ALL THE DEAD WOMEN LOOK AT ME

Rosemary - POV

The corporate lawyer's manicured fingers slide the termination letter across polished mahogany like she's dealing cards in a rigged game. I watch the cream-colored paper settle in front of me, my name printed in sterile Times New Roman beneath the company letterhead I've bled for three years to represent.

"Due to strategic realignment and operational restructuring," she drones, her voice as warm as Seattle's February drizzle, "your position has been eliminated effective immediately."

Twelve minutes. That's how long it takes to dissolve a career built on eighty-hour weeks, missed holidays, and relationships sacrificed at the altar of quarterly profits. I stare at the buzzwords swimming across the page—rightsizing, market optimization, workforce reallocation—corporate speak designed to make human disposal sound like business innovation.

"Your severance package includes—"

"I understand." My voice sounds hollow, detached, like it's coming from someone else's throat. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of what was my corner office until twelve minutes ago, Seattle's skyline stretches gray and indifferent. Those glass towers once symbolized ambition realized. Now they mock me with their cold permanence.

Security arrives with a cardboard box and the practiced efficiency of undertakers. I watch myself pack three years of life into corrugated walls—the award for exceeding revenue targets, the stress ball shaped like our biggest client's logo, the framed photo of me shaking hands with the CEO at last year's holiday party. His smile looks predatory in hindsight.

The elevator ride down forty-three floors feels eternal. The security guard—Jim, I think his name is—avoids eye contact. We've shared small talk about his grandkids for months, but now I'm corporate radioactivity, and he knows better than to get contaminated by association.

My apartment feels different when I return, smaller somehow. The minimalist design I once found sleek now seems sterile, like a high-end hotel room I've overstayed. The city view through my wall of windows no longer inspires—it judges. All those years climbing toward something that dissolved in twelve minutes of polite brutality.

I pour three fingers of bourbon even though it's barely noon, then notice the certified letter waiting on my granite kitchen counter like an omen. The return address reads "Estate of Millicent Decker" in formal script. My great-aunt. I haven't thought about her in years, barely remember visiting her mountain bookshop as a child.

The envelope tears with unusual resistance, revealing a thick packet of documents. Property deeds. Business licenses. Keys that feel ice-cold against my palm despite the apartment's warmth. And a leather journal, its pages yellowed with age and filled with spidery handwriting that makes my eyes water when I try to focus.

Most of the journal entries discuss inventory management and supplier contracts, mundane bookshop business that would normally bore me senseless. But the final entry, dated just two weeks ago, sends ice through my veins:

The crimson eclipse comes in twenty-eight days. I pray you're stronger than I was, child. The covenant must not be fulfilled, but breaking it will require sacrifices I couldn't make. Trust Sarah. Trust no one else. And remember—some inheritances are traps disguised as gifts.

My hands shake as I flip through legal documents that make no sense. How did I inherit a bookshop from someone I barely knew? Why does reading about a crimson eclipse make my chest tight with unexplained dread?

I book a flight to Montana that same evening, telling myself I need a fresh start. What else am I supposed to do? Seattle's corporate world just chewed me up and spit me out. A quaint mountain bookshop sounds like the reset my life desperately needs. The timing feels cosmically orchestrated—when one door slams shut, another opens, right?

While packing, I discover a shoebox in my bedroom closet I don't remember storing there. Inside, old family photographs scatter like fallen leaves across my comforter. Women who look disturbingly like me stare back from sepia prints and faded color photos—same dark hair, same green eyes, same delicate bone structure. But their expressions... there's something haunted in every face, a shadow of fear that makes my skin crawl.

I study each photograph, searching for identifying marks or dates. Different decades, different fashions, but essentially the same face across generations. How is that possible? Are these distant relatives I've never heard about? Why do they all look like they're afraid of something just outside the camera's frame?

The taxi honks outside, startling me back to reality. I grab my rolling suitcase and the leather journal—something about leaving it behind feels dangerous, though I can't explain why. As I lock my apartment door, probably for the last time, movement across the street catches my peripheral vision.

A tall figure stands beneath the streetlight, perfectly still despite the February wind whipping through Seattle's urban canyon. He's too far away to make out details, but something about his posture suggests he's been watching. Waiting. When I look directly at him, he simply... isn't there anymore. Like he dissolved into shadow.

My heart hammers against my ribs as I scan the street. Empty sidewalks. Normal evening traffic. No sign of anyone who might have been watching. But the feeling lingers—that someone has been waiting for this exact moment, for me to leave Seattle and head toward Montana with my great-aunt's mysterious inheritance burning like a secret in my carry-on bag.

The taxi driver asks if I'm all right as I slide into the backseat, and I realize I'm gripping the door handle hard enough to leave marks. I force a smile and give him the airport address, trying to shake off the paranoid feeling that my life just changed in ways I don't understand yet.

As Seattle's lights blur past the taxi window, I think about corporate buzzwords and family photographs and crimson eclipses. About inheritances that might be traps. About tall figures who vanish when you look directly at them.

Twelve minutes to destroy a career. Twenty-eight days until something called a crimson eclipse. And I'm flying toward Montana with a leather journal full of warnings and the unsettling certainty that someone has been orchestrating this moment long before I got fired.

The timing feels less like cosmic coincidence and more like careful planning.