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The shot I hadn’t taken should have haunted me, but didn’t.
For the first time in my life, I didn't do the job I'd been paid to complete. My hands were busy dismantling my weapon, closing the clasps to its case and rolling to my feet. I brushed glass from my front, one fingertip slicing across a piece of broken bottle, a single drop of blood swelling at the end of the extremity. The drop grew heavy at the bottom end, and just before it fell, I held my hand over the city below.
An offering, a sacrifice.
Like hers.
Her window sat empty no matter how long I waited, and I knew tonight was only the beginning of a force I couldn't halt, couldn’t prevent, only ride to its completion. A fresh obsession that would end as it did, an observer in my own fate, drawn inexorably to her.
This was a girl I would break for, because she fascinated me.
She could have killed me, given the chance, but instead she teased me, winding me toward her.
I couldn’t do anything less to repay the favour.
A hard smile crossed my face as I took one last glance at her window. This silly season would be fun. I’d hold out on her fate for as long as possible before I ended it on my own terms and no one else’s.
Her death was mine.
Whistling a broken carol to match the mangled warble echoing across the city, I strode across the rooftop in full view of my little nemesis.
Yes, we would have fun. I’d unwrap her like the present she was always made to be, one just for me.
My beautiful, twisted obsession.
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
CHAPTER TWO
CELESTE
Iswept my fingersacross the gray squares as they deteriorated across my cement canvas, devolving into deformed diamonds. Under my design, the ground appeared to ripple beneath my feet as I crossed the studio room my professor gave me as a space to create my major project for the year.
Not that Rippton U, with all its wealth and egos, didn’t have a lack of space or vacant rooms. I paid my tithe to the college directly from my own funds but I knew my father injected income into the dean’s personal account to ensure what he wanted was what happened.
And so, like with my apartment and its security men stationed outside the door as they did outside my studio, I was imprisoned. A cage of a different colour, one of greys enhanced with a rippling spiral in the centre drawing the viewer down to a zero point of nothingness that wound internally in its own twisted version of hell.
