Hey guys, sorry I haven't been updating the big stories. Also, Happy Pi Day! 3/14/15!!! Like 3.1415 and at 9:26 it was even cooler! Imagine if they had Pi Day in the 16th century. 3/14/1592 at 6:53. 3.141592653! Cool, isn't it? Well anyways, here's a sneak preview of my new story, Murderous. Enjoy!

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I walked along the hard pavement, blending in miserably with the cold dying day. How fitting. This image matched my predicament exactly: the last of today’s warmth dying from its brief moment in time making way for tomorrow to come. I was the day- dying to make room for another.

The girl walked behind me, a cold presence of raw force. She held her steely blade point against the small of my back, prodding me along towards… wherever we were going. If I slowed down too much, she would poke me with the tip, sometimes drawing blood too.

“Hurry up, Lackerman,” she growled with an icy tone. She dug the edge of the knife against my skin. I stumbled, but picked up the pace.

"Left."

I turned left, crossing the avenue and away from the busy sidewalk. We headed down a dark, desolate street where a few homeless guys panhandled for money to buy drugs, but with one look at my captor they scurried away, shooting me sympathetic looks. I wondered what was going on, but she didn't give me much time for thought.

"Stop," she commanded, sliding the knife around so it rested at my throat. Of course I halted immediately. I didn't want to die by walking into her blade.

We were standing in front of a deserted church. The once-fresh, white stone of the building was now grayed and grimy from the years it had seen. The faded stained glass windows were cracked and broken, the door hinges creaky with rust. Clearly, no one had used this place in a long time.

"Climb." She pushed me along up the stairs. She stepped up to the door, fumbling with the lock. Her back was turned, so I tried to make a break for it. Faster than my eye could follow, her knife whipped around my throat in a flash of silver. I gulped.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded coldly. "Go inside."

I could see there was no point in running anymore. I had to do what she asked and find out what she wanted from me. I had already given her everything, though: money, trinkets of jewelry, love... What more could she want?

"Vanessa, please! Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?"

She closed the door behind me. It slammed home with an echoing clang. She turned around and considered me with her steely blue eyes.

"What do I want?" she began slowly. "Well, I don't think you'll like it very much."

"Anything, I'll do anything; just tell me what you want!"

"What do I want?" she repeated. "Well, Davis Lackerman, I want you to die," Vanessa said in the most serious voice, speaking with a slow curiosity that made her sound like a psychotic little girl. Maybe she was. Hopefully I just didn't hear her right.

"Excuse me?" I asked incredulously.

"You heard me," she said in that same sly tone. "I know you did.  You're good at hearing things you want to hear, so I'm sure you can hear things you don't want to hear, you just don't want to acknowledge them."

Huh?

"There's been too much lying," she went on. "You said you loved me, but you didn't. You flirted with that girl who told you only the things you wanted to hear about yourself, deaf to my words which offered clarity, honesty, consequence."

Oh that. "Look, I'm sorry I was talking with her, but I wasn't flirting. I'm allowed to talk to other girls. It's natural. I love you so much, and she reminded me of you-"

"Enough excuses!" she snapped acidly. “You’re a greedy, incompetent fool, just like the rest of them, who only thinks of himself, for himself! Get up! Walk forward!”

She jammed the hilt of her knife into my back where she had cut me earlier, making me gasp in pain. I got to my feet and stumbled forwards toward the front of the spacious, deteriorating cathedral. A small, crumbling altar stood at the end of the aisle. A thin, watery shaft of light shined down from a crack in the ceiling, illuminating the swirling dust in the air and casted shadows on the offering plate.

"Kneel. Down on your knees.” I bowed before the altar, thinking maybe it was some kind of ritual that I ought to follow. I was on her territory now with her rules.

She stepped up on a block that sat behind the column that supported the plate.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked mysteriously. I shook my head. She continued. “It is a shrine of sorts, where priests and preachers once stood upon a podium and spun reels of lies about the afterlife. Now it’s my shrine, my shrine of lies I’ve told— to my father, to my brother, to Carl, to Timothy, to Stephen— and now… to you.” She grinned like a madman, lip curled back, top row of teeth flashing white in the light. I shuddered.

“What are you saying Vanessa?” I asked, trying to keep my quivering fear out of my voice. She smiled wider.

“I'm saying you'll meet their fate, very soon.” She closed her eyes and raised her hands over the altar like she was praying to the heavens above. She opened her eyes and looked down at me, stepping off the block and around the altar’s stand, stopping three inches away from my lowered head.

“It’s time to die."