Prologue

                                    

                                          
	Something lingers in the room upstairs, haloing itself in a white light. The house containing the room is an ugly black, and the inside it is an ugly yellow. Yellow walls with yellow lights, only red spider lilies to highlight its dullness. Something glimmers within the sickly-colored kitchen. It is silver. I run my finger over its point.
	My grip is firm on the knife's black as night handle. It feels smooth in my hand. I am alone, but that brings me no comfort. Nothing stirs by the kitchen table or the television. Not in the closet or the office, filled up with dusty books and 8-bit figurines. 
I begin my ascent up the carpeted stairs with slow, deliberate steps. Pictures line my way. They are familiar, yet not, because for some reason I see my face smiling inside those wooden frames. I am younger, with round cheeks and black eyes.
	I linger on my face in the frames as it comes into focus. I smile in the picture, which I find strange. When was the last time I grinned like that? When I look down at my blade hand I realize that the knuckles are ghost white. I don't mind it.
	At the top of the steps, there is a door. It's dark on the outside, but a bluish glow teases from the thin slit beneath it. It flickers and blinks. I slide my eyes over to the doors to its left. The middle door snores and creaks in its sleep. The left-most door says nothing until I reach it. When I place my ear to its wooden barrier and I hear the creaks and protests of an office chair. Click. Creak. Click. Creak. Click, I open the door.
	The new light that greets me isn't blue like the first door, but instead a square of white, the mark of a harsh computer screen. The typist is too busy typing away to notice me. I linger in the books and papers, observing that she has a short bob of black hair streaked with gray. 
Click, the door closes behind me, my only witness. Click. Clack. Click. Creak. Click. Crack. The clicks and creaks are my only sound. The typist's hands cease their dash across the keys, but she does not turn around. I halt my breath midway. The blade is cold and I shiver in my spot. Our breath is in sync, each inhale is my inhale, each exhale is my release of breath. Her head bobs down for just a second, a consequence of the long work day. But a second is all I need. 
	Her blood becomes an abstract work on the drywall, her neck splitting open. A high arch of red bleeds on the canvas of the yellow wall. The drip is hypnotic. The typist's hands clench to her chest in a half-second before resting back on the keyboard, albeit abrupt.
	The pain has begun.