Withering Starlight

2. Match, Hit

                                                 Chapter 2
                                                 Match, Hit

The moment Eve stepped inside her apartment the lights flickered and winked out.

Great.

It was the third black-out in as many days. She'd been looking forward to coming home, crashing on the couch and watching some good old trash TV until she was ready to pass out. But now it looked like she'd be in bed early reading a book by candle light. Frankly, she was getting fucking sick of living in darkness.

Considering Eve was seventeen – sixteen when she rented the apartment – she had to get permission from the court to become an emancipated minor before any of this was possible. For others the process might have been a little bit longer and more difficult, but for Eve she was declared a legalized adult within just a few months of her application. Considering she had already taken up a job at Ink Drop, was still enrolled in school and her only other home was foster care, the judge had gladly accepted her request.

When she came to lease this place she gave the owner a recommendation from her foster carer, Lydia, who knew the man who owned the building. It was a nice place and she was ecstatic when he allowed her to rent there.

Her apartment was an open space with only a separate bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen which was practically completely exposed anyway. She'd been living there long enough to know how to weave her way around the furniture and find the bookcase where she kept her candles for events like these. She fished out a matchbox from her purse, picked out a single stick, and struck it against the coarse side. On the second try the tip burst into flames. She lit the wick of the white candle and watched as orange light blossomed inside the room.

She went around scattering candles, setting them down on tables and the top of the TV, glad to be able to see where she was going.

She lit another match and went to touch it to a wick only to have it snuff out, a thin wisp of grey smoke rising up from the burnt wood.

Eve froze. Her eyes moved to another candle sitting on the bookshelf as it went out, following the path as it slowly moved around the room.

A dreaded feeling sunk into her stomach.

There were no doors open, no windows letting in a draught. No mundane reason to why the flame should have gone out.

But Eve knew.

She dropped down beside the bookcase, matches falling to the floor. She pressed her back up against the door behind her, her heart slamming against her ribs but her breathing paused so she could listen for the sound, the creak of that one loose floorboard outside her front door.

And then she heard it.

Eve reached up to the door nob behind her, twisted, and slipped inside her bedroom, scrambling across the floor to her bedside table. She yanked open the top draw, reached into the back, and pulled out the handgun that she kept there.

A couple years ago when thirteen year old Eve was placed in a foster home, she was with a girl the same age as her whose father was in the army. He had taught her how to shoot, and she had taught Eve. They'd sneak away whenever they could and head out into the woods to shoot at empty cans for target practice. By the time Eve was shipped back out of that family, she was a pretty good shot.

Maybe she hadn't acquired the weapon by otherwise conventional means, but it was this exact reason why she needed one in the first place.

Eve cocked the gun.