“You have your key?” Blair asked, pausing at the door.
Dee pulled the ring with the key and ID card from the front of her dress. “Don’t lose it, because you won’t get another one,” she recited dutifully.
Blair smiled. “Good learner. You should give Nyles lessons.”
Nyles pursed his lips as he swung his backpack off his shoulder, unzipped the main compartment, and removed a plastic shopping bag. “I picked up some food for myself, but you’re welcome to it.” He paused, looking sheepish. “I, uh, didn’t think…”
“Didn’t think I’d need any?” Dee said.
“Yes, rather. Sorry.”
Dee peeked in the bag. It contained a prepackaged single serving of microwavable lasagna, a lunch-box apple, and a bottle of filtered water. Kind of like the lunches her stepmom used to pack her for school.
“Thanks,” she said, forcing a smile.
“Your neighbor is named Mara,” Blair said. “Redhead. Quiet. Kinda standoffish. She used to work at the bodega, but I haven’t seen her around in a couple of weeks.”
Dee glanced at the house next door. “Do you think she—”
“Was killed?” Nyles suggested. “No. We would have seen it.”
“Right.” Because every death was public on Alcatraz 2.0.
“Unless she offed herself,” Nyles mused. “It happens.”
The only thing worse than living next to a killer would be living next to a corpse. Or maybe it was the other way around.
“I’m sure Mara’s fine,” Blair said, more loudly than before. As if she wanted Dee’s neighbor to hear. Then she turned to Nyles. “At least we all hope she is.”
“Yes,” Nyles said, dropping his eyes, suitably chastised. “Of course.”
“The first thing you want to do is search the house,” Blair said, back to her bossily friendly manner. “There’s a utility closet in the kitchen. Check that first. Then the bathroom at the top of the stairs, and both bedrooms. The closets are on the far side of each room. That’s the most stressful part.”
Dee’s stomach flipped. The dead bolts seemed like cruel irony if someone could be lurking upstairs every time she came home.
“There should be clothes up there too,” Blair continued, “which will give you a better idea of what kind of role The Postman wants you to play.”
“Role?”
“Yeah,” Blair said. “I’m the mouthy tomboy. Nyles is the Euro geek. Ethan, the jock. Griselda, the edgy slut. Remember, he’s selling a brand, and he wants us to fit into his scripts.”
“Ten quid says he sticks with the princess theme,” Nyles said.
Dee arched a brow. “You have ten quid?”
Nyles’s face fell. “No. But if I did, that’s what I’d bet on.”
She didn’t think she could handle a closet full of princess dresses. Maybe she should pray that someone would jump out from behind her princess-inspired wardrobe and eviscerate her on the spot?
Dee stared at the bolted front door. The knocker was rusting, and the light on the old-fashioned doorbell flickered off and on erratically. She was half hoping Blair and Nyles would offer to come inside with her, help her check the place for intruders. But that seemed weak. And she knew better than to show weakness.
Blair must have sensed that Dee was hesitant to go inside. “Between Slycer and Jeremy,” she said, trying to sound encouraging, “I think the Postmantics have had enough entertainment for one day. The Painiacs should leave you alone for tonight.”
Dee wasn’t entirely sure she believed her, but she appreciated that Blair was trying to ease her fears. “Thanks.”
“And tomorrow,” Blair said, giving Dee’s shoulders a friendly squeeze, “we can talk about the future, okay? Tonight, rest.”
“But no sleeping until after two o’clock,” Dee said, suppressing a yawn. She had no idea how she was going to be able to stay awake that long.
“You catch on quick,” Blair said with a smile. “See you in the morning, Princess. Things will look brighter when the sun is shining again.”
Dee thought of Jeremy and the bloody froth of water that had erupted as he was eaten alive.
I seriously doubt it.
NYLES AND BLAIR HAD disappeared down the street, but Dee still stood in front of her new home. Temporary home. One way or another, I probably won’t be here long.
Maybe Griselda was right: she just needed to embrace the fact that she was going to die on this island.
Dee shivered. The fog had pushed across the water and was now pouring over the flat expanse of Alcatraz 2.0. It seeped through the gaps between duplexes, and the houses at either end of the street had already disappeared behind the thick, damp veil. The air smelled like the sea, a dank mix of nature and decay, as if the fog brought a piece of the Pacific Ocean with it as it invaded the San Francisco Bay. Dee wasn’t sure if the sun had officially set or not, but Nyles’s initial warning hammered into her brain: Only be outside with the sun.
And yet, as she stood in front of the locked door, key gripped in her shaking hand, she couldn’t bring herself to go inside.
Was she afraid that someone would be waiting for her? Maybe. But Nyles and Blair were pretty confident that any killings were done for the day, the bloodthirsty Painiacs satiated.
Painiacs. Huh. Maybe that was more trendable than Nyles thought.
Yeah, so if it wasn’t that, what was Dee so afraid of?
Normalization. She had a house, with a key. Inside there was a closet full of clothes. A kitchen where she could make food. Tomorrow she had a job to work. A commute. Coworkers.
It was a life, just like people had back in the real world, and it would be so easy to succumb to that longing to feel normal again. She could embrace this role that The Postman had chosen for her, play it out until the end, try to pretend that her world was ordinary right up to the point when she was strung up by Gucci Hangman, or trapped in a game of human archery with Robin’s Hood. If she bought into the illusion, would her life on Alcatraz 2.0 be easier?
Dee clenched her jaw at the idea of playing along with The Postman’s plan.
“Oh, hell no,” she said out loud.
Movement to Dee’s left startled her. A curtain in the window next door fluttered as it was pulled aside. In the encroaching darkness, Dee could just make out a face in the window. Large green eyes, translucent white skin, and long auburn hair. The girl made eye contact with Dee for a split second; then the curtain dropped back into place, and she was gone.
Hello, Mara. At least she knew her neighbor still existed. Dee wondered how long she’d been watching. Long enough to hear Blair and Nyles’s conversation about her? Probably.
Whatever. Not her problem. Dee took a deep breath, thrust the key into the lock, and swung open the door to her temporary new home.
The room was dark, lit only by a bluish glow. Dee slid her hand up the smooth surface of the wall until her fingers grazed a switch. She was half expecting the lights not to work, yet another trick in The Postman’s arsenal, but the moment she flicked the lever, a soft yellow glow erupted from sconces along the wall, illuminating a small living room. The space was compact but clean, and despite the single window beside the door, it wasn’t as depressing a room as Dee had expected. It was generically furnished—couch, armchair, coffee table, all made from sturdy oak. The upholstery was brown with burgundy stripes, which matched the warm oak grain wood, and the whole thing reminded Dee of a business hotel she and her parents had stayed at a few years ago when her stepmom had been in Dallas for work. Except for one “homey” touch—a needlepoint throw pillow on the sofa depicting a rainbow descending from a cloud to a house beside the words HOME, SWEET HOME.
Gee, thanks, Postman. Douche.
Round, half-dome security cameras—like the ones inside I Scream—were mounted to the ceiling, tucked away in every corner. Their red lights flickered to life as Dee entered, just in case she had any illusions of privacy. This house probably had more cameras than a Vegas casino, a
nd as if to remind Dee that her every move would be caught on film, above the mantel a large-screen TV was showing Jeremy’s final moments as he flailed around with a dozen shortfin makos in the frothy pink foam of his own gore. The Postman had added a GIF of a shark breaching the water, superimposed on the slo-mo replay of the feeding frenzy, and the hashtag #NiceTryJeremy flashed across the image every time Jeremy thrashed in the water. In the sidebar, the comments scrolled quickly up the screen as the Postmantics continued to voice their approvals and disapprovals of the video—about a sixty-forty split in favor, best she could tell—and Dee wondered what was playing on Jeremy’s live dedicated channel at that moment. A feed from his empty house? Or perhaps the channel, like Jeremy, was dead.
Dee turned away, unwilling to watch an endless loop of Jeremy’s death, but the sound of his screams was just as disturbing. Was the volume set to maximum? She scanned the coffee table and sofa, looking for a remote control. Shocker: she couldn’t find one. Which meant there was no way to turn off the screen or the sound.
So, that was awesome. She’d be surrounded by snuff films every moment of every day. This island kept getting better and better.
An archway at the end of the living room opened into a dining-kitchen combo with a staircase running up one wall. A round four-seater table sat perfectly centered beneath a glass-and-chrome light fixture, and directionals lined the shiny white kitchen. Stove, fridge, microwave, dishwasher, motion-sensitive cameras. All the comforts of home. Tucked beneath the stairs, the utility closet Blair had warned her about. Thankfully, the door stood open, exposing a stacked washer-dryer and, unfortunately, enough empty space to house a weapon-bearing sociopath.
The good news was that if Dee came home to DIYnona hanging out in her laundry cupboard with some razor-sharp knitting needles or a home welding kit, she had a secondary means of escape. The entire back wall of the house was taken up by a sliding glass door. Which was, of course, annoyingly easy to shatter to gain entry, but she wasn’t going to think about that right now. Dee tugged on the handle to make sure it was locked, then flipped a nearby light switch. Exterior floods illuminated the backyard. It was a concrete rectangle with a set of wicker lawn chairs that had seen better days, and it was separated from Mara’s identical patch by a warped wooden fence.
Dee left the outside light on and turned away from the glass door, surveying the kitchen. She felt helpless, exposed—the red dots from the multitude of cameras were following her every move. Did she already have subscribers to her personal channel? The idea made her skin crawl: creepy dudes cycling through camera feeds from her house until they located her in the kitchen, still wearing her Cinderella gown.
“Screw that,” she said out loud.
She dumped Nyles’s shopping bag in the fridge and turned to the kitchen drawers. Maybe she could find a knife. Or a mallet. Hell, even a fork—anything she could use as a weapon.
Dee rifled through the drawers, yanking them open with such force that the entire cupboard shook. They were all empty except for one, which held a collection of white plastic cutlery. Sporks. Nothing but sporks, and certainly nothing even remotely resembling a weapon unless her attacker was made of Jell-O.
Still, she slipped a plastic spork from the drawer and tucked it into the front of her dress. It probably wouldn’t even break an assailant’s skin, but having a weapon, any kind of weapon, made her feel as if she had a chance. Even if she didn’t.
Jeremy’s screams filled her ears again as the video replay looped back around to his death. His terror was triggering, and Dee felt her heart rate accelerate. Really, a spork against one of The Postman’s killers? Was she mental?
Dee rushed into the living room, eyes frantically searching for something else she could use as a weapon. Maybe she could break the leg off the coffee table. She crossed the room, dumped the table on its side, and tried to wrench one of the wooden legs away.
It wouldn’t budge, and Dee quickly realized why: the table, the sofa, the chair—each was constructed from one solid piece of wood. Dee would have needed a saw or a sledgehammer to break it apart, and she seriously doubted she’d find either on Alcatraz 2.0.
Well, if she couldn’t break the table, maybe she could use the table to break something else? Dee grinned as she heaved the table off the floor and launched it directly at the TV.
She’d expected the TV to short-circuit, silencing it forever, or at the very least for the screen to shatter, splintering the image, like that time she dropped her iPhone and her cracked screen made everything look like a Picasso during his cubism phase. Instead, the table merely bounced off the screen, striking the wall beside the front door before it crash-landed—still in one piece—on the plush brown carpet.
Seriously? Unbreakable glass on a TV screen? Was that even possible?
She tried one of the metal chairs from the kitchen table next. Same result.
Dee turned her attention to the domed cameras. If the furniture and the TV were indestructible, she guessed the cameras would be as well. But maybe she could pry the dome off by using her spork and dismantle the camera within? Worth a shot.
She righted the table, placed it against the wall beneath one of the domes, and climbed on top, picturing the close-up image of her nostrils that the camera must have been capturing. She slipped the spork from her dress and reached out toward the camera with her other hand, but the moment Dee’s fingertips touched the domed lid of the camera, a searing pain ripped through her arm.
Dee tore her hand away, clutching it to her body. The cameras were electrified. Just fucking great. She couldn’t turn off the TV; she couldn’t get near the cameras to cut their feed. The Postman had thought of everything.
Dee’s hand still ached as she slowly mounted the stairs to the second floor, where the ever-present noise from the screen below was less noticeable. From the landing, a door opened to the bathroom, which was thankfully camera-free. Or so she thought. When Dee stepped into the room to inspect the shower—a standard bathtub-showerhead combo with a clear plastic curtain—a red dot blipped to life in the middle of the huge mirror above the sink.
At first Dee thought it was a reflection of a camera light from the hallway, but as she peered closer to the mirror, she realized that the camera was embedded in the glass.
What the hell? She couldn’t even get privacy in the bathroom? Sure, the toilet was tucked into a nook in the corner, hopefully out of the shot, but the camera’s red light directly faced the shower’s transparent curtain.
Dee could only imagine how many pervs watched the bathroom feeds from Alcatraz 2.0.
Guess I’ll be showering in my underwear.
But at least the see-through curtain nixed the possibility of a Psycho-style shower scene—she’d definitely see an attacker coming through the clear curtain.
It was a small victory, but Dee would take it.
Like the drawers in the kitchen, the bathroom yielded no possibilities for a weapon, just a hairbrush, a variety of sparkly makeup accessories, and a dental hygiene kit including toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss.
In the hall beside the bathroom, Dee discovered a linen closet with shelves that fit flush with the door. A dozen light-green bath and hand towels, half as many washcloths, and an extra set of sheets and blankets were stacked inside. Dee grabbed each of the shelves and tugged. If they were removable, she wanted to know. The shelves held firm, which hopefully meant she wouldn’t find a masked serial killer curled up with the linens when she got home from work.
Two identical bedrooms flanked each side of the bathroom—one facing the front of the house, one facing the back. Each had a queen-size bed, bureau, nightstand, and closet. The nightstand drawers were empty, except for a pair of neon-orange foam earplugs. An act of kindness to help her sleep despite the ever-present TV noise downstairs? Or a trick to allow serial killers to sneak into her room unnoticed? Dee left the earplugs where they were. She’d take her chances with sleeplessness rather than wake up to find Gassy Al looming over he
r bed.
Next, Dee opened each of the bedroom closets in turn, spork firmly gripped in her hand, as she half expected the Hardy Girls or Barbaric Barista to jump out at any moment. Luckily, the back bedroom closet was empty, and the accordion doors on the other were already folded open. An olive branch from management. See? Nothing hiding in here…yet. Not that she was about to let her guard down. Hell no. That was what The Postman wanted, to lull her into a false sense of security before he pulled the rug out.
And if the wardrobe was any indication, The Postman definitely planned to mess with her.
First off, there were no pants. No jeans, no shorts, no leggings. Which was pretty much all Dee had lived in when she’d been a normal teenager in LA. Jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. Jean shorts, tank top, flip-flops. Jeans, sweater, boots. Rinse, repeat. She liked muted dark colors, the occasional nerd-proud tee, no patterns. This closet was pretty much the complete opposite.
Dresses and skirts, frilly blouses and embellished jackets, all grouped on connected hangers for easy grab-and-go ability. A yellow peasant dress with off-the-shoulder sleeves. An ice-blue A-line dress with a translucent white cardigan. A green pencil skirt with a ruffled purple tank top. A tiered yellow skirt with a royal-blue puff-sleeved tee and a red headband…
The last one seemed familiar. The color combination of yellow, blue, and red. Dee glanced down at the ball gown she was still wearing, then back up at the Crayola-inspired closet, and groaned out loud.
Beauty. Rapunzel. The Little Mermaid. Snow White.
Nyles was right. The Postman was turning her into a modern-day fairy-tale princess.
Dee flung Snow White across the room. Bad enough she’d lost her sister, then been wrongly convicted of the murder; now she was going to be humiliated, forced to prance around the island in these stupid clothes while millions of people gawked and laughed and placed bets on how many days she’d survive until her blood was spilled in the name of entertainment.
Screw The Postman, screw the criminal-justice system, screw the government for letting it all happen. She wouldn’t play their game, and if that meant she died faster, so be it.
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