A Lesson in Cruelty

A Lesson in Cruelty

By Harriet Tyce

Outside

This is what I would do to you.

I’d drug you. Don’t worry, you wouldn’t feel a thing. I’d say go to sleep, go to sleep now, and I’d take a knife – your knife – and I’d cut and cut, all the way up your veins. That’s how they do it. I read about it at school.

Then I’d watch you bleed out like the PIG you are.

Sorry, sorry, you’re not a pig. Everyone says you’re lovely.

But I can’t take it anymore. I’m outside waiting, WATCHING, but I want to be inside.

God, I want to be inside.

Deep breath now.

Clearing dead wood, that’s all it is. A sacrifice – Iphigenia on her altar. A fair wind to take him all the way to Troy. I’m doing him a favour – all that mewling and puking will interrupt his work.

There’s nothing more important than his work.

I should have done it sooner. It’s not my fault, though. It’s YOURS; you kept it hidden from me. Better late than never.

When it’s over, the cuts made, the veins bled out, that’s when my work will be done. He’ll be free.

And I’ll be inside. Where I belong.

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