Day 85

Beth was surrounded by people, and yet she felt very alone. It wasn't uncomfortable; rather, a feeling of peace had settled upon her like a smooth, silk cloak. She wore it contentedly. After many hours of horror and pain, it was nice to just sit and be quiet.

She knew something was wrong the minute Erin stepped out the door. Grosland had never returned from her late-night mission, and after pacing the living room for six hours Erin had finally grabbed her gun off the table and gone out looking for her, swearing that there would be blood running in the streets if her roommate was harmed in any way. The door slammed shut, and somehow Beth knew that Erin wasn't coming back.

Once the sun had gone down she ventured out on her own, sheathed in darkness. She navigated the alleyways with catlike tread, silent as the approach of death. She needed clues, and soon enough, she found them. At the original rendezvous point, there was a smudge of blood on a lamppost. Beth's heart leaped into her throat. She followed the dusty footprints down the street, coming to a halt at a dead end.

She looked around, confused. Then, she spotted a scratch on one of the lower bricks in the wall. Crouching down, she was just able to read the word scratched into the wall:

 Aaaauuuggghhhh

Obviously, this had been written by a Grosland in great distress. Beth felt a wave of sadness wash over her as she thought of her amusingly short friend. She touched the word-laden brick gently - then, on an instinct, she pushed it.

It gave way readily. A great cranking sound echoed through the alleyway as the wall slid back into its holding, revealing a secret passageway. Beth was immediately alert, back on the hunt, and she stalked down the passage without a flicker of fear.

Beth in the present shuddered, remembering the filthy passageway. She'd had to traverse its spider-inhabited lengths for almost an hour before finally reaching the other side. She remembered her surprise at finding a closet door, the slits of which - when peered through sneakily - revealed the expansive laundry room of their apartment complex. Her entire ward had been in there, having one of their many after-church meetings. Beth had been about to turn back, feeling she had arrived at the wrong place, when the conversation had finally wheedled through the slats of the door to her.

"That's two of them down, only one more to go!" Josh said. The crowd responded with uproarious laughter and cheering. Josh grinned and raised his beefy arms, accepting the applause. "Really, that's enough," he said modestly. "That Erin girl wasn't very difficult. Once she'd seen her friend's gutted corpse, she just stood there and let me shoot her in the head." More laughing. Beth's heart froze over with anger.

Now a skinny woman was speaking. "Paul, how did you get that first girl anyway? She's always been so clever, I was sure she'd be the last one we'd get."

Paul smiled fiendishly, sitting on the couch with a couple of cronies. "Well, naturally, I made sure I had the upper hand. She made be skilled, but even a skilled assassin has little chance against twenty gunners. She's a lot easier to shoot when she's already dead." The laughter in the room was incredible, strong enough that Beth almost expected to feel it like a gust of wind on her face.

Suddenly, as the group of people shifted, Beth saw the table at the center of the room. A shock pulsed through her, making her gasp. Even though she'd expected it, the sight was more than she could ever have imagined: two slaughtered bodies displayed on the table like trophies - her roommates, too mutilated for her to even tell which one was which. Her breath came ragged and her sight was tinged with red. The laughter coming from the room rose and fell with her heartbeat, pounding in her skull. No more thinking; Beth was beyond that now. She was beyond BETH. She was the Hassassin. And the Hassassin only ever had one task....

The door crashed to the floor, making several of the ward members cry out in surprise. They all looked at her. Some didn't recognize her, and didn't know to run. Others, though, began to flee the moment she appeared, as if they could see death in her eyes. 


Beth smiled serenely, perched on the back of the couch. She was surrounded by people, but none of them moved or spoke, and none of them ever would again. She was alone in a crowd of the dead.

She started to whistle.