Nestled in the shadows of Spectre Selene’s Palace, you hear frenzied footsteps trot up the red-stained hallway. Two PVs, Potential Victims, a female running off adrenaline, and a male trying his hardest not to piss his pants, fall in sight.
You lurch out in front of the couple, your shrill shrieks causing the male to roar with fright. The girl screams with excitement, skirting past you hand-in-hand with her red-faced boyfriend.
You watch Leena, your co-worker, drop down from the ceiling in front of the pair, draped with plastic intestines and sporting mangled wolf teeth. When the couple escaped Leena, she giggles in your direction, shooting a thumbs-up. Eerie crickets and moans echo throughout the hallways when you and Leena took our positions again.
You hear the mad clacks of heels barreling down the path. As you hunch over to leap out at the PV, the shadows engulf your vision, the crickets dead and spirits silent.
The clacks speed past with panicked breaths before you could react. You aren’t sure whether to ambush her from behind or ask her what happened to the-
Shrieks pierce the still room. A wet slice squeals near your ears, your powdered cheeks get splattered with moist drops. Your heart goes cold, breathing stifled. The blue lights struggle awake, your eyes sticking to the body in front of you. She wasn’t a PV anymore.
Leena leaps down from her hiding place, clasping her claws around her mouth. You do not move. A scarlet pool swells under the corpse’s meaty stump. Her yellow shirt soaks up some of the blood, a tan orange stain.
“Oh my god, can someone help us!?” Leena cries out, whipping out her iPhone. She glances at you for closure, but you reflect the comfort of a gargoyle.
“Are you afraid to,” Leena stops herself, answering the 911 operative, “Hello? Someone is dead, and their-their head is gone! Me and my friend found her just now! What hap- uh, Jesus, the, umm, lights! The lights! The power went out, and then she screamed, the chick who’s dead, and when they came on, she was there.”
You watch the blood continue to run, slowly. You wonder what the girl looked like, and why the murderer took her head. She is white with an annual tan. Her ruined shirt displayed speckled blood stains and holes, Old Navy Jeans ripped and torn in som-
“Are you okay?” Leena crouches in front of you. She was off the phone now.
“What did she look like?” you ask.
“What?”
“Brunette, blonde, or black hair?”
“Jesus Christ, you got blood on ya,” Leena pulls you out from your hiding place, careful to avoid the bloody mess in front of my position. You press on.
“Did she wear glasses? A hat? Was her nose big? Was it pointy? Was it wide? Did she have thick lips? Thick eye brows? No eyebrows?”
Leena paces back and forth after putting you against the wall and turns away from the carnage. The red puddle halts its journey. You continue.
“Did she wear makeup? Was it Maybelline? Avon? BareMinerals? Did she have fat cheeks? Huge forehead? Lobed ears?”
“Shut up! Can’t you see someone’s dead?” Leena flips on you, mascara streaking her stunned face. You stare past Leena’s shock at the corpse, a cold pallor.
“But did she have fat cheeks?”