What's In The Box [Fiction]

Dara Deonn sniffed, close to tears, as the melody of Lionel Richie's Stuck on You played on repeat through her headphones.

It had been two weeks since her boyfriend broke up with her. Moving on was proving to be the hardest thing she'd faced in her twenty-four years of life.

She wheeled the vacuum cleaner out of an office back to the janitor's closet, and filled a mop bucket with water and disinfectant. She was headed towards the mayor's office wing when she heard muffled voices from that direction.

It was past eight pm and all the staff had closed for the day. The overhead lights in the offices were off but the corridor lights were a dull yellow glow across the tiled floors.

She shrugged and moved to enter another office with her mop bucket when she heard the voice again.

“....what's in the box, Victoria?”

Dara placed the bucket down, and slipped off her headphone. Just then, a figure moved in her peripheral vision. A stocky, half bald man in a dark brown tweed suit rushed into the deputy mayor's office.

She frowned. That was Wolfe Hartmann, the deputy mayor. She hadn't expected him to be working this late.

A second figure ran out of the mayor's office, a slender woman in a white silk top and black skirt. The woman rushed after Hartmann into his office.

Dara gasped. Victoria Edgewood?

She left her cleaning things and tiptoed closer to Hartmann's office. Raised voices reached her ears followed by a sharp crash and struggles.

Heart pounding, she peeped through the gap in the blinds. Hartmann struck Victoria across the neck. She stumbled, holding onto the velvet curtain before collapsing and dragging it down with her. There were splatters of blood on the wall.

Dara shrieked in shock.

Her astonishment turned to mortal terror as Wolfe Hartmann saw her. His eyes were wild, bloodshot. His mouth curled into an animalistic snarl as he came after her.

Dara Deonn screamed and ran down the hallway, her cries echoing off marble and glass. There was no one else around.

Something hard struck the back of her head, and sent her crashing into the wall. Her last thought then was whether her ex-boyfriend would miss her.

She let the soothing darkness swallow her.

I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece that I suspect may turn into a series. Not sure yet. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "what's in the box".

Thank you for visiting my blog.

^{_{Image credit: AGX}}