Strange Games

1: Why?

The music was heavy and thrummed through the body like pulsing blood  in the dancers' veins. Lights flashed, flickered, and oscillated between  bright and dim in the huge room. Fog covered the floor, disturbed by  the movement of the many bodies occupying the space. A huge screen  adorning the wall showed an impressive array of colors and designs  changing with the rhythm.

To a first-timer, the sensory input  could be overwhelming and sometimes disorienting. But not to her. She  was too focused on the carnage scattered around her. Distantly she  wondered if Simon was right and someone had indeed put something in her  drink when she hadn't been looking, but another part of her was very  aware that this wasn't a hallucination. This was reality. And it  terrified her.

The strange boy she followed into this place was  dancing to a deadly rhythm matched by another young man his direct  opposite in appearance who matched him move for move. Where the first  boy had blond hair cut and styled in such a way that many girls and guys  would find attractive, the other boy had dark messy hair more like the  woman joining their terrible dance.

The woman had long brown-black  hair that gleamed perfectly as her lithe body moved and pulsed. Her  outfit suited the rave atmosphere and had she taken this dance to the  open floor, there was no doubt she could easily have the choice of  anyone else out there. But what she chose to do with her moves heralded  destruction.

It lasted no longer than half a minute, but in that  time the witness watched seven people murdered in cold blood. Her eyes  widened when she frantically glanced at the floor for the inevitable  spray of blood and dismembered body parts and felt her stomach sink when  she found none. The floor was dirty but no more than it had been before  the massacre began. The warm metal in her grasp suddenly felt slippery  in her palms.

She shuddered and stumbled back, raising the metal  thing in her hands instinctually when something rushed her. The impact  forced the metal into her gut knocking what little breath she still had  out of her lungs forcing her to lurch forward. Her wide eyes caught the  instant wicked, inhuman eyes changed from hatred to surprise before  vanishing in a burst of fire and ash.

Gasping hungrily, she  slumped and noticed the softly glowing blade blossoming from the metal  rod she still held clasped firmly, desperately, in her hands in  confusion. Her mind stuttered as it tried to come to terms with what  just happened. That thing... That thing, which looked so very human -but  those jaws were most definitely not human- was gone. Dead, she  realized. That thing was dead. She had killed it. She had killed it. She had killed it.

She was murderer.

That  clear though jolted through her mind followed by a clatter as the  metal, newly freed from her grasp, struck the ground, the glowing blade  vanishing. A soft sob escaped her and she distantly realized she was  hyperventilating. She hadn't noticed the vibrant sensations in the rave  before, but now they hammered and clamored and threatened to engulf her.

She had to get out.

Now.

She couldn't remember the run out of the building, just snatches of color, noise, heat, and the desperate need to escape!

She  didn't notice clutching her messenger bag still slung over her shoulder  as she ran. She didn't notice Simon or Maureen calling her from the  bar. She only thought of escape. Safe. She needed to get somewhere safe.  Home. Mom. Home was safe. Mom was safe.

A dull yellow streaked by  blaring its horn and she stopped abruptly at the edge of a huge  intersection still bustling with traffic even at this late hour. She  blinked and a taxi pulled up. She didn't bother to count her blessings,  she just climbed in and her mind absolutely blanked.