* * *
In the days when she had parents, Alex Frost would shop for clothes with her mother and her father in a large shopping complex just outside Suburnia on Angel Heart Lane. There, she would buy clothes that were not only made of the finest materials, but were also tailored to fit her flawlessly. The men and women that ran these stores were all people of expensive tastes, and as such, had nothing but expensive expectations for their customers.
In the stores of Angel Heart Lane, if you saw a gold colored diamond ring for sale, then you were rest assured that not only was the diamond itself real, but that the ring was also made out of genuine pure gold, silver, or gemstone, depending on preference. If you ventured over to the winery located in between the mall’s five star restaurant and caviar shop, you would see wines as expensive as houses, and if you went over to the store that sold silver spoons, you would find that the spoons they sold were in fact, made of one hundred percent silver.
The clothing store that Alex and her Aunt Melanie went to wasn’t anything like the one in Angel Heart Lane. It was an outlet mall far from her home in Suburnia, located a mere fifteen minutes away from Aunt Melanie’s home in Wiscott Avenue. The clothes were cheap, mass produced, and to the standards of anyone who grew up in Suburnia, horribly bland.
Yet in spite of her upbringing, Alex wasn’t one with very many standards. Even to this day, she didn’t put much personal consideration into what she wore beyond what her mother and other important adults deemed appropriate.
“I think you would look great in denim,” Aunt Melanie remarked.
And just like that, she introduced from the assortment of clothes an entire denim attire. From denim pants, denim shirt, to denim jacket.
“Try these on.”
Alex ventured into the store’s changing room. There, she tried on the denim clothes. They didn’t fit her nearly as well as the clothes that her tailor made for her. And on top of that, the style was significantly different than what her mother would ever allow. She never approved of her wearing pants, except on occasions that called for it. The Suburnia fashion for girls were skirts, blouses, hair bows, sweaters during winters, and absolutely no sandals (which in Suburnia, was commonly referred to as poor people shoes). But she no longer lived in Suburnia. And realized that by the end of the semester, it was likely she wouldn’t be an Elsinore girl anymore.
She walked out the changing room to show Aunt Melanie how she looked.
“I knew it,” she said in place of an actual opinion.
“Knew what?”
“You are a complete tomboy.”
“I am?”
Aunt Melanie studied Alex further, paid particular mind to the way the denim clothing complimented her physical appearance.
“You’ve got the look alright,” she thought aloud.
“I do?”
“I like it.”
“Are you sure?” she second-guessed Aunt Melanie’s unorthodox decision.
“Well, where are my manners? Tell me what you think. That’s what’s most important after all.”
“It is?”
“Why heavens, yes.”
She stared at the blonde-haired aunt completely dumbfounded. Had Aunt Melanie just implied that Alex was allowed to choose the clothes she wanted to wear? Not what she should or ought to wear, but what she actually wanted?
“You mean, I get to choose?”
“Your parents never exactly gave you many options did they?”
To say that Alex had some or any options was to exaggerate the personal freedom given to her by her parents. The truth was, Alex had no options. Though her parents clothed her, they did so with garments that were expensive and popular among the people of Suburnia. It never occurred to them to ask their daughter if she wanted a shirt or a blouse, a necktie or a bow.
“Well, don’t feel guilty Alex. I miss my Dana to no end, but I also know how overbearing she could be at times.”
“I don’t feel guilty,” Alex replied truthfully.
“That’s good. So. Tell me what you think of the clothes. Do you like what you see?”
Alex observed herself in the store’s mirror. It was different, that much was certain. An unusual fashion never-before-seen in our heartless girl. But the real question, the one that mattered the most, did she like it?
“Yes.”
“Good. Then we’ll take it. What else do you want?”
“What?” Truly, this was too much.
“You can’t just have one set of clothes now can you? Go pick some things out. Let me know when you find something you like.”
Alex left Aunt Melanie’s presence, but with much confusion brewing in her mind.
Like?
She toured the store with absolutely no sense of what else she would have possibly wanted. On one side of the store, there were suits and professional collar shirts made for the business-minded woman. To her left was casual wear, which included various assortments of summer dresses and skirts, sandals (poor people shoe’s she heard her mother proclaiming inside her head), sleeveless tops, as well as quilted jackets for the approaching winter. The casual wear portion of the store also kept a few racks of exotic sunglasses. One with horn rimmed frames, another with bright pink frames, and one that made the wearer look more mosquito than human. There were star-shaped sunglasses, sunglasses that resembled the infinity symbol, sunglasses twenty times the size of the human eye, sunglasses with tight frames, sunglasses with loose frames, square frames, circle frames, oval frames, triangular frames, pentagonal frames, sunglasses with broken lenses, and even one that came with a plastic nose and a moustache. The options were innumerable. And so many of them were so equally interesting, it was hard to make a decision on just one.
Then again, Aunt Melanie did specify that she needed more than one pair of everything.
Because of its uniqueness compared to all the others, she started with the sunglass that had the plastic nose and moustache. Afterwards, she took one with thin frames because of how well it fit around her eyes, and also because its slim lenses carried an ebb of sophistication. Alex also picked up a third, this one because its frames were tight around the top of her ears, making it ideal for running with.
She picked up a shopping basket and placed three of her chosen sunglasses inside. She also took three pairs of long pants, four short sleeve shirts, five long sleeve shirts, three winter jackets, and three different types of sweaters. The shopping basket started to weigh on her arm, so she moved the items into a shopping cart. There, she had much more room to fill. She then proceeded to procure a pair of leather boots, sneakers, hiking shoes, and dress shoes.
Oh, and that, she pointed her mind to a hanger of winter parkas. And that, to a sharp looking suit jacket. How about that? I’m bound to need a new purse. Well, just to be safe, I might as well take two. But what if I lose them both, or they start to wear out? Don’t I need a third?
By the time she was ready, twenty minutes had passed, and Alex’s shopping cart was so full it required a hefty push to move it along. A mountain load of items crowded the shopping cart to the extent that it was hard to see where she went as she strolled it. She regrouped with Aunt Melanie, who was looking fixatedly over at dresses her own size.
“I’m done,” Alex said, interrupting her aunt’s train of thought.
Aunt Melanie turned her attention to Alex. Her eyes widened.
“Good heavens girl. You want all those things?”
Alex nodded, but began to suspect that something was wrong.
“I’m not made of money Alex. I can’t possibly pay for all that.”
“Oh.”
“Put some of that stuff back.”
Alex looked over her shopping cart. Apparently, from the grand list of things she’d gotten, Aunt Melanie would only allow her a few. But which to keep, and which to take away? There were so many options.
Later on, after much pondering and Aunt Melanie’s insistence that she hurry up, Alex walked out the
store with less than half of the things she had originally planned to keep. They stepped out the store, and on their way around the outdoor mall, came by a kitchen appliance store. From out the store window, there was a knife on display, its serrated tip sparkling, sharp enough to stab through bone. It had a hollow handle that curved along the tang, and was just as effervescent silver as the rest of the blade itself.
Alex stared at the object as they walked towards, then past it. And more than anything else she saw that afternoon, she wanted that knife.
Aunt Melanie took Alex to see the Pleasant Grove subway.
“In case I can’t drive you back to Suburnia,” she said. “I want you to know how to get there and back on your own.”
The subway was just about as grimy and ghetto as Alex had come to expect from Pleasant Grove. A few homeless people begged at the ticket booths for loose change, and once more, graffiti polluted the walls and even some of the passing trains.
“You see there?” Aunt Melanie pointed to a giant subway map on the wall. A marker with the words You Are Here was placed with an arrow pointing to the Pleasant Grove station.
“Does this go straight to Suburnia?”
“No, silly. There are no train lines going to Suburnia. However,” and she pointed her finger around the different train stations on the map while she spoke. “The closest you will get to is the Gerard station right here. From there, you can take the bus that goes straight into Suburnia. Either that, or you can take a cab from the station. Oh, and I should remind you. When you’re taking the train, make sure the number on the train is 12, not 4. 4 will take you to the opposite direction.”
When they went to the platform, Alex and Aunt Melanie encountered two other people waiting for the approaching train. One was a man standing so dangerously close to the platform’s edge that his toes stuck in the air. He was tall, had a bright yellow baseball cap, and his eyes fluctuated from open to closed. He looked drowsy enough to have a hard time telling if he was awake or if he was sleeping. Standing so close to the edge, all he needed was a little nudge towards the train when it arrived. Just one tiny push of her index finger would have been enough to send him down. He would be smashed by the speeding train, and every limb in his body would be sliced by its metal wheels. All he had to do was fall at the right time, and there would be no putting the stranger back together again.
Behind Alex was a woman sitting on a bench. She was a brunette possibly in her forties, clad in sweatpants, brand new sneakers, and a pink tank top. Not five centimeters from her feet was a puddle of water. But her mind wasn’t focused on the water spill before her. The only thing she was sternly focused on was rubbing her pink fingernails over a nail file. The edge of the file was as pointed and as sharp as any cutting utensil one would hope to find in an ordinary kitchen. Upon watching the woman filing away, Alex had to at least recognize that if she got up, the chance existed that she could trip over the puddle, fall to the ground with the sharp end of the file in front of her. All she had to do was forget to look where she walked, and she could just as easily impale herself straight in the chest.
Right then, a train began its approach. Alex heard its path through the tunnel, blaring louder the closer it came. She focused her eyes attentively at the tall man whose toes were so close to getting ripped clean off. He was still behaving dazed. Reality didn’t appear to have settled into his mind.
There it was. Alex noticed the glowing headlights on the train right as it came into view. If the man remained perfectly still until it arrived at the platform, he would be victim to a survivable injury. But if he panicked, made any last second reactions, he was likely to fall onto the train’s path. Alex watched in what felt like eager anticipation for the oncoming incident.
A nanosecond before the train arrived, Aunt Melanie pushed the man out of harm’s way.
“What is wrong with you?!” she yelled at him. The cacophonous approach of the train drowned her voice, so she had to repeat herself twice.
The tall man stood wide awake over the thought of what could have happened to him had Aunt Melanie not intervened.
“Thank you,” he praised her, his heart pounding with adrenaline.
“Be careful next time,” demanded Aunt Melanie.
“I will.”
With one possible death averted, Alex looked behind her to see the second. As the train slowed down, the woman remained right where she was. She looked up to confirm that it was indeed her train, and went immediately back to evening out her middle finger. It took the train to come to a complete halt for her to finally pick herself up. But rather than walk on the puddle and slip, she side-stepped it and boarded the train.
That was two possible deaths averted in the span of seconds.
Once he boarded the train, the irresponsible man who’d been dozing while standing waved back at Aunt Melanie.
“Can you believe how irresponsible some people are?” she said to Alex. “Hard to believe they can survive this long.”
Hard to believe they both survived, Alex thought to herself. Though she knew that that wasn’t entirely true. Strange how her own thoughts were deluding her. Though the overriding answer behind them was clear. It was then that her bloodlust came to prove to her that Lord Combermere was right after all.
Alex Frost needed to kill.