Path to Ashes

It was an accident. I had never intended to become a murderer.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I stared into the clouded eyes of my husband’s mistress. But perhaps destiny never cared for personal intentions. The NYPD certainly wouldn’t.

I’d never seen a corpse before, but I was also fairly certain they weren’t supposed to wither before rigor mortis had a chance to set in. Still, a brittle crackling filled the air as her milk-white skin drew impossibly tight, shrink-wrapping to the bones beneath.

Maybe it was shock, maybe madness, but when her fingers curled in on themselves, the tips blackened and crumbled away. A cold gust swept through the unfinished skyscraper, lifting her into the night in a scattering of fine dust.

The metallic clattering of the rebar pole spearing through her chest crashing to the floor, and the cooling spray of blood across my face, made a liar out of both my self-proclaimed innocence and reality itself. For frozen in her death scream had been two monstrously long canines stretching past ruby lips. The image seared itself into my mind long after the rest of her had disintegrated.

I could have screamed—opened my mouth and shredded my vocal cords until someone dragged me away in a straightjacket, raving about fangs and a woman who moved too fast to be natural. But that didn’t feel like the right reaction. My mind remained bent on her teeth, on the sharp pricks they’d left against my neck when she pressed her mouth to me. That was, of course, just before I managed to trip her over the unguarded edge of what would eventually become a third-floor mezzanine.

Twisting the simple ring on my wedding finger, I tried desperately to piece together how I’d ended up here. How the worst day in my life had culminated into watching a tattered, blood-soaked dress flap in the wind from the haphazardly placed rebar she’d fallen onto.

My thumb circled the gold band.

Twist. Twist. Twist.

I could see myself on the plane to New York City from Savannah. The beer in my hand grew warm as I pressed the cold glass to my temple, wishing it could numb more than just my skin.

Twist, twist, twist. 

I was standing before an unfeeling skyscraper. It’s black metal and darkened glass stretched high into the sky. Luke’s office suited him, all harsh angles and no warmth.

Twist, twist, twist. 

I was trailing behind them, Luke and the woman with fiery hair that was several shades brighter than my own. My steps felt heavy, my heart heavier still. It might have fallen right out of my chest, plopping onto the ground and scraping along the unforgiving asphalt until it was a beating, shredded mass.

Twist, twist, twist. 

My reflection in the window of the restaurant stared back at me, a dead-eyed ghost of the woman I used to be. And behind that ghost, I watched them get tangled up together. His lips on hers, her fingers in his hair. My husband and this woman consumed each other. And I... I twisted the ring, watching from the other side of the window. 

Then I was inside, a glass full of thick red wine emptied onto the woman who had her face buried into my husband's neck. Her white dress and his suit, a gift that had cost me half a month's pay, soaked in a ribbon of scarlet. Not my finest moment. 

Luke's piercing blue eyes bulged. The blood drained from his face, leaving his normally sunkissed skin a palored gray. 

My face, by comparison, was beet red. I could feel it burning so hot with rage that I was sure steam would blow out of my ears any second.

"Ba-babe," Luke stuttered in his stupidly perfect country twang. 

"Don't!" I growled so low and vicious that I didn't recognize my own voice. 

Luke cringed. 

This couldn’t be me. It didn't feel like me. I was standing in a stranger's shoes. The real me was drifting away, watching the scene unfold below her from a safe distance.

Hurried footsteps scurried behind me. Security? The hostess I’d somehow slipped past? It didn’t matter anymore. My gaze snapped to the woman’s cruel smirk and extraordinarily white teeth. She must have paid a fortune for them.

"How pathe—"

Her insult was severed mid-breath as the ball of spit that had been brewing in my mouth hit its mark. It splattered across her alabaster skin and her shriek echoed through the room like a crack of thunder. The restaurant collectively inhaled. And then, chaos erupted around me.

Twist, twist, twist.

I was wandering the empty halls of this unfinished industrial building, abandoned for the evening by construction crews. The chilled September air was laden with the scent of dust and damp concrete. Dim light from street lamps outside bled through flimsy plastic sheets covering the doors and windows, casting everything in a sickly orange glow. Formless shadows danced around me in a rhythmless fashion.

My heart was aching for the comfort of my bed, states away on the outskirts of Savannah. There, the air smelled of salt and Spanish moss. I could almost hear the cicadas’ relentless chorus rising into the night, until the shriek of an ambulance shattered the illusion. I flinched against the thin veil of construction fabric as a group of giggling, drunken women staggered past. Their shadows wavered across the partition, and I felt as insubstantial as those shapeless silhouettes drifting toward whatever late-night revelry awaited them. 

My hand throbbed. I found a slow trail of blood dripping from my clenched fist. Sucking in a breath, I unfurled my fingers. Each joint protested as though I were breaking them open. Glass shards glistened in my palm, the remnants of the wine glass still embedded in my skin.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath. 

Raising my hand closer to my face, I tried to examine the damage in the murky gloom, but blood and grime blurred every line of my skin. Squinting, I caught a faint glow at the mezzanine’s edge. It was a first aid kit, half-buried among a pile of discarded tools.

Getting to it demanded three flights of exposed stairs that climbed at a treacherously steep angle. Adrenaline spiked hot through my veins, burning away some of the sorrow that burdened me. If I kept climbing higher, to the top floor, would the rush be strong enough to scorch the rest of my heartbreak? Or would the weight of my failed marriage drag me down, conspiring with gravity to pull me back to earth?

The sharp clack of approaching footsteps cut through the thought, snapping me back into the dark.

A woman emerged from the shadows. She had generous curves hugged by a stained white dress, silky tendrils of auburn hair snaking down her shoulders. My swollen eyes narrowed as a nauseating mixture of recognition and loathing tightened my chest.

"You know," she approached in her stilettoed feet, "I almost feel sorry about this whole situation.”

"What do you want?" I asked in a painfully broken voice.

“Let’s see,” she hummed, raising a hand and ticking off points on her fingers, “You ruined my supper, you scared off my date. You probably got my name taken off a very exclusive restaurant list. Wine definitely won’t come out of this dress. Shall I continue?”

I glared at her, not sorry and with nothing to say. My heart kicked up, fueled by the quiet wrath that built with every word coming out of her mouth. 

"Well?" She asked shrilly. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"Not to you," I stood up with no small amount of effort and turned, pressing my hand into my shirt. "Go away." 

I could find a first aid kit somewhere else, before I did something stupid. She scoffed, a thin hand gripping my shoulder with surprising force. 

My head canted towards her. 

“Let go. Now." 

My muscles tightened, my senses sharpened. I could feel her standing behind me, smelled the sickly sweet stench of her perfume mingling with something like iron.

"No," a hot breath fluttered against my neck, and I felt the brush of her lips on my exposed skin. 

Gooseflesh pebbled my flesh. I remembered feeling a sudden stabbing sensation from between her wet warm lips. Instinct took over as I dropped my weight, pivoted, and sent her sprawling with a shoulder throw I’d drilled a thousand times on the mats. She had slammed into the concrete with a satisfying thwack. 

It was all blurry fragments of memory from there, stitched together by fractured pockets of motion and noises. Her hiss as she bared her too-long canines before launching at me like a hell-cat. My body scraping across the floor toward the mezzanine. The impossible sight of her swinging a sledgehammer one-handed as if it were a baton. The short, savage struggle that followed.

Logic told me that I had fallen back onto years of experience as a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor at a small MMA gym. Luke must have forgotten to mention that. If he had mentioned me at all. 

My fingernails stung horrendously, torn and bloodied. An image surfaced of me kicking her hips back and over the ledge as I clung to her ankles from my position on the ground. She teetered on those sky-high heels. There was a cool rush of air, then her terrible scream fading as she disappeared over the edge. The silence that followed was as loud as any death cry.

Nausea churned in my gut. I staggered back, bracing against the cold scaffolding, and retched until my throat burned. A woman was dead because of me. Wasn’t that the definition of murder? Unless it didn’t count because she wasn’t human. She couldn’t have been human.

But then, what did that make me? A killer? Or just losing my mind?

Questions looped endlessly in my mind until, for the second time that evening, the sound of footsteps dragged me back to the present. 

“Well now,” a low, gravelly voice sent new panic through my battered body. “This is not what I expected to find.”