Jeannette's Story - An Insane, Nonsensical Night of Horrors

The dining room of the Fortune Library sits half-lit and wrong, plates still on the table, a knife glinting beside cold scraps.

Jeannette Fortune stands over the meal, tall and motionless, while the back door gives a soft metallic click from the hall.

The lock is being worked from the outside. Slow. Careful. Someone knows what they are doing.

A shadow stretches under the back door, then lengthens across the floorboards toward the table, thin as a knife blade.

The voice is muffled but steady, hungry with certainty. One more click sounds from the lock, and the door shifts in its frame.

Something on the table gives off the sour-sweet stink of the meal, and the silence around it seems to tighten, waiting for Jeannette Fortune to move.

Jeannette yanks the back door inward on its hinges, and the journalist lurches with it, swallowed from the threshold into the dining room.

Her arm clamps across his upper chest before he can shout, and his lockpick skitters free across the boards.

His satchel splits against the table edge as they crash sideways, papers flashing white in the lamplight.

One page slides clear and sticks on the floor, stamped with the Fortune Library seal and a list of missing patrons.

He twists in her grip, reaching not for the knife, but for the loose pages at his feet.

Jeannette drives the knife in low, but the journalist jerks hard at the last instant. The blade catches skin at the side of his neck, not the throat, and a thin line of blood jumps bright against his collar.

He uses the opening to wrench free just enough to drag one paper out from under the table leg, the stamped list scraping over the boards. His other hand flies up, not to fight, but to shield the document against her next strike.

The knife hand stalls in the cramped space between them. The cut has stopped the clean kill, but it also forces the journalist back into the light, where the page is plain as day, Fortune Library seal and all.

He does not have the satchel anymore, only the proof pinched in one shaking hand, and the blood at his neck marks the exact line she missed.

Jeannette lunges again, and this time the knife drives home into the journalist’s side with a wet, ugly thud. He folds around the wound, breath punching out of him in a broken gasp.

His raised hand slips. The stamped page flutters, catches on the edge of the table, and skids across the floor into the spill of papers by the door.

The journalist stares at the document on the boards, then at Jeannette, understanding hardening into panic as his free hand scrabbles for the floor instead of the blade.

Blood drips from the cut at his neck and now from the new wound too, but he is not dead. The paper lies within reach, clear as evidence, while he bleeds and twists between the knife and the door.

Jeannette twists the knife free and shoves him hard enough to drop him flat. The journalist stops fighting the floor with one last wet choke.

His hand opens. The copied pages spill wide, then Jeannette gathers them in one sweep and feeds them into the fireplace.

The first sheet catches, blackening at the corners. Ink curls, the library seal warps, and the stack sinks into orange flame.

The journalist lies still beside the table, blood soaking into the boards and tracking toward the threshold.

Smoke thickens under the mantel. The burned pages crackle, and the room smells of paper, ash, and iron.

Then the fireplace pops sharply, and a half-burned corner lifts free in the draft, still bearing a smear of blue ink near the grate.

Jeannette Fortune kicks the back door shut with her heel and turns the lock. The latch catches. She drags the journalist by the collar into the firelight, where the blood trail smears dark across the boards.

She lowers herself over him, knife still in hand, and tears into the wound with ruthless speed. His body jerks once, then goes slack under her weight.

The room answers with a wet bite and a sharp rustle of cloth. Smoke rolls lower from the mantel, curling around Jeannette's boots as she works.

A final bite leaves him gone from the floor, what remains dragged close and hidden from the door. The copied pages in the hearth collapse into a blackened crumble.

Then wood taps softly at the locked door from the outside, once, twice, as if someone has just arrived too late to witness it.