CHAPTER ONE
2040 Words
CHAPTER ONE
Light exploded in Mauro’s eyes, lancing through his retinas into his brain. His confused, pounding brain. Blinking painfully, he clambered from his prone position on the thick woolen rug, to teeter on his hands and knees.
Man, this had been a party. A part-ay! Another wave of dizziness struck, and he slumped down again, the wool soft on his cheek. The unforgiving glare of the morning sun through the large window was too much to bear. It felt like his head was going to explode. What had they been drinking?
He’d lost count after the eighth gold tequila. That stuff had been nectar. Poisonous, evil nectar, as it happened. His stomach churned at the memory. Had he thrown up? If he had, he must have been somewhere else at the time, because the rug looked fine. How embarrassing would it have been to have woken in a pool of his own vomit, in this fancy house?
Raising his head again, peering across the enormous lounge, he noticed that the large front door stood open. Beyond it, he heard retching from somewhere outside, and his own stomach flip-flopped in uneasy sympathy.
“Alain?” he called. “Is that you?”
Where was his friend? He needed him for the ride home. Had Alain left without him? Feeling anxious now, Mauro sat up. Memories flashed through his mind. They’d played dares at one stage. Right here in the lounge. He guessed that’s where a lot of the damage he felt now had been done. Mauro never refused a dare. Ever!
The weird memory of doing a body shot off of some babe’s tanned, slinky stomach surfaced suddenly. He remembered smooth, golden flesh, the gleam of a navel ring, the tequila burning a well-traveled path down his throat, the appreciative roars of his friends.
Jeez!
Looking around, Mauro saw to his concern that the place was trashed.
On arrival, he and Alain had been astonished at the size and scale of the swanky venue to which they’d been invited. Well, not exactly invited. To which a friend of a friend had said they should come along, because there was a big bash, and everyone was welcome, and the drink was free and flowing. And it had been. His memories were hazy, but he remembered it had felt like an extremely classy hotel.
Now, it was wrecked.
The reason the light was so bright was that the window glass was broken. Through the giant, shattered hole in the enormous picture window, the cold morning sun glared at him like an accusing eye. Glass was scattered over the carpet. He was lucky he hadn’t passed out in the heaps of fragments, he thought uneasily. He could have cut himself.
He checked his hands, but they looked fine. They were shaking, though.
Then, staring around, he took in the scale of the destruction.
A giant red stain dominated the pristine cream carpet. A smashed wine bottle lay nearby, the likely culprit. Beyond, it looked as if someone had dropped a massive tray of snacks and then fallen on them. Well, that could have happened. Melted ice-cream, squashed buns, lurid yellow mustard and pink ketchup created a crazy modern art effect on the half of the carpet that had escaped the wine catastrophe.
One of the cream chairs lay on its side, its cushion ripped half off. Another had its leg broken. One of the paintings on the walls was ripped clear through, all the way to the backing and there were a few holes, actual holes, in the surrounding plaster. Dimly, Mauro remembered that had been the result of a complicated dare involving beer bottles. At the time, they hadn’t seen the holes, because an earlier perfect score had shattered almost all the bulbs in the overhead chandelier, which now listed to one side.
His heart was pounding faster. This was crazy, insane beyond any quick fix. He needed to get out of here before someone responsible realized what had gone down. This looked as if a g**g had broken in.
For one hopeful moment, Mauro entertained the possibility that a g**g had, in fact, broken in.
He shook his head, a movement he instantly regretted as the sharp, throbbing pain intensified. And then, his gaze landed on a shape in the corner that distracted him from his misery.
“Alain? Alain!” Mauro staggered to his feet, grinning widely at the sight of his friend, who’d managed to pass out with his arms around his head and his butt sticking straight up in the air. How’d he done that? A snort of laughter burst from Mauro’s dry lips. That was some accomplishment.
By a miracle, his phone had survived the night in his zip-up jacket pocket. Mauro actually fumbled it out, planning to capture this embarrassing moment, before logic caught up. Having a photographic record of anything in this house would be a dumb idea. They needed to hotfoot it out of here.
If Alain could actually hotfoot it anywhere. A rush of fear drenched the spark of amusement he’d felt.
Alain wasn’t moving. What if something had gone wrong, like he’d choked on vomit or bashed his head? He looked still. Weirdly, impossibly still.
Mauro was starting to worry that this crazy, wild night might have had terrible consequences.
“Hey, Al? Al?” he called softly.
There was no movement. His friend didn’t appear to be breathing at all.
“Al!” Frantically, Mauro grabbed his shoulder and shook it hard. “Al! You okay? Talk to me. You okay?”
Slowly, inexorably, Alain tipped over out of his unlikely semi-crouch. He toppled sideways, landing with a bump on the thick carpet.
He was blinking, Mauro saw with ineffable relief. Blinking as if the incoming light was a weapon.
“Hey,” he groaned, his voice hoarse. He scrambled to his feet and stared around him.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, reaching the same conclusion Mauro had done, a lot quicker.
“Yeah, we do. We do, but we need to clean up first,” Mauro said.
His jacket stank of raw whisky and his hair was matted with ketchup. The red wine that stained the carpet had also found its way across Alain’s shirt, which was smeared with mustard. He wasn’t sure either of them was in any state to drive, but most definitely, they needed to clean up before arriving back at the university residence.
His phone buzzed. Peering at the screen, reality hit Mauro like a cold shock.
“We’ve got soccer practice in an hour. We need to leave, now. Coach Jacobs and the guys will be waiting. We’re going to be in huge trouble with the team if we’re late. And we can’t arrive looking like this. They’ll ask where we’ve been.”
Mauro had seen how Coach Jacobs dealt with players who arrived late, hungover, or still drunk for practice. He’d never thought he’d be one of them, until this morning.
They staggered, zombie-like, across the room.
Alain was in a panic.
“I’m sure someone already called the police. I can hear a car outside,” he hissed, causing Mauro’s heart to accelerate.
The hallway was littered in beer bottles, a few of which had smashed onto the tiles. Crossing it hurriedly, Mauro skidded and almost fell as he slipped in a pool of beer.
“Here’s the guest bathroom.” Eagerly, Mauro wrenched open the door and, just as fast, slammed it shut as the reek of vomit rushed out.
“It doesn’t look good in there,” he mumbled, his own gorge rising again.
“Okay, it’s a big house. There’ll be a lot more bathrooms,” Alain encouraged.
“We don’t have time!” Mauro agonized. This was his worst nightmare made real. If the police didn’t get them before they left, their coach would get them when they arrived back.
They rushed further down the corridor, wrenching open the next bathroom door. There, two sprawled, snoring girls effectively blocked the way between the door and the sink.
“I think I hear another car,” Alain said in a tense voice as they rushed on.
“This whole place is a destruction zone,” Mauro said.
“I really hear a car,” Alain sounded panicked. “For real, this time. I can hear the tires rattling over paving. It’s going to be the police arriving. I’m telling you.”
This could be bad. There could be big trouble. Mauro was almost twenty-one. Just a few more months to go. But if the police saw him now, they would have clear evidence that he’d been breaking the law.
It would mean trouble with his parents back home in Chile. It could even mean the end of his student visa and he didn’t want to think what they would say about that.
“The master bedroom. Let’s go there. It’s at the end of the corridor,” Alain said, sounding relieved.
“Why there?” Mauro asked, hustling after him.
“Because that guy last night said nobody must go in there. I guess they were keeping it clean, being the folks’ room.”
Given the state of the rest of the house, Mauro didn’t think the folks were going to be grateful. But he also didn’t think a quick wash-up in their bathroom would make things any worse.
They reached the door and Mauro opened it.
He stared in awe at the massive room beyond. The gigantic four-poster bed was draped in cream and gold with a massive, plush headboard. Exquisite furniture – a settee, an ottoman, a vanity with a small, delicate chair – completed the ensemble.
“I hear voices,” Alain implored. “Someone’s here. I’m telling you!”
Quickly, they tiptoed to the side window and peered out.
Mauro couldn’t see the driveway, but relief filled him as he saw that what he’d thought was a giant window was in fact a glass sliding door which for some reason was unlocked and partway open. So after a lightning wash-up, they could get out that way and run through the grounds, down the driveway, and all the way to the road where Alain’s ancient Ford was parked.
Putting the curtain back in place, Mauro hurried past the enormous dressing room to the bathroom door.
“Let’s get cleaned up and go,” he said, feeling as if his plan might just save them both. If they were really quick, they’d be in time for coaching. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t throw up halfway through.
“Something in here doesn’t smell so good,” Alain said, sounding worried.
Mauro couldn’t smell anything over the fetid reek from his own shirt.
Dunking it in the tub would be the best idea, he decided. There was a huge sunken tub in the corner of the bathroom with a curtain drawn partway across it.
He hurried over and drew the curtain back.
And there she was.
Staring back at him through wide, unseeing, bloodshot eyes.
Her mouth was open, her lips drained of color. Her swollen tongue lolled from between them, and her face was bloated and greenish white. Limp strands of blond hair hung over the rim of the tub.
Amid the sound of his own panicked yelling, the high-pitched shrieking of pure terror, which was echoed by Alain, he took in the impossible sight.
A corpse in the bathtub, sprawled and dead.
A corpse. A dead body.
This wasn’t possible, it was not real, it must be some kind of practical joke, there couldn’t be a dead woman here. As he stared in dismay, a dizzy blackness threatened to envelop him, and his knees buckled alarmingly.
Then Alain grabbed his arm, jolting him out of it.
Forgetting the need to clean up, they made a panicked dash for the glass door, shouting in horror as they burst out and raced across the lawn
Mauro didn’t care anymore what trouble they might be running toward.
All he cared about was getting far, far away from the puffy, lifeless face with its gaping lips, which would haunt his nightmares for years to come.
- Writer
