St. Văduva's School for Prestigious Girls

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕿𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖞-𝕱𝖎𝖛𝖊

It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to her skull, bashing away until nothing but mush remained. She groaned as her eyes squinted shut, writhing and gripping her hair with cold, trembling fingers. The pain made it hard to think, but a few thoughts escaped through the wall of despair. The last thing she remembered was coming down the stairs... heading to the Student Resource Office. 

Dmitri. 

She was looking for Dmitri because...

The painting. 

A painful tug in her head seized her focus and she groaned. Given the state of her head, she could assume she had passed out.

She could feel her surroundings before she could see them — she was sitting on a plush surface, her face and torso slung over a wheel and sprawled over a flat surface. A ringing beat violently against her eardrum, and after a while, she realized it was not an internal tinnitus but rather an external source.

She licked her lips, mouth feeling like cotton as she unbolted her bleary eyes reluctantly, and then she could fully assess where she was. 

A car. 

She was in a car. 

It was pitch black outside, but some lights from the dashboard allowed her some visibility in the interior. It appeared to be one of the SUVs that sat in the parking lot some ways away from the school. It could have very well been the one she had been brought here in almost a month prior.

She moaned lowly, sitting up fully as she peeled herself from the steering column, leaning back in the seat and feeling the Italian leather beneath her. Peering around, she noticed there were no keys in the ignition, but they must have been there at one point, the absence making the SUV ding loudly. The sunroof was wide open, letting in the pre-autumn chill. She pressed the heel of her palm to her temple, trying to combat the pain behind her orbs as she shivered.

When did she get into a car? Where did she even get the keys from?

She groggily peered around, noting none of the items she had left the dance studio with — no books, no painting, no phone.

Sluggishly, she opened the driver's side door, subsequently cutting off the car's ringing and letting in more of the frigid mountainside air. She stepped out into the night, her legs shaky and unsteady. She swayed, and her foot caught on something large, sending her flying onto the leaf-covered floor. She hit her chin on the soil, teeth slicing through her tongue and copper-salt filling her mouth. She whined, hand cupping her jaw as the pain ebbed and flowed through her skull and her mouth. Moving her legs to try and curl them beneath her, she felt whatever her foot had snagged on move with her. She turned to see what it was, her eyebrows scrunching together as she swallowed back blood. She screamed before she could stop herself.

The man's eyes bore right through her, terror written in his pupils as his blank stare sent her scrambling back into the trunk of a tree. The feeling of bark poking into her back did not faze her as she took in the entire scene.

The car's lights were still on, shining dully in the night and illuminating the scene before her. The man lay across from her, his wide eyes the only thing that stood out starkly among the carnage that got worse the more she looked.

His fingers gripped the soil, sticks and rocks breaching through the gaps in his digits. The driver's side tire, rim shined with blood, sat on his chest, ribs concaving and making room for the object lodged over top. That was not even the worst part. His intestines sprouted from his mouth and bulged in his throat like macabre daisies popping up in spring snow. He had been rolled up like a near-empty tube of toothpaste.

She would not have been able to figure out who he was if he were not wearing an old brown leather jacket and black fingerless gloves.

Dmitri.

Her bile spewed from her once more as she realized she had tripped over his broken ankles that had been snapped inward, bones protruding from his ripped flesh.

"Oh, God! Oh my fucking God!" she whimpered once the stream stopped.

It started up again when she happened to look back at the body by accident. His eyes, bulging from their sockets, fit to bust with all the pressure.

She curled in on herself, hands in her hair as blood and vomit decorated her chin.

How could this have happened? She killed him. She killed him. It had to have been her. The evidence was damning.

Tears flowed from her eyes as that sunk in. Another thought danced through her mind as well. Ji-Yeong was probably her fault, as well. She was the one who likely threw the shelf over top and snapped her spine like a glow stick.

"Fuck!" she screamed into the night air to no one in particular.

But her calls were answered, and fear made a cozy nest for itself in the pit of her gut when she heard a voice cut through the cloak of night.

"Temperance?"

Her wild eyes darted in the direction from where the voice had come. A figure stood in the tree line, out of sight of the headlights' beam. The voice was masculine, familiar. Even so, she scurried away from it like a roach in the light, eyes frenzied.

Mircea entered the light, eyes wide as she took in the scene. He said nothing as he bent down near the car, eyes raking over Dmitri's corpse. His nostrils flared and he appeared displeased. When he spoke, it was deep, grim. "What happened?"

A sob left her throat as she wrapped her arms around herself. She shook her head repeatedly, shivering on the cold, unforgiving ground as her eyes squeezed shut. For once, she told the truth beneath her trembling breath.  "I-I don't know! I just woke up here... What have I done, oh my God..."

Mircea stewed in silence until he stood, his footsteps crunching the leaves. He finally stood before her, and she waited for him to grab her or restrain her or something to obtain the murder suspect.

She was not expecting a jacket to be placed around her shoulders.

Hiccupping, she peered up at the man before her, who watched her closely with those same soft features that he regarded her with when she had her nightmare weeks prior. He held his hand out, and without thinking twice, she grabbed hold of it and let him help her to her feet. His touch was as frigid as the night air, but she was relieved to feel his skin against hers. He placed a hand on her upper back, leading her away from the scene of the crime and back toward the university.

"I will take care of it," he assured quietly as Temperance sobbed to herself, "Do not worry. It will all be fine. I promise."