Blood

While he tortured himself over the morality and plausibility of this whole deal, the girls came down to him. They stood between him and the waves, smiling down to him in silence. Words couldn't convince anyone to do this. They didn't look like angels in the night when he finally looked up at them, but something close. However close you can get to that in moonlight on the beach when asking someone to kill you.

Two of them reach out their hands, and her took them. Back by the stairs he picked up the knife. Sand stuck to his blood. He started to clean it off, but they told him it didn't matter, and lined up in front of him, facing the bay. Lights scattered along both arms of the Cape, leaking a bit over the horizon. The Milky Way hung over them, dimmed by light pollution, but not hidden.

"It has to go through the heart." The girl on the right took his free hand and held it to her chest. "Right between these two ribs and angled in to the center." He took a deep breath and nodded. She grasped his hand and told him "you're doing the right thing. I know that sounds terribly cheesy, but it's so true. You won't be forgotten." He looked into her eyes and smiled. The hilt of the knife was starting to get sticky with the blood from his hand. She nodded and he pointed it at their hands. She let go of one and took gentle hold of his knife wrist. Not sure what to do with his free hand, he slid it around her waist to the small of her back. They were so close he felt like she would fall over before he was able to finish.

She leaned in and kissed him before positioning the tip to make sure it did the job. She took a deep breath and nodded, and gasped as the knife plunged into her heart far easier and smoother than he expected. Her weight deadened. Rather than letting her fall, he let go of the knife in her chest, wrapped his arms around her, and let her gently fall back into the sand. After hesitatng a moment, he pulled the knife from her body and stood in front of the next girl. "You need put more blood on the knife. It's all in her now."

He held the knife in the wrong hand and squeezed more blood onto the blade. She took his left hand, now sticky with two bloods, held it to her chest like the first, and smiled. "Thank you." They switched hands, and she kissed him. He held her in the strange embrace again. She nodded smiling, and she died just like the girl before her.

The third girl had tears running down her cheeks. "We all love you." He could feel her heart pumping hard beneath her skin. She semmed scared. "If you don't want to do this-" She cut him off with a slap to the face, then grabbed his hand tighter. "It doesn't work unless we all go. If you don't free us all it's just two counts of attempted murder. I meant it when I said we love you for doing this. We're tired. We want to go home." She smiled and pulled the knife up to her chest.

Another kiss, another girl laying in the sand, leaking blood. He stood above them for a moment and let himself cry a little longer before running back to the house. He scrubbed his arms in the kitchen sick and threw his clothes down the basement, feeling more and more tired every second, until he passed out on the couch in the living room.