In the midst of this, still in her bathrobe, Davette sat drinking vodka on the rocks and watching these dreadful people reshape her universe. It was all so distant somehow, as if this really weren't her house and Aunt Vicky weren't really dead and one morning she'd wake up...
No. Best not to get too detailed and lose the fantasy.
So she just sat and drank some more and waited for the scurrying trolls to leave. Which they did about midnight. Not because they were finished. But because Ross couldn't wait one more minute to try out his new playhouse. He dismissed the workers and went out to hunt.
Ross returned soon, just after two, with two couples driven in a limousine of their own. The four were well dressed and cultured and wildly, happily, drunk and friendly, the two men in their early forties, their wives a few years younger, and they laughed and laughed as they came tripping through the front door following Ross and they laughed as they got their drinks and they laughed some more when one of the ladies caught a heel on the edge of Ross's new red carpet and when Ross made some comment about Demon Rum they laughed some more and one of the men raised his glass and said, "I'll drink to that!" And they all laughed a lot at that and then Ross apologized for the unsecured rug, explaining that he was in the midst of redecorating and one of the women, who could not have known that the whorish red carpet was Ross's idea, picked up an edge of it and said, "Better hurry!"
And all four laughed longest and hardest at that until they realized Ross was not laughing at all. Davette was thirty feet away and above them, hidden in a shadowy recess, still wearing her bathrobe, still drinking her vodka, and she could not only see but feel the change in Ross. His coldness and anger, instantaneous, eruptive, seem to sphere out from him to the high walls of the living room and back, and the two couples, as the wave passed through them, caught their breaths and their faces went slack and pale.
And then Ross was all smiles and laughing one second later, his face animated and gracious and gregarious and endearing. And Davette watched the four stare and exchange uncertain, uneasy looks. But this passed because they had just been having such a good time and Ross was so charming, after all and...
And what was this? A game! How fun!
And Ross was everywhere among them, laughing, making them laugh and oh, yes! we're going to play a game, a drinking game, but we need one nondrinker, and somehow they were persuaded to fetch their chauffeur in while Ross and an ash-faced servant rolled out the plastic tarp left by the painters to cover the new red rug. The women had to take off their high heels, to keep from making holes in the plastic, and there Ross was, on his knees, to assist them and oh, the comments and the sly exchanged looks and the ooh's as he performed this sensual task.
But then all was ready for the game and Ross personally positioned everyone, including the chauffeur, at just the right place on the plastic tarp after first taking their glasses from their hands. And one of the men groaned and said, "I thought this was a drinking game!" and Ross smiled a sly smile and, "It is! It is! You'll see!" and then he had one last person to position, the loveliest of the women, the only name Davette had caught from her perch, Evelyn, whose long black dress suited her so. Ross took her by the shoulders and stepped her over to the center of the tarp, the exact center, and then, with everyone smiling and laughing, turned her once more with her shoulders, turned her around so that her smiling faced his and slit a gaping gash in her throat with the edges of his long fingernails.
The blood fountained from her severed arteries and Ross had an impish moment to catch some of it in his mouth before turning and doing the same thing to her husband who simply stood there staring, with no chance to react. The second husband had enough time to open his mouth to protest, to raise an arm to object before Ross's vise-grip closed his throat and spinal cord forever. The second woman screamed a high-pitched scream