CHAPTER 6
“I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that blood actually is all around.”
—Not Love Actually
It’s chaos. Like the beginning of a flash mob before everyone moves in synchronicity.
Curtis is bleeding out in front of me, and behind him is a blurred background of running bodies as different flight responses kick in.
The smell of fear hits me as I gape at the body slumping in the chair. It’s a bespoke cocktail of sweat and spilled alcohol, a mix of too many incompatible colognes and something else so innately primal that it pulls me out of my shock.
I’ve seen scenes like this before. I’ve watched terror play out on a screen and I’ve examined each shot and analyzed every plot point.
I know all the possible endings to a story that starts with bloodshed.
So I stay in my seat instead of heeding a more reactive impulse and heading for the stairs, because the panicked hive mind has taken over and too many bodies start to head for the archway we all walked through at the beginning of the night.
That’s a bad idea.
It’s not wide enough to fit so many people at once, and watching the horde try to squeeze through the frame is like watching Bridget Jones pull on a pair of Spanx.
Men and women jostle shoulder to shoulder to get away from danger, and all that polite conversation and active listening and reciprocal flirting means nothing now.
This isn’t the Titanic.
There’s no “ladies first” code of conduct when another man’s neck is gaping open.
Chivalry died in that chair with Curtis.
Somewhere in the fray, over the screams, I hear the ding of the date bell—someone must have stepped on it in the rush—and the room descends into darkness again.
The screaming seems to hit a new level, a consistent piercing tone, and I drop to the ground to avoid being at throat-slitting height. Pulling myself under the table, I hit my forehead against Curtis’s splayed knees as mine burn against the carpet. He would’ve loved for our date to end like this.
My palms shake where they’re planted on either side of his shoes, and I try to ignore the warm, wet patch slowly creeping underneath my fingertips.
All I can hear is glass crunching under heavy footsteps, body parts hitting furniture, so many voices, and so many different screams mixing until it sounds like we’re in the middle of a hurricane.
It’s a communal howl that builds and dips and then that sound from before, the one I couldn’t place, cuts through it all.
I know now what that sound means. I’ve seen the effect of it draped across Curtis’s neck.
It’s the sound of flesh being slashed open like the ribbon on a Tiffany & Co. box.
The alternating quick stabs and prolonged slices playing out from the darkness are performed with the same fervor of a long-suffering girlfriend hunting for an engagement ring within her Christmas presents.
It just keeps happening, more gruesome sounds playing out afterward, and all I can do is dig my fingers into the tacky, moist strands of the carpet and keep my mouth shut so I don’t draw attention to my hiding spot.
I met these people two hours ago and now I’m bearing witness to their last moments, and it’s… too soon, too much, too intimate. I don’t know them well enough to share this kind of thing with them. I don’t know anyone that well except—
Oh my god.
Laurie.
I grab the strands of carpet to stop myself from crawling out and navigating the darkness to find her.
I pray she paid attention to the poster I stuck on the back of our bathroom door.
The one I bought as a joke: How to Survive a Slasher.
Because rule seven is don’t run up the stairs, and rule four is turn on the light.
As suddenly as it began, the noise stops. Then it’s just the muffled sound of footsteps on the level above, like the last dancers standing are giving it their all in the middle of the dance floor before closing time, and the steady drip of… liquid.
A second later the lights turn on, as innocuously as the beginning of a Nancy Meyers movie. And once they do it doesn’t take quite as long for my eyes to adjust, not when the lights seem dimmer… darkened by a red tinge.
I peer through Curtis’s legs, zoning in on where Laurie was sitting.
Her date’s chair is knocked over, giving me an unobstructed view of her table.
She’s there, crouched under the table in the same position as me, her eyes shut tight.
I watch as her head nods, like she’s psyching herself up to open them, and then her gaze goes straight to my table.
It darts around where Curtis is slouched in his chair and I shift forward—quietly, carefully—ducking my head between his legs so she can see me.
So she doesn’t try to move out and find me.
She stares when our eyes finally meet, her red nails digging into the carpet just like mine, her shoulders relaxing when she sees I’m okay. Relief makes her face crumple into a silent sob that draws a lump into my throat and brings tears to my eyes because I’m the emotional one.
We wave weakly at each other and then I hold my palm steady.
Stay.
Rule two of how to survive a slasher: always hide for longer than you think you should. And rule three: find a weapon.
I move back from between the legs of the chair and try to find something we can use to defend ourselves.
To my left there’s a single block high heel.
To my right is a broken Kahlúa bottle that’s rolled an arm’s length away.
The base didn’t break evenly, making it look like a jagged candy scoop, but it will do the job.
All I have to do is reach out and grab it.
I look over to the archway that everyone ran through.
I can see the light switch that’s allowed whoever is doing this their anonymity while butchering complete strangers, and there’s no one there.
There’s no obvious threat like a knife-holding assailant allowing their blood-soaked weapon to drip steadily on the floor.
That doesn’t mean it’s safe, though. The killer could still be in the room.
They could be waiting for someone like me to crawl out of their hiding spot so they can restart the fun and games they triggered by slitting Curtis’s throat.
It’s a risk, and that’s why there’s a rule warning against leaving a hiding place prematurely.
A glint of amber glass catches my eye like a wink across a bar, droplets of Kahlúa glistening on the sharp edges of the broken bottle, and it’s hard to resist. Though it feels wrong, I might need to break one rule to follow another.
Inching my arm out across the space, I grab the neck of the bottle and pull it slowly and silently under the table. It’s wet and smells like the top note of the espresso martinis I was drinking, so I use the bottom of Curtis’s slacks to dry the glass until I can hold it firmly in my palm.
Rule three: find a weapon. Check.
Rolling from my knees to my ass, I check that there’s nobody behind me (rule six: watch your back), then, when the coast is clear, I slide out from beneath the table.
Once I’m standing, the bottle clutched tightly in my fist, I cast a glance around the room I thought couldn’t have gotten any redder and am immediately proven wrong.
There’s movement across the space, and when I tear my eyes away from the sprays and arcs of blood that are still dripping down the walls, I see Wes. He’s two tables down from Laurie, closest to the other entrance of the bar, and he has the same idea as me.
Sometime during the clusterfuck he’s broken the leg off one of the chairs and now holds it out like a baton.
The sharp stake is steady in his fist even though his chest is heaving.
I spy the dark point of that tattoo on his shoulder before our eyes meet and he straightens, the ink slipping back out of sight.
He looks like he’s ready to burn this whole place down, like what just happened is going to form the basis of his origin story and the jury is still out on whether he becomes a hero or a villain. It’s confusingly attractive.
There’s one other figure straightening from behind the table closest to where everyone escaped, and I realize it’s John.
While he hasn’t gone down the weapon route, his fists are curled tightly at his sides.
That won’t achieve anything, but I’ve got to give credit where credit is due.
His blue eyes are wild, searching around the room, and when they land on me, he shakes his head like “did you see that?” His hair flops across his forehead, sticking to the sweat on his skin. Also surprisingly attractive.
When I take in the rest of the scene, I see figures crouched behind overturned tables and people hiding behind heavy velvet curtains before they slowly push them to the side—others who found ways to hide from the killer.
On first count there are eight survivors.
It’s a cruel parody of the evening’s previous uniformity.
Before it was ten men, ten women, ten minutes per date.
Now it’s four men, four women, and four…
bodies. Curtis lies terrifyingly still, as do the two bartenders.
An ice pick protrudes from the neck of the one Laurie was flirting with, right in the jugular (RIP hot nerd).
The other bartender, the one who was manning the end of the bar closest to me, has a long gash across his neck.
A perfect match to the one starting to coagulate on Curtis’s throat.
Their blood is sprayed across the entire bar top.
Then there’s the host, Marion, who lies facedown in a booth near the doorway with a knife sticking out of her back.
It’s a scene that leaves everyone speechless.
Shell-shocked. I think we’re all still processing, waiting to see if the killer is in the room.
I mean, nobody is holding a blade stained with blood or proudly taking responsibility for slicing through Curtis’s trachea, but my guess—an educated opinion, some might say—is that you don’t do such a thing under the cover of darkness because you want people to know it was you. Not yet, anyway.
And so the possibility stands: the killer could still be in the room. The thought draws my gaze back to the table that has my best friend underneath it.
“Laurie,” I call, and she pokes her head around the fallen chair, crawling out when I nod. She can’t help but smooth down the front of her jumpsuit when she stands (silk creases so easily!), before casting a guarded glance around the room.
Her eyes fall upon the body of the bartender sagged against the mirrored wall behind the bar, and the sight makes a little whimper fall out of her glossed lips.
“Laurie,” I say again, and she tears her eyes away from the sight. I extend one blood-tipped nail to the space next to me.
She doesn’t question the silent directive.
She just puts one spiky-toed foot in front of the other until she’s at my side, staring at the cleanest patch of carpet in front of us.
When it starts to darken from the expanding pool of Curtis’s blood, she raises both her hands to cover her mouth, and the sight of her empty shaking palms in contrast to the Kahlúa bottle clenched tightly in my own makes me realize she’s not following rule three.
The table on my left has a half-empty beer bottle on it, so keeping my eyes on the other emerging members of the room, I reach across Laurie and curl my fingers around the neck.
Once I smash the base against the tabletop—a collective flinch rippling across the room at the sound of breaking glass—it’s a travel-sized version of the weapon in my hand.
Now that all eight of us are standing out in the open, I try to identify everyone.
Me, Laurie, John, Wes, Drew—I mean Stu—the guy I would’ve had a date with after Curtis, and the two women I first started talking to during cocktail hour: the Kate Hudson blonde and the Meg Ryan pixie cut.
That seems like a long time ago now.
“Take this,” I say, pushing the neck of the bottle into Laurie’s palm as I straighten, her fingers trembling until she tightens her grip.
“Okay… what… what do I do with it?” Each word shakes as it leaves her mouth, and it just makes me focus extra hard on making my own voice sound steady when I answer, “If it looks like someone is going to attack you… stick it into them.”
“Right…” She nods, as if I’ve told her she needs to stop believing the contouring tricks she sees on social media are going to work for her in real life. “Of course.”
A scream echoes from above, and eight heads jerk up like it’s the beginning strains of “Mr. Brightside.” It cuts off so quickly, so abruptly, that I know that—even without the weighty thud of a body falling to the ground—whoever is doing this, whoever is capable of doing something like this, must be up there.
And while there is a moment of relief that they’re not still in the room with us, it’s quickly overwhelmed by what that scream means.
They aren’t finished, not by a long shot.
Curtis was just the first kill—the first of four—and any one of us could be next.