St. Văduva's School for Prestigious Girls

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕱𝖎𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓

Temperance's hand flew to her mouth, her nausea rising up her throat.

Dead? Someone was dead?

She held back the bile in her throat even though it burned her esophagus and tried to figure this out. She fainted, with no memory of what had happened, and now she was covered in blood. Blood of some dead person that lay on the other side of a false wall.

She shimmied to the hidden door, pressing her ear against it to try and hear the conversation. She could pick out Ottilie's prim, British voice amongst a slew of others, and that seemed to frighten her more than it comforted her. Ottilie was only there when it got bad.

"Oh, dear. This is not good." The dean paused. "Have we alerted parents yet?"

A deep voice spoke next, sounding much like Coach Mahon. "No. We wanted to see what you wanted to do about this first."

A bout of pregnant silence followed, Temperance holding her breath as she awaited the answer.

"Hold off on it." It was spat out like something bitter, and Temperance recoiled at the harshness, eyebrows wrinkled. Ottilie continued, "Something is not right. I'll have Mircea hold an assembly. Clean up this poor girl before her guard dog starts ripping heads off."

Temperance listened intently, unintentionally clenching her fists as she nervously fidgeted. She winced as something cut into her non-bloodsoaked palm. Uncurling her fingers, she was greeted with a horrific and familiar sight. A pink barrette nestled deep into her fist. She immediately blanched, strands of straight black hair still inside the clip, as though it had been ripped from someone's head. She launched it down the hall, crawling away from it as she whimpered.

Her mouth mouthed the word "no" repeatedly. It was not true; it could not be true. This was just a really, really bad dream. An extended hallucination—

"Who had a problem with Ji-Yeong, anyway? She was such a ray of sunshine." It was spoken loud enough for Temperance to pick up through the wall, and it was followed by a loud slam of the laundry room door.

This tripped the sensors of her stomach, the floodgates exploding as she turned around and vomited violently across the tile. She slammed her fists onto the ground below, vomit spewing from her mouth and nose like a gushing waterfall. She dry heaved for several moments after the flow ceased, sobbing and drinking in air greedily.

The realization might as well have been a punch to the face.

It was Ji-Yeong's blood.

Ji-Yeong was dead.

"Oh, fuck," Temperance whispered, hands shaking as her tears fell over her cheeks, converging with clotted blood and dripping down her chin. Temperance licked the tears that touched her lips unconsciously, grimacing and gagging as the taste of coagulated pennies entered her mouth. More vomit ensued until her stomach clenched around complete emptiness. "What have I done?"

The barrette, the blood, the blackout — it was all leading up to a conclusion that Temperance did not like.

She needed to leave before the teachers came back and discovered her bloodied and covered in her own sick. It would make things so much worse. She did not even remember what she did, and how could she? There were chunks of time always missing from her memory, eaten away like swiss cheese by the ball of cancerous tissue that acted as a sped-up biological clock.

Oh God... Constance...

How would Constance react? Her best friend was a dying murderer, with no recollection of an atrocity she had done. The thought of Constance sobbing in a court setting made her stomach lurch, but nothing but saliva poured from her gaping lips. Her stomach muscles ached from having to clench quickly, and she moaned at the ache in her ribs.

She blearily peered down at her uniform, the small sliver of light beneath the false wall allowing her eyes to adjust slightly to the dark. She was bathed in blood. It stained her outfit, coated her face and hair, and trailed down her thighs slightly. She wished to rip her own skin off, but she had to be quick. Disgusted and ashamed of herself, she began to strip the sodden clothes from her body, the feeling of blood sticky and cold. She sobbed quietly, throwing the clothes over her puddle of vomit and stepping over it quickly, as though it were a bear trap waiting to snag her ankle.

She remembered her clothes in the washer and concocted a quick plan. Find a way out, grab some clothes from her finished washer, and get to the dorms before anyone sees her. Standing on shaky, bloody legs, she swallowed back the rancid flavor of bile from her tongue and cautiously headed for the wall. Again, she reached out and felt along the seam on the wall. Nothing stood out immediately, so she stood on her tiptoes and stretched her hand further up the crevice. Something small and metal caught her fingers then. She gasped softly, feeling along and discovering a latch. She tickled around the edges of the metal until she could pinch it between her index and middle finger and pry it from the wall. Cheering to herself, the door popped open like a can of biscuits.

The heavy scent of copper and salt assaulted her senses, the intensity making her hesitate. Her mouth salivated with the oncoming flood of nausea, but she refrained. Balling her hands up, an expression of determination was written on her face as she crept out from the hidden room.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight she dreaded seeing.

The shelving unit was tipped over, and laundry materials were strewn about. Various cleaning liquids mixed with crimson unceremoniously on the floor. Ji-Yeong lay in a puddle of her own life source, her eyes simultaneously dull and glassy. Her face was whiter than paper but surprised by her final facial expression. Her eyes were widened slightly, as was her mouth. Her hair was matted and covered in congealed life source. But that was not the most surprising thing.

Ji-Yeong was bent like a pretzel. Her back bent unnaturally as her head laid too close to her feet and her torso wrapped around the fallen metal shelving unit. Her clothes were soaked in crimson to where it was difficult to discern what the original hues of her pajamas were. Her phone sat in her hand, the screen shattered and glitching as her lifeless body lay mangled.

Temperance choked, stepping back until her back hit the paneling beside the secret entrance, tears flowing over her bottom lids. Ji-Yeong stared at Temperance, and Temperance had to force herself to look away. Did she really do this? The amount of strength it would take to snap someone's spine like they were a toothpick seemed too great for it to be her, but what would everyone else think? She had blacked out, woke up in the blood, held a barrette of a dead girl in her grasp, and had a visible altercation involving the deceased just hours before. Something was not clicking but Temperance's frayed mind tried to string it together.

Her musing and mourning would have to wait, as a loud thud from upstairs startled a wet gasp from her lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut, running past the dead girl and to the washer. She opened the handle and dove in, pulling out a damp pajama shirt and some random sweatpants. It could pass for sleepwear. Not suspicious at all. If one did not look at her blood-soaked hair, it would be fine.

She quickly dressed, hopping over the dangerous combination of liquids and heading for the other shelving unit. Constance being a true crime junkie paid off. Temperance grabbed hold of a bottle of bleach, venturing back into the hidden room and back to her clothes and vomit — all DNA evidence. Swallowing nervously, she contemplated what she was about to do. She was covering up evidence. Although she was not entirely sure she did not do this, she needed time to figure it out without someone discovering it all. She reluctantly glanced back over to the girl tangled up on the floor. She bit her fist, swallowing hard as she spoke so softly she almost did not catch it. "I'll... I'll figure out who did this, Ji-Yeong."

She decidedly poured the bleach over her sick and her clothes. Once it was mostly covered, she crept out once more, placing it back on the shelf in the same place it was before, ensuring there was not so much fluid taken that it would be suspicious enough to search the handle for prints. Finally, she pressed the false wall shut, hearing the latch mutely click back into place.

She consciously made an effort to avoid looking at the dead girl, peering at the closed door to the laundry room. She had to figure out how to get back to the dorms unseen. Covered in the blood of the girl who was murdered with no recollection of what had happened.