My options are slim.
One, I can remain in the Maxor Hotel’s ballroom. Drowning here in the empty conversations and endless mockery, or…
Two, I can go home. Suffocate in the inescapable obsession over my appearance and my social status.
My heart is aching for a place that’s truly home. It isn’t a place I’ve been before. I don’t know if it’s a place that I’m going.
“Hello?” Mother picks up the phone, finally, and pretends that she wasn’t watching my phone call on her phone’s screen the entire time.
“I’d like to come home, please. Could you pick me up, or send Father?” I ask. My voice sounds like it’s fading away. Am I whispering? “The party is winding down.” I hope this detail will grant me an exit, but it won’t. Mother wants me to schmooze, to never miss an opportunity to make impressions and connections. “Other people are going home.”
“No,” Mother says. “You’ll stay. We’ll let you know when you can come home.” I can almost hear her eyebrows knit in frustration. She’ll stop when she thinks of the lines that might form on her skin. “Socialize!” she groans. Mother hangs up.
Jeremy
Lorenzo Sirvio doesn’t know that he’s breathing his last breaths tonight, but I know it. I know, because I’m going to snuff him out.
His propensity for cruelty isn’t a well-kept secret. Not like how I manage to rid the world of plenty of terrible stains like him. No one knows that I’m a serial killer. Being clever, wealthy and unpredictable has lent itself well to my dangerous hobby.
Tonight, Lorenzo is getting a surprise. I’m going to slide my knife in him and listen to his gasping breaths and know the world is a better place because he’s not in it.
Sitting on the far side of the bar, I wait for Lorenzo to show up. I’ve watched him enough to know his schedule down to when he eats an extra candy bar he keeps stashed in his desk.
Running my finger along the condensation on
my glass, I lick my lips and watch the entrance. A girl in an elegant gown walks into the room. Everyone notices her — how could they not, with that monstrosity of a dress wrapping her up like some delicate little present?
I watch her. Forgetting Lorenzo, and his impending death, for a moment. The beautiful girl carries herself like she wants to be anywhere but here. If she notices the eyes on her, it would surprise me. She sits on the far side of the bar. I watch her order a drink. She’s too young for alcohol. The bartender brings her a ginger ale.
What a good girl.
The Maxor Hotel bar likes to serve underage girls, but this particular bartender doesn’t and I approve. Yes, the murderer with morals, that’s me.
I come here for the scum and clean up some of it, but I’ve never seen someone so enchanting as her. I’m not sure what about her presence compels me to move closer, but I remove some of the distance between us and sit nearby.
“Another?” the bartender asks. I wave him away. I can’t be bothered to look away from this delicate little woman.
In the room, I can observe everything around me, hyperaware and keyed up for action. She is the opposite — dialed out and utterly drained by everyone and everything. She’s so disconnected. I want to change that.
I see her, sweet little beauty, all by herself and away from the world. Some of her peers bolt into the room. When they enter, holding bottles of champagne and walking in a tangled gaggle of leering, the air becomes putrid. They stink of superficiality and arrogance. Nothing like her. When she’d entered the room, she had tried to cocoon herself back into solitude. These girls boisterously wander in, and they spot her.
I clench my fists. My legs urge me to stand when I see the newcomers close around her.
“We got some champagne. If you want some, you can have it, but you’ll have to suck it off our cocks. I mean, we have to know you’re worth it,” I hear one of them loudly proclaim.
“Yeah, Carrie, we can throw some dick at you so you won’t be such a weirdo,” one of the girl says, taking a swig of her champagne bottle and then burping. “Or do you need to find some other caterer to try and save from actually doing her fucking job and getting us what we want when we want it?”
I would kill every one of them to pull sweet Carrie from this situation. But that’s not how I’ll procure my beauty. I quiet the monster inside, for a moment, and let calmness come. Carrie will be mine.
“Are you done yet?” Carrie asks the intruders, bored and unperturbed. As she’s looking down, she catches me staring at her.
Carrie sees me. She smiles in such a soft way. She seems surprised by my stare, and her cheeks get pinker. The color on her is ravishing, and for a moment I swallow just thinking about how fucking hard I am at her little reaction.
I leer at the lovely Carrie, and she smiles again. It charms me in a way that I don’t think I’ve truly experienced before. I have fucked hundreds, maybe thousands of women, but my cock is harder than it has ever been for my innocent beauty. Does she know that she’s trapped herself? Would those kind eyes still regard me in such a pure way if she knew what I’m going to do to her?
Carrie
Mother finally calls, hours after my original plea and several ginger ales into a dreadful evening, to tell me that I’m released from this hell of a party, and I’m thrilled. I wait outside for the car to pick me up. The chill whipping wind reminds me that I had a wrap, a wrap I’d left back in the ballroom, but I’d rather freeze than re-enter that hellscape of boozed up prep school kids. Hugging my arms together will have to suffice.