have viole[n]t ends. clue.

[✨ zozo.]

I remember Whitney's hand wriggled out of mine. I remember screaming, and the crack of something hitting porcelain, and the door swinging open.

And I didn't hesitate.

I should've clutched her hand. Refused to let her go, the way I did down there in the dark. A sweetbitter taste still lingers between my teeth from the bottles we sipped on and I wince, running the tip of my tongue around my mouth. Tastes like regret, I should have dragged her out with me, "Whitney?!" I should of, I should of, I-

"WHITNEY?!"

I can't breathe, anxiety clutches at me and the world tips sideways. Left, I hit the side of the hallway and feel my lips go numb. Goosebumps bristle the back of my neck and they tingle as my lungs close up, running my palms across the wallpaper and feeling nothing but shocks of half-awake nerves dancing through my forearms. 

I'm going to die in this house.

Stumbling and gasping, choking on my own fear, I look for the first door and fling it open. Alone, I hurry into the room's four walls and slam the handle shut, acutely aware I have nothing to defend myself with. Not even a nail file-

I curse the empty bottles made of glass, the knife that had fallen to the basement floor with a thud, the burning torch in Whitney's hands. Three weapons I abandoned, along with her. Whitney. All alone. And Blaine - the thought of him makes me retch, decaying and pale and so void of his soul, left for dead in the bath tub, and then I shake and gasp and slide to the floor and scream into my hands. I'm stupid. Stupid, and selfish, and terribly, awfully, terrifyingly alone.

Just a stupid little flower girl who thought she could grow in a house without light.

[ violet be lookin for a key !! ]

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[ all graphics in posts are from here ]

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[✨ zozo.]

For a moment too long I simply sit there and weep. It's selfish and stupid, just like I, to sit put in one place while a killer roams the house. All I can think about is Whitney. Her hand leaving mine for Poppy's. How I demanded for an explanation as to why she locked me in the kitchen. Then Coralie shrieked, and Amrin leapt toward her, and I heard that great c r a c k -

I've seen many a dead person in my life. But I've never seen someone die. She might not even be dead, Amrin, sitting in the kitchen with me whilst Indigo cooked. Petting Baxter between his ears affectionately. Sifting through books in the library. Holding her head high and speaking her mind. She could be still breathing - I didn't bother to check. I'm not sure if I'm more disgusted with the concept of her bleeding out of her ears on the bathroom floor or the fact that I left before I could see it happen. Maybe I could've held her. Maybe I could've saved her.

She might be rotting, too, in the basement. Or it could all be a trick and she's behind this door, knife in her hands, ready to gut me like a fish.

Mr. Nox choked to death on his own blood, slit clean across the throat. That I know. But Blaine, dear Blaine, he'd been too dead for me to tell. I whimper at the thought of him, tremble at the idea of someone finding my body like that. Decaying and rotten, flies and bugs making a home in my bones and my organs. The thought of Mom and Dad planting me in the back garden and hoping flowers grow in my place makes my bottom lip tremble - I don't want to be flowers and earth. Not yet. Not yet.

With a great sigh I wipe my tears with the edge of my sleeve and haul myself up, walking off the numbness in my legs. Each creak or footstep or murmur from the house makes me freeze. Every strange sound dares me not to breathe. For good measure I take a chair and barricade the door - then I question it once more, what if I need to get out - what if help needs to get in.

For what feels like hours I ponder and second-guess myself, searching the unused office for any sort of weapon. No letter-openers, no furniture legs, not even curtain cord. Only dust, making me sneeze every other minute, greets me on my quest.

The last desk drawer shines with the glint of metal and my heart skips a beat - but it's not a knife.

It's a key.

Of course, I think, carefully plucking it from the depths of the wooden drawer. If the trapdoor from the kitchen that plunged me into the basement was anything to go by, there's bound to be more ways to get back into the basement. And in the basement there's our torch still burning, and the glass bottles I can smash, and my knife.

With all my might I shove the wooden desk to the corner of the roof, roll up the red and gold rug below it, and find exactly what I'm looking for.

[ violet tries to open the door ]

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[✨ zozo.]

For a moment I hesitate, key hanging just above the trapdoor hole. Instinct, perhaps, or common sense. My body flinches, heart racing, begging me not to go back down there. I can hear Whitney's gasps, the way she held me back as her voice shook so violently it were as if she'd seen a ghost.

"No, Vi,"
"No, you don't want to be in here."
"Please, please, let's go, you don't—"

But we saw much worse than a ghost.

It's the thought of her that pushes my hand down. The key slides in to the hole with ease and I gasp a little, like perhaps I'd hoped it wouldn't fit. But of course it did. I knew it would. Because I'm not stupid. Not all the time. Sometimes I'm right.

And Whitney - she's right. Right and good and kind and brave, and she's worth plunging back into the dark to find again.

So I furrow my brow, take a breath, and twist my wrist with vigor.

[ violet tries to open the door #2 ]

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[✨ zozo.]

("Last door," I say.

"Are we ready?")

My head screams don't do it,
but my heart screams just one name:
Whitney.

So I grasp the corners of the trapdoor and lift.

[ violet tries to open the door #3 ]

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[✨ zozo.]

But it doesn't budge.

"No!" I moan, writhing and heaving at the edges of the trapdoor. "No no NO! Damn it all!"

Something underneath the wood latches the door shut. It groans and scratches at my efforts but they are for naught, giving up as I slump back onto my knees and pound the floor childishly with my fist. Stupid Violet, thinking it would be that easy. Even in his death Malcolm Nox was still holding me back, still making me sweat, still grinning at me like he knew something I don't.

"Fuck!" I bark, twisting the key up and out of its hole. So sure I had been this would work. So confident - how he mocks me, Mr. Nox, alone and afraid in his mansion of horrors.

Still, Whitney's safety perils my heart. I slip the damn thing into the pocket of my jeans and get to thinking. If there's a trapdoor here, and one in the kitchen, and Whitney found me in the dark somehow, then there has to be more secret doors in the other rooms.

No weapon as sharp as the plan in my head, I leap from my place and slip quietly out of the office.

[ violet tries to find another key in another room ]

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[✨ zozo.]

"Bingo!" - it's much quicker to find something when you know it's hidden in plain sight.

This time behind an old painting, the door no larger than me on all fours - it'll be a squeeze. I can fit. Surely. Just. A squeeze, for sure, and the idea of being alone in the dark with barely any room to move makes me frightened beyond measure - but the sight of the cut-out door in the wall gives me hope nonetheless.

Carefully I take out the key from my pocket and hold my breath, the corner of my tongue poking out the side of my mouth in concentration.

[ violet tries to open this door ]

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[✨ zozo.]

It fits. But I must learn my lessons if I'm to pass this test. Instead of a gasp, my chest rises and falls calmly with shallow breaths, all too aware of the failure I'd found in the office. It's what Mr. Nox would have wanted, I think. To watch me grow and learn. To make me a better person. To make me think, assess, look beyond the box. To solve his riddles and puzzles.

Perhaps without the fear of death wrapped around my every muscle, but I suppose that's not his fault.

Look at me now, Mr. Nox, I think slyly as I move to turn the key. Look at me now.

[ violet tries to open this door #2 ]

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[✨ zozo.]

"HA! If it were me, you’d be the last person I killed."

God, I hope it's Whitney.
Maybe she'll spare me.

"Let's look for a door, c'mon."

Wait, what am I thinking?

"It’s nothing, it’s just a speck of blood."

Whitney couldn't be. She just couldn't.

"We’re gonna figure all this out."

Could she?



[ violet tries to open this door #3 ]

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[✨ zozo.]

This house is mocking me.

I shriek, push out terrible word from gritted teeth, and kick the painting over in a huff.

"Give her back!" I beg the night, frustrated and manic and flooded with guilt. "I didn't," breathless and dizzy, "I didn't let go-"

She let go of my hand.

Because she didn't want to be saved.
Because she didn't want me in here when Coralie,
when Poppy,
when Amrin,
when she-

Maybe I didn't lose Whitney. Maybe I escaped her.

I rise and hurl myself through the door, the halls, up the stairs and around corners. I'm not thinking clearly. There's a killer in this house, and a dead boy in the basement, and by sunrise I'll either be gone like Whitney or worse like Blaine. And if I can't trust anyone, not even Whit, not even my own mind - then what's the point of it all? What was the point of me coming here, taking a chance I knew was slim to begin with, just to die alone and unsure of my own self?

Like hell.

Furious, I rattle doorknobs and hurl the first unlocked door wide open with a bang. Anger coarses through me, though who I'm most angry at I cannot tell. Mr. Nox, for sending the stupid lavender invitation. My parents, for convincing me to try. Poppy and Adam, for locking me in the kitchen. Whitney, for taking my hand and letting it go and stealing away my reason to replace it with doubt.

Or myself, for being too stupid to end up here in the first place.


[ violet be lookin for a key AGAIN!!!!!!! ]

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[✨ zozo.]

Behind a bookshelf, I don't bother with safety or silence. If the killer wants to be done with me already they can come and fucking find me, show me their face, look me square in the eye as they watch me gargle on my own blood. I've been looking at death kissing the faces of corpses for years and years. The least this coward can do is watch me join the dead.

With a hiss and a grit of my teeth, I jam the stupid fucking key into the stupid fucking hole.

"Third time's a god damn charm huh, Mr Nox?"


[ violet be opening a third damn door]

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[✨ zozo.]

It's a given that this key fits and turns all the locks just fine. But which it unlocks is a question I could spend all night hunting for the answer to. If Mr. Nox were here he'd tell me to be smart, slow down, to take a moment to think - but I'm all out of time, all out of smarts, and damn all out of patience to care about the advice from a dead man. All the intelligence in the world couldn't stop him from inviting a murderer into his home, letting them sleep in one of his rooms, allowing them to get so close to him that they were so easily able to kill him. All the money in the world and he's dead, yet I'm still alive. That's got to count for something. It's just got to.


[ violet be opening a third damn door #2]

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[✨ zozo.]

"If this fucking door doesn't fucking open so help me Ripred-!"


[ violet be opening a third damn door #3]

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WE'RE IN BITCHES!!!

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