Birthdays of a Princess Read online

  Helga Zeiner

  Birthdays of a Princess

  A Psychological Thriller

  Copyright @ Helga Zeiner

  All rights reserved

  Published by POWWOW Books, Canada

  Cover Design: Andreas Heinrich, Sydney

  Table of Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 1

  It was just before eight in the morning when Melissa woke. She sat up and listened for a while in the semi-dark. It was quiet, like most of her mornings nowadays. The metal springs squeaked a sigh of relief when she finally lifted herself off the mattress. It was nippy in the flat. She pulled back the curtains, slipped into her terry towel bathrobe, and listened in the narrow hallway. Still nothing. She grimaced at the emptiness. See if I care.

  Down the hallway and into her kitchen, where she put the kettle on, waited for the water to boil, let her tea steep for exactly sixty seconds, heaped three spoonfuls of sugar into the mug and poured in so much cream the tea instantly cooled to drinking temperature.

  Mug in hand, she settled into her favorite place by the window. It faced west, toward the high-rise monuments of downtown Vancouver barely visible in the distance. She opened the window a crack to let the gentle hum of the traffic below permeate her flat.

  Vancouver was still sleepy, yawning and stretching like a lazy lion, rubbing its eyes, waiting for someone to brush the remains of last night’s excitement from the concrete floor of its den.

  She turned on the TV. It was exactly eight now, and the channel was set to CTV. She watched for a while, not paying much attention until a bright orange Breaking News banner flashed below the female morning anchor. Melissa turned up the volume. She took a sip of her sweet, sweet tea and leaned back a little.

  “We have a developing story of a brutal attack on a customer at the Starbucks coffee shop on Robson Street. Our reporter Emily Jackson is on location. Emily, what can you tell us?”

  The upper body of a reporter, holding a microphone in one hand and fighting her wind-swept hair with the other, came into the picture. Well, it was October, at least it wasn’t raining.

  “From what we know so far, a young woman has attacked another woman inside the coffee shop you see right behind me. We don’t know the identity of the victim or the attacker yet and have no information about her motive. Apparently, she suddenly produced a knife and threw herself at the woman, screaming at the top of her voice.”

  “Do we have any information about the condition of the victim?”

  An autumn gust blew hair over the reporter’s face. Trying to control the strands with both hands, she nearly lost her microphone but fumbled it back into position when she realized that the camera was focused on her again. One side of her pretty face was completely covered with hair. It looked ridiculous, and Melissa wondered not for the first time why all the women on TV had to have long hair.

  “The ambulance has transported the victim to the emergency ward of St Paul’s Hospital. If the victim survives the attack she’s very lucky the hospital is just a few blocks from here—”

  The reporter’s voice travelled along Melissa’s attention span and lost its grip. Background noise. She liked that. And God, her tea was good. She knew she shouldn’t take that much sugar but she liked her drinks sweet. Her shift at the supermarket started at ten, finished at three, so maybe she could go see a movie afterwards to kill the afternoon. Or go to Starbucks, sit outside if the weather held, watch the people walking by. Maybe that Starbucks.

  The anchor’s overly excited voice demanded her attention again:

  “We have just received a video clip from one of our viewers who filmed the brutal attack. We would like to warn you that some viewers may find the content offensive in nature.”

  The filmmaker must have jostled for a good position between other coffee-shop patrons who had jumped up—the picture was shaky. The back of shoulders and heads popped in and out. Screams of horror and confusion could be heard. Their unedited sound quality lent an unnerving authenticity to the unfolding drama.

  An arm rose up in the air and down again, in a kind of wood-chopping motion. Up and down, no hesitation whatsoever. And the chopping went on. Up and down, up and down—accompanied by ‘Oh my God’s’ and ‘Oh no, oh no’s’. The view changed—the filmmaker must have climbed on a chair, holding his iPhone or whatever device he had high above the ghastly scene. The victim of the attack was on the floor now. She was trying to protect her face with crossed hands. The attacker, wearing a black hoodie, was over her and chopping into her with such vengeance that Melissa could feel the force of her hatred. The attacker continued to stab wherever she could. Face, arms, torso? It was impossible to make out exactly where her knife sliced.

  Bodies now moved in and out of the picture, making it hard to tell what was going on.

  “We have word from the police that the victim you have just seen being stabbed inside Starbucks on Robson about an hour ago is in critical condition. Her attacker was overpowered by three heroic young men who held her captive until the police arrived.”

  The filmmaker had managed to muscle himself closer to the young woman now pinned to the ground—and smiling straight into his camera.

  Melissa gasped. It couldn’t be.

  The mug slipped from her weak hands, dropped to the floor, and spilled tea on the cheap vinyl kitchen floor before rolling under the table.

  It couldn’t be. But it was.

  The attacker was her daughter.

  Chapter 2

  God only knows why I’m so calm.

  I’m sitting on the backseat of a police cruiser and feel like a taxi passenger, being driven along streets I know well.

  The handcuffs feel weird but they don’t cut into me like some actors on TV pretend, and the constables haven’t been rude. They did touch me when they put the cuffs on—can’t be avoided, right?—but they didn’t even push my head down when I got in the car. That’s something else you see a lot on TV. And they were careful not to press my cuffed arms against the seat. That could have hurt.

  So, here I am, and I feel so free I would sing like a bird—tralalalala—if I had a happy tune in my head. But oth
er than the pleasure of a perfect morning, there is nothing happy in this void. The sun is out, I’m being chauffeured down Burrard Street—all right, by guys in uniforms, but still—and there is still enough adrenaline in my system to make me feel like Superwoman, but not so much that I’d want to rip the handle off the car door and jump out into this lovely autumn morning.

  I feel good. Tralalalala after all.

  I lean against the window pane of my police taxi and strain my eyes to make out every single delightful detail. The lady in the designer coat with a miniature poodle in her arms. The pigeon picking crumbs under sidewalk tables. The closing-down sale sign on a shop front. A bike courier weaving through traffic too fast. Last night's rain forming a puddle in the gully. Guess I won’t see downtown again anytime soon.

  I keep my eyes alert even when the sights of downtown’s splendor slowly give way to the drifters hanging out around Main Street. Some of the low-lifes are familiar to me but none of them wastes a glance at the passing police cruiser. Instead of tall buildings I’m now seeing shops secured with plywood boards, piss corners with homeless still curled up in blankets, shopping carts full of personal junk. Downtown is now rundown.

  Still, it’s good to take in even those sights. Me, the tourist on a farewell trip down the ordinary life, dressed in a clean vest. I really should prepare myself for the onslaught of questions.

  What a glorious, satisfying moment it was when I stabbed that bitch in the face.

  I lean back again to savor the already fading memory. But it’s like sucking on a strawberry-cream-swirl candy, sweet red rage and smooth creamy innocence. The more I savor it, the more the two melt into each other and become indistinguishable. Eventually they’re both gone, leaving me with nothing, not even a faint aftertaste.

  I stare out the window but don’t register my surroundings any longer.

  I taste nothing. I see nothing. I remember nothing. I don’t know why I did it or who the bitch was. The only thing I do know is that I had a good reason.

  Chapter 3

  Macintosh hated dealing with teenagers, couldn’t stand to see them piss it all away because of drugs or simple stupidity. But he figured this case to be fairly straightforward once all the media hype had died down. Interview her, write the report, hand it over to the judge. Nothing to it. Get it over with as fast as you can, and get on with your life. He opened a new file, grabbed a coffee, and stepped out of his office at the Graveley Street VPD station.

  His partner was waiting for him outside.

  “Listen,” Harding said, “if you want, I can do this by myself.”

  Macintosh was tempted. The final stage of his career shouldn’t be wasted on a junkie. But what the hell, you take what life—and the Sergeant—throws at you.

  “Can’t let a dumbass like you ruin a cut-and-dry case.” He shook his head, forced a smile and stepped into the plain, brightly-light interview room. He pulled up a chair. Harding hovered in the background.

  “State your name and address, please,” Macintosh said to the shackled and handcuffed girl, clad in an orange jumpsuit.

  She didn’t react.

  “I don’t have all day. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have you locked up and throw the key away. All the same to me.”

  The girl didn’t move.

  He looked at her more closely. Sitting behind the steel table, it was hard to judge her height, but she was very young and small and skinny. A fragile orange bird. Pretty in a way, with soft round features, smooth and not yet painted by life. She wore no makeup. Her dark hair was cut boyishly short. It seemed to him that she had made a concentrated effort to achieve a certain mediocrity. Macintosh remembered his daughter. My God, how she had loved dressing up.

  He shook the thought off.

  “Don’t make it harder on yourself. We’ll find out who you are sooner than you think.”

  The girl continued to stare a hole in the table-top, barely blinking.

  The detectives studied her in silence for a while, hoping to unsettle her that way. She didn’t seem agitated, as could be expected from a person having committed a serious crime resulting in bodily harm. She also didn’t suffer obvious withdrawal symptoms, and she certainly wasn’t in awe of her surroundings. Her shoulders were straight, her hands lay folded in her lap to comfortably accommodate her cuffs, and her face was a mask.

  “How old are you?”

  No reaction.

  Macintosh shook his head and motioned Harding to follow him. The detectives left the room.

  “That’s a bummer,” Harding said as soon as they had closed the door. “She’s got no ID on her.”

  “Ah, don’t worry. I bet she’s been doing drugs, probably on the Eastside. She’ll be in the system.”

  “What are we gonna do with her?”

  “Nothing. Let her stew in there. Eventually they all get bored.”

  It didn’t take very long to identify her. Somebody saw the footage on TV, recognized her and called in with the information. Her name was Tiara and the caller said he knew her mother, Melissa, who, as expected, lived on the fringe of the Downtown Eastside. The caller hadn’t known the mother’s last name and couldn’t give an exact address, but he had seen both of them a few times in his corner shop.

  “I hope for her sake she looks younger than she actually is,” Harding said.

  Macintosh only shook his head. “Can’t imagine her being over eighteen. Not a day over sixteen, if you ask me.”

  Chapter 4

  They are so transparent. Those detectives are watching me from behind the mirrored wall, I’ve seen it often enough in movies. Won’t catch me cracking under pressure.

  I’m not a murderer. Even if I killed that bitch, I don’t think I’m guilty of anything. I feel no remorse because my intent to kill wasn’t born out of hatred or driven by a lust to kill. It wasn’t a bad thing. I know that I did it because I had to do it, same as a mother has to wipe the snot off her child’s nose. There’s no other explanation for it. I did it to cleanse a filthy spot from the surface of my being. I hope it has been a clean swipe and I’ve gotten rid of the slime covering my soul. It doesn’t make me a murderer, but if I haven’t succeeded and she has survived, I can’t even be called a decent cleaning lady. The slime will still be there, suffocating my soul.

  Other than this, I can’t give them anything, so I might as well shut up altogether. I fold my hands and start to breathe deeply. I can sit here forever, staring at the table. I have learned to sit quietly and be obedient. I have learned to bob over an ocean of minutes and hours in an imaginary boat. Far, far away I float, until I see no shoreline, not behind me and not in front.

  If I just concentrate on the floating, I drift and dream along, not thinking of anything in particular. Usually it takes only a little discipline, but today it seems to be a lot harder.

  The room around me changes color. Grey becomes sea foam turquoise and white. The air-conditioner noise transforms itself into an ocean breeze. Damn it, I’m drifting into Galveston. But I don’t want to go there. I want to hang out in no-memory land. It scares me to think of the town I grew up in—going back seems dangerous, even if it’s only in my thoughts.

  But how else will I remember?

  I close my eyes and try to project the turquoise ocean picture back onto the silver screen behind my eyelids, far away and slightly out of focus, so I can blink it away quickly.

  Nothing happens.

  Beautiful, threatening Galveston stays at a distance, kept at bay by the fading image of the faceless bitch. I wonder where my strawberry flavored urge to destroy her came from.

  A door opens and I can feel one of the policemen come back in again.

  “I’m Detective Macintosh,” he introduces himself this time and turns on the recorder.

  A little curious, I look at him. He is slightly overweight, quite old. At least fifty. What’s left of his hair is salt-and-pepper—a lot more salt than pepper—and curls outward like the dry bark of a birch tree. Bad hairdresser or j
ust bad hair day, I can’t say for sure.

  “You spend too much time in your office,” I say.

  “What?” Vertical furrows carve darkly into his leathery yet pig-colored skin.

  “You’re so pale.”

  “My complexion is the least of your problems,” he says. “State your name and address.”

  I can feel the antipathy he hurls toward me. The guy is wired. He has bottled up too much excess energy and is ready to implode. I guess he hates his job, or his life, or both. His mouth is a thin line. He doesn’t give a damn, not about me, and not about anybody else. I like that. A lot. I don’t want people around me get all touchy-feely.

  “You’re the policeman. Figure it out.”

  “We know already who you are, Tiara,” he says with a brief twitch of his upper lip, like a smile gone wrong.

  I look away.

  “Your mother Melissa will be contacted shortly, so don’t give me any crap.”

  Good luck with that one, a great help she’ll be.

  Chapter 5

  When the doorbell rang, Melissa expected the police but it was only her mother.

  Louise’s face was ghostly white and drawn. She looked like she had aged ten years since their last meeting, which had been only a few days ago.

  “Melissa, did you see it?”

  Her mother was a head shorter and half of her in volume, but had the same face, the same gestures and the same movements. This carnal miniature of hers barged in and headed straight toward the kitchen.

  “I came right away.” Louise put the kettle on and pulled fresh mugs and tea bags from the cupboard. “God, I can’t handle this. My heart!”

  Melissa sat at the table watching her.

  “It was her, wasn’t it?”

  Melissa nodded.

  Her mother didn’t even look at her. “I always knew it would come to this!” followed by: “It had to come to this!!!” and rounded off with: “Mark my words, this is only the beginning.”

  Melissa sighed.