Ice Cold

6: Mystery

Scarlett

I stood before my next victim, smiling sweetly at her. This was one of my professors, but not for long. I had had to change my hiding place for the bodies, considering the police had finally found them on the University campus. But this place was far more secure than there, anyway.
The woman was staring at me in shock, but her movements had ceased. She had accepted death, just as many of my past victims had done. This would teach her for giving me too much homework. I grabbed hold of one of my biggest knives, one with a hooked edge that would catch easily on skin. I carefully touched it to her neck, digging it in slightly so that small spots of blood started to form. The woman closed her eyes tightly.
I slapped her gently and her eyes opened again. Tutting, I drew the knife back and put my hands on my hips.
"If you want me to make this quick and less painful, I'd keep my eyes open if I were you. I want to see the life drain from them." The woman nodded hurriedly and I placed the knife back on her skin. She looked into my eyes, pure terror within hers, and I yanked the knife across her neck. Her eyes instantly glassed over and I grinned with satisfaction. Another beautiful death.
Washing my knife off in a sink, I looked up at the walls of the room to see photos of my past victims, laying in bloody heaps. Some of them had mangled faces, where I had pulled the hooked knife directly down the middle of their faces. In some cases, I had ripped out both of the eyes of my victims with a hook and then slit their throats.
The room was dimly lit by a light bulb hanging from the ceiling and the walls were a mouldy green colour. In fact, the entire room stank of mould, as well as blood. The floor was covered in both.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket and I checked it to see that the next challenge was up. This one involved people doing fifteen second dance covers to Chris' songs. Without further hesitation, I switched on my front camera and leaned it against the dead body of my former professor, standing back so that my whole body was visible on the screen. I fished around in my school bag and grabbed my iPod, finding one of the songs that I knew the dance routine to.
Yeah 3x started playing and I easily pulled off the end routine. But as I watched the video back, I realised that all of the pictures of my dead victims were clearly visible behind me. I closely cropped the video but you could still see them behind me.
Suddenly, an idea hit me. I went on Instagram and posted the video with the caption:

Hey guys, this is my dance cover to Yeah 3x! I'm in my Criminology classroom at the moment so that's why there are creepy pictures behind me 😂

Yep, that looked innocent enough.

Chris

"What do you mean, there were two holes in his neck?" I asked shakily. No. I refused for the dream to be real.
"Look, I'll show you! Come on!" He exclaimed, pulling on my arm and dragging me out of the studio. We ran down the street together, about the same speed. He'd always been a fast runner like me, and he could sometimes outrun me when I was human.
We passed many blocks of apartments before we finally reached the dreaded ones that I had visited in my dream. I had to swallow down the bile that was rising up in my throat as I looked at the window sills that I had leaped onto while hunting down Trey's manager.
Running up the long flights of stairs, we both reached the top at about the same time and he stopped to catch his breath. I waited, but that was one good thing about being a vampire. Even as a human, it took a lot to tire me out. Once Trey was ready to carry on, we walked down a long, narrow hallway towards his manager's room.
The stench of blood was already coming from the room, and it took everything within me not to change form and lap up every drop of my life preserving substance. Trey shakily pushed down on the door handle and the door creaked open slowly, revealing a large kitchen area and a door leading to another room. We crept through the door slowly and made our way into his sitting room, where there was a sofa and a TV.
And a dead body.
I covered my nose and mouth instantly, half in shock and half to try to block out the smell. Trey's manager was lying on the sofa, exactly where he had been in my dream, with a river of blood pouring from the unmistakeable two holes on the side of his neck.
I dared to step a little closer to examine the two holes carefully. Trey made a retching sound and went to the bathroom, leaving me alone with the body. I touched my canines with my finger and thumb, measuring the distance between them, and placed the finger and thumb against the holes in the neck.
     Aha!
     The holes were a different distance apart than my teeth were. So it hadn't been me, after all! But then...who had it been? I suddenly inhaled, a little too sharply, and the smell of the blood filled my nostrils. Before I knew it, my senses were getting sharper and my throat was craving the red liquid.
Instantly, I was at the window of the apartment, the same one I had come through in my dream, and was getting ready to jump out by moving into a crouch on the windowsill. The smell was just too much to bear and I knew that I wouldn't be able to control myself if I stayed there any longer. But just as I was about to jump, a voice from behind me startled me.
     "Chris? What are you doing?" Trey asked from behind me and I knew that I had a decision to make. I could tell him now and he could possibly help me to get this under control, or I could continue to keep the secret from him. But I had been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed him approaching.
     "Stay back, Trey." I murmured, my canines getting in the way slightly as I spoke.
     "Why? What's wrong?" And before I knew it, he was next to me at the window sill, looking into my bright red eyes. Instantly, he jumped back and almost tripped over. I looked at him with sadness and everything was silent.
     "I thought I told you to stay back." I said in a low growl, my words reverberating through the now empty room. He just stared at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
     "What are you?" He whispered in confusion and horror, taking a few steps back.
     "I'm a vampire." I said softly, before leaping straight out of the window.