He ran to her, the woman caked in blood, a knife wound in her back. He’d only left to take a shower, he was only gone twenty minutes, the sound of the steaming water pouring past his ears and down his sweaty skin must have blocked out the sounds of her screams.

He ran to her side wearing nothing but a white hotel towel. Leaned over yelling, pleading for her to be okay. But after turning her onto her back he understood it was too late.

She was dead.

Death stood vigil as the woman said goodbye to her physical form and looked on sympathetically at the man she had laid with for the first time only half an hour ago.

Death offers his hand and she takes it leaving the scene of her murder, leaving the man alone with her corpse.

He kneels there on the floor, face buried in the sheets the body lays upon. His hands grip the covers, rose petals buried between his fingers.

With tears streaming down his cheeks he begs the universe to tell him why, why was his girlfriend killed in such a brutal way? He was sure he’d locked the door, sure the windows on the fifth floor were still shut.

Could she have answered the door to someone? If so, why was she still naked? Nobody answers the door naked.

He was right about everything, the killer had not entered via any physical means, just as she had never left.

Sylvia, daughter of Death stood in the shadows admiring her handywork. Hiding from the eyes of her father who had arrived to collect his soul on cue.

The woman was always supposed to die tonight, not by murder, but by over-excursion after a night filled with lustful pleasure. So it gave Sylvia the perfect cover to get to her first.

“She was a cheat, and an adulterous whore.” Sylvia’s silent words told the grieving boyfriend. He would miss her, but so would the other five men she had been seeing at the same time, who were all sure to come to her funeral.

Her phone sits just inches from her fingertips, right beside the man’s hand as it pings a message from one of the other men. A single emoji in response to the photo she had sent him just moments before her death.

The man looks at the message, his eyes blurred with confusion and tears as he holds her phone up to her face, unlocking it. He sees the image clear as day and screams at her body, lobbing her phone at the wall smashing it to pieces, glass raining down on her.

He gathers his clothes, dresses quickly and leaves her behind, slamming the door behind him. In life she could have been happy with him, but in the end she was always intended to be alone and naked with Death.