Lexy Andrews

The Red Dahlia

Lexy stood in the clearing in Fox Forest, surrounded by a gang of gargoyles. A bonfire separated her from them and on the ground in front of her were two chalices.

One of the gargoyles walked around the fire and handed her a coin.

"Flip for your fate." He said.

Lexy took the coin. She had heard about other people doing this task. Both chalices were filled with a blueberry drink called fresh aid. But only one of them had cyanide in them.

Cyanide was a fast acting poison that stopped cells from being able to derive energy from oxygen. The Nazis used it in the gaseous form of hydrogen cyanide in the concentration camps.

So whether the coin landed on heads or tails all depended on fate. Was she supposed to die right now?

Lexy got that same buzzing feeling she got when she almost fell through the ice on Sweetwater River. It was unearthly. She was walking on a tightrope between life and death.

She flipped the coin effortlessly, like a master. It landed on the ground in front of her. Tails. There was a  heads and tails symbol on each chalice. She took the one with the tails.

It smelled completely of fresh aid. Maybe that was the point. The blueberry drowned out the scent of cyanide?

She raised it to her lips and gulped it back. It immediately gave her flashbacks to when she was a kid and the kids from the neighbourhood would hang out in her back garden and drink this. Little did she know ten years later it might be the very thing that kills her.

She put the chalice down and wiped off her mouth. All of the gargoyles remained silent for a few minutes.

"Well? Which one had the cyanide in it?" Lexy asked.

As usual, she was high on fizzle rocks. They gave her this permanent dreamy tone to her voice, like a siren that would call a sailor to their doom. Her eyes were distant and hazy. Even in public situations, she constantly looked like she was somewhere else. Like if you tried to talk to her, it would just go right through her.

When she was really high, when she had taken a full packet at once, she laughed a lot. Everything seemed funny to her. Especially her own voice. So whenever she would speak, she would burst into fits of giggles afterwards.

"Heads had the cyanide in it. You're fate has been sealed." The gargoyle said.

He then turned to the other gargoyles, as if he was giving them permission, and they all began to disperse back into the forest.

"Wait!" Lexy called. They stopped but only half faced her. "I just want to know... can you guys at least tell me which one of you deemed me worthy?"

None of them said a word. Maybe whoever it was wanted to keep their identity a secret, otherwise why wouldn't they sign their name on the letters.

"You're all wearing masks. If you tell me which one of you it is, it's not like I'll know who you are." Lexy urged.

They looked around at one another for a couple of seconds before one of them slowly stepped forward.

"Me. I've been sending you the letters and the quest cards. I'm the one who decided you were worthy enough to play for the Gargoyle King." He said.

His voice was disguised through the mask and he wore the same thick clothing as all of the others, so there was no possible way for her to recognize him.

And for some reason she didn't care.

As long as she had the game, the quests and the fizzle rocks, nothing else mattered. Nothing.