The fluorescent hum of the girls' bathroom at Arcata High School was a familiar, almost comforting drone. Today, it was punctuated by Juliet’s wild, celebratory dancing.

“Girl, this year is going to be sick! We’re seniors!” she shrieked, her voice echoing off the tiled walls. I rolled my eyes, a small smile playing on my lips. Juliet had always been the enthusiastic one, a stark contrast to my own carefully maintained composure.

I leaned closer to the mirror, applying a shimmery coat of cherry lip gloss. The sweet scent filled my nostrils, a momentary distraction from the dull ache behind my eyes. Last night’s Miss Arcata High practice had been brutal, another forced performance in my mother’s endless pageant of perfection. As I smacked my lips together, sealing the gloss, the world warped.

The bathroom’s harsh lights dissolved into a sepia-toned gloom. I was no longer in school, but in a cavernous church, its interior vast and silent. Wooden benches stretched into the dim distance. I lay on the pulpit, disoriented, my head swimming. My gaze drifted to a stained-glass window: Judas, hanging from an olive tree, thirty pieces of gold glinting at his feet. The colors were breathtaking – amber, gold, green – a beautiful horror.

A gasp tore from my throat as a woman loomed over me, a knife glinting wickedly in her hand. I raised my hands instinctively, but she merely laughed, a chilling, guttural sound, and seized my hair, pulling my head back. Her fingers, cold and sharp, traced the line of my jaw.

“Don’t worry, Leslie,” she purred, her lips curling into an evil sneer. “It won’t hurt for long.”

Leslie? Who was Leslie? Before I could form the question, she chanted a string of incomprehensible words. The air thickened, heavy with an unseen force. Then, the knife plunged into my heart. A blinding flash, a sharp, cold pain, and I jolted upright, gasping for air.