The Underdogs

A Beautiful Death

Chapter Three

A Beautiful Death

Tak hugged the jacket around her, inhaling its musty scent, a mix of sweat and subtle cologne. The leather was soft and wrinkled from what must have been years of use. It had been well loved; that much was evident from the ease of the zip, the way the sleeves were cuffed just right. That posed the question: why would someone have left it with her?

She did not spend much time pondering the matter. The important thing was that she had survived another episode and another night senseless in the city streets. One foot in front of the other, she counted her steps under her breath. Rhythmic actions -- adding up footfalls, finger-drumming out the beat of a favorite song -- always helped her recover from the disorientation of the fatigue and vertigo that always followed a fainting spell.

Normally, she would have gone to Jenna’s apartment rather than toward her parents’ home. It was a weekend after all, a time better spent with a friend rather than the meticulous surveillance of Bill and Serena Floshian. But today was different. Today, her father was being honored by the president for a decade of service as Chief of Police, which Tak would never had cared about had she not promised her brother to accompany him to the gala.

It took 1,847 steps to get to President Zelmar’s mansion.

Everything was marble: the floors, the ceiling, the walls. To Tak, it looked more like a museum than a home; more like a still life than real life. A pair of snaking staircases flanked either side of the sprawling foyer, lined with crimson carpet so plush it could have been velvet. Towering windows let shimmering rays of golden afternoon sun dance across the floor.

Lined with silky white cloth, small tables and plush-backed chairs dotted the room like a Seurat. Men in suit and tie chatted up women in gowns that dusted the floor as they moved; children in glittery dresses and woolly sweaters clung to their parents’ wrists and shirtsleeves, and picked at their food. Though people milled about endlessly, it took no time for Tak to find her brother, who was busying his restless hands by helping the caterers pass out hors d’oeuvres.

“Tris, Mom’s not running this party, right?” she asked him, running her fingertips along the velvet seam a chair cushion as Tristan helped a black-suited waiter balance a particularly precarious tray of shrimp puffs. “So why’re you busting your ass with these… What are they, muffins or something?”

“No, I just…” Tristan trailed off, biting away a strip of skin from his thumb. “I just can’t be around them right now. Who knew he could find a way to get drunk of champagne at three in the afternoon.”

“Dad?”

“Both of them, now that I think of it,” he replied, tossing brown bangs from his eyes. “Honestly, Tak, would you mind if we left early?”

Tak shot her brother a sly smile, but it faltered when he didn’t return it. Only then did Tak notice the grayish undertone in Tristan’s cheeks, the way his shoulders slumped forward as if tied to weights. Not only that, she realized, but he seemed quite slimmer than before, black slacks gaping around his once thick middle, pooling around his feet.

“Let me just say goodbye to Zack,” he said, referring to the president’s only son, with whom he had been friends since grade school, “then we can get out of here. Wanna come with?”

Tak nodded, always eager for a chance to accompany her older brother. Only pausing for a chance to grab a finger sandwich off a passing waiter’s tray, she hurried off after Tristan as he ascended one of the grand staircases.

From years of friendship with Zack, Tristan knew the Zelmar home almost as well as he knew his own. But to Tak, the further they progressed into the heart of the mansion, the home began to feel more like a monster. The empty halls were like bowels, the spiraling stairways misshapen jaws full of jagged teeth. Silver-lined windows rose from the floorboards and nearly made it to the ceiling, surveying the Zelmar grounds like watchful eyes. The rumbling beneath their feet was like a budding scream tearing through the throat of the beast.