Drifting through the hall she passes her motionless mother and baby sister. Her mother’s face beaten unrecognizable by giant fists, her baby sister still in her mother’s arms, a permanent and silent cry frozen on her tiny features. Asha wonders whether her own disappearance would be noticed, whether her father will be thought another victim. She hoped not. 

She walks out the front door leaving it wide open behind her. Her mother and baby sister need to be found. They deserve to be mourned. Asha wishes she could do it herself, though that’s impossible. The dead mourn no one. 


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