Our Vengeful Souls (ONC 2024)

ONE

Because standing there, right down there, on the pathway IN FRONT OF HER HOUSE (?!?), was a masked figure, soaked to the bone in blood, knife in hand, singing along to 'Summer Nights'.

Victoria screamed. For real this time.

***

The room was cold- seeped in a grimness unobservable to the human eye, creating a dark, brooding, mysterious atmosphere, counterbalanced only by the golden glow emitted by an oil lamp that hung from one of the stone walls. Sasha Vaughan stood in the centre of the room, leather digging into her skin from where one of her knives lay to rest in her holster. The other was on the table in front of her, blood turning flakey, creating a cast, as it dried.

"Did it really need to be that messy?" The dark eyes of her brother were screwed, tense. His arms were crossed, voice gruff, and his posture slouched, telltale signs he wasn't impressed with her work.

Sasha merely shrugged. "I did what I had to."

Her brother sighed, heavily. "What you had to? Or what you wanted to?"

"Does it matter?" She snapped back, rolling her dark brown eyes. "He's dead, okay? That's all that matters."

"Not when you look like you fucking murdered someone!"

Sasha just grinned. "But Felix, I did murder someone." She responded, words soaked in her usual sarcastic tone. "And, if you wouldn't mind, I'd actually like to celebrate it."

"The fuck do you mean 'celebrate'? You killed three guys last week and didn't want to celebrate that."

Sasha turned, walking towards the door, away from Felix, shrugging off her black trench coat as she went. Hanging up her mask and coat on the hook nearest the door, she turned back to face her brother, wicked smile upon her face.

"Well, dear brother. They weren't him."

***

Victoria had been shaking in a corner for sixteen minutes. She clutched her phone in her left hand, and held it close to her chest, her only hope of making it out of the night alive. In her right hand was a pillow, the only weapon she could find in the very limited time she'd had from screaming her head off, to hiding in her living room corner.

She would've called the police, if the service on her phone would actually work. She'd attempted to facetime her mother- her very last resort, but she wasn't picking up, even after the forty missed calls. Losing all sense of hope, Victoria turned to the one thing she could trust.

"How to survive serial killer" she muttered as she punched her question into Google. Within seconds, an array of answers appeared, and she clicked on the first one that caught her eye- a WikiHow article.

"Step One," she read. "Lock all doors and windows in your house."

Crap. She'd seen all six scream films, and was a self proclaimed serial killer expert. She knew that locking the door– locking all doors and windows, was the most logical thing to do- for goodness sake she'd complained about the characters blatant dumbness for the first half of all of the movies. Clearly, it was much more different in practice.

Wearily, she rose, pillow held out in front of her, as if it would protect her from anyone lurking around the house. She tiptoed around the apartment, as fast as her quiet scrambling would allow. Reaching the front door, she paused, inhaling deeply, before turning the lock with a little flick, and testing the doorknob to make sure it was actually locked. Satisfied, she made her way back to the living room, though not before the sharp ringing of the house phone startled her.