sociopath ✘ z.m.

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one

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Eve shivered, hugging herself tighter and rubbing her forearms to spread warmth to her arms before striding to thermometer to adjust the temperature in the room. With her pointer finger, she pushed the arrow button that pointed upwards, increasing the degree by seven. As time lengthened, she was broken from her frozen trance, permitting her body to function at a normal rate.

Her hand moved swiftly, only stopping to dab her brush on the paint palette. What seemed like days passed before Eve was interrupted from her work, the bell hanging above the door jingling from the force the customer used to push open the piece of wood.

She raised her eyes to meet those of the stranger, smiling with a sort of glow, “Hi, can I help you?”

The consumer’s top half was adorned with a white tee shirt and a leather jacket hugging him tightly while his bottom half was covered by a pair of jeans and black vans. His jet-black hair was gelled back, and if it was the mid-nineteen-sixties, he would have had no problem fitting in.

He cleared his throat, “I need white paint to cover up some stains on my walls.”

“Sure, I’ll be right back,” Eve made her way to the closet at the back of the room, returning with a bucket of BEHR Premium white paint.

When she returned, the art enthusiast’s lips were pursed as he stared at the painting Eve had been recently working on. His leather jacket was now slung over his shoulder, revealing his arms, which were covered with black ink and other minimal colors.

“Nice ink,” she commented.

He furrowed his eyebrows before realization flooded to his face, his eyes wandering down to his arms, “Thanks, not many people are fond of the amount of tattoos I have.”

“The way I think of it, tattoos are a way to express our passion for art with no restrictions. The police can arrest you for graffiting the wall, but they can’t arrest you for the tattoos you have.”

“I like that, Eve,” he read the nametag on her shirt as his lips perked upwards into a slight smile.

“Thanks….” she hesitated.

“Zayn,” he offered, striding over to the front entrance, plastic bag in hand.

“Zayn,” she repeated.

When the wood door was slammed shut, Eve returned to her easel, taking a seat once again. She dabbed her brush into the jar of brown colored water before bringing the paintbrush it into the puddle of black liquid mixture. When her eyes travelled up to the painting she had been previously working on, she noticed that someone had tampered with her piece, but they hadn’t messed it up, they had fixed the problem she was so intent on fixing.

Eve returned to her easel pad, painting with concentration seeping in her bones. As lunch rolled around, she finally lifted her bottom from the artist stool, walking over to one of the cashiers and reaching under the cupboard for her lunch bag, except when she opened the cupboard, lunch wasn’t the only thing she was looking at.

Laid next to her bag was an arm, covered in a pool of crimson liquid.

The arm was cut off at the elbow, and the rest of the body was no where to be found. There were no cuts on the arm, besides the one separating the upper arm from the part that was in the cabinet, but the arm was as battered and bruised as it could get. There were bruises within an inch apart spread throughout the whole arm. The injuries were a red color, so they must’ve been relatively new.

The arm sent shivers through Eve’s body, but she did nothing about it, grabbing her lunch bag from the cabinet. She assumed it was fake and a prank one of those nasty teenage boys liked to execute, no matter how real the arm had looked.

She had been here all day and had locked the store up at night, so there could’ve been no way someone had been battered up and cut up and placed in her shop. Eve was sure it was one of those pesky, little teens that had slipped passed her while she was painting.

She packed the hand in a garbage bag, placing it near the door for later disposal. With a towel, she wiped the cabinet shelf clean of the "blood," chucking the towel in a nearby bin.

After thoroughly rinsing her hands with water and soap under the faucet, she unpacked her sandwich and took a bite from it, chewing slowly to absorb the flavor gradually instead of all at once. The ham, lettuce, and cheese attacked her taste buds, causing her to smile in satisfaction. The perfect sandwich; ham, cheese, and lettuce, hold the tomatoes and mayonnaise. If there was anything in the world she hated, it was tomatoes and mayonnaise. She hated the texture of the red fruit and the way it felt like slime on her tongue. She loathed the sour taste that cream-colored condiment provided to her sandwich, but Eve loved the other contents of her sandwich.

After she had gulfed down her sandwich, she quickly moved on to her bag of Chips Ahoy, munching on the cookies while her eyes roved around the room. She looked up to the ceiling, where the white wall was replaced with dark blue paint, resembling a night sky. Coated on the blue paint were specks of yellow, representing millions of stars. The four walls of the store were painted with forest trees along with rivers and forest animals. On the cabinets, Eve had doodled whatever had come to her mind at the time she was first opening the store. The aisles of the store were covered in art supplies, but one shelf was racked up with paintings that Eve, herself painted.

Her eyes stopped near the door, where the garbage bag containing the hand stood, but next to the black bag was a plastic bag from the store. Eve’s eyebrows furrowed, she didn’t notice that bag earlier and was unsure of what was inside. The content was heavy, stretching the sack to the verge of splitting open. There was another bag, only it was upside down, to cover the content, so there was no way of knowing what the inside contained without removing the plastic cover that was upside down.

Rushing over to the door, Eve did so, uncovering the mystery hidden inside.

This time, Eve let out an ear screeching scream, terrified of the sight before her. There was an upper half of a body in the bag, cut off at the neck and waistline. The skin on the body was battered and bruised as well, and at the bottom of the sack was a puddle of blood, just like the arm was in. However, on this piece of the body, there were three gashes, about ten inches long, on the person’s back.

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honestly, i probably write more during school. i'll try to keep up a schedule of updating every week, but please bear with me if i fail to update one week. i'd rather you guys get a better update in two weeks than a crappy one in one week. i'm surprised and extremely thankful that there were four hundred reads and twenty-eight votes on the prologue, alone. 

thank you all for reading, i love you guys xx