Kieran washed his hands and exited the bathroom, wiping them on his jeans. He took his phone from his pocket to check the time when a thump at the end of the hallway caught his attention. It had come from Jase's bedroom.
More curious than concerned, he approached the door, pressing his ear against the wood.
"You cunt!" came a yell from the other side. Kieran instinctively reached for the handle, cursing when it didn't budge. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew the voice didn't belong to Jase and something wasn't right.
He ran downstairs, pushing past everyone in the living room to get to the table, calling Jase at the same time. Janine spotted him first, getting Sam and Jase's attention and pointing in Kieran's direction. His panicked facial expression was enough to get the men out of their seats.
"There's something going on in Madison's room, the door's locked-" Jase didn't wait for him to finish, barking orders at people to move out of his way, Sam and Kieran followed in his wake. He took the stairs two at a time, key already in hand.
There was no sound when they reached the door. The silence was almost tangible, leaking out from underneath, overpowered only by the dizzying bass of Jase's pulse in his own ears. He slid the key in the lock, pausing for a moment. A hurricane of scenarios flipbooked through his mind, all of them resulting in finding Madison dead. He had to brace himself before twisting.
The door opened with a short whine. Kieran was already wretching, covering his mouth and averting his eyes. Even Jase had to hold his breath, though for entirely different reasons. All he could see was blood. Lines of red swiped across the wall resembling silly string, a web of crimson splashed over the popcorn ceiling, a puddle collected on the bed, it was everywhere.
Jase's knees buckled and he had to use the doorframe to steady himself, leaning his shoulder against it. He struggled to register the image of Madison's body, half slumped on the bed and half on the floor, glistening in dark syrupy fluids. Everything inside him tensed, his vision came in waves of focussed and unfocussed, an excruciating ringing screeched in his ears.
Then Madison sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, smearing the blood on her face and she wasn't the lifeless body posed unnaturally on the edge of the matress.
She was on her knees at the head of the corpse, the white t-shirt she was wearing was no longer white, now saturated with blood and clinging to her body. One sleeve hung off her shoulder where the collar had been torn.
Jase could feel his limbs again as relief seized him, returning oxygen to his lungs. He took in the scene once more, specifically Madison's white knuckles wrapped around his switchblade and the poor guy who had picked the wrong one to fuck around and find out with. The discarded jogger bottoms flung on the chest of drawers didn't go amiss. Nor did the jeans sagging around the body's thighs, exposing a pair of checkered boxers. The math did itself.
"Is that Charlie?" Sam asked, breaking the silence.
"Jesus Christ," Kieran mumbled from a safe distance, having just about pulled himself together.
Madison's head snapped round, she hadn't noticed them come in. Jase found her eyes through the clumps of bloodied hair clinging to her face but he couldn't for the life of him gauge what she was thinking.
Without a word, Madison stepped off the bed, took the box of cigarettes from Charlie's back pocket and calmly slid one out. She lit it, chucking the packet back at him. Sam alternated between watching her and watching Jase but Jase was only watching Madison as she stepped over to them, placing his switchblade on the chest of drawers, the blade tacky with Charlie's blood.
An air of caution drifted between the men. Madison's eyes flickered to each of them in turn as she took a few drags on the cigarette before handing it to Jase. He took it, holding it like a birthday candle, studying the red fingerprints on the white paper as she strolled towards the bathroom.
"What the fuck?" Sam mouthed at Jase once the bathroom door was locked. The soft whirring of the boiler kicking up brought the music back, reminding Jase they had a house full of people mere meters away from a murder scene. He put the cigarette in the ashtray and tried to get his head straight.
"Kieran, get everyone out," he instructed evenly. Kieran jumped to it, glad to have an excuse to get away from all the gore. He'd never been very good with blood, the smell of it turned his stomach. Jase closed the door in case anyone wandered upstairs and took a deep breath. He hated cleaning up.
He looked down at Charlie's lifeless body, tilting his head at the shredded flesh on the side of his neck. Madison had severed his carotid artery, which explained the sheer amount of blood on her but not the walls and ceiling. He leaned in for a closer inspection, noticing the slits in the back of Charlie's t-shirt - knife sized slits. So many of them it was hard to distinguish an exact number. It was like he'd been attacked by an angry sewing machine.
Kieran's voice travelled upstairs.
"No, you can't finish your drink. Get out. Because I said so, party's over."
"Go and help him," Jase muttered to Sam, still analysing Charlie's wounds. "And get the tarp when they're gone."
Jase took fresh clothes for Madison out of the wardrobe when Sam returned with a large sheet of blue tarpaulin. Jase told him to get Charlie wrapped up whilst he went to check on her.
A stab to the carotid artery would have finished Charlie off in less than thirty seconds. To continue stabbing him, breaking all three layers of skin, feeling the resistance from the epidermus with each puncture and the suction from the hypodermus clinging to the blade on its way out exhausted the term overkill.
Madison would likely be in a state of shock with a high volume of adrenalin pumping through her as her brain tried to piece together what had happened.
He knocked three times, loud enough to be heard over the shower but there was no answer. There was also no privacy for the girls in the house so the lock could be undone from the outside. She was staring in the mirror, something she was doing increasingly more often these days. Steam crept up around the edges, encasing her reflection in a foggy circle. Her expression hadn't changed, remaining unreadable and disconnected.
Jase was familiar with the trance. Knifing someone was a world apart from shooting someone. With a gun, you never felt the life you were taking leave the body the way you did with a fatal stab wound.
"Madison," he said coolly. She displayed no signs of acknowledgement. Her eyes were pinged wide, pupils the size of garden peas standing out amidst the streaks of red on her face. "Madison," Jase repeated, louder this time. Still nothing. He inspected her body language. Her breathing was deep but controlled, no hyperventilating so far, and there was only a faint quiver in her hands. Besides this, there was nothing overly untoward other than the spaciness and obviously, the blood. "Mads, are you okay?"
Slowly, Madison came back to life, her movements stiff and robotic. Her head turned jerkily in Jase's direction, stopping halfway.
"Is he dead?" she asked.
"A little," Jase replied, trying to determine how lucid she was and deciding the less so, the better. It would help nothing if she became hysterical.
"Good."
"Are you okay?" he questioned again tentatively. Madison turned her body, like a jewellery box ballerina on it last legs, until she was facing Jase. She blinked at him blankly, tilting her head as if she didn't understand the question. Or maybe it was because it was a stupid question, he couldn't tell.
Rather than answer, she held her hands up displaying ten black crescents at the tip of each finger.
"Do you have a nail scrubber? I need to get this blood off me."
Jase was rarely lost for words but Madison's reaction to stabbing someone to death, in quite possibly the most savage manner he'd ever seen, was not what he expected. He was perplexed. She was too calm, it was eerie. Disturbing, almost.
"Jase?" Madison said. His brows fused together in question. "Nail brush?"
"Medicine cabinet," he replied. Madison opened the cabinet, taking out a brand new nail brush with a wooden handle.
"Do you need my clothes?"
Jase scrunched his eyes shut, unable to comprehend her passive attitude. He opened them to Madison waiting for an answer, one bloody-brow arched impatiently.
"You haven't answered my question, are you okay?" Because the first time he had stabbed someone, he had thrown up and his experience hadn't been half as messy. Madison sighed, looking down at her feet. Her socks were screwed up in a ball by the bin, she'd stepped in Charlie's blood getting off the bed and tracked footprints to the bathroom. Fortunately, the hallway carpet was an ugly red swirling design they wouldn't show up on.
"I was nearly raped," she said candidly. The word was the unspoken backbone of their business but hearing it from Madison's lips somehow made it sound sharper, more predatory. Jase winced and she took a deep breath. "I knew after my first failed escape that I wasn't getting out of here without a few bruises and likely without my virginity in tact," she laughed flatly. "Although, I didn't think I'd get a say in that so, thanks." The smile fell limp, her eyes growing glassy, blurring the blood on the tiles floor. "I knew, if pushed, I would need to be prepared to kill someone." She lifted her head. "Until a few weeks ago, I expected that someone to be you."
She didn't care for a reply, eager to get out of the clothes. The t-shirt was heavy, sodden and stinking of iron. She was desperate to get clean. She pulled it off, dropping it to the floor.
"Well, I'm glad it wasn't me. It looks like the Texas chainsaw massacre in there." He was trying to make light of the situation, still determining whether she was having a seriously delayed reaction. He still half expected her to burst into tears at any second.
Madison's bra followed the t-shirt and Jase followed the trickles of dry blood between her breasts, mapping her body for any obvious injuries. Apart from a nasty looking bruise forming under her ribcage, and a few budding around her thighs and arms, she appeared physicallly unharmed giving Jase a sense of relief he hadn't known he needed.
Guilt was still gnawing at him. Had she screamed? Because if she had, he hadn't heard. If it wasn't for Kieran, or the switchblade, things could have taken a different turn, one he didn't want to think about.
She shimmied out of her underwear, scooped the clothes off the floor and dumped them in Jase's arms as she stepped into the shower.
The red water slowly turned pink, gradually running clear once she'd tackled the ropey tendrils her hair had turned into. And just like that, Charlie was gone.
"You don't care, do you?" Jase asked, finally coming to terms with the fact that she was genuinely unfazed, not putting on a brave passive front. Madison shrugged.
"It was me or him."
She was the only person on Earth that could stand in front of him, wet and naked, and make him feel like the vulnerable one.