Chapter One
EMPTY EYES ACCUSE A FACE SO EVIL
My eyes open to the sting of sunlight. Something is wrong. Not the kind of wrong you feel when you first wake from a bad dream, but Something truly evil. A feeling of panic and desperation courses through my veins with such urgency that I leap from my bed with no regards to the bedpost that my head will inevitably strike. What is that smell? So unfamiliar. The only thing I recognize in its musk is Annabel, but it’s as if something so profoundly putrid is masking its unusual tantalizing odor. Why am I shaking? Am I wrong about the dream? Perhaps I’m trapped in the final seconds of a nightmare so horrific that even as I stand here awake I cannot escape its grasp. A sip of water and a moment to gather myself should help me put the pieces together. Where was I last night? What did I do? I remember dinner, drinks, laughter. I remember making love to Annabel. I remember drawing. Yes, my sketch, my latest masterpiece. Oh, I cannot wait until my sweet love lays her eyes on my finest achievement to date. It will please her so very much. I should wake her, I’m too excited to let her sleep any longer.
I reach out to gently shake Annabel from sleep and find my hands are covered in blood. The smell, the shaking, the panic. Against my will, I turn my gaze toward the horrific scene lying in the bed only inches from where I slept. The harsh reality of what I am seeing washes over me as I fall to my knees screaming, crying, vomiting. This cannot be happening. I am still asleep, I never woke up. I will crawl into bed, wrap my arms around my sweet Annabel, and in the morning wake to the gentle caress of her lips. With every bit of my strength I pull myself into the bed and move slowly next to woman with whom I have shared the last seven years of my life. It was at this very moment that I notice the painfully angelic beauty of her eyes. So gentle, so forgiving, and now in this seemingly endless instant, perfectly still. Her once lush, glowing skin is now drowning in a pool of crimson.
I’m not entirely sure what attracted my attention to the mirror on the wall. I’m not saying that if I hadn’t seen my reflection on that fateful morning that things would have gone differently in the end. All I know is that until the day I die I will never sleep again. In revealing the mystery behind the final hours of Annabel’s life, the old, cracked mirror that has hung in my bedroom for as long as I can remember made one thing perfectly clear. I, the Artist, had killed the only love I will never know, Annabel.
