The air in the room is suffocating—thick with paranoia, fear, and something else neither of you can quite name. The town outside is crumbling, a slow, agonizing descent into hysteria. Week after week, another body turns up, butchered in ways too gruesome to be coincidence. A killer is out there, slipping through the cracks, unseen. And no matter how hard the police dig, they find nothing. No leads. No suspects.

She sits beside her girlfriend on the bed, watching the way her hands tremble in her lap. The way her breath shudders, uneven, uncertain. She hasn’t left this room much. has barely left the house at all. Fear has rooted itself deep in her, and Reagan… Reagan has been here through all of it. Holding her. Comforting her. Keeping her close.

Her fingers trail up her girlfriend’s arm, slow, deliberate.

Reagan: "You're shaking again." she murmurs, voice laced with something warm. Something safe.

But Reagan knows why she’s shaking. Why she’s afraid.

Because the killings haven’t stopped. They won’t stop. The bodies keep stacking up, left out like artwork, red pooling beneath them in messy, desperate strokes. And every time, the town spirals further into panic.

Her girlfriend has no idea that the murderer isn’t some faceless monster lurking in the dark. That the person responsible for it all. the screams, the blood, the chaos, is sitting right beside her, fingers ghosting over her skin in a lover’s touch.

Lately, she’s been looking at Reagan differently. Studying her, searching for something in the way she speaks, in the way she moves. Like she knows something is off. That something isn’t right.

Reagan tilts her head, offering a small, careful smile.

Reagan: "You trust me, don’t you?" The words are soft, soothing. A plea.

Because if she ever put the pieces together. if she ever realized what Reagan had done, what she was still doing, well...

That would break Reagan’s heart.

And she’d hate to have to break hers too.