Ageless

by Cege Smith

  “So did you at least get his name?”

  “Lest you forgot, I had a raging banshee waiting downstairs for me. So I grabbed the book and ran,” Violet said.

  Margo grinned. “Well all’s you had to do was text me that there was a hottie in the stacks and I would have given you an extra minute or two to get acquainted. It’s about time you got yourself a boyfriend.”

  There was the rub. Violet had been expecting it sooner or later. Over the course of her high school career, she had gone on a few random dates here and there. Over the last six months the only ones she’d been on had been fix-ups by Margo. None went beyond the first date because Violet hadn’t found any of the guys interesting enough to want to see again. Margo finally gave up, saying she was starting to feel sorry for the poor schleps that she put in Violet’s way.

  “I don’t need a boyfriend,” Violet said, crossing her arms. “The guys around here aren’t interested in the same things as I am.”

  “Snore-worthy reading material and late-night Saturday rendezvous in the library?” Margo winked

  “Thanks, Margo,” Violet said with a huff. The words, although true, still hit a nerve. It wasn’t that Violet didn’t want to be a normal teenager; it was just that her normal didn’t seem to jive with everybody else’s idea of normal. She didn’t think that was necessarily her fault.

  Margo pointed at the cup next to Violet’s laptop. “It won’t kill you to have a little fun and let loose just a teensy tiny bit, Vi. You are too young to be acting so damn old. You have the rest of your life to be serious. Trust me on that one.” With that, she pushed up from the table and left the room.

  Her final words hung in the air. Violet knew that Margo was right. Her singular focus on academics and grades meant that she sacrificed a lot of other things, which included hanging around other people her age. But Violet felt uncomfortable in most of those regular teenager type situations, which complicated a lot of things. She eyed the cup again and then took another swallow. It burned going down, but she was feeling the warm flush starting to radiate from her core.

  She pulled the book closer and was surprised to see the words floating, going in and out of focus. “The hell?” she said out loud. The drink hadn’t been that strong. Then she felt her head start to spin.

  It didn’t occur to her until that moment that there might be something else in the drink besides just the alcohol. “Margo?” she tried to call out, but the name came out as nothing more than a croak.

  She tried to stand but her legs felt like they were jelly. Then she heard noises coming from the other room. Shrieks of laughter had given way to screams of pain. It sounded like she may not be the only one in distress. As her legs gave out and she slid to the floor, Violet couldn’t help but wonder if her time left to enjoy a normal teenage life was over.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Violet never fully lost consciousness. She almost wished she had as she listened to the screams continue for what seemed like hours. Even though they were coming from the den, Violet felt like she was in the same room with the others. The shrieks bounced off of the walls and invaded her ears like shards of glass. She couldn’t move. Whatever drug she consumed made it so that she could barely think. The only thing she knew for certain was that something very bad was happening to them; something that would probably happen to her as soon as she was discovered.

  The wails of pain abruptly stopped and the absence of sound was almost more unsettling. Violet’s mind slid in and out between phases of clarity and fuzziness. Her paralysis lifted several minutes later. Although her limbs were back within her control, her ability to think was still clouded and fear shot through her. Was whatever happened to the others going to happen to her now?

  Violet didn’t move, but strained her ears to see if she could determine if she was alone. There was no sound that indicated anything was amiss, but she thought for sure that there were intruders in the house. Whoever the silent predator or predators were, though, they weren’t letting their presence be known. She didn’t know what to do. She tried to think where her cell phone was, but that part of her memory was eluding her. She rarely used it, so there was a good chance that she hadn’t even thrown it in her bag when she left the dorm.

  A whimper escaped her lips and she bit her bottom one to keep it from turning into a full-blown scream. She didn’t think she had ever been so scared in her life. After several moments with no one entering the room, she decided that she had to move. Continuing to lie there on the dining room floor would surely ensure that she was a sitting duck for whoever was in the house. Violet had watched too many horror movies to naively think that she would be lucky enough to escape whatever fate had befallen the others.

  She wondered if there was any chance that Margo was unharmed. Although their friendship had been brief, Margo had wormed her way into Violet's heart. Tears appeared in the corners of Violet’s eyes as she thought of the screams and shrieks of pain that still rang in her ears. Maybe Margo had gone to the bathroom after she left Violet. Maybe she was hiding somewhere in the house now like Violet was, waiting to make her escape. Violet could only hope so.

  She managed to get to her feet using the chair to steady herself. Once fully upright, she realized that she was still well under the effects of whatever her drink had been spiked with, but her body was at least functional. She felt drunk and slow. Her eyes swam in and out of focus. Still, she reached into her bag and felt around for something helpful. Her search didn’t find her phone, but she did come across a small can of pepper spray that she had forgotten was there. It had been a handout from a safety session at the school a few months ago. At the time she had thought it was silly, but now she was grateful to have something, anything, to defend herself.

  Violet didn’t want to do what she knew she needed to do next. She still couldn’t hear any movements at all from the hallway or the room down the hall. No one had presented themselves in the doorway to the dining room. As far as she could tell, she was alone. As her mind went fuzzy again, Violet cursed herself for being a coward. It was very possible someone needed help, and she was standing like a gutless statue trying to decide what to do. She had to find a phone. She had to get help.

  Her first step toward the door was wobbly, but then her legs seemed to remember what they were supposed to do; moments later her back was against the wall next to the door. She tried to plan a strategy. She couldn’t just waltz into the hallway without checking it first. As she congratulated herself for not wetting herself in fear, her teeth started to chatter. It wasn’t from the cold. She clenched her jaw to keep it still, and then slowly moved her head to look into the hallway.

  It was empty. Even so, she didn’t trust it.

  Extending her upper torso into the hallway, she swung her head to the right and then the left. She knew that the open doorway two doors down on the left led to the den, where the others had been playing video games and mixing drinks. The front door was in the opposite direction. Violet desperately wanted to go that way. But she couldn’t, not until she knew for sure. She leaned back against the dining room wall, closing her eyes and trying to will her brain to think straight.

  She was one girl with a can of pepper spray. She wasn’t some kind of ninja warrior princess. She had never even been in a fight in her life. The sensible and logical thing to do would be to get the hell out of the house and call for help from a neighbor’s house. Of course, the nearest neighbor wasn’t close; Mike’s family lived in a gated community with wide expanses of acreage between the houses. But she felt the pull of something else, and then Violet suddenly understood why the heroines in horror movies always went down the stairs or into the room when they knew they weren’t supposed to.

  She was gripped by the desire to KNOW. That crazy, irrational desire to fully comprehend what had just happened overwhelmed her. So no matter what, she knew that she was going to turn left instead of right when she left the dining room. She was going to go into the den and find out what happened to the others
who had been gathered in the house with her. The risk that she would suffer the same fate as they did was almost certainly one hundred percent. But even that knowledge couldn’t sway her away from what she was going to do. Because if there was even half of a percentage of a chance that Margo had been spared somehow and needed her help, Violet would never forgive herself for abandoning her friend.

  Violet was startled to realize how much she cared about Margo. If it was just the others at the party, Violet thought that she could have easily turned right and run out the front door. But it was Margo who held Violet’s feet to the floor. Margo had been nothing but a terrific friend to her. Margo had pried Violet out of her introvert shell kicking and screaming, but it was for Violet’s own good, and she knew that. Margo was her best friend, and there was no way that Violet was going to leave without knowing if Margo was okay.

  A shuddering deep breath racked her lungs as she peeled herself away from the wall. Her hands stretched to the doorway and she peeked out again. Stillness greeted her. Nothing moved. Her legs were visibly shaking as she wobbled out into the hallway. Directly across from her a large mirror hung on the wall, with a small table underneath it. The face that stared back at her was gaunt and pale. Her violet eyes took up the majority of her countenance. She made a face at herself to try to give herself a dose of courage.

  She turned left and forced herself to put one foot in front of another. All too quickly she found herself inches away from the doorway that led to the den. Again she flattened herself against the wall. She reviewed in her mind what she remembered about the room from having seen it briefly earlier when she arrived.

  The entire back wall of the room was floor to ceiling glass with a sliding glass door that opened out onto a wide patio. The room looked out over the back of the wooded part of Mike’s family’s property. She remembered Margo bragging that Mike’s family owned more property than anyone else in town. Violet wondered if the intruders had come through that door, and she was almost certain that had to have been the case; otherwise, they would have walked right past Violet in the dining room. Her chair had faced the doorway and she would have noticed someone passing by.

  There was a large stone fireplace on the far wall and matching leather sofas were set up facing each other in the middle of the room. A flat-screen TV was over the mahogany bar on the other side of the room and a foosball table completed the entertainment area next to the bar. Violet listened again for any sounds of life coming from the room but heard nothing. That made her more nervous than anything. Surely she should be hearing something. If the attack was a robbery, the intruders should have been pilfering the house by now. But the eerie noiselessness was unnerving. Some part of Violet wondered if she was actually at home in her bed and this was all a very bad dream.

  The moment of truth had arrived. She knew that she couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. She had to make the decision to go forward, and Margo’s face sprung into her mind. She tried to clear her head as best as possible, and then she swung around to face the open doorway.

  Instantly her mind began to reel. The first thing that hit her was the smell. It was like her nose had been turned off before, but now that she could smell it, she couldn’t smell anything else. It was coppery, thick, and pungent. As her elbow came up to her nose to try to block it, her eyes focused enough for her to wish that she had gone right for the front door.

  Everywhere she looked, all she could see was blood. It was smeared all over the walls of the room, and she could see that it was even dripping from the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. Immediately she started to gag, but a thought spun through her mind. Where were the bodies? With all of the blood in front of her, there was almost no doubt that the others were dead, but there was no sign of them.

  Her eyes began to water as they went back out of focus, and she tried to call out to her friend. “Margo?” She didn’t want to go into the room any further, but she had to find Margo. She looked down too late as she took a tentative step, and as her foot hit the puddle of blood inside the doorway it slipped out from underneath her and with a wild shriek she started to fall. As she fell backwards, she felt strong arms catch her under her armpits and yank her back out of the room.

  Her body was whirled up and around and her mind spun again from the sudden movement. She found herself staring up into two violet eyes that looked familiar, but they were framed by brown hair, not black. The rest of his face was caught up in a snarl and his blinding white teeth were sharp and menacing. Suddenly it was too much for Violet to process. The drugs, the blood, the massacre, Margo missing, and now this man looking down at her like he was going to kill her. Too many things swirled together in an awful pattern. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Closing her mind, Violet let herself go and slid into darkness.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Violet woke up gagging. Her dreams had been saturated with blood and death. Alone and afraid, she hid deep within her mind until she couldn’t bear it any longer. As the whispers of her dreams fell away, she realized that she wasn’t waking up in her bed in her dorm room. She sat up and took in the room around her and blinked. It was fit for the inside of a palace.

  The bed that she was in was bigger than any bed she had ever seen. It had scarlet sheets that kissed her skin. She looked down and blushed. The nightgown she was wearing matched the sheets and was cut so low in the front that it skimmed the tops of her breasts. She hadn’t ever worn anything so revealing, not even to bed. Usually Violet drowned herself in baggy T-shirts when she wasn’t wearing the required school uniform. She pulled the sheet up and tucked it under her armpits as she took in the rest of the room.

  There were two large windows across the way, and cheery sunlight streamed into the room. A large antique armoire took up one wall next to the door. As her eyes skimmed upwards, she saw that the ceiling had a Renaissance-like mural painted on it.

  “I hope you like it. I picked this room out just for you.”

  Violet jumped at the female voice and turned. In a chair in the far corner, almost tucked behind the bed, sat Margo. Her memories came rushing back and Violet slid out of the bed. Her heart pounded as she grabbed Margo into a tight hug. “I thought you were dead!” she said.

  Margo stroked her hair and gave her a tight squeeze back. Then she disentangled herself from Violet’s arms and pushed Violet back enough to look her over. “That color is killer on you. You have to stop dressing like a bag lady, Vi.”

  Instantly crossing her arms over her chest in embarrassment, Violet started processing Margo’s words. She took a small step back, her enthusiasm at seeing her friend suddenly extinguished. “Margo? What’s this about? What happened?”

  Margo grimaced and put her hands up. “I’m really sorry about what happened at Mike’s place, Violet. I didn’t know everything that Tesla had gotten herself into, so things got a little bit...out of hand. It was completely unexpected.”

  A cold feeling swept through Violet. She remembered that it had been Margo who gave her the drink; the drink with the drug in it. What had Margo gotten them into?

  “Where are we?” Violet asked as she slowly backed up against the bed. Her mind raced as she tried to quickly assess if she could get to the door before Margo.

  “Hear me out, Vi.” Margo said gently. She tossed her chestnut hair over her shoulder and took a step toward Violet. When she saw Violet inch backwards again, she stopped and sighed. “No one is going to hurt you, Vi. You are totally safe. You are set up here. What is about to happen is going to be cooler than your wildest dreams.”

  Violet started to shiver as Margo’s words sunk in. She pulled her arms tighter around herself, wishing she had more to cover her body than the thin nightgown. Margo looked alarmed as the sound of Violet’s teeth chattering reached her ears.

  “Violet! You are going into shock,” Margo said as she swept a light afghan off of the back of the chair and moved quickly to settle it over Violet’s shoulders. Violet couldn’t resist. “I know
you saw more than you should have at Mike’s house, but you’ve got to trust me. You weren’t supposed to be part of any of that. I gave you a little something that should have knocked you out. I didn’t know you’d have some kind of immunity to it.”

  “I th-th-th-thought you were-were my friend,” Violet managed to get out. Her whole jaw was vibrating. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get that horrific bloody room out of her mind.

  Margo took her firmly by the shoulders and pulled her across the room into the bright sunlight. Instantly, Violet’s face felt warmed by the strong sunbeams streaming into the room and her body’s quaking stopped. She looked at Margo, and saw that Margo’s pretty face was pulled into a tight grimace. Violet remembered the man who caught her in the hallway. Then there was all the blood. Violet started to shake her head.

  Margo took a deep breath as if collecting herself. “I am your friend, Vi. I want you to know that everything I’ve ever said to you is true; at least, the intent was true. But I admit there are some important things that I left out because it wasn’t time yet. You weren’t ready.”

  “And it’s time now?” Violet asked. “I have to say, Margo, I don’t think I’d ever be ready to see what I saw because I’m not a crazy person or an ax murderer.”

  Margo groaned and started to pace the room, but Violet noticed that she carefully avoided the patches of floor that were exposed to the full strength of the sunlight. Violet didn’t even want to try to make sense of what that meant. Margo told her once that she didn’t like exposing herself to too much sun because it was bad for her complexion. Violet had never really questioned it that Margo never took her up on her invites to study at the picnic tables in the quad. She had always chalked it up to Margo not being an outdoorsy type. But she was starting to look at everything now with new eyes.