THE AMULET Part 1

Kimmy listened distantly to the stony clunk as the heavy head of the wet and sticky ax fell to the concrete beneath her feet. This had been easily the longest day of her life and, finally, it seemed to be drawing to a messy, ugly close. Laying strewn about the place like discarded store-front mannequins were the mutilated remains of seven bodies each in a vastly different state of slaughter and disassembly. Kimmy surveyed here doing, sighed with a confusing mixture of remorse and cloying disdain, and crouched to her knees in order to collect the Amulet she'd fought so bravely to reclaim from the dying hands of her family and friends. This very Amulet, some might have called it the Jewel of Mortis, was the cause of and solution to all of the plaguing problems that filled the last 24 hours like a bowl too overloaded with soup. Kimmy hadn't a clue as to how any of it occurred; all she knew was that upon waking from her restless slumber, she was set on by her three brothers: each enveloped in a milky, blank stare and consumed by their merciless thirst for murder. Kimmy had no idea that the hunger was brought on by the Amulet she'd just purchased a day earlier from a street vender outside of the Museum she'd visited on a class field trip. Even as she sprung from her bed, clamored down the basement steps to the garage, and snatched the axe from against the wall nearest the wood-burning furnace, did she still remain blissfully dumbfounded and intensely frightened at the curious goings-on. Kimmy was never one to show an overt amount of courage; some might have even called her a bit too girly to be the self-proclaimed tom boy that she's often strived to be. But she brought out every bit of her pent up anger and survival skills as she systematically severed heads from necks and twitching limbs from torsos. Yes, her family was lying about in rapidly congealing pools of blood, but the Amulet was her's once again. Now, it was only a matter of getting out of the house...