Gilded is the Rose[Beware the thorns]
The most dangerous people are the ones who mask their thorns with beauty. You never know how much danger you are in until it is too late.
A creepy hospital, a freezing night, a beautiful girl, how bad could it be? Karen is about to find out.
Maybe they don't leave the hospital
Door slams shut or is unable to be opened, frozen shut?
Kamila suggests finding another door?
Maybe Karen deals to kids?
V wants the soul?
Seeing ghosts of overdose?
Maybe she runs into some-else in the hospital? Trying to find a way out
Homeless man?
Drug dealer- rival?
Torment the soul on the way to damnation?
Meth drug of choice?
Color tagging her stash
red-hard
yellow-medium
green-easy
maybe gets stabbed with two syringes?
First by rival who runs, then Kamila
Rival runs, long chase ensues, maybe Karen starts hallucinating, starts running faster out of fear?
Rival is killed
Kamila follows and finds Karen
Karen randomly makes out with Kamilla, possibly fueled by lust via drugs
Kamila stabs Karen with syringe
Karen pushes open the doors, the metal squeaking under her palms, echoing loudly. Her flashlight twitches over the stacked boxes of medical supplies and long abandoned cots.
No one ever comes here. Everyone thinks it's haunted; even the gangs stay away.
Karen scoffs. As if a lame place like this has the air of a haunted building. Everyone knows that you need history to have a haunting. This place only was open for thirty years and closed down after the director was discovered stealing drugs from his patients to sell on the black market to support his gambling habit.
Lame.
Karen uses it to store her stash. The cops never look here. She shuffles a few of the boxes around, pulling out the satchel she'd left there the previous week. Everything's where it should be.
She can make a lot of money and be set for a while, she thinks, transferring the contents to a less conspicuous bag and shoving the satchel back into its hiding place.
It's as she's standing to go, that she notices something pale and stark white, like marble, peeking out from behind a tarp covered counter.
Karen edges cautiously around and stifles a shriek.
It's a person, lying there, still and pale as death.
And Karen's seen people die, seen them bleed out in the street after the gangs had raked through, uncaring of who was in the crossfire.
It's a girl, about Karen's age, red hair the color of blood haloing her head. Her legs are long, slender and Karen didn't ever think that she'd think a person's legs beautiful, but the girl's legs are gorgeous.
She's alive, chest rising and falling gently, pale lips the color of pink roses, a spattering of freckles across her nose.
She's also not dressed for the weather, wearing shorts that hardly cover her butt, and is very clearly not wearing a bra under her thin shirt.
Karen's amazed she's not dead. It's almost thirty outside and not much warmer indoors in here.
She reaches out to poke the girl's shoulder. No response.
She pokes her again.
"Mmm?" the girl says, and her alabaster eyelids flutter open to reveal the palest green eyes that Karen has ever seen.
"You're going to freeze in here," Karen says.
The girl nods, eyes closing. "Sounds like a plan," she mumbles.
"Hey," Karen says. "I'm being serious."
"Mmmhmm," the girl replies.
"You're way too pretty to freeze in here," Karen says, surprising herself. That was a terrible pickup line to use on a random girl who's sleeping in the abandoned hospital on the edge of town.
The girl smiles. "You think M' pretty?"
"Sure," Karen says reflexively.
"That's nice," the girl says, blinking slowly up at her.
Karen is a sucker for pretty girls and doubly so for redheads which is why she says, "Come on, I've got a room at home that I'm not using."
The girl unsteadily takes her offered hand and Karen hauls her upright. She's light as a feather, almost crashing into Karen as she stands, wobbly as a newborn puppy.
"What's your name?" Karen asks.
"Kamila," the girl says shyly. "My name is Kamila."
"It's nice to meet you, Kamila," Karen says, guiding her new friend back through the lobby over to the entrance and placing her free hand on the doorknob. "I'm Karen."
The doorknob doesn't give under Karen's hand. It moves just a bit down and then stops. Was it frozen?
Karen jiggles it again.
Nothing.
"It does that," Kamila says quietly. "I think there's another door in the back," she adds helpfully.
The door that Kamila leads her to is rusted and dark with age, but it looks like it will open.
Karen tries the handle which creaks under the pressure. It doesn't turn. It wasn't locked.
Why wasn't it opening?!
"That's weird," Kamila says. "Maybe we could try the front door again?"
Karen sighs. "Yeah, I guess."
They walk back to the front of the hospital, their shoes squeaking on the floor. As they pass the room where Karen has hidden her stash, she hears a muffled thump and the quiet rasp of curse.
She freezes and Kamila mimics her, glancing around.
"You haven't seen anyone else in here, right?" Karen whispers. She's certainly never seen anyone.
Kamila shakes her head, mouthing 'No.'
Karen peers in through the rounded windows of the double doors and shoves them open. A person in a dark hoodie is digging through the satchel that Karen had left hidden. Syringes roll about the floor, scattered in the person's haste.
Sonava bitch!
Karen shoves the doors open and lunges, grabbing the figure by the hood of their oversized blue hoodie, hauling them upright. Behind her, Kamila makes a frightened sound, a pale figure at the edge of Karen's vision.
The hood falls back, revealing greasy brown hair, reddened blue eyes set into a face that looks like it's been attacked by a wild cat.
"Justin!" Karen snarls. "This is my turf, you bastard!"
"No, it ain't!" Justin protests. "It's neutral! Gangs don't come round here, no one does! Seen you sneaking in, figured you had something in here'-"
"My turf, my stash, get the fuck out!" Karen hisses. "Or I'll put a knife through those twiggy ribs of yours!"
"Fuck you, you crazy bitch!" Justin says. "Gotta make a livin' somehow! So what if it's by stealing someone else's stash!"
Karen makes a move to throw his scrawny ass to the ground, hard, when there is a sharp pain at her shoulder.
Justin cackles, pushing the plunger of a syringe down into her arm.
Karen throws him, relishing in the pained cry that escapes him before he climbs to his feet and runs further into the hospital.
Fuck, she thinks, shaking her head. He'd gotten her with one of the good ones. Karen color-codes all of her stash, green for the easy stuff, yellow for a medium experience and red for the hardcore junkies.
The syringe that rolls empty at her feet was red. She dashes after the bastard, because drugs or no, she's going to kick his ass.
She barely hears Kamila's worried shout behind her, more concerned with finding Justin and making sure he won't steal her shit again.
The halls seem to stretch on forever as Karen runs down them, catching sight of Justin pushing through the door to the stairs and hurrying up them.
The hallways are getting darker too, which is a little odd as the night is almost half over. Karen shoves the errant thought aside and focuses on the stairs, taking them two at a time and almost twisting her ankle as she rounds a corner a bit too sharply.
The next floor is almost as dark, the only light coming from the dim red exit signs and the faintly flickering lamp in the stairwell.
The shadows seem to move eerily as Karen jogs through them, and she ignores the way they seem to form hands and claws that drift lazily across the walls. The air is heavier up here, tinged with the stale taste of time and dust.
Karen hears a scuffling and turns to see Justin hauling ass through another door marked exit. She squints at him, there seems to be a bit of a wet gleam to his cheek as he runs.
Strange. She runs after him.
That's when things take a left turn into Weirdsville. Shadows drip down the walls, pooling at her feet, soaking into her shoes. Her feet squish with every step.
The air becomes oppressive, weighing her down, making her stagger as she heads through the door. The stairs are painted a gleaming red, footing becoming treacherous and Karen clings to the railing as she climbs.
Above her a door bangs closed, and she clambers towards it. She makes it through, finding another hallway, just as dimly lit as the previous one.
The walls seem to move, bending and shifting as if they were breathing with her, each labored breath struggling through lungs compressed by some unseen force. She catches sight of a white face out of the corner of her eye.
Black lips peel back from a sharp-mouthed grin and Karen runs for the only remaining light she can see.
Terror unlike anything she's ever felt floods her veins, a jolt of icy cold that pushes her through the door on the other end of the hallway.
There's no stairs on this side of the door, only another short hallway leading to a pair of double doors that are still swinging closed.
Justin had to have just gone through them. Karen follows.
Justin isn't standing when Karen finds him. Rather he's suspended from the ceiling on glistening, dripping ropes, the stench of entrails heavy in the air, the scent clinging to Karen's nostrils, choking her.
Justin's head drops back, exposing a wet, dark hole where his throat should have been. His arms stretch out to either side in a parody of crucifixion, red pooling on the ground beneath him.
Behind Karen comes the shuffle of footsteps, and a quiet gasp. Karen turns slightly.
Kamila is staring at the sight, eyes wide and mouth gaping, stark horror and fear clear on her face.
Karen twists away from the gruesome display of Justin's body, and draws Kamila close; she doesn't need to see this horror. She's shaking, and Karen strokes her hair, buries her face in the other girl's shoulder.
She smells like violets, the sweet fragrance somehow suffocating the scent of entrails.
There is a sudden sharp sting in Karen's neck, and Kamila draws back, an empty syringe in her hand. A red sticker decorates the barrel, a brief flash of crimson as the syringe drops to the floor.
Fucking hell?!
The room seems to hum, the air trembling as the second dose takes effect.
Kamila is smiling widely, too widely for any human mouth, a gaping grin and her teeth are pointed, rows upon rows of gleaming teeth. Her green eyes glitter with malice.
As Karen watches, Kamila's neck snaps to the side with a sickening crack, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the empty hospital. The temperature plummets, becoming so cold that Karen can see her breath tumbling out in shocking white plumes.
Kamila just blinks lazily at her, grin never faltering as she shoves Karen against to the wall, ripping away Karen's coat and shirt, leaving her to shiver in the cold in her bra.
"Oh, Karen," Kamila says in a voice that rattles Karen's very bones and makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. "You can't leave. We've haven't finished yet."
A freezing hand presses to her stomach and a finger slides across her belly and down from the edge of her ribcage to her pubic bone, the impact making Karen shriek.
She watches with horror as her skin peels back, blood seeping down to coat Kamila's delicate fingers.
Kamila reaches inside her, pulling out ribbons of gleaming, wriggling red flesh. Her smile is delighted, joyful even as Karen screams in agony.
"What's the matter, Karen?" Kamila asks. "Not having any fun?"
Karen can only shriek in pain.
Kamila smiles. "Oh, I know, all girls love pretty necklaces. How about I give you one?"
She loops one coil of wriggling flesh around Karen's throat and Karen wants to vomit but can't past the screaming that erupts out of her.
Kamila pulls the coil tight, squeezing the breath from Karen's lungs. Kamila's pink lips curve into a wicked grin as Karen's screams die to a gasping whimper.
"Ah, but I just take your breath away, don't I?" Kamila murmurs in Karen's ear with a soft giggle.
Karen can barely hear her, the darkness closing in, the only light the glinting pinpricks of Kamila's pale green eyes.
"Sleep well, darling. We'll meet again soon."