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HER DEATH STARTS with his.
And it's terribly hard not to be poetic about the whole thing—the loss of one life resulting in another, the amount of blood covering every surface of the moon washed room—because that's just how Caroline Kingston is.
Her mother always said that her one true flaw was her writing mind. Not because of the novels it churns out like word vomit, but because of the poetic undertones that she finds in everything.
Despite the panic rising in her throat, she feels the urge to make a mental snapshot of everything in the room: of the cracked crowned molding and the blood-surged white carpet; of the butcher's knife in her hands and the arterial fluid crawling up her pale arms and legs and cheeks. (She's becoming more blood than girl, more slaughtered meat than person). Of the body, which lies slumped against the foot of the bed, pale green eyes vacantly watching her every anxious move.
She remembers looking into those eyes during the struggle. She remembers them widening once the knife pierced his chest, closing with every hilt-deep penetration. She remembers them flying open and closed, open and closed, with every last shuddering breath.
After the final one, they stayed open, watching her with an empty message prodding her chest: I'll follow you to the end of the earth. You can't run from me.
His presence, now small in death, still pierces Caroline with fear—uncertainty.
Her death starts with his, with blood and despair. Her death starts with an end.
She's impulsive, on top of her writing flaw. So much so that, when she was forced into this room with an animalistic presence that was ready to pounce and claw and rip her limb from limb, she panicked. The party downstairs still shakes the mansion with preppy precision, like the syncopation of hundreds of drunken hearts make up the music blaring from the speakers.
Caroline doubles over for the second time that night and heaves, trying to expel the concoction of feelings tightening her stomach. The moonlight is the worst of it; it burns her like the sun. She feels her façade peeling away like dead skin.
Caroline's a snake, reborn, sent back to tempt with fruit once more. The cherry-lipped seductress from before has melted away. In her wake, a trembling seventeen-year-old girl. The shoes she stole from her foster-mother knock against each other, too big for her feet.
She's just a girl—not a god. They've had it wrong this whole time.
She squeezes the hilt of her knife like she squeezed the life out of the dead man lying a few feet away. Another flaw: her ruthless anxiety makes her something short of heavy-handed. But none of it is enough—the bloodied knife in her grasp won't be enough to stop what's coming. It won't be enough to save her life.
With every vibration of the windowpane beside her comes a frenzied thud-thud-thud down the hallway. Even combined with the sweltering laughs of the guest's downstairs, and the booming bass seeping from the speakers, she can still hear them. They're heavy enough to break ground—fast enough to emit sparks. Footsteps.
