Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Best Cheesecake This Side of Montreal Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE BEST CHEESECAKE THIS SIDE OF MONTREAL

The big doe eyes came naturally, but the tight shorts that tucked up to the ridge of shapely flesh mounds and the t-shirt tied above the midriff, were choices. The cut of Mandy’s belly button was neither truly inny nor outty, chiseled at the edges as if from smooth milky marble. The bubble gum pop was part of the statement.

“Anything else?” She leaned over the table seating two men in suits—shiny and stylish, Hugo Boss, Armani, or Brioni, not the door-to-door insurance peddler duds from department stores. “Can I get you boys something sweet? We have the finest cherry cheesecake this side of Montreal.”

“That’s a bold statement,” one man said.

Farewell, British Columbia being four thousand kilometers west of Montreal, Quebec did suggest a bold statement.

“Best you ever had.” The gum popped again.

The coquettishness of that voice was undeniable and yet impossible to ignore. She was like a pied piper and those words carried across the diner.

Sarah had never hated another human as much as she hated Mandy. If there was a choice, she’d work elsewhere. Hell, if the bank account didn’t almost always have a negative dash preceding the fund summary, she’d blow this joint and never cast a backwards glance.

“Listen to you,” the same man said.

The other man nodded, grinning. “We came here about ready to tear every hair from each other’s heads.” He stood and snatched the spare napkin from his side of the four-seater table, sending the clean and formally rolled silverware clanking. “She’s the one.” He lifted the napkin to Mandy’s nose, covering her face beneath her eyes. “Look at that color.”

“Damned right. Eyes, curves, allure, oh baby.”

“Honey, if you can skip out on this wholly rewarding task for a while, we have a job for you. You’ll do pretty much what you’re doing now only less work and more play.”

“And no fryer stink, plus a serious uptake in your hourly wage.”

Mandy smacked a chew of her bubble gum. “You talking porn?”

One of the men pointed to the bulky RCA hanging from the corner over a table of six grannies talking granny business. “See that?” On the all-day rolling newsreel was an image of a bus crash. “Our star gal is in the hospital with a broken leg. Client needs this promo Saturday. We’ve got it set up north of town, but we don’t have our girl and…Jesus, your eyes might be the source pool for the paint on Kokanee cans.”

“Need to dye your hair a bit darker, brunettes are where it’s at this week.”

Mandy sucked in her bubble gum and blew out another pink, flesh-like bulb. “Give me your business cards. Plate digits and model written on the back.”

“It’s a rental,” the standing man said, reaching into his wallet.

“Even better,” Mandy said.

“Ma’am? Ma’am? I need a new ketchup, this one’s no good,” said a chunky little man at a solo table, reeling Sarah from her eavesdropping and furious intrigue. The man waved a ketchup bottle she’d filled that morning.

“What?”

“I said this bottle’s no good. Think it must be gunked up. Maybe needs cleaning.”

The bottle was a classic Heinz 57, glass, and washed times innumerable. The label was gone and the contents were not Heinz.

“It’s clean. I filled it this morning.” Sarah heard the harshness in her voice, knowing the tone killed tips, but was incapable of holding it in. “You born yesterday?”

The chunky man was young, in his early twenties. He wore the smirk of a recent college grad, possibly in the midst of taking a Master’s in social justice. He looked at Sarah as if she was a know-nothing bumpkin.

“Don’t yell at me because this place has defective bottles. When was the last time the health inspector was here anyway?”

Mandy threw her pad on the counter, behind where Sarah leaned on her elbows. The pad struck skin and stole Sarah’s attention from the ketchup man.

“Hey, Sis, just got a job offer. Take these and call the cops if I go missing. Stop by tonight.” Mandy grinned as she handed over the business cards.

“You have three hours left!”

“You’ll be fine.”

Mandy was gone before Sarah had the comeback to hold her in place. Really, she wanted her gone, even if she didn’t. It wasn’t as if Mandy did her share of cleaning anyway. Never rolled silverware.

Mandy got away with everything.

“Hey, are you listening? I need a new—”

Sarah snatched the bottle and tapped a glob of ketchup on a cleared space on the man’s plate.

“Young Miss, we’re waiting for the bill?” the head granny said, probably the one who always solved the crime two-seconds before Lansbury revealed it.

Sarah slammed the Heinz bottle down on the tabletop and Western Family brand ketchup burped like magma from a freshly awakened volcano.

—

Mandy had been correct about most of the remainder of the shift. There were additional dishes to clean, silverware to roll, and a handful of situations where Sarah pulled double duty. The ease of it all was a nasty taste.

Sign turned to closed, she sat at the bar with a slice of cherry cheesecake, the diner’s signature dessert. It came in boxes shipped from Vancouver. The owner lived in Calgary and didn’t mind lying to patrons about a supposed on-site delicacy. Farewell was a town smack in the middle of a mountain range, so who cared?

Ordered-in or not, it was damned fine cheesecake. Never had a customer complained that the dessert at Roger’s Half-Mile High tasted like the stuff from the frozen aisle at Safeway.

Across the street, a boxy black luxury sedan pulled up to the ratty four-plex apartment building. The car parked and Mandy bounced out and up to the door. She no longer wore her restaurant garb and instead donned tiny jean cut-offs and a pale blue halter top. She had a grocery bag in her hands. Her hair was three shades darker than it had been that morning.

Sarah shoveled the dessert into her gob with mounting fury. It wasn’t as if she was so different from her sister. They always had similar grades. People said they looked alike. They worked at the same crummy diner. They lived in the same crummy building. And yet, with all this, they led vastly different lives. One had it easy, found fun and excitement without looking—all smiles. The other knew trouble as if she had an exclusive membership to the VIP section.

To look, Sarah was mostly like Mandy, minus the smiles, minus the interesting men interested in her, minus a cup size, add fourteen pounds, deflate her hair, and slant a central incisor to the right.

The telephone rang next to the till. Sarah knew who it was. She let the shrill rattle echo over the quiet, dim diner. The telephone was a tabletop rotary deal, it was the same kind of phone Mandy had in her apartment. Sarah didn’t have a phone, they cost too much, and only her mother and sister had ever called her. Forking over the cash was a waste.

Sarah cringed, picturing Mandy lifting the receiver to her ear. She’d painted it shiny black, adding little stars with glow-in-the-dark nail polish. She always had such cool and whimsical ideas. Nothing in Sarah’s apartment had one-tenth as much personality as what that telephone had.

The diner’s phone ceased its tormenting cry only to resume a half-minute later as Sarah swallowed the final bite of cheesecake.

From the apartment building, there was a great view into the diner, best from Mandy’s flat on the second floor—the apartment right above Sarah’s much smaller space.

There was no way Mandy did not see her. That phone would ring forever.

“What?”

“You’re in a grouch,” Mandy said. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“No, guess.”

Sarah hung up. The phone immediately began ringing.

“What?”

“You’re no fun. So, I did a photoshoot. They paid me two-hundred bucks cash and I’ve got a date tomorrow with this guy named Shaun Vallen, or Allen, or something. He played for the Oilers, but is going somewhere in California next season. I guess Disney made that kids’ movie a real team.”

“A date with a pro hockey play—two hundred! For what?”

“I had to sit in a hot spring with a bunch of dopey athletes. You can kind of see my nipples, but not all the way, I think. Doesn’t matter, it’s for magazines.”

“Wait…?” Sarah was behind, stuck on the cash, reeling.

“A beer ad, they always have a sexy girl. I don’t know why they made me go brunette, but it looks pretty good. They liked my eyes, and my tits.” Mandy laughed.

Sarah slammed the phone onto the base and bussed her dish and fork to the kitchen sink.

—

Diner locked up, standing before her stainless-steel mailbox cubby, Sarah rediscovered the irritation of fine print. Six months prior, she’d lived in a shared house on the south end of town with two girls she knew from high school. Columbia House was the agreement, six movies for a penny. Month after month, the videos came and she sent them back, until they stopped coming.

One day, Sarah arrived home from work to find the place vacant of roommates and that she lacked a few items that she partially owned, or outright owned. Three days after that, while racking her grey matter about how she’d come up with rent in a week, a notice landed in her mailbox. She was overdue on nine VHS movies she’d never seen. She’d argued that, but the company explained that the contract she signed suggested she knew the rules, it was not their fault other tenants at her address had possibly committed mail fraud.

When Sarah moved out of the place, she told the post office nothing, and for five blissful months, she received no mail beyond local flyers and a telephone book. Now, Columbia House’s collection department wanted the $169.85 plus interest and fees, totalling $298.12—about three weeks’ take home from the diner.

Right there, it was as if a light burned to life inside, bubbling that cheesecake to boil. Being Sarah Crews was not worth the trouble. Inside the apartment, she packed a suitcase and filled a box with non-perishable food. She hated Farewell, hated it her whole life. It was cramped and painful, it worked for some, but it didn’t work for her.

Hell, it worked against her, if she were Mandy, and she practically was, life would’ve been fair and easy and…

Rolling along the highway northwest, a smile crept onto her face as she crossed the bridge out of town. The radio played Mariah Carey. Sarah howled out of tune for when that hero comes along. The road descended on a heavy, winding slope and she pressed her brakes. There was a whine and then an obnoxious clunking. Three minutes later, the Reliant K sat in a transport truck runaway lane, idling, while its driver cried behind the wheel. There was nothing ahead for more than one hundred kilometers, and getting stuck out and needing a tow in the middle of the night was not something within her budget. In her wallet sat a little more than nine bucks: the day’s tips.

Where was she going anyway?

The wheel banged and groaned—busted wheel bearing—as she rolled it back up the mountain toward home. Sarah Crews again said hello to Farewell.

—

Awakened from a long night with little sleep and desperate thoughts of suicide, Sarah’s fury returned. Mandy was up and her radio was lit to the maximum volume. Country music was poison. Sarah buried her head in her pillow.

“Shut up, damn you!”

There was a knock at her door, bringing her from the tunnel-vision of emotion. She wore clothes from the night before and buttoned her jeans. She opened to the knock. The figure cast eyes upwards to the rat’s nest atop Sarah’s head and then brought them back down to her face. “You Sarah Crews?”

“Why?”

“I have this registered mail for you, that’s all.” The man had a letter in one hand, clipboard in the other.

“Is it a bill or something?”

“No idea, are you Sarah Crews?”

“Yes, fine, whatever.”

The man passed a pen and clipboard before Sarah. She signed on the line and accepted the letter from BC Hydro. At the house, they split the electric bill. At the apartment, things were all-inclusive.

This one she hadn’t meant to skirt, but skirt she had. Two months of summer hydro, add another $33.25 to the burden.

Thoughts of the bang and whine of her car rang over the world, silencing the postal man’s van as it drove away and the shitty country music coming from upstairs. The world was unfair.

Why couldn’t she be Mandy?

Letter in hand, Sarah gawked into the nothingness of Farewell. The diner. The grocery. The bank. The pizza joint. The gift shop closed until ski season.

Mandy hopped down the stairs, bubbly as ever.

“Hey, Sis.”

Sarah turned, chin practically dragging along her forearm. Into those big blue globes, she peered, wondering why she had to be the tarnished, hapless, crooked-toothed yang to her sister’s perfect yin.

“Earth to Sarah.”

I hate you so much I hate you enough that I want you to squirm in pain I hate you like nobody has ever hated before I hate you so much I’m going to steel your tits and mouth and wear them and then I’ll have everything easy and you’ll be shit!

“What’re you drunk? Better sober up before noon.”

Sarah worked the 12:00 to 7:30 PM. Mandy worked the 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

“Eat it,” Sarah whispered, her throat parched.

“Huh?” Mandy asked, but continued walking.

Sarah poured water from the tap into a glass from the night before. As she drank back the icy cold, mountain fresh H2O that ran through the veins of Farewell, an opportunity flashed on her mindscape. Before she knew exactly what she was doing, she leaned out the back window, climbed from the bottom ledge to the top ledge, and reached into Mandy’s apartment. It was still warm enough that the windows needed to remain open at all times on the second floor.

Front rolling, landing with a heavy thud, Sarah came to a rest on her sister’s living room floor. There was no way to know for sure where the money was, but logic suggested Mandy didn’t carry it on her. Who took that kind of cash to a job where a purse sat unattended for the sum of an entire day?

“Not Mandy.”

There was a small, faux-gold box on the coffee table. Sarah did not recognize it and tried her luck. Apparently, Mandy was back into pot, nothing surprising about that.

Sarah had been in her sister’s apartment only five times, despite countless invitations. Five was enough to know the layout of any apartment. Into the bedroom, she rifled the closet. Cheap, thin clothing lined one side while heavy wools lined the other. There were three boxes on the shelf, half-buried beneath hoodies and jeans. The first contained all the elements Sarah cared not to see—two vibrators, lube, handcuffs, and a little red bottle of Spanish Fly. The second contained tax returns. The third contained snapshots dating back into grade school. Sarah stared at the little girl in the top photo. Mandy was completely different from the awkward figure pictured, aside from her perfect eyes. Those eyes had always been there, always been incredible.

The boxes returned to their spots and she moved on.

The nightstand had a single drawer. There was a third vibrator, a tiny one, another bottle of lube, and three melted candles on a silver pie dish, marijuana ash and pinched black roaches surrounded the running wax.

“Shit.”

On top of the nightstand, next to the steel chime alarm clock, was a snow globe. Sticking out from beneath the snow globe were two brown bills, and beneath those were three red bills. “You snake.” The fact that Mandy had lucked out in every facet of existence was annoying. That she not only had enough to pay her bills, but also had enough to save an additional one hundred fifty on top of the two hundred from the shoot was a fed coal-fire. Rage was a tiger in her blood.

She picked up the heavy Banff snow globe, the phony snow showered around a Swiss inspired chalet, and she snatched the bills.

Behind her, the telltale pop of bubble gum sounded and a door pounded closed. Footfalls approached quickly. Sarah dashed into the closet, sliding in behind the winter duds. Mandy entered, smacking again as she ran in her too tight uniform.

Sarah’s breath stilled in her chest.

Sucking back in her gum, Mandy stepped into the closet. Through the darkness of the scratchy sweaters, Sarah gazed into her sister’s perfect eyes. The clothing cover shifted with a scratchy clang on steel coat hangers and Mandy leaned back, surprised, pink bubble gum mounded against a pressing tongue—stuck about to blow, about to speak.

She was always so damned perfect…

Sarah swung the Banff snow globe, cracking Mandy on the contour where hairline and forehead met. Blood gushed in a wave first and then fell into a steady flow. Mandy’s big blue eyes remained open as she dropped.

Looking to her left hand: cash. Looking to her right hand: bloody snow globe. Looking straight and down: body in a growing red puddle. Sarah set the snow globe back on the dresser, stepped around the puddle, and then left the bedroom as if running on autopilot.

At the door, she slipped on a pair of Mandy’s thong sandals.

—

It had been nine months since she’d last smoked, two and a quarter per pack really added up, but she walked up the block to Mountain Tobacco & Convenience. The bell above the door tinkled. The woman at the counter smiled and started into a conversation of familiarity. Sarah heard none of it and cut her off.

“A carton of Player’s Light regular,” she said, subconscious knowing the woman opposite her was apt to complain if she used one of those red fifties to pay for something under five bucks.

“You okay?”

The invisible little lady inside working the cogs and oiling the gears nodded Sarah’s head. “And this.” She added a green Cricket Maxi lighter to the bill.

The woman took the money and made change. “You’ve got something on your arm.” She pointed at the trickle of blood trailing from elbow to wrist.

Sarah turned and left without another word. In her apartment, she lit and smoked seven cigarettes in a row before surfacing from reverie. The telephone rang upstairs. Mandy had come home from work for something and never returned. This was a problem.

Sarah leapt to her feet and dashed into the hall and up to Mandy’s apartment. The body was truly there, eyes wide and dead.

“Shit.”

In little time, the cook would come looking for Sarah. He’d spot her Chevette out back if he checked and he’d begin banging on the door. Might even turn the knob and walk on in.

“Shit.”

Frantic, Sarah grabbed a suitcase from the closet. Cramming, she filled the bag with bits of everything, including the bedside dildo. It had to look convincing. The keys sat next to Mandy’s hand. Sarah snatched them from the sopping carpet.

There was a train that ran through Farewell. The station was more of a loading dock, but everyone knew folks hopped aboard empty cars, and it wasn’t always the likeliest candidates who rode the rails to freedom.

This was Sarah’s first thought, and it was stupid. The hockey pro was the answer, a knight in shining armor to whisk Mandy off to sunshine and palm trees.

Door locked behind her, the suitcase went into the trunk of Sarah’s car. In her own apartment, Sarah set about showering. She scrubbed as if she might expunge the crime from her bodily rap sheet.

It was 2:30 PM and she had to be at work for 3:00. It took effort to pull a grumpy veil over the overwrought terror of her actions. The plan was to get to the diner and tell them Mandy left off with the hockey player.

Head down, dressed, cigarette between her fingers, she charged across the street and into the diner. She stubbed her cigarette on the first dirty ashtray she saw and stormed straight back to the kitchen. There were three patrons, all three had cheeseburgers. Sarah ignored them.

The fryer cast a wall of intense heat and scent.

“Mike, I just talked to Mandy. Some hockey player named Shaun Vallen took her on a date, to California, or something—”

“What?” Mike spun from the sink.

“Shaun Vallen, a hockey player, and he’s playing with that team from the movie with Emilio Estevez and he’s—”

“Wait, you mean Shaun Van Allen? Shaun Van Allen took Mandy to Anaheim? When the hell did this happen?” Mike’s head seemed to throb visibly, expand and deflate, expand-deflate, scalp to chin.

“Mandy came by and told me, I don’t know, like two hours ago,” Sarah said, wondering if it really had been two hours since she’d brained her sister.

“When’s she coming back?” Mike absolutely hated waiting tables and it was obvious where this kind of situation led.

Sarah shrugged. As she looked into Mike’s eyes, she imagined Mandy’s eyes, superimposed and then filling his sockets. Her guts swirled. This was insane. This was no time to be at work.

“Also, I’m feeling sick. I thought I could work, but—”

“What the fucking fuck is this?”

“Sorry.” Sarah lowered her gaze, unwilling to look into any eyes. She spun and left.

Mike shouted behind her, “I’m closing early! You can explain to…!”

—

At home, she sat at the kitchen table and wondered. She emptied the water pitcher from the fridge with glass after glass and wondered some more. She filled the pitcher, returned it to the fridge, and wondered more yet. She smoked five cigarettes before it came to her.

The bed went out, the dresser went out, and she rearranged the closet as she worked. The building was old and the owner half-assed everything. The ten-year-old carpet lay atop thirty-year-old carpet. Pale green replaced the charcoal grey as she rolled the dusty rug.

Yes, this might work.

Armed with garbage bags, yellow dishwashing gloves, and a camping hatchet, Sarah returned to Mandy’s bedroom. The telephone rang several times as she cut her sister into manageable portions. She didn’t answer and eventually it stopped.

The only trouble remaining was what she would do with the body. If she waited until night, then perhaps it was possible to cart away the five large bags, but the parking lot butted up against the twenty-four-hour Petro Canada. There was always someone there at night, and they were always bored and watching the lot.

She’d been there, she knew. Worked nineteen overnight shifts behind that counter before starting at the diner.

In her bra and underwear, both made pink with blood, gloves up to her elbows, Sarah decided this was going to take a few days. She could transport one portion at a time, until then, she settled on the bathtub. She rinsed off the bags and began scrubbing at the rug. The linoleum was an easy clean.

For six hours, Sarah smoked blood-tinted cigarettes and worked. Towels rang into a mop bucket, the bucket dumped into the toilet. Baking soda was supposed to be good for smells and the blood had a real scent, it was everywhere, on everything.

She ate leftover spaghetti from five days earlier, first pack of cigarettes long gone, she was onto the second deck of the second pack. This ordeal was proving almost as physically taxing as it was mentally taxing.

After checking the hallway, she lugged the heavy old rug upstairs and into Mandy’s apartment. A fly landed on her nose and she gave it a ride to the bedroom before she dropped the rug and swatted it away. Bed and nightstand pushed aside, she unfurled the rug cut to match the identical bedroom a floor below—the only portion of floor plan the same between the two units.

By nine o’clock, she felt all right, her chest hurt and she was tired, but things were on a good path. In bed, sleep washed over her quickly. She dreamed of Mike standing before the grill. Sarah didn’t speak, but waited for a response. Eventually he turned and opened his mouth.

He had one of Mandy’s big blue eyes on his tongue.

It was 7:30 AM and she cried into her pillow. At 7:45 AM, she forewent her tears for another cigarette and a shower. She smelled too much like pine cleaner and baking soda.

The face in the mirror was hers, but for a moment, the eyes were not. Mandy gazed with those dead bulbs. Sarah acted quickly and tossed a towel over the vanity.

“Eat it,” she whispered and dropped her cigarette butt in the toilet.

Fortunately, it was her day off—though with a sister missing, they might pester her to cover.

She spent hours staring at the dull surface of her kitchen table. She’d blanketed every reflective surface with towels or bedsheets. The eyes hadn’t returned, but it was better to plan ahead until the image faded.

—

6:01 PM, there was a knock on her door. Two policemen in blue uniforms stood in wait.

Sarah’s heart tried to leap through her throat. So badly she wanted to turn and run. Instead, she opened the door.

“Ms. Crews, do you have a moment?” the first officer said. He was older, a bit wide at the hips. Wore shiny silver sunglasses.

“Sure.” Sarah stepped aside. The first entered. The second was younger but did what he could to look like the older officer. Including the sunglasses. “What’s going on?” She feigned surprise as best she could.

“Have you heard from your sister today?” the first asked.

“No, why?”

The second closed the door. “Any chance I could get a glass of water?”

“Oh, sure.” Sarah retrieved three glasses from the cupboard. “There’s a pitcher of cold water in the fridge.” The glasses jingled in her shaky hands as she carted them to the table.

“You told Mike Beaton that your sister left with Shaun Van Allen. To California, you said. Correct?” the first asked.

The second poured water into the three glasses.

“That’s what she told me. I didn’t see the guy.”

The second officer piped up. “See, there’s a problem with that. Shaun Van Allen stopped by to pick up your sister this evening, but she wasn’t home and she wasn’t at the restaurant. The cook called us after nobody answered the door at her apartment.”

“You were there?” Sarah asked, half-gasp. She hadn’t heard them. “I mean, I usually hear everything that goes on up there.”

The first said, “And you haven’t heard her today?’

Sarah grabbed for a glass of water. “No.”

She caught her reflection in the shimmery water. The skewed eyes did not belong to her. She dropped the glass.

“Damn,” she said and then lifted her gaze.

The panelling walls were a series of waves and knots. The knots blinked; Mandy’s eyes peered into her. She shook them away, hair swaying over her shoulders, eyelids snapped tight.

“Ms. Crews?”

“Sarah?”

A hand touched her bicep. The grip was meaty and firm, the first officer then said, “Do you know where your sister went? It’s just fishy, that’s all.”

Sarah shook harder. Mandy’s eyes fizzled to life as if beamed by Scotty, right there, in the dark behind her pink, personal draw curtains.

She opened her eyes. Mouth wide, fighting for breath.

The first officer took off his sunglasses. “Ms. Crews, look at me. Do you know where Mandy is?”

Sarah’s chin bounced as she inhaled and stared deeply into her sister’s dead eyeballs, set perfectly in the officer’s sockets.

“No.” She managed to breathe. “No.”

The second officer had stepped around the table. “How come you have a towel on your toaster?”

“Huh?” Sarah turned.

The other officer’s sunglasses dangled at the V where the second button closed shop an inch below the collar.

His eyes.

His eyes were not his eyes.

“I…I…” Sarah trembled.

They were everywhere. It was impossible. They were too dead and still everywhere. Like a bad fad or one-hit wonder. Those eyes were played out, but not going away.

“Ms. Crews?”

“I…I…”

Those eyes snapped gooey lids, no longer dead, but oh so dead all the same.

“I…”

Shaking, Sarah turned her face to the table. The puddled water glared at her with massive blue eyes.

“Ms. Crews?”

No more.

Sarah grabbed the tipped water glass and flailed her hand against the tabletop. The glass shattered into a series of jagged mountain peaks. She swung and slashed at the first officer’s eyes. Blood spurted with thick crimson squirts followed by pale pink fluids, running a thin and slippery chase down his cheek.

“Stop looking at me with those eyes. Get them away!” She reached back to swing again. “I killed you once, I’ll kill you again. You get everything and I get nothing!”

The second officer fumbled with his sidearm. “Sarah, don’t make me—”

Sarah swung, the glass raked over the first officer’s hands where they covered his eyes. The big man rocked on the second-hand vinyl and steel dining chair.

“Get those eyes outta here! I killed you already, you bugh-uh—!”

The shot rang and Sarah rocked forward. The pain was immense for two seconds before it evaporated. Blood pooled and she gasped while her lungs filled.

A red river ran and she gaped at her reflection, the eyes in the blood and water conglomeration puddling beneath her face. They were happy, blue, smiling eyes.

“Why you gotta be so perfect?” She choked and wheezed, died staring into her reflection.

XX