The book falls to my chest as I struggle to sit up, gaping at the man standing not six inches from the end of the bench.
His hair is jet-black, his eyes red as blood. And on his head, a pair of white rabbit ears sits, one perked and standing upright, the other flopped in half. He stares at Brandon for a moment and then with a gloved hand, reaches into the pocket on his red vest. Pulling out a stopwatch, he checks the time with an agitated sigh.
“Fuck,” he says again, and then he lifts up a gun with his opposite hand and points the barrel in Brandon's direction.
“No, wait!” Brandon calls out, falling to his knees and putting his hands together in a prayer position. “I just need more time for—”
The red-eyed boy's floppy left ear perks up at the same time he raises an eyebrow.
“King's orders,” is all he says, and then he's pulling the trigger and putting a bullet through Brandon Carmichael's forehead. Blood spatters the lenses of his glasses before he slumps to the side into the grass.
“Brandon!” I scream, scrambling off the bench and stumbling over to him. I sink to my knees in the mud and feel the side of his neck for a pulse. In my heart of hearts, I know that he's dead, but I have to check. I just have to. “What did you do?!” I shout, but Brandon's murderer just stares at me blandly and checks his pocket watch again.
“Hearts, I really am late,” he scowls, tucking the watch back in his vest and tossing the gun to the ground at his feet. With one last glance at me, he turns away. The rabbit ears on the top of his head twitch (something I should've wondered about, but at the time seemed the least weird of all the shit happening around me) before he takes off across the yard at a jog.
I might be a bit of a loner, more likely to sit and read on a Saturday night than go out with friends, but there is no fucking way I'm letting a murderer run free.
Yanking the cell from my pocket, I dial 911 at the same time I stand up.
“I've just witnessed a shooting,” I gasp, adrenaline surging through my limbs. Before I can second-guess myself, I start to run, picking up the gun as I go.
I blurt the address out to the operator and then shove my phone back in the dress, leaving the connection open so if anything happens to me, the police might still be able to find my body …
Thinking about it later, I'd realize that I wasn't just a stupid teenager making an even stupider decision, I was compelled to follow the White Rabbit.
“Hey!” I shout, stumbling after the psycho, the murder weapon clutched in my sweaty hands. “Stop, asshole!”
My breath screams in my lungs as I struggle to keep up, heart pounding, brain scrambling to remember how exactly I'm supposed to hold this revolver in case I need to take a shot. Isn't there a spot that'll blow your finger off if you touch it there while firing? Or was that an internet rumor? I can't remember!
The rabbit-eared nutcase dives into the bushes with me following after him, my dress catching on branches as I follow the rustling, quivering motions of the foliage.
They lead me right to him.
Or more specifically, to the edge of a very large, very suspicious looking hole.
There's no time to think, to wonder, to question.
One minute, my feet are safely on the ground. The next, I'm tumbling into blackness.