After a second that seemed to be an hour, she lost strength and collapsed to the floor, her skull landing on the wood with a loud crack. The killer cracked a sinister smile.
John Walker crawled slowly along the edge of the wall, trying to stay out of the path of any light. He crept along, as silent as humanly possible, attempting to get to the shattered glass the murderer had entered through. He reluctantly stepped on a shattered piece, the quiet crinkling sound it made echoing through the dark room. He stopped and looked into the darkness to see if his position had been realized, then came to the fruition that if he had been he would have to move even faster and kept going.
-thunk-
A sound from the darkness that he recognized, yet wished that he hadn’t.
-thunk-
Again.
-thunk-
-thunk-
He kept going, his eyes beginning to get hazy from tears of knowing exactly what was happening in the darkness. He looked ahead and saw that the window was only a few feet away. Letting out a short, raspy gasp of excitement before becoming silent again, he listened to the sounds in the darkness.
There was some soft sobbing, followed by a slinking sound and a sharp crack.
He moved forward again, but realized that he would not be able to step over the glass without blocking light and attracting attention. He would have to crawl over it. Lifting his two hands over first, he began to pull himself along. The jagged, toothed glass stuck up from the doorframe, cutting into his abdomen as he made his way along. Blood ran freely as the sharp glass ripped and rendered the tender flesh of his chest and stomach. He bit back a yelp of pain as a piece of flesh got stuck on a small, razor-like piece of glass.
Rather than go back, he moved forward, pulling on the piece of hanging flesh. It stretched momentarily, before the glass itself broke off into the wound. With the stomach out of the way, John now stepped over the glass with one foot, lifting it high to make sure what happened to his mid-section did not happen to more sensitive areas. He lifted his other foot over in the same fashion and began a slow crawl over to the edge of the balcony where he would jump the two stories to freedom.
Suddenly, he felt a tug.
For a moment he thought that the killer had finally caught up with him. He stayed perfectly still, almost waiting for the inevitable to rain down upon him. But it didn’t. He turned his head slightly, enough to see that his jeans were hooked on the glass. He turned back for a second, giving a short sigh of relief. Believing he was out of trouble, he pulled his leg forward. Riiiiiiiip. The sound of fabric tearing cut through the air like a knife, and John knew that there was no chance the killer hadn’t heard it.
He stopped, listening to the darkness again.
There was a dead silence, and he thought for sure that he was finished. Then he heard the sickly reassuring sound of his redemption.
-thunk-
The sound of yet another friend’s body dropping to the floor. He sighed again. The fact that he was relieved, almost happy at the sound of death made him want to vomit. He sucked it back and pulled his leg forward again. His jeans pulled on the glass again, this time causing it to break. As if in slow motion, the glass flipped and spun as it cut through the air before landing on the ground and shattering with a clink that cut through the muteness. All at once it seemed as though the previous quiet had been nothing. It was as if even the silence had shut up.
It finally came to John that he had been discovered. He got up quickly, running to the edge of the balcony. He paused only for a moment, staring into the darkness behind him. Hearing the loud, heavy footsteps of his stalker behind him, John saw the glint of his blade as it swung from side to side in his back holster. He turned his eyes back to the ground below and, placing a hand over his stomach wound, jumped over to it.
His loss of blood and the couple of Budweisers that he’d had all gave him the sensation of flying, when in fact he was only falling. He didn’t even do that for very long. He felt an enormous pressure on his throat as his downward momentum came to a halt, and he had a brief sensation of weightlessness.
The killer had grabbed his collar.
Throwing him onto the balcony, the killer let loose with a hard kick to the ribs. John bent over in pain as he rolled through the glass and back into the house, almost exactly where he had begun. The murderer loomed over him, the moonlit night casting the shadow of him down upon his latest victim.
He took the drawstring from a window shade and held it up to the light. There was a warning on it that advised that children could choke on it. That sinisterly evil smile once again curved his lips, showing his sharp teeth. He wrapped the string around the chandelier, then around John’s neck. He picked John up with both hands and held him up for a moment, supporting his weight.
Then, smiling, he let go.
There was a loud crack as the string went taut against John’s neck.
Another girl attempted to run for the exit and the killer threw his blade into her back, sending her toppling
