Page 53 of Kill Feed

“Sorry,” another snaps, taking the blame.

My hand lifts instinctively to my neck. It’s too warm in here. And why does the air feel thinner?

The teens dart through the next door and vanish. I move forward again, slower now. There’s a pressure on my chest, simmering in the sudden heat that licks my skin. The corridor narrows further as the wallpaper changes to something older. Yellowed floral patterns peeling at the edges. Static hums faintly somewhere ahead, growing louder and louder. I reach a door half ajar and push it open. The scene greets me in all its wrongness.

It’s just a living room.

Old-fashioned and dated, with a sagging couch propped in the middle. An old box television flickers with black-and-white static, the sound harsh and uneven in the enclosed space.

On the couch sits a family.

A woman in a faded dress, a boy and girl at each of her sides.

All three with their heads removed cleanly at the neck. Dark red fabric is stuffed into the stumps to simulate flesh. Blood painted down their torsos in thick streaks.

My vision narrows, and for a moment it feels like the floorboards are moving beneath me, with the noise sharpening into something too close to memory. My throat collapses in on itself, but I barely register it. All I can see is the scene blooming in front of me as my vision catches a wax figure of a man close to painted stairs on a wall. In his grip is an axe, mid-swing.

The sound of a door slamming breaks the daze I’m caught in. Control rushes back into my nerves as I swing my body around.

Air floods my lungs but doesn’t settle. It rebounds against something locked. My peripheral vision collapses inward as the man with the ram skull mask stands at the closed door.

My back hits the wall before I consciously step. Cold plywood presses through my shirt and jacket. I spread my hands flat against it, grounding through temperature, through the texture of splintered grain under my palms.

I breathe.

In.

Out.

The ram skull tilts. A low mechanical laugh filters through the mask, distorted and amused. “Do you like it?” he asks, voice altered but familiar beneath the modulation. “I suggested this one.”

He gestures lazily toward the couch. “My own input.”

My pulse pounds in my ears, yet my eyes never leave him.

“Not exactly accurate,” he continues conversationally, stepping closer. “But close enough.”

The words hit like a slap.

“You did your homework,” I say. My voice sounds distant to my own ears, stretched thin between the rising panic in my chest that I keep forced down.

He takes another step forward.

“You’re easy to research,” he replies lightly. “Tragic childhood. Deranged father. Dead mother and sister. Scholarship boy. Photography… I can go on?”

A pause.

“A broken little stray.”

The room tilts again, and my heart kicks harder, ribs tight as a fist closing. I can’t get a full breath. It keeps catching halfway. This is inefficient. How am I supposed to defend myself in this state?

I don’t have fucking time for this.

Think.

Distance… five meters by the looks of it, but the door is blocked. There’s a weapon: a prop axe in the corner held by the wax figurine. It’s most likely foam. So, fucking useless.

My fingers press harder into the wall until they ache.