42. DAPPER-DAN #2
She’s on the floor.
There’s a moment before comprehension settles, where the world fractures into fragments instead of meaning, where your mind isolates details because it cannot yet assemble the whole.
I notice the color first. Red behaves differently depending on where it lands.
On tile, it pools, spreading outward in slow, deliberate expansion.
On fabric, it soaks, disappearing into fibers until it darkens them completely.
On skin, it glistens, making it look either beautiful or disgusting.
And there’s too much of the said red liquid.
She looks haunted with eyes wide open from terror.
Red spills out of her neck, and chest… and other parts of the body. It pools on the tile, soaked onto her clothes, and glistening on her skin.
Her body is positioned wrongly, which doesn’t align with anything natural—each limb angled at something no human anatomy would permit.
He’s still there, gripping the broken neck of a bottle, jagged edges catching the light. Red is still dripping off it.
The paper slips from my hand without any sound.
I don’t bother to pick it up, or say something, or ask him anything at all. I just go numb.
People always misunderstand moments like this. They assume this is when they feel something inside them break.
It doesn’t. They confuse clarification with sanity.
For me, there’s no confusion in this moment, no need to question what comes next.
The path ahead unfolds with an inevitable clarity, as if every moment leading up to this has been a quiet preparation for it. I know what I’m supposed to do, what I am supposed to become.
Alastor—the spirit of vengeance.
The axe hangs on the wall as a cheap decoration. It was meaningless until now.
I take it down, registering the gravity without reacting to it—gravity is just resistance, resistance can be overcome.
He turns too late just to see a smiling boy.
The first strike is messy and imprecise but still manages to hit his spine, lacking refinement but effective enough to establish the pattern.
The second adjusts.
The third improves.
After that, it stops being about him.
It becomes about understanding.
You apply force. You observe the outcome. You refine your technique.
I don’t remember when he stops moving, only that I continue long after he does. Stopping would require looking at her, and looking at her would require understanding something I’ve no interest in processing.
So I don’t look at her at all.
I don’t allow my gaze to settle on the unnatural angle of her body or the way the red has stopped spreading or soaking or glistening.
It’s easier to improve technique than to process what lies a few feet away, easier to reduce the moment into mechanics than to acknowledge the finality of her stillness.
That’s why I focus on him, on the movement, on the repetition, on refining the arc of each strike with increasing precision.
But the radio keeps replaying. “With your smile, turn the world upside down…”
And with that, the smile on my face never falters, even as each imperfectly chopped piece of his body stops twitching too.
Not a single knock at the door, not a voice calling out, not even the careless intrusion of someone expecting her to answer.
The house settles into a silence so complete it feels unnatural, as if the world has quietly decided to forget us and move on.
Days pass.
Maybe more.
Time loses structure inside this space, bending around the slow decay of what remains of the bodies.
The smell worsens before it stops meaning anything, thick and invasive at first, then gradually becomes part of the air itself until I no longer register it as something separate.
Maggots come eventually.
I remember watching them, the sluggish way they move, the way they gather to consume without any judgment.
For a moment, I think they’re moving toward me next, that I’ll simply become part of the same process.
That’s when I understand something important. Rotting alongside the dead feels… inefficient.
So I stand and begin to clean the house all by myself.
It takes me six hours to completely erase their existence.
Six hours of no smiling but only shedding tears at a stretch.
Six hours of promising to myself that I’d never allow myself to cry again or stop smiling.
Surprisingly the Kurome mother gifted escaped any blood stains. I pick it up and set it beside the now-dead radio.
Then I open the windows to let fresh air come in with a broad smile.
When the dawn finally hits, I carry that same smile with me, moving back into a world that has no idea what it’s about to accommodate.
On the fourth night, I leave the house not to run but to test.
People move through the world believing they’re safe, believing rules and systems exist to protect them, believing no one’s watching closely enough to notice their patterns.
I prove them wrong.
I study their routines, their blind spots, the predictable paths they follow without ever questioning why. I insert myself into those patterns with quiet precision just to clean this planet of them.
Not once, not twice, but repeatedly, methodically, each encounter refining something that has already begun taking shape inside me.
And then, when morning comes, I return to school.
I take my usual seat, open my books to the exact page I have left them on, and complete my work with the same consistency that has always kept me invisible.
Having the whole house to myself only, it helps me focus on my studies without any unnecessary interruption.
My uniform stays neat, my handwriting precise, my answers correct.
Teachers continue to nod in quiet approval, smiling at me enthusiastically, occasionally pausing beside my desk with that familiar expression—the one that suggests I’m something worth noticing, but never quite enough to investigate further.
I became the ideal student of the entire campus.
No one mentions having no new bruises on my skin, and the old ones fading. No one questions why I seem calmer.
I killed those bullies too.
Children still laugh, still push, still test boundaries they don’t understand, and I allow it when it serves me, ignore it when it doesn’t.
Their behavior has become predictable, their cruelty repetitive, their presence no more significant than background noise.
By then, I’ve already learned where my attention is better spent.