"SHATTERING LOLITA'S MIRROR"

CHAPTER 1

(This is unedited, raw draft, so do not be too hard )

“Name?”

“Adriana Denkova. Investigator from the Domestic Violence Department, Sheriff's Office, Houston, Texas.”

“Captain Denkova?”

“Former”. A weak nod.

“Is that your blood on your clothes?”

“I don't know.”

“How many bodies are still inside?”

“Over twenty.”

“Any survivors?”

“No.”

 Adriana stared blankly at the silhouette of the nearby pine tree, whose bark bore the fresh memory of fierce gunfire. Her face was covered in mud and dried blood. Her once vibrant red hair fell haphazardly in tangled curls on both sides of her battered face. The toes of her bare feet appeared painfully curled, embedded in the rugged forest soil. Wrapped in a bright yellow raincoat, her body swayed under the force of the January wind. She tried to straighten her hunched shoulders, but a sharp pain cut through her clouded gaze; she winced and staggered. Consciousness left her, and her severely dehydrated body collapsed into a few outstretched hands. The blue-red lights of police cars cast an ominous glow on her dry, bloodied lips.

***

She lay on the cold ground, in an even colder dungeon, and her thoughts feverishly jumped between memory and reality, not knowing where exactly the boundary was.

Her consciousness took her back to the distant year 2001 when she and her two sons sat on the roof of the dormitory, watching swallows perched on wires.

"Sometimes I wonder how they know where to fly when it gets cold... And they all fly together," her older son said. The younger one looked at him with his huge golden eyes and replied:

 "Can you imagine how nice it would be if humans could fly together like that..."

She saw herself smiling and tousling their curly heads bathed in sunlight. She remembered how overwhelmed with emotion, her eyes filled with tears, which she tried to hide but then, again, the portal of time transported her in the warm lap of her grandma, and she heard her soft, melodious voice whispering: 'Cry, my guglitse! Cry! Tears heal!'

Adriana wiped her face with trembling hand and snapped out of this memory. Looked around. There was nothing warm in her surroundings. She was hungry. Thirst had driven her perception to the brink of hallucination. Her pupils, accustomed to darkness, distinguished shapes on the ground. Some unrealistically small, others elongated. Fragile bodies, covered with almost parchment-like skin and rags. She took a deep breath to calm the rising panic in her chest, but the smell of decomposing flesh triggered painful convulsions of nausea. A small amount of stomach acid dripped from her cracked lips, causing an even stronger dizziness. Adriana leaned against the stone wall, and her trembling fingers felt moisture. She turned and pressed her lips against the rock. ‘Life in condensed form’, passed through her mind as her taste buds tried to absorb every droplet on the quartz surface of the rock. She knew well that the moisture on the walls did not indicate the presence of a water source, let alone the direction of the cave's exit. It was simply a result of the clash between warm air and cold walls, but it was also something much more. It was hope.

Adriana gathered strength in her weakened lungs and called out again. This time, the cave didn't just respond with a lost resonating sound. Distant voices arrived from somewhere. Then flashlights appeared. The echo brought approaching footsteps. And then came the freshness of the pine forest. And the resin on the bark of the pine. Like black, sticky tears.

***

 Almost a year earlier...

A quiet, family-oriented neighborhood surrounded by dense forests and a year-round babbling brook cutting through the heart of the wooded area. A beautiful park offering amenities such as a pool, barbecue area, an artificial lake with boats, and a playground filled with joyful laughter – this was The Village at Caney Mills in Conroe, Texas.

Emma, a fourteen-year-old girl with long, waist-length straight blonde hair, sat on one of the benches by the lake, staring at the screen of her brand-new Nokia with three cameras. It was carefully protected by a light pink case with a sturdy back. Occasionally, she lifted her head and glanced at her two half-sisters – charming five-year-old twins, Lily, and Mia, who were chasing each other around the slide, giggling.

Lily and Mia had the same deep blue eyes as their sister, but instead of bright liquid gold, their faces were framed by restless black ebony-like curls. Their tiny noses were like glued little spheres on their round faces, illuminated by endless smiles. Emma adored her two sisters, but lately, especially since their father started working on the oil platform, three months ago, taking them to the park every day after school has started feeling like a heavy burden. Emma usually played with the twins – drawing with chalk on the pavement, helping them go down the slide, teaching them to play hide-and-seek or "Wild Rooster." However, recently, a new family moved into the neighborhood, whose son attended the nearby community college. His name was Spencer – slim and quite tall for his age, with shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail and a little silver hoop going through his left ear. It turned out he played the drums very well and was immediately "picked up" by the college's rock band, that was the main performer every year on prom night. The band usually gathered in the family’s garage, every Friday, sometimes Saturdays as well, and oh, boy, weren’t those some loud afternoons.

With Spencer’s arrival, Emma started wearing tight-fitting blouses, always left unbuttoned to reveal the lacy, padded bra she found among her mother's stored belongings. She also stopped playing with Lily and Mia, as she was too busy exchanging messages with her friends and taking pictures to post on social media. Perhaps that's why she never noticed the perpetually slightly open curtain of the light blue house located just across the park. Also, she was blissfully unaware of the shadow of a tall, broad man who invariably watched her and the twins – every day, for a year.

The light blue house was small, one-story building, the only one in the neighborhood having a single garage, whose black door no one had ever seen lifted. Neighbors assumed that the inhabitant of the small house didn't have a car. Once a month, the Pizza Hut boy would arrive – a single ring, a small package slips under the door, and the delivery person leaves. And then, every week, unfailingly on Wednesdays, at 6:30 PM, a minibus, a red KIA with the white H-E-B delivery logo on both sides, would stop in front of the light blue house. The driver's door would open, and a single driver would always emerge from the car – a young man, visibly around twenty years old, with an elongated thin face and deep brown eyes that stood out on his excessively light skin. The boy wore a red uniform T-shirt with short sleeves and a red baseball cap with the stamped logo of the grocery chain, its visor always pointing backward towards his neck. He had expressive lips that always seemed slightly pouted – perhaps because the cap strap was so tight that it held his thick, dark-brown eyebrows tightly gathered in the middle of his forehead.

 The boy would get out of the car and skillfully unload the paper bags of groceries. Always five in number and always paper. He would arrange them in front of the house – two rows, three bags in the first row and two in the second. He never used the doorbell. He would knock three times, lean in, pick up a small white envelope that appeared from under the door, and without turning around, would board the minibus and leave. Before leaving, he always glanced towards the park, where on a bench, just across the street, sat the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. At that exact moment, without fail, Emma would lift her gaze from her phone, look in the direction of the tall H-E-B delivery guy, smile gently, and wave. The boy would also raise his hand in greeting, and behind the drawn curtains of the light blue house, the silhouette of a bearded man of indeterminate age would watch them while taking a bite of an apple pulled from one of the paper bags, which no one had seen him bring inside from the small porch in front of his house.

This whole game caught the curious mind of the five-year-old Mia. What the adorable girl found most interesting was how the man’s face would ‘peek a boo’ through the dark curtains, so for weeks she would waive the man ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ but would never get a response. Until one afternoon, she simply ran across the alley and placed her little palm on the man’s window. The man hinged back and covered his bearded face with the curtains, but almost right away he reappeared, his teeth white and shiny in a wide smile. Mia giggled and placed her nose on the glass, leaving a warm mark from her breath. The man tilted his head wearing turban and placed his large hand on the other side of the window glass. Man, and a girl looked at each other’s eyes and Mia ran back to her sisters, jumping like a little rabbit. Day in, and day out.

Two houses down the street, yet another window constantly observed the playing children in the park. This window was very different from the one in the light-blue house. It was large, always bright, like a huge clean eye. The facade of the house it belonged to was clad in white bricks and stood out with a large copper star and the inscription 'TEXAS,' placed in the space between the upper edge of the double garage door and the angle formed by the two slopes of the roof. The window had neither blinds nor curtains and engaged in a strange, constant flirtation with the street. The wide, almost wall-sized triple glass revealed a half-empty room with walls painted in a soft peach color and an antique crystal chandelier hanging directly above a 1914 Steinway & Sons grand piano. Adorned with rich African mahogany, the piano cabinet was hand-polished to highlight the uniqueness of the wood. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a three-seater Italian Baroque sofa made of heavy mahogany wood with curved armrests and intricate wood carving. The seats and the backward-curling cushions were upholstered in a lush cream and pastel pink damask, with a glaring yellow plush blanket thrown on top, contrasting with the elegant furniture. The Collins residence.

Every evening, habitually at 6:30 PM, a peculiar couple entered the room with the piano: a tall lady, visibly around seventy-five years old, with white hair neatly arranged in a French twist, and a slightly stocky man, of average height, with a balding head showing signs of advancing grayness. The man consistently wore the lower part of flannel pajamas, a loose T-shirt or sweater, depending on the season, and fabric-made, checkered indoor slippers. The lady always walked ahead, with her chin up, shoulders pulled back, and a neck adorned with a simple pearl necklace. Almost immediately after them, a well-built eighteen-year-old boy, with delicate slender nostrils and slightly downturned corners of the lips, clad in tight, sporty-elegant trousers that reached down his legs, and a snug-fitting shirt, closed the double-winged door behind him. With a smooth, natural grace, he sat on the floor next to the window overlooking the street and the park. The elderly lady would sit on the three-seater sofa, lean gracefully, take off her elegant shoes, arrange them carefully in the corner of the sofa, then wrap herself in the awful plush blanket, cradling her knees with both hands, and would dreamily gaze somewhere beyond the silhouette of the balding man. Dragging his feet, he would reach the piano, run his fingers over the shiny mahogany surface, and open the lid. And then, the high-quality musical wires and specially made soft copper windings for the bass strings, wound on black Klinke Diamond tuning pegs, would begin to create worlds. Magic, passion, radiance, storms would find life under the fingers of an aging music teacher, whose mother, as always, didn't even notice his presence. The teacher played without sheet music, with his gaze fixed on the playground on the other side of the street.