Kate woke up in the haze that comes after a long night of drinking and sex and pumping your body full of everything that it wants. Light pierced her skull as she opened her eyes. When she tried to swallow, her throat closed in on itself from the dehydration of the tequila shots and whatever else theyâd all imbibed the night before.
Her head was on something hardâWas she sleeping on the floor?âand she shifted her neck so the pain shooting up her left side would ease off. The pounding in her temples dissipated a little and she wiped a lazy hand over her eye to clear out the sleep from the corners.
It had been a wild night.
Kate could count on one hand the number of nights sheâd woken with this sense of throbbing satisfactionâmixed with a swirl of regret. There was the night back in college, when she and her sister went clubbing and someone gave them ecstasy, which theyâd never done and decided to mix with their Vodka Red Bulls. Rebecca threw up behind a Dennyâs dumpster at 3am while Kate picked at a Styrofoam tray of take-out fries. Then there was the time Calvin brokered that huge deal, and they ate and drank their way across New York City until 3am, when they ended up in a hotel room instead of their apartment and made love until the early dawn streaked through the expensive brocade drapes.
Something moved in the corner of the room. Kate turned her face gently. The walls of the room were white, with what her hungover brain interpreted as abstract paintings in bright primary colors. Blues, yellows, and reds.
Later, Kate would realize the walls were decorated with massive blue and yellow flowers. That the reds didnât belong.
The dark smudge moved again in the corner. When Kate focused, she recognized the long orange beak and sleek body. It was a toucan, hopping in a tangle of bed sheets on the ground. His dense, intelligent eye stared back at her.
A breeze drifted from above. The poor bird must have wandered in through the open window to snack on the remnants of last nightâs party. Theyâd ordered room service to Ashby and Billâs cabana, their two new best friends at the resort, indulging in burgers and chocolate pudding like teenagers. âItâs not every day you have a near-death experience,â Bill said, holding his drink in Kateâs direction.
Everyone laughed and toasted each other. âTo surviving,â Calvin replied, his face already pink from the whiskies at the hotel bar heâd slung back after they returned from the day trip gone wrong.
Kate couldnât remember when the tone began to shift. She was still a little sun-drunk from their day on the water, and she hadnât eaten much. The tequila went straight to her head, and her movements and those of Calvin and Bill and Ashby started to blur around her, like they were moving in slow motion. It couldnât have been too late into the night when Ashby leaned in and kissed her, full on the mouth, with their husbands cheering from the sidelines during a game of truth or dare, Ashby insisted on starting up.
âWhatâs the worst thing youâve ever done?â Ashby asked when Kate, like an idiot, chose truth for her turn.
Kate avoided Calvinâs eye, and then lied and said it was stealing a purse from Macyâs when she was fifteen.
Ashbyâs turn was next, and of course she chose âdareâ and so Bill dared her to kiss Kate. It was like being the star of her own coming of age teen drama, except Kate was almost forty and Ashby was the cool girl, not Kate.
Her lips were softer than Kate expected, and what started off as a chaste pressing together of their lips turned into a deeper kiss, the two women tipsy from the liquor and exhilarated from the events of the day. They kept kissing, Ashbyâs hands moving to Kateâs waist and looping around to pull the two of them closer together. Then Kate felt hands in her hair and another pair of lips on her neck, and she opened her eyes to see Calvin looking at her with a mixture of desire and discomfort from his seat on the couch while Bill started to unzip Kateâs dress from the back.
She could have stopped it, easily. Kate could have said no and pulled the straps back over her shoulders and grabbed her husband by the hand and returned to their cabana, where they could have made love together in an old married way. But she didnât. Kate let what was happening keep happening, and so did Calvin.
Kate blinked. Her hip bones ached. The toucan rapped his beak against the wooden post of the bed.
Finally, Kate felt coordinated enough to sit up. The room spun for a moment in front of her and then settled into a crisp image.
But what Kate saw didnât make sense, even though the colors and edges were all forcing their way in through her optic nerve and her brain was telling her what she was seeing. And smelling. The lush, flowery acidity in the air wasnât coming from the exotic flowers gathered in a vase on the coffee table.
It was blood. Her friendsâ blood.
Ashby lay across the room, her eyes closed. Streaks of red marred her forehead, along with mottled browns where the blood had dried already. Her neck gaped open like an animal had been tearing away at her perfect, smooth skin. Bill was crumpled in the corner by the bar, his face buried in the floor and his head bashed in from behind. Kate was certain she could see the soft tissue of his brains spilling out along the edges, with white ribbons of his skull framing it like a portrait. Both were naked, their limbs sprawled out in strange, unnatural angles.
Bile rose in Kateâs throat. She vomited onto the plush grey carpet. She was naked, too, and she instinctively checked over her own body, trying to feel if any part of her had been attacked, but she was intact. Save for the injury on her leg from yesterdayâs encounter in the water, Kate wasnât hurt at all.
Calvin. She needed to find Calvin.
He would know what to do.
He did it once. He could do it again.