Bailey Miller
My heart thumps in my ears and in my swollen ankle as I shift back and forth on my feet in front of the door.
The color of the door doesn’t register, neither does anything but the house number next to it and the sound of the doorbell ringing. I ring the bell twice, hands shaky, until it’s thrown open. My jaw drops on its own as a woman is revealed.
She looks just like me. Bailey Miller has curly brown hair and pale skin the exact same shade as mine. She stands three inches shorter than me, dressed in a sunflower-patterened dress. Her hazel eyes are squinted agitatedly at me, and even then, she still doesn’t look like a rapist.
But she is one.
“What do you want?” She snarls, her crappy personality showing through her soft appearance. There’s something akin to hunger in her eyes and I shrink from it.
I really didn’t have a plan up to this point besides getting here. But now that I’m staring at Bailey face-to-face, rage pours into every ounce of my being.
“You’re my mother,” I blurt out. Her hazel eyes widen and she gapes. “Spencer Reid is my father.”
It feels wrong, saying my father’s name to this monster. Especially when the shocked look slides off her face and the hungry one intensifies. She grins, gaze far away in the past, and I shudder. There’s no way I want to know whatever the fuck it is she’s thinking about.
She snaps back and turns a glare to me. “Come inside. Now.” I make no move to do so, so she grabs me by the collar of my shirt and yanks me inside. The house is cold, obviously air conditioned, but she pulls me hard enough that I fall onto the tiled floor. It’s a struggle to get up, my ankle hurts so much, but I manage it as I hear her lock the door.
Right when I stand up I get decked in the face. Her fist collides with my nose and something pops before I’m staggering backwards, eyes watering. My hands come up to clutch my nose and she takes her chance to punch me in the stomach.
My MMA training choses this moment to kick in. I ignore the stomach pain and throw a right hook, getting her right in the jaw. With my strength and size it should have knocked her out, but she barely moves. It clicks that this isn’t the first time she’s had to subdue someone bigger than her, and has probably had years to practice.
I am a fucking idiot.
She raises her right foot and kicks me hard in the chest. I skid back across the floor and my head hits the cabinets in the kitchen. The world is spinning and black dots dance in front of my vision, but I manage not to pass out.
Then Bailey is on top of me, straddling my stomach with a knife in her hands and I’m suddenly wide awake.
“I remember your father,” she hums, dragging the very tip of the knife across my cheek. It burns but I don’t dare move, focused intently on her words. “He was so pretty, and so young. He squirmed a lot, too.”
Her words make me gag. My blood is boiling as she presses the knife to my neck. I let her, preoccupied with trying to get something out of the bag still on my back. I feel a cold metal handle right as she presses the knife hard enough to draw blood and my eyes snap to hers.
“You don’t squirm, though,” she tilts her head, brows furrowed. Usually I’d be able to diagnose her. Figure out what illness plagues her mind. But right now the only illness I can think of is her being a fucking bitch. “You have to be like him. A freak. Off. But you don’t seem like it. Aren’t you afraid?”
“No,” I bite out. “I don’t tend to be afraid of pieces of shit pedophiles.”
Bailey blinks, leaning back slightly and setting more of her weight on my stomach, “I’m no pedophile. He enjoyed it.”
I want to vomit. “It doesn’t matter if he enjoyed it! You were seventeen and he was twelve! You were one month from being eighteen. He was only a kid.”
“And so are you,” she mutters. “But you’re so angry. Just like me.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“Oh yes you are,” she hums, raising the knife up over my heart. “But don’t worry, it won’t matter soon.” Bailey glances up at me, her eyes manic. “See you in hell, kid.”
“Tell them who sent you,” I bite back before dragging the gun out from my bag and shooting her.
The BANG echoes in my ears and warm blood hits my skin, but I don’t focus on that. Bailey's body goes slack on top of mine and I kick her off quickly, staring in horror at her face.
The bullet went right through her forehead, and it’s a gruesome sight. Her skin is peeled back and brain matter is all over her face. Her hazel eyes quickly lose color, but they’re still fixed on me.
I killed Bailey Miller. I killed my mother.
At some point the neighbors must have called the cops, because after either a minute or an hour one of them kicks the door down. Three storm in, but I don’t turn to look at them. Someone mutters ‘holy shit’ while another says ‘look, a security camera in the living room, get the footage’.
Someone’s crouching next to me. Her hand is on my shoulder, then dabbing at the cut on my neck with her sleeve. She’s panicking, her heart rate is fast. Too fast.
“Someone help! She’s bleeding out! She’s gonna--”
******
In movies when the main character is recovering from some major trauma where they get knocked out, they wake up slowly in the hospital surrounded by family and friends. They smile softly at their family and go back to sleep in the silent building.
That’s a fucking lie.
I snap too in a panic, hyperventilating. I’m not in a hospital, I’m in the break room of what seems to be a police precinct. The female voice who crouched besides me earlier is in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. She’s telling me something.
She looks almost exactly like the bus driver, but she has long black hair in box braids tied into a bun. She’s a very curvy woman and is slightly overweight, but her green eyes
are comforting.
“.....id, kid, kid, calm down. Calm down. You’re okay,” she soothes me, rubbing her thumbs over my eyes and I realize I’ve been crying this whole time. “My name is Saya. You’re in our precinct. We took you to the hospital and they splinted that ankle of yours and stitch up your neck and jaw. You’re okay. Can you breathe for me?” I thought Saya would be mad at me, I did murder someone after all. But she stays calm and reassuring as I slowly start to breathe normally.
Once I’m calm, she smiles softly at me, reading me like a book.
“So, we watched the security footage, and we’ve deemed it self defense,” she explains, moving to sit next to me on the couch. “You’ve been napping for about two hours. We know what she did to your father, but we didn’t catch his name. Is there someone we can call to pick you up?”
“Wait-wait,” I stutter, gaping at her. “I’m-I’m not going to jail? B-But I killed someone--”
“She tried to kill you first, kid. Almost did, actually. We did have to confiscate that gun, though.”
I wave that off, “That’s fine, I hated it anyways.” My brain is still muddled but I thank the lucky stars that I’m a genius and an idea pops into my head. “Actually, you could call my sister. Her name is Emily. Here, I can talk to her if you have a phone…”