Violet Eyes

“It’s over,” Zona kept telling herself. “It’s done...”

Her violet eyes lit up as she stood there, unmoving, scanning the room for any sign of hope—any faith that even a breath could shatter the fragile illusion of a stable world. That she would get caught, be seen, heard.

She felt like she had been caught, coldness lingering on her shoulders from a responsibility she didn’t want to bear. Zona never thought it would come to this.

Yes.

Seventeen-year-old Zona Ankou had killed her mother.

She tilted her head in a sadistic way, as if studying the corpse that lay before her knees, making sure Jenna Ankou was dead—she had to make sure.

She tightened her grip on the blood-stained frying pan—the murder weapon—until her knuckles turned white, then finally let it drop with a soft thud.

It had all happened so fast, a blurry contrast to the long nine years Zona had been forced to endure. Her mother, once the most beautiful, untroubled woman in Zona’s enraptured eyes, had withered away slowly, but painfully.

What changed? Zona asked herself that same question over and over, until eventually, she realized.

Finally, Zona knew the answer to the forbidden thought that had haunted her since she turned eight.

“I was a burden to you, right?” Zona asked the lifeless body. “I always was.”

She paused.

“But you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Zona repeated her last words incessantly to herself.

What’s going to happen to me, Mom? Will I go to prison now?

Zona sat down beside the corpse.

She closed her eyes, exhausted. Her palms were sweating. She thought of a particular conversation she had overheard years ago—her mother talking to her boyfriend. The way Jenna had spoken so carelessly about Zona. So recklessly. Like she didn’t care if her daughter was listening from the other room.

“Jenna, when are you going to get rid of her?” the hoarse voice of a man in his forties had asked.

Zona remembered her mother’s answer clearly.

“The little shit? Thinking of sending her away somewhere.”

“She itches me all day and gets on my nerves.”

Her voice had been gravelly, soaked in cigarette smoke.

Zona had lain awake all night after that. The thirteen-year-old believed she’d wake up in an orphanage the next day.

And every night after was just like that.

Zona’s eyes fluttered open, no longer weighed down by fatigue. The shock never came—only a raw, aching clarity. Her thoughts were sharp. Her heart was steady. She was herself again.

Maybe her mother didn’t deserve to die, but Zona had carried that burden for so long. And now, at last, she had done what her soul had been crying out for.

I’m not losing to you. Not again.

Sighing, Zona picked up her phone from the floor and dialed 9-1-1—but only stopped at the first one.

Should I even do this? she wondered, biting her nails at the thought of getting away with it.

What sickened her wasn’t the act itself—it was how easily she had moved on, as if her mother’s life had meant nothing at all.

Zona hit the final “1,” bringing the vibrating phone to her ear with practiced ease. Her face was blank, her movements fluid and automatic.

The silence on the line stretched, and she let it be, knowing that timing was everything.

When she spoke, her voice was soft, measured—just enough edge to sound shaken, just enough air to sound convincing.

“Hello?”

She paused, eyes drifting to the motionless shape on the floor, then back to nothing.

“Yes… I think my mother’s dead.”

End of chapter 1.