BAYOU

the estate

Sugarplum knew sooner or later, she'd have to turn the key and be right back in the place that could cause a whisper to echo.

Lucas's penthouse.

She was looking for his phone to check his messages and missed calls since it was impossible to discern whether the radio silence from his absence, was abnormal or if she was simply paranoid because his "absence" was actually a death.

A murder.

At her hands.

Better not to think about it.

His estate unnerved her, was more of a museum for the wealth he inherited, for people to stand in the middle of, look around and go "woooow."

With its wide expanse of perfectly polished floors and dark interior, the room designer expressed enthusiastically that it was so Eastern, so refined and woody and masculine and earthy and positively only fit for early retirement; a bachelor like himself with a beautiful exotic thing of a girl on his arm needed his house to denote a seriousness, some sort of refinement or maturation because it revealed that he wasn't chasing youth, but that the beautiful, exotic, thing of a girl on his arm was simply attracted to him because of her intrinsic good taste.

And besides, he wasn't old, he just preferred a salt and pepper beard.

Tuh.

The "beautiful, exotic thing of a girl" hated this place. Deeply.

He didn't allow any sign of her here, which was the main reason he bought her the condo. It was a symbol that there would never be a marriage between the two of them because for her, love never lived here and for him, experiencing marriage for the second time would be a nightmare.

She never wanted to be married to Luke, but the fact that he didn't want to marry her either made her feel even less like a human. He was really using her for his own amusement. To make pretty then take down, knowing that anyone from the outside looking in would assume she was hit by a stroke of luck.

From the living room, the sunset was blinding, which should've bathed the achromatic interior in a delicious, orange warmth, instead there was a coolness that was uncanny, like if ice cubes were piping hot.

Not a sign of life around or inside, no plants, no dirt as if at any moment, Architectural Digest were waiting to wipe their feet on the nonexistent doormat at the main entrance and take pictures of boring perfection. Look at this house, everyone! Look at it and feel nothing. The dining room chairs won't sink with character after being sat in, they keep their shape, rigidly so. How militaristic!

The one thing to behold, the beautiful moss tree in the backyard, he had cut down. Without it, the lot felt sterile.

Expensively sterile.

Like him.

What possessed her to dress up in heels and a midi dress that gave her cleavage a much-appreciated boost? Wearing that "housewife wear" she practically sneered at Daisy-Mae for. Did she expect Lucas to turn the corner and spank her for putting him inside the marsh? That he'd just re-materialize, respawn, she'd dropped to her knees, beg him for forgiveness and all would be forgotten?

Sugarplum sighed, the sound repeating itself like a pebble making waves in a river.

Just then, his phone rang coming from the bedroom. She followed the sound, unsure of being here, afraid of walking deeper into his estate after what she'd done.

"Pull yourself together." She mumbled to herself.

Only his phone, which was flat on the nightstand, was off. The screen was dark yet the sound still persisted.