Page 65 of Requiem & Reverie

“In the journal, he detailed his methods of taxidermy, skinning animals, studying their flesh, their insides. His technique for sewing and carving out the eyes from the skulls. He lamented about women like my mother, how sex with them was so unfulfilling, and that’s when he decided to taxidermy his very own sex slave. That’s when he set his sights on Nora, a local college student. So smitten with her, he wanted to immortalize her and keep her. I was moved by this gesture. Found it oddly romantic.”

You would, sick fuck.

“Eventually, grandpa passed away, followed by my mother, and I became a teenager on the streets. Penniless.”

“Welcome to the family.” Out here, I have to be attentive to Nola, where a stray bullet might easily hit her, so firing blindly isn’t an option.

He snorts a laugh and shakes his head. “Yes, well, it was while living in squalor that I found purpose, and when I learned that Nora had a sister, I thought it the perfect ode to my father.”

Swinging the gun around, I search through my failing eyesight, and when I turn, I can just make out an object pointed at me. Probably the barrel of a gun.

He must back away from me, because the object shrinks until it blends in with the blurred surroundings.

“As riveting as this conversation has been, I’m afraid I’m running out of time with Nola.”

“What’s in the kiln?” I’m trying to zero in on him, keep him talking.

“Just some … insignificant female that I picked up from the bar the other night.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, focusing on the proximity of his voice. “Zelene.”

“Ah! You must watch the news. Good for you.”

“Why didn’t you dump her body somewhere, like the others?”

“She was … impure.”

“How so?” I aim my gun toward where I think he’s standing. Just shoot, my head tells me, but without a clear shot, I’m throwing away bullets and risking one of them hitting Nola.

“Only one Queen of the Night remains, and that is saved for my beloved.”

Across from me are the shelves of flowers I remember seeing earlier, including the pot that held the single Queen of the Night.

The lights cut out, and once again, I’m in total blackness. My pulse hammers as I fight the lingering residue in my eyes and crouch low to the ground, rounding the table in the center of the room toward those shelves. Flames streak across my arm, as a bullet hits my bicep. Fuck! Palm slapped to the wound, I slide along the wall. I curl my fingers around what I think is part of the shelf and heave at the metal, sending objects crashing to the floor.

“No! No!” Simon screams from somewhere in the room, the rage in his voice enough to peel the paint off the walls. “That was my last bloom! You’ve ruined it!”

Good.

Stepping over hazy debris below me, I knock a second shelf, and more items crack against the concrete.

“This was going to be a gift to my father. I was going to carry out his vision.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I continue to taunt. “I killed him.”

The burn in my bicep has me probing the wet skin around it, the angry flesh where the bullet is lodged inside.

“He hated you. His journal spoke about how much he loathed you. How he wished to hear you suffer. I’m going to take great pleasure in killing you,” he says, before a bullet pings off the steel shelving beside me.

I don’t say a word, in spite of the agonizing pain in my arm, as I back myself around the corner, down the same hallway as his little hobby room.

“Nola was supposed to be my first true love. Special. And that flower was for her. My beautiful queen.”

“Looks like you’re shit out of luck,” I respond, as my eyes adjust in the darkness, and the shapes of objects begin to sharpen. “She already belongs to me.”

A bullet hits the wall beside me, steeling my muscles.

“No. You’re nothing but a mangey dog. Dirty and filthy. I plan to purify her with my nectar. To make her clean and virtuous again.”