Dead Man's Gambit / Haymitch Abernathy

05. Fifty words for murder

ACT I, CHAPTER FIVE
❛ fifty words for murder ❜
content: blood/gore, violence, gaslighting/manipulation, discussion of systemic oppression.

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After a quick dinner with Elena, Renfri and Lex don't have the chance to talk. Suvarna escorts them directly to their quarters. Lex had been exchanging glances with Renfri all throughout dinner, and just before he closes his bedroom door, he bids her goodnight with a smirk. Suvarna shoots Renfri a look. Renfri just smiles, immensely satisfied.

Soon as she's alone in her room, Renfri shucks her Parade costume off her body and tosses it in a silver heap on the floor. While the shower's heating up, she takes the rings out of her hair and chucks them to the ground, too. It takes twenty minutes to scrub all the paint and glitter off her skin. When the water runs clear, she dries herself off and wraps a silk robe around her body.

The hot shower made her sleepy. Her mind is oddly quiet. Perhaps she's satisfied with Lex's progress toward her. Or maybe she is reminded of late nights back home, when she'd be so tired coming home from Blanchet she would nod off in the shower before collapsing into her bed. She crawls into this bed and curls up under the blankets. Pretending she's sleeping in District 1.

(But a daughter of House Xiu should never think of home before bed. Vengeful ghosts walk the halls of the place Renfri calls home. Even reminiscing on it invokes their violent deaths to replay.)

Far away, someone is laughing. Renfri turns. She stands at the threshold to the east wing of Xiu Theatre Company, staring down the long, dark hallway to the end, where a yellow glow spills up from the staircase. There must be a guest on the first floor. But the sconces along the walls are unlit. And the scent of blood is still warm in the air, wafting down the corridor.

Faintly, she remembers. A person lay dying at the end of the pitch-black hall. She's been here before.

Against her will, Renfri's feet move forward into the shadows. The darkness engulfs her, and the further she walks, the closer it clings to her skin. She cannot see her hands in front of her, nor her legs pacing her nearer. The air is warmer now, the smell of blood so thick it feels like humidity, like she's walking through a fog of the stuff.

The door to her mother's room is open at the end of the hall. This close, she can tell the laughter is coming from inside. Someone is cackling, hidden in the shadows. The feeling she is no longer alone. A sudden hush falling.

Hot wind rushes from the inky doorway like breath sighing from a lung. She takes a step back. All the candles have blown out. The mansion is silent. She can only see the trail of fresh blood by the moonlight trickling through the windows. Long, heavy drag marks—like streaks of black paint in the dark—leading out of her mother's bedroom. When she shifts her feet, she feels her heels sticking to the marble, soaked in blood. The sound of someone dragging a dying man to the top of the stairs. The smell of iron so strong she can taste it like sweet syrup on her tongue.

Renfri wills herself to wake up. She has been here before. She must be dreaming.

She has been here before. It must be stuck inside her. She has no choice but to turn, to see the final scene again.

Her mother's fine dress is ruined with red stains. Her father's voice is weak, barely a gurgle in the back of his throat. "Medalion." His last word. Her mother finally drags him down onto the first stair, and his skull CRACKs open like a nut as it slams down.

━━━

Renfri stands under a stream of cold water for a long while and tries to compose herself. The nightmare had been frighteningly vivid. She fumbles for a toothbrush to wash the lingering taste of iron out of her mouth. Afterward, she stands motionless beneath the shower faucet for another half hour, pretending the icy torrents washing down on her are cleansing her. Sloughing the memory off her body like dirt circling down the drain.