Red blooms in the water. Petals unfurling. If you just focus on the growing spirals of red in the water. Crimson curling and dancing around one another.

If you just focus on that.

If you don’t look for the source.

It’s beautiful.

I’m frozen.

Trance like as I watch the red shift around me. I reach out a pale hand disrupting the vermilion. It breaks, making way for my hand.

This jolts me out of my stuper and I look up. I look to the source.

I wish I hadn’t.

I wish I had stayed in the quiet hum of my blissfully ignorant trance.

It’s Alice.

Or what’s left of her.

She’s been gutted.

From her belly button to the base of her throat. A bright red smiling gash let’s her insides out.

I can’t help it.

I scream, I thrash in the pool.

Choking on bile and chlorinated water.

I have to get out of here.