It was then I saw them—the body parts—mangled legs and arms. They were littered around the room like broken, bloodied doll parts. My eyes clashed with a set of long, blonde locks of hair drenched with blood. Her mouth was open and her dead eyes were staring accusingly at me.

Sarah.

My Sarah.

The girl I’d been dating for the last few months of my life.

I’d just told her I loved her, and we’d had sex for the first time a few months before. She was my first and I was hers. I knew once I had her that I was going to marry her. The way she opened up for me and trusted me with the most innocent parts of herself… I realized in that moment she was undeniably special. Yet there she was—dead—decapitated like the stranger beside her and screaming out into the morbid solitude around me.

I was in shock. I knew that because as badly as I wanted to go to her, I couldn’t move. It was too gruesome of a sight. Blood splatter covered the space, painting the room a rusty red, as if some abstract artist had just finished painting a masterpiece.

It was a slaughter. There was so much death.

Who could’ve done such a thing? And where was that person now?

Why had I survived?

There were so many unanswered questions.

Looking down at my blood-soaked shirt, I lifted it to check for cuts. There was nothing. It was then that I took notice of my hands. The rusted color of dried blood was smeared all over them. It was caked in my cuticles, dried streaks running up my arms. Some had crusted in my arm hair, making it stick on end. It was all over me… and it wasn’t mine. It was theirs.

There were only the dead people… and me. Their bodies were mutilated in ways that made my stomach instantly sour. I closed my eyes against the scene, and images filled my mind. There were pictures of screaming and running. They were begging to live—Sarah, begging me to live—staring at me with fear while crying. It was all so real.

I blinked away the images. I couldn’t remember the events that led me to the moment I was in, but something told me I was responsible. A twinge of doubt and guilt tickled the back of my conscious. I wasn’t sure why or how, but I’d killed Sarah and the stranger. I’d ripped them limb from limb and beheaded them like a madman.

Panic thickened in my gut and I turned to the side, puking all over the dirty, wooden floor. The sour smell of beer and things I couldn’t remember eating teased my nostrils, making my stomach empty even more.

I was a monster. I was sick and demented, and I didn’t even know it. My reality had somehow shifted, and I was in another universe—one where I wasn’t the young, carefree boy I’d always been, but a dangerous, bloodthirsty freak.

I needed to get out of the room. Away from everything before me. I couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t look at the disaster I’d caused. I scrambled to my feet. The blood rushed from my head, making me feel dizzy.

I had two options: I could run… or I could go to the police station and confess to murders that I didn’t remember committing.

Both options were taken away from me by the loud banging on the door.

“Christopher Jacobs!” a man with a deep voice called through the door. “FBI!”

After that proclamation, the door came crashing in, wood splintering and flying into the space around me. The room filled with the authorities, their accusing eyes filling with disgust as they took in the scene around us. They trained their guns at my head, but everything became muffled and began to blur.

A single beeping noise filled my ears, nagging my beating head and forcing me to swallow and blink. The room spun and the men moved in slow motion toward me as I held my hands up. I was tossed to the ground, a knee in my back and my face pressed into the bloody floor beneath me, as I was cuffed. Suddenly, the beeping sound disappeared and I could hear clearly.

“Christopher Jacobs, you’re under arrest for murder.”

My life was over. I was as good as dead.

CHAPTER 1

LYLA EVANS

“FUCK, BABY, I can smell that sweet pussy all the way over here.”

My eyes flashed his way, and I was met with a hairy face and rotting teeth. Quickly, I looked away.

“I’d kill every motherfucker in this place to feel those pouty lips on my dick,” another inmate called out.

I looked straight ahead instead of into the eyes of the men who shouted out to me.

The words of the warden and the commanding officer at my interview moved through my mind.

Don’t show fear. If you show fear, they’ll eat you alive.

“I bet that shit tastes like strawberry pie. I could eat strawberry pie all day, baby.”