(Note to Readers [all three of you]: This is my response to this week’s IndieInk Writing Challenge. It’s not as long or as considered as I would have liked, given the shitty week I’ve had. It has one shining virtue: it’s finished.)

Mona stormed out through the entry gate of her apartment building and took in several gulps of cold, crisp air. She had to huddle her sleeveless arms around herself for warmth; she hugged herself so hard that she dug her nails into her flesh. She didn’t care. It was worth not being in that damn building for two minutes.

I could run, she thought. Run far away, before I do something I’ll regret. Except I left my purse and cell phone upstairs. And my shoes. And it’s my apartment.

A blast of frozen air tore through her skin. The stars above leered down upon her, as if they could see through her clothes. A few more minutes here, Mona knew, and they’d have to amputate her feet. Reluctantly, she plodded back inside and upstairs seven flights, taking each step with the measured precision of the condemned. I’m calm, I’m calm. I’m a fucking fairy in the woods I’m so calm.

The apartment was as she’d left it. The couch tipped over. Chips scattered on the floor and mashed into the carpet, arranged in accidental geometry around a large wine stain that Mona could swear had swelled in her absence. And at the far end, near the window, sat her five friends, huddled around two card tables.

She sat down. To her left, Fran ignored her, opting to study her own hands instead, while Andy and Toshiro were grimacing so intently at one another she didn’t think they even noticed her. To her right, Meela looked at her with begging eyes. Pansy, Mona thought, only distantly concerned with where her world-famous empathy had gone. And Greg – Greg who brought her flowers, who begged her every other Tuesday to bear his children – Greg fixed her with a look that blended “slept with my best friend” and “murdered my puppy” into a grimace of absolute malice.

“That was the longest smoke break since the discovery of tobacco,” Greg said.

“Oh, fuck you,” Mona spat.

“Can you two shut it?” Toshiro said, not removing his death-stare from Andy. Both maintained a death grip on a plastic figurine. “We’re waiting on you guys here.”

Greg threw the dice at Mona.

“Roll,” he said.

On the first toss, Mona flung both icosahedra so hard that they flew off the table. Meela wept silently. Fran gathered up the dice and placed them in Mona’s hand. On Mona’s second roll, they came up a perfect 40.

The table sat in shocked silence. The only sound was the wind swelling and shaking the window, demanding  entry.

Meela was the first to crack. “No no no no nooooo. Oh GOD!” she screamed, and tore into the kitchen, where she attempted to open an artery with a butter knife.

Fran wheeled on Andy. “You’re fucking him?” she said.

“I give him what he needs!” Toshiro hissed. One of the card tables spilled over, taking game pieces and half the board with it, as Fran tackled Andy to the floor.

While this was happening, Mona removed the ring on her left hand. She stood up and loomed over Greg. Everything was illuminated. Her soon-to-be-ex-fiancee sat fixed in his seat amid the chaos, wringing his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, over and over. He looked like he could cry, but his eyes were empty. The tears of the guilty, Mona’s mother used to call them.

“Not good enough,” she said. Mona unfastened and opened the window. “I need you to be sorrier.”

Two hours later, the apartment was swarming with police. Everyone had been taken away by one means or another, except Mona, who sat on her couch cradling her bandaged right hand in her left. A detective rummaged through the mess on the floor and picked up the top of a box in his gloved hand.

“Must have been a hell of a game,” he said.

“What?” Mona said.

He handed it to her. “Hell of a game, yeah?”

The game box cover depicted a young woman in Goth Lolita garb sitting on a throne woven out of bramble. The spear she held in her left hand dribbled blood onto the throne room floor. Scrawled above this in sharp pink lettering: Malevolence.

Mona handed it back. Her face was an unsolved jigsaw. “You know…I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever got around to playing it.”

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bewildered Bug challenged me with “Malevolence” and I challenged femmefauxpas with “No doubt about it: this was worse than the last time I’d drowned”.