The Pilgrimess

During Colonial times, Maria Hill sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to a New England town in search of a better life, but the tight-knit townsfolk didn't trust outsiders, and Maria became isolated from the rest of the town.

When the town's livestock began to die mysteriously, shortly after her arrival, Maria was accused by the local preacher of witchcraft. She denied the claim, but when the preacher fell ill, the town quickly turned against her and cornered her in a barn. They lit the structure on fire, but Maria emerged, completely unscathed.

Instead of a quick death, Maria was sentenced to a slow, painful death in the stocks, where kids stoned her, women cursed at her and men spat at her until she eventually died of starvation weeks later.

The Chase

"Are you alright, Tony," Clint asks, rounding a new corner and leading them farther away from the basement steps.

"Not even remotely, but I'm trying to compartmentalize."

"And how's that working out?"

"It's not." Clint nods, pursing his lips and watching as Tony takes his sweet ass time. If the glorified babysitter doesn't like the pace Tony's setting, then he's more than welcome to lead the way. It'd be a stupid choice considering there's only one pair of spectral viewers between them, though.

"So tell me about the ghost situation."

"They're in the basement."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that." Tony scowls and shoves the glasses at the taller man. Clint slips them on, glancing over at one of the containment cubes and appearing entirely too nonplussed. According to the sigil etched into the glass, that cube belongs to the Bound Woman and she's not exactly the prettiest ghost to ever tiptoe through the tulips. "I'm not seeing anything, man."

"What? Gimme." Tony snatches the glasses back and puts them on before turning to face the cube. The glass walls are flecked with phantom blood and a few maggots are wriggling on the floor (which, ew), but Gamora is nowhere to be seen. That's about when he notices the door to the cube is open and the panic really starts to dig its claws in. "Oh shit…."

"What?" Tony turns and presses his face close to the opposite cube, only to flail and nearly overbalance when Fury slams his hammer against the glass with a roar of agony.

"Son of a bitch! I hate it when they do that!"

"Do what?"

"They wait for you to press your face right up against the glass and then they give you a big, fat boo!" Tony passes him the glasses, taking the tiniest bit of pleasure when Clint jumps back against Gamora's cube. Fury, aka the Hammer, is a horrifying, heart-wrenching sight; six feet of lithe muscle with railroad spikes driven through his skull, neck, and shoulders, his dark eyes filled with pain and rage and resentment.

"It's- It's a—"

"A ghost, yeah," Tony nods. "If you think he's spooky behind glass, then you would'a shit yourself when he had free range at that chicken farm." Tony had hidden under a pile of moldy hay and prayed to a God he didn't believe in to make it out of the dilapidated barn while Obie's men did their best to get Fury into his cube. They lost two people and Tony's pretty sure their bodies are still there.

"Holy mother..."

"There are ghosts around us all the time. Most of them can't hurt us, most of 'em don't want to hurt us, but there are exceptions." Tony doesn't look behind him as he leans against the cube, Fury's gaze almost a palpable thing drilling into the back of his head. "The ones who die a violent death are stuck in that tortured realm, so violence is all they know."

"What's he doing?"

"How should I know? You're hogging the glasses." Clint passes them back and Tony has a vivid flashback to first-grade show and tell when he and Rhodey shared Tony's homemade 3-D glasses. He turns to face the cube again, unsurprised to see Fury etching a note into the glass with a rusted metal spike he'd pulled out of his chest.

UR DED, the note reads. Tony cocks his head and sidles up to the glass again, acting tough.

"Still mad at me for putting you here, huh? You gotta let that go, man." Fury bares his teeth in a silent snarl, the glass keeping all his growls stuck inside the cube. He mouths something that Tony doesn't quite catch, but he's guessing it's not a sweet poem. "Love you, too, big fella."

"Okay, stop antagonizing the ghost," Clint says, pushing at Tony's shoulder. The blue-tinted vision doesn't hit all at once, but it's creeping up close, a dense pressure behind his eyes that makes his headache that much worse. He groans, stepping away from Clint and giving Fury the bird. That's when the vision hits; Fury out of his cube and flinging Tony around like a ragdoll, knocking him against glass walls until Tony's a bloody mess. He hits the floor in the vision, consciousness and life fading from his eyes and blood dripping across a ruined cheek.

Tony jerks backward, the vision clearing so that things are back to normal.

Behind the thin pane of glass, Fury smiles.

"Come on, Tony," Clint yells. He's a good ten feet away now and Tony rushes to catch up. There's no way in hell that he's being left alone down here. There are too many ghosts ready and willing to turn his ass into a shish kabob. "I'm so ready to have this place in my rearview."

"Ditto." They round the next corner at a fast walk, the next empty cube bringing Tony up short. "Oh." Clint pauses when he realizes that Tony has stopped, glancing between him and the empty cube. He doesn't realize why the color has left Tony's cheeks and Tony hopes Clint never has to feel the same wave of horror.

"What now?"

"That's the symbol of the Jackal," Tony says, pointing. The symbol is just as menacing as the spirit, all sharp points and straight edges like a razor. "He's, like, the Charlie Manson of ghosts. If the Jackal's loose, then we need to get the fuck out as soon as we can."

"Then I suggest we find Steve a little bit faster." Tony nods and they take off again at a fast jog, not quite running as they try to navigate the basement. Tony's mostly going off intuition at this point, doing his best to find his way back to the stairs. It'd be easier if the hallways weren't identical, no little map screwed to the wall with you are here and a helpful little arrow.

They come around a corner and Tony curses to find the way blocked by yet more glass. When he gets out of here (after chugging a bottle of tequila), Tony's going to toss anything made of glass in his apartment. He turns to head back the way they came but freezes when he spots the Firstborn Son standing on the ceiling just a few feet away. Little Peter Parker had been a rambunctious boy, but now he's filled with seething rage like all the other spirits trapped here.

"Oh, fuck."

"What," Clint hisses.

"We got behind enemy lines. Come on, stay quiet and don't move fast." They back away slowly, taking the left corridor that's mercifully free of ghosts. They don't run again after that and Tony's doing his best to hide just how wide his yellow streak has grown across his back. If this is how Scooby and Shaggy always felt, then Fred is a major douche.

It's a few feet farther, two more corners before Tony spots another ghost. This one is in her birthday suit, covered in deep gashes and holding the knife that killed her. Wanda Maximoff had been beautiful in life, but her corpse isn't half so pretty.

"Clint, stop!" Clint freezes a couple of steps ahead, brows furrowing as he turns to look at Tony. "Don't- Don't move." The Angry Princess leaves droplets of water behind her as she moves, dark hair hanging limply around her shoulders like seaweed. "That way." Tony points a finger to the corridor directly in front of Clint. "That way, dude."

"I can't see shit without the glasses, you idiot!" For just a brief flicker of a second, Tony's tempted to use Clint as a human shield. Then he hears Pepper's voice in his ear like some kind of pissed-off angel on his shoulder and he lets out a groan.

"Well I can see and I think you should go that way—" another jabbing motion toward the corridor "—right now! Go, go, go, go, go!" Clint darts forward and Tony sprints after him, slipping past so that he's in the lead again. "This way, I think."

"You think or you know?"

"I'm making this up as I go along, man." The house shifts again, the glass panels sliding from one spot to another as Tony comes to a stop. "Stairs!" He takes a right with Clint at his back, but then the walls are sliding inward and he's forced to go straight ahead and Cint is forced to retreat. "Hey, glasses!" Clint barely catches the spectral viewers, fumbling as he stumbles back. Then the glass wall has slammed shut between them, sealing Tony into a cube. "Perfect."

"You okay in there?"

"I've been better." Actually, this is about the size of his bedroom back home, it's just missing a pile of dirty laundry that may or may not be sentient and a twin-sized bed with a spring that has made itself too comfortable against Tony's kidney. "Is something in here with me?"

"I don't know." Tony hunches his shoulder as pain lances up between his shoulder blades, managing to send Clint a dirty look in spite of it.

"Put the fucking glasses on, genius." Clint slips them on and looks back at the cube right as something hard cracks against the back of Tony's head, dropping him to his knees. "What the fuck was that?"

"Baseball boy!" Which means he's stuck in a cell with the Torn Prince, a baseball junky who had a penchant for drag racing. At least it's not the Jackal. "Roll to the left!" So Tony rolls to the left, his shoulder slamming against the wall and throbbing its protest. "Get up!"

"I'm trying!" He manages to get his feet under him, but then the invisible bat is colliding with his temple and he nearly goes down again. The blow has blood rushing down the side of his face, dripping from his chin to his favorite tee. "What do I do?"

"Duck! Go to the right!" Tony follows the shouted instructions like he's playing some fucked up game of Simon Says, Sam Wilson's bat colliding with the wall in a shower of sparks. "Move! Run!" Clint's pulling on a glass panel, forcing it open just enough for Tony to duck and roll past it. Clint lets go the second Tony is clear, the panel slamming back in place with enough force to behead French royalty.

"I'd kiss you if the thought wasn't disgusting."

"I'd let you if you were my type," Clint says, breathless as he leans against a wall. "You know who you should kiss when we get outta here? Bucky. You're totally his type."

"And what type is that?"

"You're smart and sarcastic, that's pretty much all he looks for. Fair warning, though, he's been known to pop off his arm and throw it at people when they ask for a hand." Tony takes a moment to picture that scenario (he imagines it must be like that scene in Holes when Mister Sir throws a tire iron at Pendansky) and then he collapses in a fit of honest-to-God giggles. "Yeah, it's pretty great."

"God, I can't wait to see that. I'm gonna ask him for a hand the second we're out of here." The giggles die off as Sam hits the wall again right over Tony's head. Tony takes that as the cue to make like a tree and get the fuck out. "Glasses, please."

"Sure thing." Clint hands them back and Tony puts them on before making himself stand on legs about as steady as Jell-O. A couple more turns find them in front of the stairs and Tony has to force himself not to just run up the damn things just in case there's a nasty surprise waiting at the top. If he's going to die, then he'd prefer to do it on silk sheets with Metallica playing in the background and not in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

When he reaches the top, he pokes his head around the corner, looking for any ghoulies or beasties and finding none.

"See anything," Clint asks."

"No." Not that that actually means anything. For all he knows, the Juggernaut is hiding in the deep shadows of the house just waiting to break Tony in half. Clint pops his head up over Tony's shoulder to take a look for himself, age-old instincts kicking into gear. And who knows? Maybe those hearing aids can pick up ghost radio or something.

"Can I count on you not to get me killed?" Clint turns his head to look at Tony, so close that their noses are nearly brushing. He's careful not to actually make any contact and Tony is grateful.

"I guarantee nothing."

"Then just tell me when I'm supposed to scream and run like some b-movie actress." Tony nods as they creep forward, his shoulders a tense line. "If we get out of this alive, I'm demanding a pay raise."

"You think you'll get it?"

"Bucky will probably just buy me a pint of Ben and Jerry's and call it even." Going off Clint's tone, that's not necessarily a bad thing. He gets the feeling that Clint would be happy with a stick of gum just as long as he can stay with the Barnes family. They're almost to the front of the house again when blue tinges Tony's vision, edging in until Tony blinks the vision back. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know." Tony edges forward to the next turn then feels all his muscles lock into place. At the very end is the Great Child and the Dire Mother, a fearsome duo despite their relative lack of size. Meredith and Peter Quill don't need to be huge to take people down, they just need to work together (and the ax Peter's swinging certainly helps with that).

"Tony?"

"Scream and run time," Tony says, breaking his own rules by shoving Clint back. They take a left instead of going forward, trying to stay ahead of the Quill family. They take another sharp turn up ahead and Tony nearly trips trying to go backward, Clint steadying him and screaming as a head pokes out of the floor. In fact, Clint's still screaming (he could put Jamie Lee Curtis to shame) when Tony realizes the head belongs to Justine Hammer.


"Dad," Darcy pleads somewhere behind him," slow down. We don't need to get lost down here." Bucky can hear the fear in her voice, making her sound like the little girl who'd demanded Bucky check her closet every night for the boogeyman. Bucky just keeps going, his heart beating harshly against his ribcage until he's certain it'll break right through like some kind of macabre cartoon.

"Stevie," Bucky calls, desperate. "Steve, are you down here?" He spots something near the end of the hall and races forward, grabbing the little recorder that's practically stuck to his son's hand. Steve doesn't go anywhere without his recorder, not since last Christmas after Tasha— Bucky squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, forcing himself to breathe.

"Dad?"

"It's his—" Bucky can't force the words out, just turns to face his daughter with the recorder in his hand. She's got a pair of glasses held up, identical to the ones Tony had been wearing. Bucky rewinds the tape and then presses play, wincing at the garbled scream that comes out of the plastic speaker. He presses stop just as fast, not wanting to hear his little boy so afraid.

"Dad, listen to me." Darcy moves in front of him so that he's got no choice but to look at her. She's scared, too, her big eyes wide with fear. Bucky wants to draw her against him and protect her from the big, bag world, but his limbs feel like they're made of concrete. "He's gonna be okay. We're gonna find him."

"You're right, baby. Let's keep going." The sooner they find Steve, the sooner they can return to their cramped apartment. Darcy nods like she's thinking the same thing, following closely behind as Bucky leads the way down another hall. They've been moving in relative quiet for five minutes before Darcy speaks up again.

"What if Tony's right? What if there are ghosts down here."

"Do you think about what you're about to say?"

"No, I prefer to be as surprised as everyone else." Which is fair, okay? The Barnes family, past and present, have never been known to have an operational brain-to-mouth filter. They say the first thing that comes to mind and then try their damndest to avoid the consequences. Bucky once told his mother-in-law that her hair was going gray and then slept in a motel for the week of Thanksgiving to avoid having to apologize. "But what if he's right?" Bucky sighs because another thing that's genetic is nagging.

"He's not right." Bucky stops and turns to face his daughter, not liking how pale she is. After this mess is over, they're taking a long vacation to some beach or another so that his kids look a little less like they've been held captive in a dark space all their lives. "There's no such thing as ghosts." Because Darcy lives to prove him wrong, she slips the glasses on and glances up again. "See any ghosts?"

"Yeah…" It comes out as a choked whisper and where there had been fear before, there's now full-on horror. The brown of her eyes is nearly swallowed by her pupils, the little color she has draining away at whatever she sees. Bucky's brows draw together and he follows her gaze to the right, but all he sees is empty air.

"Darcy, I don't see—" Darcy's jerked backward even as he speaks, propelled down the hall by invisible hands. She's got her arms up in front of her face, her scream making something inside of Bucky tear. He sprints after her, forced to watch as she's lifted up a wall and claws tear her shirt to ribbons. "Darcy!"

"Daddy, help! Help!" More scratches appear across one cheek and her neck and shoulders, sets of three that send blood cascading over her chest, soaking into the shredded remains of her shirt. Bucky grabs onto her legs and tries to yank her down, but whatever's holding her up there is strong.

"I can't see it! Where is it?" He bats his good arm at the space in front of his daughter and he's partly surprised when his knuckles crack against a transparent cheekbone. "Get off of her, you bastard! She's just a little girl!" Bucky's still throwing punches when he sees a flash of light in his peripheral, a flare soaring past his face so close that the silver sparks burn his cheek. The flare collides against the wall an inch from Darcy's head and then his daughter is toppling to the ground.

"Daddydaddydaddy—" He collapses beside his daughter, cradling her against him and glaring over her head at the newcomer. The woman is a skinny thing around Bucky's age, her blonde hair cut into a bob and a heavy satchel bumping against an angular hip. "Daddydaddy…."

"I've got you, baby," he breathes, rocking Darcy gently until the rambling stops. "I've got you. It's gonna be okay." He never takes his eyes off the advancing woman, shifting so that Darcy's curled up behind him. If nothing else, he can pop his prosthetic off and whack this woman on the head with it. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'll tell you that when we're not in danger," the woman snaps, yanking on his good hand to get him up. Bucky resists just on principle, but one glance back at where his daughter's blood is smeared over the glass has him getting up. He doesn't bother seeing if Darcy can walk, bringing her up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and following the stranger through the halls.

"Hurry," Darcy screams, beating her fists against Bucky's back. "He's back! He's back!" Bucky doesn't look over his shoulder as he runs because, contrary to Tony's belief, he's not that type of stupid white boy. No, he focuses dead ahead, shifts Darcy into a bridal hold, and keeps running like his life depends on it (because it kind of does).

Bucky nearly falls going around a corner, but the woman jerks him back on track right before a pane of glass slides shut behind them. Whatever's on the other side crashes into the glass, sending out a shower of orange sparks like lightning hitting a transformer. When he's sure the thing isn't getting through, he drops to his knees and settles Darcy down beside him.

She's sobbing again, a violent tremble making her teeth chatter. Bucky doesn't want to see just how many scratches she's got, doesn't want to see how he's failed another child that he's supposed to protect. Goddamn it! He's going to burn this fucking house to the ground. Instead of screaming like he wants to, he shrugs off his shirt and helps Darcy into it. He can stand the cold temperature if it means keeping his kid from getting hypothermia. Bucky hunches over her when that's done, keeping her pressed against his chest as he glares over at the stranger.

"Who the hell are you and what the hell was that?"

"I'm Justine Hammer," she says, breathing hard. "I'm in the spirit reclamation business." She correctly interprets Bucky's expression to mean what in the holy hell are you talking about and explains. "I free trapped souls. Obadiah has been—"

"Forget Obie! What in the world are you doing here?"

"Looks like I'm saving your life." Bucky wants to snarl at her that they wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for that stupid lawyer, but Darcy's tugging in his wrist and he drags his gaze back to her. The tears have stopped at some point, leaving clear trails through tacky blood.

"Dad," she whispers, pointing at the glass barrier. "He's still there." Bucky takes the glasses from her, hesitating a moment before pulling them on and turning to stare at the thing that hurt his baby girl. The man, if it had ever been a man, is around Bucky's height and all-around mangled; greasy hair and jaundiced skin, wild eyes, broken teeth, and ragged claws that scratch feverishly at the glass. He's dressed in a tattered straitjacket, a metal cage closed around his head with the front bars bent outward as he snaps at the air.

"He's another one of your uncle's victims."

"Victims," he repeats. Bucky reluctantly looks back to Justine, forcing himself to keep breathing evenly. If he hyperventilates all the way down here, he's likely to just die. "What do you mean?"

"Obadiah had a nasty habit of enslaving souls. That's why I'm here. It doesn't matter whether they're dead or not, they're still people." Darcy sends her a disbelieving stare that's usually followed by some scathing remark or a fist to the mouth. Thankfully for Justine, Darcy's too tired for either option.

"How'd you get in here? Maybe you could help get my daughter out the same way."

"I jumped through an opening while the house was shifting, but it's closed now." Bucky's hope, fragile as it is, dashes against the rocks at the conviction in Justine's voice. If they can't get out of here, then how can he keep his children safe? How can he keep Clint safe? "Here, you need to see this."

"See what?" Justine answers him by pulling a book out of her satchel, bulky and bound in leather that creaks when she opens it. There's a thin, metal disk set into the cover, divided up into small sections and squares similar to the gold-plated disks set in the floor upstairs.

"This is the Arcanum. Many people died in the quest for this book" She flips through the pages like she's looking for something specific, Bucky only catching a brief glance at the other pages; parchment with sketches and a few strange symbols drawn on it in thin, black ink. "It was written in the fifteenth century by an astrologer named Basileus. In it, he describes the building of a certain device, one that can see into the future. He wrote it while he was under demonic possession."

"Probably why it never made it on the Time's bestseller list," Darcy grumbles. Justine finds the page she's looking for, filled with a sketch of various gears and mechanical parts, those same strange symbols boxed in at the top of the page.

"I can't believe Obadiah actually built it." Justine is breathless with her reverence like this murder house is a dream come true for her. Bucky kind of wants to kick her, but he restrains himself. "We're in the middle of a machine designed by the Devil and powered by the dead."

"Man, Uncle Obie was a dick."

"Look, I don't give a flying fuck about this place or the ghosts in it," Bucky says, slipping back into the firm tone reserved for bullies and Darcy's ninth-grade science teacher. "All I care about is getting my family the hell out of here."

"I came here to set the souls in this house free," Justine says, just as firmly. "If you want out, you've got to help me first." Their staring match lasts far longer than it should and Bucky's the first to blink, shutting his eyes and lowering his head until his chin rests against his chest. He's tired, a bone-deep weariness that he can't seem to shake since Natasha died. If his wife were here, she'd have gotten them out five minutes in just using this chick as a battering ram.

"Darcy, can you walk?" When he doesn't get a response, he looks over at where his daughter's sitting. He starts a little when all he sees is more glass with small droplets of blood dotting the floor, his back straightening out of its hunch to look around. "Darcy? Darcy!" But she's not there to answer him and panic floods his veins. "Where is she?" Bucky jumps to his feet and sprints to the next corner, craning his head to see if Darcy's waiting there.

"We have to get out of here." Justine's breath is warm and sour against his cheek, her bony fingers wrapping around his bicep.

"Not without my daughter!"

"Try telling him that." Bucky follows her gaze to the right, spotting a little boy with an arrow poking through the space between his eyes and a tomahawk grasped in one small hand. "Move straight ahead, slowly." Bucky and Justine creep down the hall until they're out of the boy's sight, then they start to run without caring about the noise they're making.

"Mind telling me which direction I should flee in?"

"Stairs! We need to get out of the basement!" Bucky takes a left up ahead and then a series of rights until he's forced to skid to a stop to keep from running into a wall. He can see the stairs beyond it, can see the thin rays of light falling across the gleaming metal that would take him back to the first floor.

"Dead end. What do we do now, genius?" He looks at her with an impatient sound, but it cuts off in his throat when he sees how intently she's staring at the wall behind him. "What?"

"Back away from the glass now." Bucky takes a step away from it and glances over his shoulder to see what she's spotted. There's a tall black man on the other side, dressed in a leather blacksmith's apron with a fuckton of railroad spikes driven into him and a heavy hammer connected to the stump of his wrist.

"Oh, not good." They move back the way they'd come, but the end of the hall is blocked by another sheet of glass and the ghoul in the straitjacket is beating his head against it. "What was he called?"

"He's the Jackal."

"Well, with a name like that he was bound to be a little loony." The flat look Justine sends his way tells Bucky that he's not as funny as he thinks he is. "Let's try this way." They make a right at the corridor, carrying them away from the Jackal and Creepy Extra number three.

"There's a map of the house in here somewhere." Justine hurriedly flips through the pages of her book, hands shaking and concentration split. Bucky can still hear the Jackal's maniacal laughter down the hall and he's seriously considering just throwing the book at the Jackal's head.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm trying!" She flips another page, this one filled with squares drawn in thick lines that make her eyes light up. She taps one square in particular like it's supposed to mean something other than the fact that Bucky had failed geometry. "We need to get to the library, it has protection spells all around it."

"Where's that from here." The finger on the library square leaves the page and points up at the glass ceiling above their heads. "Wonderful."

"I think I can pop a floor panel loose if you can boost me up." Bucky nods, resigned to his role as a human ladder. Justine shoves the Arcanum back in her satchel and brings out a flare, giving him a pointed look. "The flare will deter any ghosts, but there's no guarantee."

"Then I suggest you hurry the fuck up before our dear friend in the straitjacket finds a way past that glass." She drops the flare to the floor, ignoring the way it spits out silver sparks over their boots as she starts to climb. Bucky hoists her up against a support beam, doing his best to keep her stable. "So what's the deal with the flares?"

"Quicksilver disrupts spiritual energy and buys us time to get away."

"How many do you have left?"

"Three."

"Three? You didn't think to bring a whole truck full?"

"I wasn't prepared to give a tour!" The thick panel pops loose with a hiss of air, making a light scratching sound as Justine shoves it aside. She grasps the edge of the hole with one hand and wraps her legs tightly around the beam, so she's got a hand free. "Give me the flare." Bucky grabs it and hands it up to her, watching as she rolls it a couple of feet from where they'll be climbing out of, close enough to grab but not so close as to burn them.

There are voices from somewhere above him, one of them being Justine's, but Bucky's attention has settled on a shifting glass wall that lets the hulking blacksmith into the hall.

"Hey, fuckheads," he yells, trying to climb the beam. "Get me out!"

The Angry Princess

Wanda Maximoff had never been happy a day in her life; she sulked as a child, rebelled as a teenager, and became a felon as an adult. She went through a series of boyfriends, each one worse than the last.

After her brother's murder, Wanda went completely off the rails. Her drug use increased and she cut off all contact with her friends and family. It's during that time that she met a darkly handsome man named Darren Cross. Darren seemed like the stereotypical bad boy at first, but then Wanda caught him dismembering a body in their apartment. Instead of calling the cops, Wanda decided to join in.

Their romance continued for a year before Wanda grew bored. She was in the middle of packing her things when Darren came home. She'd explained that they were done, that meth was more exciting than murder. Needless to say, Darren didn't take the news well.

As she was heading for the door, Darren pulled out his knife and set to work. He stabbed her seven times in the back and cut deep gouges in her face. She lived through all of it until the knife plunged through her heart.

Darren left her in their apartment for the landlord to find two weeks later, Rebel Yell blaring from the radio.