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{__miss.world__} The forecast for the night had called for snow, and seemingly after much deliberation, the sky delivered: fat, irregularly shaped snowflakes drifted toward the ground, blanketing sickly yellow grass and unremarkable concrete in a vast plain of white. With a shiver, Morgana dropped the folds of the curtains she’d previously parted to examine the progression of the snowfall, pulling her silken white robe around her otherwise nude form. In her well-heated, more than adequately insulated home, she couldn’t feel anything of the outside world. She was oddly disconnected from the flurry outdoors, as if watching a reel from a silent, sepia-tinted movie – but she could imagine its effects all the same. Or she tried to, anyway. At this level of income, it was hard to imagine being affected by the same trivialities as regular people – the weather, unpaid bills, death. Turning away from the window, she regarded the room with disinterest – glaring lights, twenty-four hour news playing ostensibly on a loop, a paperback romance forgotten on the nightstand. The crushing weight of loneliness made the room seem smaller, closed in; everyone was gone for the night but her, and they’d left with the promise of returning in a few hours. Striding gracefully across the master bedroom, Morgana entered the adjacent bath. If this wasn’t her home, she would have admired its marble tiling, ornate bathtub and the vanity mirror that stretched nearly the length of the wall – but because it was hers, and she was used to such finery, she stripped her robe off with indifference, allowing it to sink to the floor. Unabashedly, she examined her naked form in the mirror, as if to search for a recently acquired imperfection. The bathroom lighting was subtle and flattering; it made her skin glow, rather than wash it out. Her pink hair shone in cascading waves down her back and over her breasts, offering tantalizing slivers of flesh between strands. What she saw pleased her. Beauty, according to those who claim to know anything about the subject, is only skin deep - but in certain professions, it was everything. Kicking aside her discarded robe, Morgy stepped into the bathtub, releasing a nearly scalding stream of water from the tap and drawing the solid pink shower curtain around it. For a long moment she stood under the water, allowing it to sufficiently soak her hair and skin, before lathering her hair with a sweet-smelling shampoo. In small circles she lathered a luxurious soap over every inch of her body, allowing the water to adequately rinse it away before stepping out of the bathtub. The entire bathroom billowed with a thick layer of steam, which Morgy seemed unfazed by. She bent to retrieve her robe from the floor, which was uncomfortably cool beneath her feet, and wrapped it around her body. It quickly grew damp, its thin fibres becoming nearly transparent in moments. Morgy hummed to herself, high-pitched and sweet, as she wrung the loose water from her vibrant hair; and she glided toward the fogged mirror, taking pains not to slip in the small puddles of water she’d created on the floor. In a grand, sweeping gesture she smeared the steam away from the mirror in an effort to examine her reflection again. Morgy wasn’t alone in the mirror. Peering over her shoulder, behind her soaked and tangled strands and the pale moon of her face, was an individual much larger than she – dressed all in black, the piercing blue of the figure's eyes boring into her through holes in a generic black ski mask. Her jaw dropped instantaneously, and she whipped around, nearly colliding with this foreign body, who stood intimately close – too close for comfort. Then again, the figure would have been too close for comfort no matter where it stood. “Who are you?” she gasped, tightening her robe around herself in a rare display of modesty. “How did you get in here?” Wordlessly, the intruder lifted a knife that she hadn’t realized they’d been brandishing until now, and it caught under the soft lighting, gleaming menacingly. Instinctively she raised her hands as if to shield herself, tears running down her cheeks in a seemingly never-ending river. “Please,” she choked in desperation, raising her hands higher; and before she could beg, or grovel, or offer any sort of bribe, the prowler brought the knife down repeatedly into the open palms of her hands, tearing large gashes through her paper-thin flesh. She screamed in animalistic fashion, her voice ragged and throaty, blood coursing viscously through her outstretched fingers. The figure grabbed her wrists, wrenching her arms violently, as if to distort her stability; and in this the intruder succeeded, sending her crashing to the floor, her skull colliding harshly with the edge of the countertop as she groped wildly for balance.
And then there was nothing.
{__live.through.this__} “Morgy! I’m home!” Adora called, her voice echoing through the expansive front entrance, aimed at no destination in particular. She slammed the door behind her with conviction, silencing the howling of the voracious wind outside. The house was eerily still, especially in contrast to the din and contrast movement stirring outdoors; and only a singular wall light burned, casting a dull, strangled glow over the substantial space. “Don’t ignore me!” Adora playfully called again, stripping off the bright red gloves that warmed her hands and tossing them in the hall closet. She shook the rapidly melting snow from her platinum blonde locks, peeling her coat, scarf and boots from her chilled skin and placing them alongside her gloves. There was no reply from Morgy; and feeling ignored now, Adora furrowed her delicate brow, heading toward the grand staircase that would ascend her to the second floor. Everything on the house’s main level was soundless, too shrouded with shadows to suggest that her friend was down there. If she was, every light would be burning; the words “dark and quiet” were not ones that could be used to accurately describe Morgy’s ideal living space. With one hand tightly gripping the intricately carved wooden banister, Adora climbed up the stairs, the sound of her footsteps enveloped in thick white carpeting that wasn’t particularly practical. The view from the top of the staircase was the same as the one below: shadows danced along the walls, brought to life by a singular dim light, and Adora’s own silhouette leapt and stretched to twice her size as she crept toward the master bedroom, the closed door of which suggested that Morgy was already sleeping. “Wake up!” Adora commanded as she flung the door open; and the king sized bed inside, rumpled and disheveled as its sheets were, was empty. The wall-mounted television set was on, droning international news in hushed tones, and every available lamp was lit, illuminating the impressively large space with the glow that seemed to be lacking everywhere else. The curtains bordering the room’s picture window were drawn as if to ward off the outside world; a book on the night stand was splayed, cracked open to one of its last pages, seemingly forgotten. It looked very much like a scene that had been interrupted. “Where is she?” Adora muttered, casting a scrutinizing glance around the bedroom; and her eyes settled upon the adjacent closed door of the master bath, a thin, rectangular slot of light filtering from its base. In the grand scheme of things, however, the light was unimportant; because pooling persistently under the door, lapping hungrily at the otherwise pristine white carpet, was a vinaceous puddle of blood. Adora gasped, her nervous hands fluttering at the base of her throat; or at least, she meant to gasp, but the sound died in her vocal chords, leaving her gaping mutely, her mouth contorted in an archetypal depiction of surprise. Managing to unlock her momentarily frozen legs, Adora rushed toward the bathroom door, her feet sinking into the blood-stained carpet. The vital fluid, still hot, soaked through her socks, pressing against and seeming to burn her skin; and she shuddered violently, her stomach lurching in protest as she eased the door open. There was far too much blood, even from what she had been briefly exposed to, for the prognosis to be promising. The air was heavily laced with a pungent, metallic odour that was overwhelmingly nauseating, intensifying with every inch the door opened. On the tiled floor, her arms and legs splayed like those of a broken doll, was Morgana. Her glassy eyes stared perennially into the distance, her bruised, cracked lips parted in a silent, blood-coated scream. The waxy pallor of her face was interrupted by jagged, symmetrical cuts marring each cheek, and thin rivulets of blood formed a gruesome crimson web on her skin. Her pink hair ribboned beneath her, discoloured and matted from the vital fluid that she seemed to have drowned in; and the skin on her hands, so previously well-maintained, seemed to have been shredded. The porcelain skin of her small throat had been cut, her soft tissue splitting and caked with coagulated blood. Adora, though she tried not to, could picture Morgy in her final moments; wheezing in vain for air through a severed windpipe, feeling a veritable river of blood scald her flesh and stain her once-pious white robe -- Shaking her head violently, Adora felt her knees grow weak, and she grasped at the door handle to keep herself from falling, a tortured, guttural moan escaping from behind her lips. Her stomach roiled with an intensity she hadn’t known was capable of existing, and she gagged violently, tears immediately blurring vision that was already hazy with distress. Smeared, bloody hand prints stained the bath tub, as if Morgy had reached out to someone – anyone – in her dying moments. An arterial spray of blood splattered across the mirror in a perfect arc, like crimson paint on a grim canvas; and Adora stumbled backward, attempting to shield her astonished eyes, which had already seen too much.
And not knowing what else to do, Adora screamed.
{__i'll.be.here.a.while__} Morgana's lifeless eyes stared up intently at nothing. Even if there had been more than a white ceiling, it would have been nothing to her; her body and eyes were no longer anything but sad testaments to the ultimate culmination of life as we know it: death. Vince Kinney stepped into what was once her field of view and gazed down at her, the red and blue siren lights from beyond the window dancing playfully on the wall behind him. "No signs of forced entry," Vince muttered to himself as he placed small number cards near each piece of potential evidence. He often wondered how twelve years of crime scene investigation hadn't left him completely desensitized to such violence, but he was glad to feel anything more than just apathy for the human condition after all he had seen. "People with houses like this don't leave security up to chance," noted Geneva Price, a young but fiesty and very thorough forensic scientist. "If this was an illegal entry, a S.W.A.T team would have been here instantaneously," she said, a tinge of sarcasm in her tone. "We scoff at celebrities and their self-indulgent security measures, but it sure looks like she could have used a bodyguard, doesn't it?" Vince sighed wearily. A trail of frenzied, bloody footsteps wound around Morgana's corpse and led out to the master bedroom to which the bathroom was adjoined. They led to the plush, king-sized bed, where Adora sat, her legs dangling over the edge. She only stared at feet that she barely knew to be her own, fresh blood in the process of drying on them. Her eyes were wide and vacant as Detective Bill Whitaker tried to get answers out of her. "The victim's a wrestler, singer and model," explained Bill from beside Adora. He seemed awed by the scene; in his thirty years of service on the Toronto police force, he probably had not earned half of what Morgana's home cost. Each of those thirty years also failed to provide a murder as mysterious, cruel and high-profiled as this one.
"Then I guess she's used to having her picture taken," Geneva commented coolly, raising her expensive camera and zooming in on the gaping hole that was Morgana's neck.
{__y.control__} In her nine years as a forensic pathologist, Annie Fu had never seen anything like this. “I can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing that aspects of this job still surprise me,” she muttered, casting Vince a wary glance. He stood across from her, a morgue slab separating them in all of their sterile, hospital-scrubbed glory, and returned her momentary look with a calculating one of his own. “What’s there to be surprised about?” he inquired stoically. “It looks pretty obvious to me. Exsanguination: she bled out.” “This is why you’re a CSI and not a pathologist,” Annie smirked, gesturing toward the slab between them with a gloved hand. She was used to having her logic questioned; at thirty-seven years old, she looked closer to adolescence than middle age with her long, jet black hair, petite stature and pretty, almond-shaped eyes. Her youthful appearance, in nearly every work setting she’d been introduced to, had always initially been a detriment to her credibility – although she’d assumed that by now, Vince would know better than that. Morgana – what was left of her – lay between them, illuminated under a singular bleak light that revealed the waxy tinge of her lifeless skin. She was completely nude, a stark white sheet pulled atop her body and tucked over her breasts. Her collarbones protruded harshly against her skin, her facial features sharp and angular under the glaring light. Her eyes were seemingly sewn shut, her impossibly long hair pushed back from her face and carefully coiled about her head. “So what did you find, then?” Vince asked, clearly interested by Annie's evasive, condescending answer. He regarded Morgy intently; he knew her, and he knew what she’d looked like before tonight. She was the kind of woman who, if she’d lived, would rather have been dead than look the way she did now. “I’ll agree with you on one thing, though. This is more horrific than most cases we see.” “I know. Such little regard for human life,” Annie replied with a long, tired sigh. She fixated her eyes for a long moment upon Morgana’s chest, which was split into three sections with the ghastly y-incision Annie had used to examine her innards. Afterward she had stitched the y-shaped slit that extended to Morgy’s naval with precision involving wide, large loops of surgical thread; and although she was dead, the wound had weeped with tissue fluid as her skin, muscle and soft tissues were peeled off of her chest wall. “Anyway,” she continued, shaking her head as if to snap herself out of a reverie, “I’ve established that when you found her, she’d been dead for approximately two hours. I’ve determined this due to the lividity of her skin – discolouration caused by the gravitation of blood. Discolouration usually begins thirty to sixty minutes after the heart stops; within six to ten hours, it’s permanent, as I’m sure you can see.” “I can,” Vince replied, eyeing Morgana’s still figure. He tried not to stare, but it was nearly impossible; her thin wrists were marred with horrific blue bruises, her face hacked into symmetrical sections with a cruelly wielded knife. “Official cause of death, then?” “Blunt force trauma to the head,” Annie stated firmly. Vince shifted his eyes skeptically toward her, and she held his gaze with narrowly slotted eyes of her own. “She has a three inch fracture to the occipital bone and a subgaleal hematoma. That’s what killed her; everything else was an added bonus.” Vince gaped at Annie disbelievingly; and as if for the sole purpose of proving him wrong, she placed her skillful fingers against Morgana’s hairline. Wordlessly, she began to peel the flesh off of her scalp via an incision Vince hadn’t previously noticed was there; and Morgy’s hair lay practically next to her now, its absence exposing the starch white plates that formed her skull. Very gently, Annie turned Morgana’s head to allow Vince a view of the back of her skull, where it met her neck; and there was the fracture Annie had assured him would be there, jagged and seeping with dried blood. “Here’s the fracture,” she gestured, pointing toward what she had called the occipital bone, “and here’s the hematoma.” Subgaleal hematomas – or hemorrhages, or internal bleeding, if you will -- occur between the skull and the scalp, leaving superficial bruises and blood clots upon its location. A dark mass of blood marked the separated skin of Morgy’s scalp, and Vince averted his eyes, as if he’d seen too much, which was difficult in their line of work. “So why the cut throat, then?” he asked, more to understand the events that had transpired than to be difficult at this point. “I believe that the fracture to the skull was an accident,” Annie explained. She pointed toward Morgy’s wrists and her hands, which were severely riddled with stab wounds. “She has defensive wounds on her hands and perimortem bruising on her wrists; I think that her murderer grabbed her and began to stab her, and she fell and hit her head. She was already dying from a fractured skull when she had her throat lacerated.” “I guess leaving her to die on the floor after hitting her head wasn’t humiliating or painful enough,” Vince murmured contemplatively. “We found an arterial spurt of blood on the mirror at the crime scene. Her killer would have had to pull her to her feet in her semiconscious state and cut her throat that way. It’s all very deliberate; like someone wanted to put on a show.” “And that’s why I was so surprised,” Annie responded. Simultaneously, they cast their eyes toward the gaping wound that had torn Morgana’s throat in half; the yawning, serrated gash exposed deep tissue, a severed windpipe, sliced arteries. “It seems very intimate and calculated to me.”
“Yes, it does. Her best friend made the 911 call,” Vince revealed slowly, contemplatively, as if profoundly affected by Annie’s words, “and now I’m not so sure if we have a grieving companion or a murderess on our hands.”
{__if.i.did.it__} With a great deal of stealth, Adora eased the bathroom door open soundlessly, finding Morgana exactly where she’d expected her to be: before the mirror, clad loosely in a pure white robe, casting her reflection a scrutinizing glance through a layer of steam. She was so fucking vain. Adora crept behind Morgana, tightening her gloved fingers around the handle of her knife. Her friend, humming softly to herself, was oblivious to the presence of another body in the room; and when Morgy cleared the mirror and noticed Adora’s masked figure behind her, she gasped, her lilting tune dying abruptly in her throat. “Who are you?” she demanded fearfully, struggling to tie her robe, as if it would sufficiently protect her from what Adora had in mind. “How did you get in here?” Adora lifted her knife, a sneer spreading easily across her lips behind her mask, and Morgy shed silent tears of surprise and horror. She raised her hands in what could have been either a defensive stance or a gesture of rationality, taking a step back from Adora. “Please,” she begged, her voice raw and her breathing shallow – and without hesitating, Adora stabbed her knife downward, easily ripping through the tender flesh of Morgy’s hands over and over and over again. Morgy half screamed, half wailed, and Adora grabbed her wrists, jerking them forcefully, as if she intended to rip Morgy’s shoulders from their sockets. Morgy promptly lost her balance, clearly surprised by the sudden offensive movement; and she plunged toward the floor, the back of her skull smashing against the corner of the countertop as she did so. Immediately, she could feel blood flowing from the back of her head, as if to compete with the fluid that ran freely through her fingers – and she lay on the cool tile floor, streaming in and out of consciousness, dull pulses of pain clouding her waking moments. Adora stood above Morgy, shadowing the ceiling light, appearing as a rigid, daunting silhouette above her fallen friend. She crouched beside Morgy, whose eyes were frighteningly glassy and rolled precariously behind her eyelids; and almost tauntingly, she slid her knife across Morgy’s sharp, high cheekbones, bestowing symmetrical slashes upon her face. Morgy moaned in weak protest, groping feebly at the bath tub in an attempt to rise to her feet. Adora yanked her roughly into a standing position, and she swayed brokenly, struggling to keep herself from collapsing. What she didn’t know was that she was already dying; that whatever Adora at this point was superfluous. Seizing Morgy by her matted, sticky pink hair, Adora roughly pulled her head back, exposing her willowy throat to the lustrous blade of her knife.
“Bitch,” Adora whispered menacingly, barely recognizing the sound of her voice as her own; and as Morgy’s eyes closed with finality, Adora sawed the knife across her --
{__can't.you.hear.me?__} "Are you kidding me?" Adora cut the group of investigators before her off abruptly, snapping them unceremoniously out of their fantasy. "No wonder so many guilty people go free; you spend more time on whackjob theories than you do actually trying to find who did it." "They all say that," Geneva stated icily, tucking a lock of shiny blonde hair behind her ear, before replacing her crossed arms firmly across her chest. She wasn't sure if Adora was guilty, but she was certainly going to try to trip her up--it was her job to help people contradict themselves into an indirect confession. "So you're saying that whoever did this has essentially outsmarted you and left nothing behind. And since I live there, you've found endless traces of me. Meanwhile, I can barely slice a tomato properly, yet I'm responsible for butchering my own best friend with what was, from what I could tell, professional precision," Adora shrieked, exasperated and emotionally drained. Tears streamed down her face, but she felt only rage that these people were standing there and blaming her, instead of looking for the real culprit. "Why would I kill her? She's almost all I've got," Adora said through gritted teeth, breathing deeply in a failing attempt to steady the quiver in her voice. "It's quite obvious," Geneva began, embellishing each 's' in a haughty manner. "She had everything you wanted," she stated simply, glancing at Detective Bill Whitaker, who stood behind her, waiting to play the sympathetic shoulder to lean on. "She had the fame, she had the money, she had the marriage. You wanted all of that, didn't you?" "I have my own fame! I have my own money! It may not be as much as hers, but then again I haven't worked as hard or as long as she has, have I?" "I imagine it must be hard for you, though," Bill interrupted, "playing second fiddle to someone who's the subject of such adulation?" "Why is it so hard to believe that I'm proud of her for what she's achieved?" Adora asked meekly, overcome with helplessness. "Why do people act as if I'm the only one in this whole world who doesn't understand what she's gone through to get to where she is? I was the one who was there every step of the way!" They were silent, exchanging only a few knowing looks.
"You're free to go for now," Geneva said, glaring coldly down at a broken woman before her.
{__you.can.touch.me.if.you.want__} A chill surged through Adora's very core as she exited the downtown police headquarters, where she had been confined for an amount of time she could not quite establish in her mind. Did it even matter? Did anything? Morgana was dead. Dead, dead, dead. There was no mistaking it, and there was no bringing her back; she was gone forever and she would stay gone. Maybe she was with Julius, or maybe the afterlife was little more than a black abyss in which absolutely nothing happened - Adora didn't know. She didn't even know where she was going or what to do with herself, let alone what had become of her slain best friend. She felt her glassy eyes well up with hot tears that ached to shed. They flooded down her cool cheeks, reddened by the sharp wind, and warmed her tired, taut skin. The salty fluid stung her dry, sleepy eyes, and she yearned hopelessly to rest her head upon a soft pillow and mercifully close them. But she had no home anymore; it was a crime scene, a prison and a nightmare now. As far as she was concerned, she had no one to turn to, either. Someone had killed her best friend, and they were still at large - who could she trust? He or she could have been lurking beyond any corner, in any shadow, waiting to claim her next. The police offered little recourse; for lack of a better lead, they still believed Adora to be their prime suspect. She almost wished they hadn't let sent her on her way, that they had forced her to stay there - in a cell, for all she cared - as long as it meant she had somewhere to go. Reaching into her pockets and pulling out her bulky keychain, Adora reviewed the places she could potentially go. She splayed the dozen or so keys in her palm, examining them each thoughtfully before her eyes settled upon a small blue key with hot pink polka dots on it. It unlocked Morgana's old apartment - from their days in XWW - and while memories of their carefree years were not something with which she wished to be bombarded, the building was closest to the police station that brought Adora her only semblance of solace. Even though the police were more against her than they were eager to help her at the moment, they would be the ones to ultimately solve and avenge Morgana's death. Taking a deep breath, she rounded the corner that would lead her to the building, which was one of many that lined the wide, main street that was mere blocks from Lake Ontario. Harsh wind immediately greeted her, hurling itself remorselessly at Adora, sneaking its way into every available space in her clothing. She shivered and picked up her pace, grateful that at least her destination was but steps away. The large numbers above the door read '725', arched in elaborate wrought iron. She felt a similar pang of excitement, just like she used to feel each time she walked through those doors in the past: soon she would be rambling enthusiastically about something asinine to... to no one. The happy feeling plummeted and reality hit; no one was waiting for her in the penthouse. Still disbelieving that she had truly lost someone so monumentally important to her, Adora's mind periodically lapsed into denial, leaving her certain that she could go complain to Morgana and have her make it all better. The concierge was temporarily off duty for reasons that weren't immediately apparent, and frankly, Adora was glad to be spared the chitchat. She passed the abandoned desk and made her way across the shiny marble floor to the elevators. Behind her, the building doors opened and closed again, followed by shuffling footsteps. She glanced mindlessly behind her, where a heavily bundled man stood shivering, any dicernible feature shrouded by dark winter apparel. The elevator doors opened and he graciously stepped aside to allow her to step inside first. As the doors closed, she reached for press the 'PH' button, her hand colliding with the man's as she did so. A small laugh escaped her lips, taking her by surprise that she was still capable of the feat - because at this point, the prospect of laughing or feeling joy really seemed like feats. The doors reopened, this time presenting the plush cream carpeting and wallpaper of the hallway, warmed by dimly lit, gold sconce lights. She veered to the left and, satisfied that the man's footsteps were going in the opposite direction, she headed towards the familiar door bearing the number '3101.' She recalled fondly how lost they would get in the building when Morgana first purchased the condo; each floor offered winding hallways with few distinguishing features, and one could run around like a chicken with its head cut off without finding their destination for an embarrassing length of time. Now, she expertly navigated her way to the apartment's door. The sound of footsteps behind her returned as she pulled the keys out of her pocket, and she glanced cautiously down the hall again, finding nothing and no one. She turned back to the beckoning door, her view of which was now obstructed by the broad shoulders of the man from the elevator. "Oh, my god!" she exclaimed, letting out a nervous chuckle at the false alarm. "You scared the shit out of me!" she breathed as she raised her head to meet his gaze. Only his cold blue eyes were visible beneath what she now knew to be his guise, and they bore unsparingly into her own. As if anticipating her reaction, he swiftly wrapped an arm around her waist and brusquely squeezed whatever air she had in her diaphragm out; if she planned to scream for help, she could barely catch her breath now, let alone produce an attention-catching sound. He pried the keys easily out of her hands and slid the correct key into the lock without thinking twice. How did he know? His grip around her waist remained firm and allowed for only the occasional small, sharp intake of breath. "Keep your mouth shut, and maybe I won't slice your pretty head off your shoulders like I did your friend's," he ordered gruffly as he opened the door and shoved Adora through it. The pink shades greeted her first, a sight she was well acquainted with - that brought her brief comfort - followed by a coffee table with squat, gold legs and a pristine glass tabletop that had been Morgana's first expensive piece of furniture. She stumbled and tripped over her own feet at the force of his push and went crashing to the ground. He closed the door cautiously and locked and chained it. The guest bathroom was only a few feet from the entranceway, immaculately clean and unused for years. Keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Adora's fallen figure, he dashed inside, not bothering to turn the light on, and snatched a light pink face cloth off a rack. "You have no idea how much I'd like to feel my cock in your mouth, have your pretty little mouth kiss it and worship it like a slut like you should," he snarled as he balled the towel up and pushed it unceremoniously into Adora's mouth, sending waves of nausea and repulsion over her as the dry fibres scraped against her teeth, "but I don't trust you not to scream. I wish I could, but you wouldn't realize how much you like it until it's too late. Girls like you never do." He forced her to her feet by her long blonde hair and held her face level to his. His eyes were quite beautiful, and there almost seemed to be a tenderness lurking deep within them, beyond the inexplicable rage and hatred. A single tear fell from her eye. "Don't cry," he said, brushing the tear away with his free hand. Anger and frustration welled within her, and with a burst of adrenaline, she wretched free from his grip, fleeing madly into the vast living room - perhaps her knowledge of the condo's layout would work in her favour - but her right ankle was compromised from her last fall, and she simply sunk to the ground once more. He pulled a length of rope from his pocket and approached her, placing a foot firmly on her back to keep her in place. "Take off your clothes," he instructed, "or I'll gut you like a fish." He lifted his foot and allowed her to sit up - she could have fought, but why? Chances were he would kill her regardless, and she barely cared what happened to her anyway. She sat up and removed her coat, sweaters, top and bra as quickly as she could, her hands trembling with both fear and the unlived-in chill that filled the apartment. He removed his coat and gloves as well, revealing a hunting knife attached to his belt loop in a leather sheath. His tackily cliché balaclava remained on his head, even when he was just down to his boxers and t-shirt. He grabbled her arms and dragged her over to the overstuffed, black leather couch, where he firmly tied her wrists in front of her. She knew his eyes were locked on her bare breasts, his sick desire to hurt her fueled as her nipples hardened from the cold. He tore her pants off crudely, her wounded ankle catching in them as he tried to pull them past the shoes that remained on her feet. Her eyes widened in agony as he tugged indifferently, but no sound came from her gagged mouth. He freed one foot but gave up on the other, letting her jeans hang off of it. Eyeing her black, cotton panties, he removed the knife from its sheath and slid it beneath the fabric, causing the skin under and around the cool metal to break out into goosebumps. With one clean motion, he jerked his arm back and cut the underwear wide open, exposing her to him. "Promise not to scream?" he asked, dangling the knife above her nonchalantly. She nodded, tears upon tears gushing from her eyes. With her arms tied, one leg useless and the other trapped beneath his weight, there was no point in angering him. He pulled the gag out. "Have you ever seen a dick like this?" he asked confidently, pulling his boxers to his knees. It bobbed almost humorously, and under any other circumstances, Adora surely would have laughed at the 90-degree angle it created. "Have you?" he demanded, now angry at not receiving a prompt reply. "Yes," she choked, "yes." He spread her legs apart violently and thrust pitilessly into her. She whimpered in pain, not a drop of lubrication present to soften the blow. He grabbed each of her legs by the outer thigh, pulling her forcefully down onto his cock after he withdrew. He repeated the motion again, sinking deep into her, and from the sheer friction, her body began to produce moisture. "You see, you little bitch? It feels good, doesn't it? I can tell your little pussy hasn't had anything like this before. You're tight for a whore, aren't you?" he said through what she was sure were gritted teeth. "It feels good, doesn't it?" he yelled at her, beginning to pant. "You love my cock deep in your little pussy." "Yes, I love it," she said with an appeasing amount of enthusiasm, her tears continuing to flow. He increased the forced and frequency of his thrusts, hitting her cervix repeatedly. She cried out to what felt like stab wounds in her midsection, almost losing consciousness from the pain it caused. His unkempt, dirty nails dug into her flesh, and she knew he was on the brink of climax. Slamming her body one final time, he spent himself deep within her. "Fucking cunt," he muttered, satisfied. He pushed her away, letting her fall to the floor, where her head bounced off one of the coffe table's gold legs with a sickening thud. Her vision grew blurry, but she could see him hovering above her, semen dripping for his still half-erect penis. Once again, he grabbled her hair and dragged her across the apartment, her bare skin burning and itching as it scraped along the marble floor. "Wash your filthy self," he said, dragging her into the shower stall and abandoning her on the ground with hot water running over her battered body. She didn't move. "I'll fucking do it myself," he grumbled as he watched her, disgusted that all she could do was loll her head and eyes lifelessly about. He sprayed her until she was completely wet, and when she cried out feebly at the scalding water, he smacked her in the mouth with the removable shower head.
"You're not so fucking tough now, are you?"
{__i.feel.just.like.a.local.god.when.i'm.with.the.boys "Ugh," came Morgana's unimpressed voice. She had been laying stiffly on a morgue slab for over sixteen hours, almost every inch of her bare skin covered in thickly layered and elaborately applied body makeup. "I feel fucking disgusting," she announced, shaking her arms off vigorously, hoping to maybe - just maybe - feel her own skin beneath the sickly substance that molded itself over her every curve. Her left hand drifted to her head, where a crustaceous red wound seemingly oozed the contents of her skull, and ran her fingers over the bumpy, semi-malleable surface. "Ugh," she repeated, twice as exasperated as she previously was, "that's going to be a bitch to get off." She stretched her lithe frame almost hungrily, her body cramped and aching from the hours she'd spent being very, very dead. The makeup artists' eyes bulged as they watched their hard work - their art - flake off of Morgana's otherwise naked form. Miscellaneous male crew members welcomed this destruction and distraction; rarely did corpse makeup manage to leave a woman looking as beautiful and alluring as Morgana did. "Where's the wife?" she demanded, standing with one hand nonchalantly rested upon her hip, oblivious and indifferent to how very exposed she was. "I'm here," Adora called, walking onto the morgue set. "I just finished my scene and I had to take a leak. I could almost feel pain when I looked in the mirror," she shuddered, gingerly exploring her face with a hesitant hand. Her usually defined lipline was gruesomely marred by a sickly lump that protruded from the centre of her lower lip. The bulky prop makeup weighed her mouth down considerably, and she'd been feeling ridiculous and slack-jawed all day. "I'm like a drooling old man," she whined, slurping back a trickle of wayward saliva. "Hawt," Morgy wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "I think that's a wrap, guys," Jerry Bruckheimer announced, a large grin on his face. Many people thought him a machine that simply pumped out slightly reworked shows borne of the same successful formula, but each CSI series was a like a child to him. CSI: Toronto was especially unique and exciting: it allowed for writers to explore a new cast of characters in a new city and country, which presented a whole new set of laws and potential crimes and cases. The pilot had to be glamorous and simultaneously morbid enough to enthrall audiences who might otherwise be uninterested in another autopsy show. What was more glamorous than the prospect of a wealthy celebrity being slain brutally in her own home, with her equally beautiful best friend as the potential killer? Graciously, Adora and Morgana had agreed to not only starring in the episode, but allowed writers to use their real personas - after all, as wrestlers, they were used to the very fine line that barely existed between the characters and the real people. "You ladies did very, very well. I really feel that this is going to turn out beautifully," he gushed, ecstatic that his project was nearing completion. "Does that mean we can wash this stuff off now?" Morgy asked, excited to save her skin from the miserable state it was surely in. "Go ahead!" he waved his arms permissively. "Your scenes are done for today anyway." "I don't want to shower here," Adora announced. "I don't have flip-flops, and unless I miraculously learn to levitate, I'm not setting foot in any public shower." "Agreed," Morgy nodded before wandering off the set to seek out her clothing. She'd deliberately dressed in unspectacular clothes, as she'd been forewarned of the heavy makeup staining anything and everything. Adora still wore her bloodied, slashed up costume, which she'd been oh-so-generously permitted to keep. Just what every girl wanted: souvenirs from her violent rape and near murder. Morgy slipped on a pair of flannel pajama pants and a loose Nine Inch Nails t-shirt that had probably been untouched since she was fourteen. Their belongings lay near a catering table, exactly where they'd abandoned them in the early hours of that morning. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, neither woman had been accomodated with a plush dressing room, and neither one had demanded one to be furnished and supplied. This sort of television was different; the actors had actual talent, and each and every crew member served an important purpose. In Morgy and Adora's fantastical wrestling land, they were surrounded by one retarded stump of a human being after another, and they did not feel guilty in the least for setting outrageous stipulations for their time. After all, who would provide the entertainment and intrigue? Chris Extreme and his half a nut? "We're going to need these for later," Adora said in an assuring tone, as she grabbed hors d'oeuvres and small sandwiches from one of the food tables and shoved them into the pockets of her hideously oversized coat. Neither woman had taken much care in her appearance before arriving to the set, and so both looked like hobos who had made off with a garbage bag of Salvation Army handouts. "You know, we can order something in," Morgy reminded Adora, as her friend tucked a slice of tomato that hung over and out of her pocket back into its sandwich. "Yeah," Adora agreed reluctantly, sucking tomato juice individually off of each of her left hand's fingers, "but this stuff is ready to eat!" "True," Morgy said, reaching into Adora's pocket for an hors d'oeuvre as the two walked towards the exit of the large warehouse that housed the set. They didn't bother exchanging melancholy goodbyes with crew members they had befriended, as they were due back at least once for voiceovers and concluding scenes. A shiny black limo awaited them in the frigid Februrary cold; Toronto was a city of weather extremes. Rarely was a resident satisfied with what nature offered because it was either too cold or too hot, or what Adora called 'toasty-cold weather.' Never did moderate weather conditions blend together beautifully; it was either too cold for a t-shirt or too hot for a light sweater. Global warming was the one unfortunate reprieve for the city's residents, allowing for unseasonable temperatures to briefly appease. The two piled hastily into the vehicle, shivering ferociously from their momentary encounter with the elements. Knowingly, the driver - who had been provided by either Jerry Bruckheimer or Corey Page, grateful for even more publicity; they weren't sure - headed for Morgana and Tim's awaiting estate. "Merrr," Morgana trembled, rubbing her hands up and down her arms fervently. "Now that we're done filming, all we have left is preparing for Over The Top Rope. How pleasant." "Oh god," Adora groaned, "don't remind me. We have to face and destroy every fucking retard in this fed. How pointless this will be, as if everyone doesn't already know the outcome." "Well, there's always the hilarious possibility of, say, Shawn Samson winning!" Morgy laughed derisively. Bits of sickly green makeup fell away from her neck and floated down as she threw her head back to let a dramatic laugh escape from her throat. Adora was grateful that Morgy's slash wound was sufficiently covered up, as she hardly wanted to see the grotesque sight again. "There's so many of them being flung at us all at once, I can barely separate them in my mind," Adora marvelled, displeasure registered upon her face. "Me fucking neither, and I've already beaten half of them at some point or another. Let's do this bitch alphabetically," she suggested. "A... do we have any opponents starting with A?" she asked before replying to her own question. "Ali Khadafi." "He's the dude with the gross teeth who has shitty music trailing him wherever he goes, right?" Adora cringed. "His shtick is that he feels he can avenge Rwandan genocide by getting pissy at random wrestlers? You know, because that's not a moronic statement by any means. If I wanted to do something about a vicious injustice to humanity, I'd go win a World Title in some fed and show everyone who's boss. Like, totally. And then I'd have the attention of the corpulent American public, because they're clearly the people you want to appeal to while trying to make an important political point." "Oh, for sure!" Morgy agreed. "I just love how he's learned from his experience, too. He wants to 'show' the United States how awful they are by acting in the exact same self-important, hot-headed, asinine and violent manner that his supposed enemies did. Gotta love perpetuating the exact thing you claim to be appalled by. And all that bling he loves to wrap gaudily around his neck - you decry that disgusting American lifestyle, Ali, you decry it good!" "Yeah, we can thank rational geniuses like him for the ongoing cycle of violence for the sake of violence in this world. Mimicking what angers you is truly the way to englightenment. I should go slaughter some pigs as a means of reaffirming my stance on animal cruelty!" "Could you just turn right here?" Morgy asked the chaffeur, pointing toward her looming home and its wide, crescent-shaped driveway. "Is that what he talks about in his promos?" she asked, returning her attention to Adora, who mindlessly picked food out of her pockets and popped it into her mouth. "Nah, I don't think so. He's got some sort of Rwandan ebonics thing going on there. It sounds half coherent and sassy, half like the brown noise - like he's so senselessly cocky and stupid that I may crap myself just from listening to him." "The brown noise?" Morgy shifted her eyes. "Eh, South Park," Adora shrugged. "Makes sense. He also called me a bitch randomly and somewhat incoherently in his paradigm of subtlety of a promo." "Yeah, see, I tried to watch that, but he lost me with the Rwandan ebonics again. Bottom line, the only thing that even remotely sets him apart from anyone else is that he's black. It's novel, because he maintains black people sterotypes, and it allows for everyone to be like, 'heehee, he's such a black person,' before realizing that it doesn't make him particularly special," Adora waved her hand dismissively, as if fed up with the subject. "You know how I feel about people who perpetuate retarded stereotypes." The limo came to a stop, primly and perfectly paralleled with the enormous front doors of the house - the chaffeur clearly had mad chaffeuring skillz. "Speaking of retarded people, how about Arran Hayden?" she said as she maneuvered her heavily bundled self out of the car. "He called you my twin last week." Morgy stuck out her hand for Adora to grab, and Adora yanked herself out of the car as well. She felt like a marshmallow expanding in hot cocoa in her coat. "I'd rather be your twin than vote for myself obsessively on fan polls," Adora muttered, brushing bread crumbs off of herself. Morgy burst into laughter that, trapped by her closed mouth, erupted through her nose and caused her to choke on her own spit. "Who does that?" she asked incredulously, gasping for air between amused chortles. "Seriously! I can't figure him out - he makes himself out to be half pigheaded macho guy, half pussy. Honestly now, what kind of self-respecting wrestler would give Nikita as much credit as he did? I understand him not wanting to face you again, and I can even understand his reluctance to face me, but Nikita just doesn't count. She lucked out hardcore, and I sincerely hope she knows it." "Don't even get me started on her," Morgy sneered, her pleasant expression crumpling into an irate one. "I've worked harder than any woman in this industry to achieve gender equality and I still get lip from nimrod men who can't handle my superiority. And yet, half the roster is neck fucking deep in her asshole, searching for a spot that hasn't already been licked or fucked clean by her misguided admirers. Why does she get this sort of 'no questions asked' respect - despite her title winning match not even being considered for most memorable match of the week - while we made it possible for her to even be where she is?" he voice leapt an octave as she made no effort to hide her dismay. "Just let her enjoy her reign. She knows better than anyone that her days as World Champion are very, very numbered. You know, she actually did well in Corey's place last week... she's obviously more adept behind the scenes than she is in the spotlight," Adora concluded in a rare display of assent to positive qualities in a colleague. "But enough about her for now, needs more Arran Hayden!" "True," Morgy agreed. "I don't get him either - in one breath he expresses fear of facing you or Nikita, then in the next vows to destroy me in our next match or something. Shouldn't he be most afraid of me since he, uh, sucks at beating me?" She opened the front door and walked in, dumping her belongings in a heap in the foyer, then waited for Adora to do the same, which she promptly did. "Well, to his credit, he wasn't naive enough to say he was going to beat you outright; he simply said your next meeting would be 'intense,' which is code for him being hopeful that won't be beaten quite as badly." "That's what I got out of it too. Who else is there?" she wondered aloud, making her way to the living room, where she plopped herself down onto a comfortable couch as ungracefully as possible. "Ahhh," she sighed as she stretched her limbs blissfully, relishing the opportunity to relax. "There's yet another inexplicable Nikita worshipper," Adora shuddered, plopping herself down on the other end of the couch just as gracelessly, dragging an ottoman over to her with her feet. "Mike Phantasy." "Ugh, what a needlessly cocky twathole - hehe, cocky twathole - who thinks he's entitled when he's not. So he's won the Platinum Title twice... does that even exist anymore?" "Nope, too meaningless. But he insists on calling himself 'The King' anyway. Go figure, the closest he'll get to the World Title is fucking Nikita -- and he'd better get all his shits and giggles out now, because once you or I win it, he's going to have to look at pictures or videos to get anywhere near it," Adora laughed derisively. “So, so true,” Morgy nodded in agreement. “I mean, the idea of Mike Phantasy winning this thing with either of us around is laughable, much like his unfounded claims of being ‘The King of Sin.’ Sorry – Nikita’s no queen, and fucking her doesn’t elevate anyone to any sort of royal status. He needs to work out his crippling personal problems before he can even attempt any sort of success in SW.” “Crippling personal problems?” Adora echoed, clearly confused. “I’ll admit, I only know enough about him to sufficiently mock him. I couldn’t care less about his personal life.” “Yeah. He has this thing where he can’t speak normally; he’s always referring to himself in the third person like some kind of fucking psycho. From now on, I’m going to conduct all of my promos in the third person, starting now.” “What about the second person?” Adora suggested. “That’s more interesting.” “Too confusing,” Morgy shot the idea down. “We’re already more intelligent than any of our opponents could ever hope to be, so they’re probably lost enough as it is when they watch us.” “They’re probably not as lost as they would be watching Chris Extreme move through every day life,” Adora inserted with a catty sneer. “Holy fuck, I swear to god, everything that guy goes through seems like some fucked up, drug-fuelled fantasy. I mean, a magic carpet floating in the driveway? Aladdin fucking his mom? A police officer using words like ‘slutties’ and sharing information about his personal life with a civilian? The semen-soaked corpse of ‘Hecate’? His entire promo was so nonsensical that I wanted to bludgeon the closest person to death - preferably him. He needs to check himself into some sort of twelve-step program so that I never, ever have to see anything like that again.” “I don’t really have too much to say about him,” Morgy shrugged indifferently. Adora offered her a bewildered glance, pressing her cool hand against Morgy’s forehead worriedly. “Are you sick? You do feel kind of feverish,” she muttered in motherly fashion. “There’s no other reason you’d be able to pass up somebody calling us gold digging bitches who should be sucking his cock – you live for dismantling idiotic statements like that.” “He’s not himself right now,” Morgy shrugged again. “He doesn’t even know who I am, so he needs to overcompensate with horribly generic insults. I’m not offended by being called a shady slut – he called me worse during sex. Big deal.” “If you say so, man,” Adora replied, “but I can’t pass this up. Chris said that all the pussy in SW has been put on a pedestal, like it’s anybody’s fault but their own that the men here so are horribly inadequate. We sure are being put in our place, what with three women holding the majority of SW’s titles and all! If anything, he needs to forget about the pussy in SW and focus on trying to keep what he has left of his balls – which is probably going to be hard, considering the fact that every fuck in SW has a problem with losing to women. They pretty much emasculate themselves with their chauvinism; it’s fucking great.” “That I can agree with,” Morgy relented, “but holy fuck, I’m tired. Working for reputable TV is so long and tiring. Bed time?” “Shower first, then bed time,” Adora corrected.
“Thank god,” Morgy breathed with a small smile. “I’m so tired of feeling like a fucking corpse.”
{__i.know.what’s.good.for.you__} He could get as close to the house as he wanted to, because the snowfall and the night would cover all of his tracks. In a city this large, it was scarily easily for people like him to maintain an air of anonymity; to be neither seen nor heard, existing but not truly living. It’s not as easy for the type of people who own houses like the one he was currently crouched in front of – because people in ostentatious mansions want to be seen, and admired, and noticed. He noticed. Windows lined the entire ground floor, and although a great deal of them had their curtains tightly drawn, the room that mattered most offered a carelessly exposed view. The night air was cold, the elements stinging the uncovered flesh on his face and hands, but it didn’t matter; because where he crouched, half shrouded in darkness, allowed a prime view into the mansion’s living room. The two girls sat together, in closer proximity than most people would, clearly engrossed in conversation. They gestured wildly with their hands, parted their lips in silent laughter, tossed platinum and pink hair in a distinctly haughty manner. He pulled away from the window, careful to stay just outside of their field of vision, should either of them decide to look – not that he expected them to. Girls so self-absorbed rarely ever did. His shoes punched footprints into the snow as he trailed away from the house, guided toward the street by a row of dimly lit street lights. It didn’t matter; in minutes, any evidence that he’d been there at all would cease to exist - his steps were already being filled in with freshly fallen snow. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he cast a studious glance back at the house; from where he stood, he could see a thin beam of light filtering through the window he’d just been peering into. Tonight wasn’t the night, but it was coming soon. And if there was one thing that they were soon going to realize, it was that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. |
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