of the game!”
Jeffries reaches in front of me, insistent on taking the letter from Alyssa’s hand. The smile drops away from the redhead’s face as the Lieutenant stares her down. I see my name written on the face in that same cursive script. Jeffries rips open the envelope and pulls out the letter.
After reading, she hands it to me, despite my hands being cuffed. It says:
“You are the killer. Avoid capture at all costs.”
The lights in the ballroom drop. The rabble of the crowd dissipates to near silence. A single flash strobes near the bar while a thunderous crash echoes throughout the ballroom. A scream bellows next to me, probably Alyssa. “Jeffries, JEFFRIES!” I shout. “I’m handcuffed! It’s not me!”
“It’s not a gunshot!” Jeffries yells at her companions. “What in the hell?”
The house lights come back up. I’m holding my hands in front of me as best I can to signal to the Lieutenant that I haven’t done anything. “It wasn’t me,” I reiterate. “I’m still in your custody. You know I’m not armed.”
“No I don’t, actually,” she says and begins to pat me down, almost viciously. There’s nothing on my person besides my wallet and keys.
“Who’s the victim?” Alyssa asks, watching with a sort of teary-eyed apprehension. “There’s a victim, isn’t there?”
“Over here!” someone shouts. The group of men who had previously surrounded the luxurious Alyssa had shifted to gape at the hapless body on the floor. Then I begin to panic; it all starts to make twisted sense.
Through the crowd, through the black tuxedos gathered round, I can see the figure prone on the ballroom floor. She wore black high heels, fishnet stockings. Broken glass litters the ground, spilt cocktails – Scotch and Sodas, Martinis, Bloody Marys. Her arm sprawled out, her perfect violet eyes still twitching in their sockets; she appears as the model of a Renaissance painting, reaching for her creator.
“No,” I whisper, rushing away from Lt. Jeffries to examine the poor creature. “You’re nothing more than a product to them.” I brush tears from my eyes to cup her angel face in my bound hands. “But not to me. You have someone who loves you. Your name is Charlotte.”
Jeffries stands above me, next to the smiling Stephen Shields, proprietor of this event. “You did this, it was you.” I find myself weeping, then launching myself upon the department store heir. Using the cuffs to strangle him. If only Jeffries hadn’t been there to pull me away. Kicking, frothing, shouting, “This has all been for your amusement! This has all been an act, a play, just for you. This has all been a fiction. She was nothing but a fiction.” Shields is left on the floor, choking and gagging.
The crowd laughs and applauds as I’m dragged toward my inevitable erasure, out of the ballroom and to oblivion.
Grant Piercy grew up in north central Illinois, where he studied English and Literature at Northern Illinois University. Upon graduation, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he still resides with his wife. He is the author of the e-book The Erased, which is available from Amazon.com.
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