Since we were a group of teenagers that had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, the five of us decided to try to wait it out. The plan was to sit in the living room area until we were sure the monster out for our blood was gone. I sat on an armchair with my legs over the side. Normally, I would sit in a way that wouldn't draw any attention to me, but I didn't come anymore. These people knew me. I was entrenched in this. I was already in the spotlight. There was no way that I wasn't.

Sandy was on a cot in the corner. She wanted to sleep. Ethan was still at the counter, trying to clean the blood off of his book. Otherwise, the rest of us were gathered in that space.

Ethan broke the silence first. "I don't get why it's being so angry and coming after us. I think it's linked to someone here."

"What makes you say that?" I looked over my shoulder and around the back of my chair at him.

"You know, so-- Let me explain." He reached over and took out an ancient napkin from an open drawer. "It's like- it's complicated."

"Explain it, then!"

"Calm down, sweetlips."

I didn't know how to feel about that (I was mostly just confused), but I figured the look of pure disgust that Blanche had on her face summed it up pretty quickly and pretty well. It wasn't like I had the opportunity to say anything before he started talking again, even if I were able to think of something to say. 

"So, the thing is," he said, no longer looking over at us. "Some monsters are created, made from five deaths and an intention or some symbol. This seems to be one of those kinds of monsters. Eve, what did you say it was called again?"

I was still reeling from the sweetlips comment, so I didn't register what he asked at first. As soon as I did, I scrambled to say, "The Eye For An Eye."

He nodded. "I think I've heard of that one."

Then he didn't say anything else. Those of us who weren't asleep were all visibly confused as he went back to what he was doing. Willa gave me a look with her head cocked to the side and her eyebrows furrowed. Blanche broke the momentary silence, gesturing with her dirty, bloody palms. "Well?"

Ethan looked up from his work. "Yeah?"

"Are you going to continue talking, or, like, are you stupid and pulling shit out of your ass?"

Ethan gave her a look that conveyed some sort of salacious intent. Blanche audibly gagged and slapped a hand over her mouth.

Now that I wasn't the only one he was treating like that, I began to catch on. This guy was a weirdo. He was gross. He was useful, sure, but he was just as gross as ever. I had almost forgotten. It had been a bit of a joke when I said it before, but Ethan really was a sleazebag.

Willa put to tactful words what the rest of us were thinking. "Ethan, please stop being weird. We just need to know what you know."

"I don't know anything," he said, looking away, wearing a certain type of disappointment like a mask or a particularly pungent perfume. "I lied. I don't know that name. I just thought it would make me look cool and smart if I did. I don't know anything."

"I do," Blanche sighed. 

The rest of us fell into silence; all eyes were on her. 

"I know things about this," she clarified, like that was the problem.

I turned back to her. "Care to elaborate, then? What do you know?"

"Do I have to?"

"Yeah, you do. This thing killed me, and we used Sandy as bait to try to catch it, so you'd better fucking say it before I go ballistic." 

"Jesus, who put a bee in your panties?" 

"It's you!" I barely recognized the exasperation in my own voice-- but, then, I knew it well. I contain multitudes, I guess. 

Blanche rolled her eyes, leaned back in her chair, and looked up at the ceiling. A bit of her hair slipped away from her skull and head, exposing the bloody hole there. "This is going to be a doozy. Do we have any booze in here? Scratch that, yes we do. My grandpa was a super Jack Mormon. He was a fiend for the stuff. Give me a minute."

She stood and lurched her way out of her chair. We watched her walk, nonchalant, to a shelf near the back, where she clinked her way through some bottles until she found what she wanted. Then she came back, holding a bottle of something I didn't recognize. She came back, popped it open with a spin, and sat down on her normal chair. The rest of us, Sandy excluded, looked at her expectantly.

"I guess I have to tell you the full story, then," she sighed, looking away from all of us. "I have to tell you what I know."

"I mean, yeah," I interjected.

Willa interrupted me, gentle in manner but tired in voice. "Eve. She's trying to be dramatic."

"Oh. Sorry."

Blanche sat like an old fading patriarch with a pipe in his hands, looking off into the corner of the room. She cleared her throat. 

"I was a senior in high school back in 1985. It was the first half of the school year and, already, I was coasting on the way to graduation. Things were looking up for me but, like, they always were.

"It wasn't like I was someone who ruled the school. Like, I was popular, sure, but I wasn't at the top. And you know me-- I'm a bully. I'll admit it. I'm a bully. It's what I do, and I'm damn good at it. Sorry, not sorry.

"So, there was this girl. Cassie Wilder. And I tormented her, like the bitch I am." Blanche gave a wry smile, like she was half-expecting us to high-five her. When we didn't, she continued, "So. Cassie. She was this tiny little thing. No tits. No lips. Face full of acne. She played the clarinet. I mean, can you imagine a better target?

"So I'll admit it. I bullied her. I thought she deserved it, too-- after all, she had plenty of opportunities to better herself. Me and my girl friends, we all chipped in, made her life a living hell. Do I feel remorse? Maybe. It's easy for me to justify what I did. It still is.

"We decided to pull this huge stunt, where we got her elected to student council and then totally humiliated her at the pep rally following it. I'm talking poster boards with her face superimposed on a pizza, her face stuck onto a boy's body, her everything on something we used to insult her. We had the students in the stand do all sorts of jeers about her. She was going to be delivering a speech that day.

"How was I supposed to know she was going to go home and slit her wrists in the tub? That she took a bunch of pills to make it go down quicker? I didn't mean for that to happen. Can you really blame me for what she did?

"Her brother found her. He was already a huge jackass, a wastoid who hung out in the landfill on his days off. He was already not-entirely-there. And, when he found her, something snapped. So, old Jack Wilder, nineteen and crazy as hell, tracked me down. I was with my girl friends at the time-- we didn't know yet. We didn't know that Cassie had done that. We wouldn't have done it if we knew she was going to do that. We were at this lake, having a party, drinking, listening to the radio through the open window of someone's car. He found us there, in that weird sandy dirt, and he killed the three of us, then himself.

"It's so weird, to lose your life at the end of a shotgun. I didn't find out Cassie was dead until I found myself at a joint funeral for all five of us. Yeah, that's right. They buried us all at the same time. Murderer, murderees, victims and suspects, all the same in the end. Five deaths. Five deaths and a monster, almost like a ritual. I guess I'm lucky, that it wasn't me that changed, and that it wasn't the guy that killed me. It was Cassie. She became the monster."

I wanted to explode. I wanted to scream, to get up in Blanche's face and to hurt her like Rosie did. I want to kill her. I wanted to kill her again, to make sure she stayed dead, to knock her into nothingness, even though I knew that wasn't how it worked.

"Are you joking?" I yelled, waking up Sandy in the process. She sat up, groggy, but I barely noticed. I was too busy being pissed. It tore out of my throat again. "You'd better be joking."

"Yeah, Blanche, what the fuck?" Willa agreed, eyebrows knitted with all sorts of concern and confusion, like she expected something else from Blanche.

"Oh, like you're even any better," she snapped, crossing her arms like a petulant fourth grader. "Little miss Willa, who's so pure and so wholesome and has never hurt anyone."

"I haven't!" Willa countered, then slowly followed it up with, "Not on purpose."

I bit my tongue, choked down the fact that she did hurt me. I was willing to come to her defense, to say what I knew was the truth despite what I felt (and knew) about the sentiment. "There's not a mean bone in Willa's body, you heinous fucking bitch."

"Eve. Eve. Calm down." Will said, raising a hand as though she was going to put it on my arm.

"No, she's wrong. Blanche, you're wrong. All of this is your fault. Do you not get that?" I instinctively swatted Willa's hand away, almost a little too hard and a little too quickly. Remorse hit me immediately, washed over me like a tidal wave, took me out, but, still, I spoke.

Blanche rolled her eyes. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I wanted to stand up and give her what for, but the sound of a stool scraping across linoleum-covered concrete cut me off and kept me from digging my hole even deeper than it already was.

"I mean, she's kind of right," Ethan said from the counter. "There's no way she could have known that five deaths and the involvement of certain conditions-- a redhead, strong emotions, stuff like that-- would create a monster. It's not like that's common knowledge."

I wanted to ask how he knew that or what my hair color had to do with it, but I didn't. Instead, I gave him the most withering look I could muster. He didn't back down, though.

"No, I'm right. How was she supposed to know? Hell, you're a redhead. How come you didn't know?'

"Its not like there's a manual that comes with dying and making monsters and all this supernatural bullshit!"

"Exactly! So how was she supposed to know? How were any of us supposed to know?"

He had a point. I shrugged. "I guess she wasn't." 

"Exactly." Ethan pointed at me with the hand he was still holding a bloody paper towel in.

"But you should. That's the entire reason you're here. Because you're supposed to know things. Because you said you know things." 

"I just said I didn't, Eve."

"Yeah, whatever," I said, trying to seem nonchalant about it. "I'm going for a walk."

"In the bunker?" Blanche asked. Her voice dripped with judgment.

I didn't bother answering her. I just walked away, wanting to cool off before I did something I would regret.