BELLA COULD NOT feel peaceful while staring at Mommy. She knew that all Mommy wanted to do was kill Cole.

The voice inside Bella's head begged her to continue finding help for the poor boy upstairs, and the terrified boy in the woods. But Mommy's voice drowned that voice, and begged for Bella to kill Cole.

"I can't, I can't, I can't," Bella continued crying, threading her fingers through her hair.

"You're a murderer," Mommy's voice emerged from the back of her mind. "You murdered me, so why can't you murder him?"

"You did this to us," Bella sniveled, reaching up to wipe her nose. "Cole didn't ask for this."

"I just wanted to love my children," Mommy's voice immediately responded, her raspy and twisted tone made Bella's head pound. "But you killed me before I could have a chance to do that."

Bella couldn't handle it anymore.

She stood up, her dress entirely saturated in blood. Her feet squeaked against the wooden floor as the crimson liquid stuck to her heels, but she continued to step through the empty basement.

She looked in the room they were first thrown in, and observed the way untouched toys littered the floor. The way the chains attached the walls had cracked them, and the way blood was splattered against several surfaces - she suddenly found comfort in that room.

She stepped inside and instantly, the numbing cold nipped her arms with metal teeth, raising bumps across her flesh instantly as she recollected the first time she woke up in that room.

She was scared, but for what reason? Mommy did spare her life, after all.

Bella walked out of the room and started up the stairs. The steps creaked beneath her gentle, bare feet as she took her time up the staircase.

The house was engulfed in an early morning sunrise, that swallowed the furniture in a sweet, bright, and warm caress. Bella looked down at her red-coated toes, before she ran her hand through her thick and knotted hair.

Bella was aware that she wasn't in the right state of mind, but she couldn't seem to suppress Mommy's voice.

"I won," Mommy's voice echoed. "I won."

Bella's eyes gravitated over to Cole's body, and focused on the agonizing rise and fall of his chest. Why couldn't he just die? It would make everything so much easier for Bella.

"I am so proud of my princess," Mommy's voice sounded. "You know what to do now."

Bella scoured the knife holder filled with sharp and tempting weapons. But then she noticed the record player sitting at the edge of the counter, opened with a record already settled inside of it.

Bella walked over to the record player and lifted the needle, setting it down on the black, spinning vinyl.

Static emitted from the speakers until the first notes of Simon & Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa began to play.

Bella wiped her eyes as she sang along to the first words, her body trudging to the knife holder.

Bella couldn't believe she was in such a situation.

She gripped the end of a long knife and pulled it out, staring at her reflection in the shimmering silver. Her knotted hair, blood-splattered flesh and thinned face disoriented her.

She slowly walked over to Cole on the ground, listening to the soft music as she knelt beside him.

Staring down at him, she took in the way his cheekbones dipped and the sharp structure of his pointed jaw. Her fingers moved across his thick, messy eyebrows, before pressing her fingertip against his eyelid, forcing his fan of eyelashes to flutter immediately.

But he remained unconscious, even as Bella pulled his eyelid up to expose his scleras.

She frowned, "I just wanted to see those beautiful eyes one last time."

The song continued to play, and Bella stared at the beautiful boy who Mommy had trusted her to kill.

Her fingertips moved to his full, pale lips, as she felt the chapped skin. Hesitantly, Bella moved closer to gently press her warm lips against his frigid ones, a tear rolling down her cheek.

"I will miss you," Bella whispered, her voice hardly escaping her lips. "I'm sorry, but I need to get her voice out of my head somehow."

"Don't think about it as killing him," there was Mommy's voice again. Bella's fingers instinctively curled around the weapon at the sound of it. "He's practically dead already - you're doing him a favour. Kill him... and then yourself, and we can all be happy together."

She looked up and found Mommy kneeling down, swaying gently to the music. Mommy's eyes were large and the colour of honey, beneath dark eyelashes, and her skin was smooth and pale. She looked young and absolutely stunning, her bouncy, orange curls glittering as the sunlight bathed them.

Mommy sang along to the song, her voice as soft as the light that blanketed her figure. "Yes I would, If I only could..."

Tears pricked Bella's eyes, as joy flushed her cheeks. The knife in her sweaty grip played along Cole's skin once again, but this time, Bella was determined.

"I surely would," Mommy sang the last note, her lips stretching into a happy smile towards Bella who sat mesmerized by Mommy's new beauty.

Bella stared into Mommy's eyes, feeling lost in them as her mouth opened to speak. But before she could, a foot kicked through the heavy wooden door, before it fell to the floor.

A sea of men rushed in, guns held as they looked down at Bella who stared with wide eyes and a pounding heart.

"Please move away from the boy," one policeman ordered, his words muffled by a mask over his nose.

A few men rushed down the basement door behind Bella.

Bella couldn't speak or move - her grip was strong on the knife as she gazed.

"Sweetheart, I am not going to hurt you. Move away from the boy and drop the weapon, please," the man said, only a mere silhouette in Bella's blurry vision as he stepped closer.

Bella jumped and backed away, dropping the knife and letting tears flow down her cheeks. Two of the men dropped to Cole's side and checked his pulse, his breathing, and the wound on his knee. "He's alive!" one of them called out.

"My name is James," the policeman cooed, trying to comfort her. "Can you tell me what your name is?" The man asked, his sparkling eyes watching her in confusion.

Bella refused to answer. Her heart was racing and her entire body was trembling as James stepped closer to her, trying his best not to startle her.

"Do you know where the youngest boy is?" James asked her gently, likely recognizing her as one of the three children that were missing.

Bella shook her head, her eyes squeezing shut.

"February eighteenth, nineteen-eighty three, at approximately five A.M., we have found Isabella Bryers and Cole Mancini, we are still unsure of where Elliot Greene may be as we have searched the entire house and there is no sign of him," Bella heard a man speak into a recorder. "...Both children are clearly malnourished and have been physically harmed..." The voice trailed off as the man walked farther away.

James moved towards her, until she was backed into the wall. She watched as they lifted Cole's body onto a stretcher, an oxygen mask over his lips. They then lifted Sir's decomposing body, and Bella finally watched them emerge from the basement with Mommy's body.

"No..." Bella said quietly, before she began screaming. "No! No! Please, no! No!" she screeched, her voice blood-curdling as she jumped towards them.

James caught her swiftly in his arms and restricted her as she flailed.

"That's her!" she cried out, her tears flowing heavily down her clammy face. She kicked her legs out aggressively. "That's Mommy!"

"We are not going to do anything to her, we are only taking her away," James assured Bella as he walked her outside, and she buried her head into the side of her shoulder from how bright the sun was against her sensitive vision.

"I killed her!" Bella screamed, "I am the one that killed her! I am a murderer, I am!"

James and a few other men lifted her onto a stretcher and strapped her down as she continued attempting to flail and get away.

An oxygen mask was strapped around her lips, and her vision was slow through squinted eyes as she looked around the area.

There were many people around, watching from behind the caution tape. Her eyes quickly locked on a woman who was walking a stroller with a small child in it, but the two of them stopped to watch the commotion from afar.

"How precious, a mother and her child," Mommy's voice spoke. "Reminds me of me and you."

Bella felt as if she wanted a child desperately. She wanted to be a mother, one that was beautiful and loved her children, a mother that her children respected.

One day, she thought with joy, as her eyes locked on the child in the stroller one last time.

One day.