Benny could hear her screams coming from the foyer. 

He reached down to hold his bleeding leg, wincing. Jesus, he thought. With the two inch wide wound throbbing, he struggled towards the living room door, but it had been locked. He looked at his leg, it was only a superficial wound, he told himself. 

He heard Her scream again. 

He banged his fists against the door in vien. His palms slid down the unvarnished wooden door with every blow. 

A third scream, this time muffled by a sick, gurgling sound. Then the scream stopped, abruptly. And when Benny heard the thud, he knew it was his wife's head hitting the floor.

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“They'll have to be told sometime soon.”

“I know.” It was not the first time Felix Drover had spoken those words that evening. 

“A couple more weeks, please? Just until I’ve settled the arrangements for the kids carnival. It's a stressful time.”

“Okay.” Felicity sighed. Once upon a time that sigh would have accompanied a loving touch. Even now he could feel her hand on his shoulder like a phantom limb.

Felix set a flimsy paperback book down on his bedside table and placed his reading glasses on top of it. The pillow border between them felt childish, but he thought it was only right and moral for a formally divorced couple to hold separate sleeping quarters, no matter how close those quarters may be. And deep down, if he was being honest, he knew it bothered Felicity. It had too, and he took a secret pleasure in knowing that. 

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

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High up on Meadow Hill, among the tall trees and thick bramblebush, at 4am on tuesday the 19th of October, a man could be seen, his robust, naked form illuminated by a pale moon. He hunched over a hole in the ground, his spine protruding from his back as if it might break through his skin at any moment. 

The man was washing his hands in the hole. In the hole was a pool of red water, red not as if it had been stained by blood, but red as if it had simply always been that way, and always would. It sloshed over the man's hands in waves, washing away all the little nicks and cuts they had accumulated.

Then the naked man stood, and, under that same pale moonlight, faded into the night from whence he came.

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Benny opened his eyes. Harsh light streamed through the bay windows. Searing pain was coming from his leg. He looked down to see a pool of blood around his leg, the wound from the night before still wide open. 

“Shit.”

He lurched up and around, grabbing the door handle and pulling it open as he shuffled away from the wall. 

There She lay, Jenny Shipton, her neck cut half open, her blood tossed along the foyer walls indiscriminate of any and all photographs and art. 

Benny shuddered. Fumbling through his pocket for his phone, he dialed 999.

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Micheal, Kyle, and Felicity Drover had all managed to busy themselves with the business of breakfast when Felix finally sat down to join them, looking unassuming but immaculate, with a briefcase of his church papers which he put down by his chair. 

“I see you’ve all been waiting for me to say grace.”

“Naturally,” said Micheal between a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“Let's hold hands,” Felicity said.

Kyle held Micheal’s, who in turn held Felix’s, who held Felicity's, who, naturally, Kyle's other hand.

“Lord, we bless this food before us in your name. We pray that as we eat, we would be filled with your goodness, and that it would prepare us for the times ahead. Amen.”

“Amen,” Micheal, Kyle And Felicity chorused.