Prologue #2
She makes me a bright blue drink with hints of red. I ask her what’s in it.
“Grenadine, lemonade, vodka, and blue curacao. It’s one of my own concoctions. I call it The Night Shift.” It looks a bit messy, but for whatever reason she seems quite proud of it.
She tells me she likes the color pink. I tell her I like green.
She tells me she just moved to the city a few weeks back.
I tell her I’ve been here a few years now.
She tells me she’s a Taurus. I tell her I’m a Scorpio.
She tells me her favorite show is One Tree Hill.
I tell her mine is BBC’s Flowers. Especially the first season.
An hour of small talk later, Camille hands me my phone — partially charged, but enough to get me home.
“Thanks.”
“Of course.” She gives me a long, up-and-down look like she’s assessing me for something and deeming me fit. “Maybe I’ll see you again?”
My smile is forced and strained. I grab my coat and head out the door.
It’s almost midnight and with the exception of a few homeless people asleep on the sidewalk, there’s no one around.
I check my phone and the nearest Uber is fifteen minutes away.
Not left with much of a choice, I request the cab and start walking towards the pick-up point.
I reach the same alleyway as before when I hear someone call out a name. “Ashley!”
I keep walking.
“Ashley!”
I turn around. It’s the same asshole from the bar.
He takes a step forward and a deep unsettling feeling sinks into my stomach.
Like something bad is about to happen. Instant fear locks my muscles together.
My grip around my phone tightens. My brain screams at me to run.
Run, it demands. RUN! I turn back around, but he’s faster. Stronger too.
He grabs my arm and pulls me into the alleyway, shoving me against the wall. My head hits the cold brick surface, and tears sting the back of my eyes.
“Don’t be afraid.” He covers my mouth with his hand. “I’m not a bad guy.” He bends down next to my ear. “I bought you a drink, didn’t I?” He tightens his hold over my mouth and screams into my face. “Didn’t I?!”
My jaw hurts. Looking up at him, I feel so small.
“But what’s the point of being nice, if sluts like you are gonna keep taking advantage of us?”
His voice is hoarse, moving around me like a tornado.
“If you’re gonna keep treating us like we’re the bad ones, we might as well live up to the expectation, right?”
He yanks me by the hair and reaches beneath the hem of my dress, sliding it up to my thighs. A scream tears through my throat, and I knee the motherfucker in the balls, trying to make a run for it. But he simply pulls me back and slaps me hard across the jaw with the back of his hand.
My stomach lurches.
I try to scream again.
He throws me to the ground and comes down on top of me. My breath seizes in my lungs as realization hits me hard and fast. He tugs my underwear from my hips until they fall at my ankles.
After that, it’s all a blur.
I don’t remember a lot of it.
I don’t remember how long I scream before deciding to give up.
Before my lungs start to hurt. I don’t remember the exact moment I stop fighting back.
I don’t remember how hard I squeeze my eyelids shut, trying to zone out.
Trying to put up some sort of mental block, a defense mechanism.
I try ignoring the taste in my mouth, the sticky dampness between my legs, the pain radiating through my thighs.
Nauseating pain. Like a bullet ripping through my gut over and over again.
My entire mind starts to shut down. Tears spill down my cheeks and I wonder if this is how it happened for her.
Is this how she felt too? So utterly and completely helpless in those last moments.
Is that why she did it? Because no one came to help her?
No. Because nothing felt right afterwards?
Stop it. Is that what I’m going to feel too?
Stop! Am I going to do it too? My chest heaves up and down, burning and stinging, as my guilt and desolation mingles with the years of pent-up rage. The anger.
So much anger.
My head falls to the side, my blurry gaze catching Aanya standing on the street.
The scars over her wrists look worse. Messier.
Bloodier. She’s breathing hard. Her long, dark hair is streaked with something sticky and there’s blood all over her hands.
So much blood. Blood dripping down her arms, all over her white sneakers.
She shakes her head. Once. Twice. She shakes it vigorously like she wants to tell me something.
Like she’s desperate for me to know. My heart twists violently in my chest. She points to a broken bottle lying on the ground.
I don’t move. At least, not then. I just force myself to breathe.
The minutes tick by. I count them.
At two minutes and ten seconds, the man tells me to stop moving so much or else he will hurt me. At two minutes and twenty-five seconds, I grab the broken bottle and stick it in his neck.
Blood. Everywhere.
My clothes. My neck. My face.
With a guttural shriek, he falls on his side as more of the hot crimson liquid gushes out. I push him off me and stand up. His face contorts as his hands grab at his neck. He tries to scream but all that comes out is a stupid gurgling sound.
He manages to stand up. His hands are still grabbing at his neck, trying to keep the blood from spilling out. It’s useless, of course.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face against the brick wall. The sound surprises me. I was expecting a loud cracking thud, but the reality is much wetter. Like a ripe watermelon being squelched under an iron press.
I do it over and over again till his skull splits open and blood is spilling all over my hands and face. It’s warm and sticky, and I…like it.
I like it a lot.
Breathless, chest heaving, face coated with a mixture of tears and blood, I keep bashing his skull in.
I can feel my arms dealing out blow after blow.
I hear the gruesome cracking of bone, the wet sound of brick hitting his mangled face.
Curiosity compels me to grab him by his hair and hold him still while I push the bottle deeper inside his neck. Blood, flesh, bone. Blood, flesh, bone.
He tries to scream again. All that comes out is a weak whimper. It’s such a pathetic sound that I can’t help but let out a small laugh. Can’t help but feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
There’s blood on my teeth. Some of it is even coating my gums. I haven’t swallowed it yet, but I can still taste it. It’s warm on the tip of my tongue where the first bit of his arterial blood sprayed me, coating the back of my throat like some kind of numbing agent.
I lick my lower lip. It tastes coppery. Along with the slightest peppery tang that reminds me of arugula.
Hmm.
A large shard of glass sticks out the other end of his neck like an icicle dipped in sticky cranberry sauce.
It looks pretty. I want to touch it. Lick it.
I let his hair go. His limbs quiver as he loses balance and falls to the ground.
His body goes limp on the concrete. His throat makes one last gurgling sound and then it’s just silence.
My eyes widen as I take in the gory scene in front of me. The horrifying, horrifying mess I created. Me. With my bare hands. A life taken. I smell the blood. Metallic and tangy. I smell the victory. Exultant and worthless.
My breathing intensifies.
The body, lifeless and cold, lies sprawled on the floor. A cold wave of…something washes over me, and I force myself to breathe. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my eyes. It’s okay, Holly, I tell myself, forcing myself to calm down. He deserved it. He fucking deserved it.
I pull the bottle out of his neck and the red liquid flows out the gash, dripping to the ground and staining it red. A flicker of light from a streetlamp catches on the glass bottle, momentarily showing me my reflection and another quick strangled laugh leaves my mouth.
I look like myself, but I’m somebody else. The blood continues to pump from his neck. Thick and maroon. It pools around his head like an oil slick. My breath saws in and out and slowly but surely, a sort of calm encases me.
I kneel next to his head like a cat. There’s blood smudged on the hem of my dress.
I’ll have to get it dry-cleaned. My fingers drift towards the gaping wound on the man’s neck, an almost involuntary reaction, and I stick two fingers in.
The hot, velvety texture envelops my skin, a pleasing contrast to my usual sterile world and for a moment, everything fades to black.
The world seems to slow down. The only sound is my ragged breathing and the thud of my heart against my ribs.
This taste of fear is intoxicating. Wait.
Is it fear? No. No, I don’t think so. It’s not that familiar, suffocating sensation around my neck.
This feeling is something sharper. Something cleaner.
A thrill that vibrates beneath my skin like a live wire.
I swirl my fingers inside the man’s wound, delighting in the thick, liquid resistance. The vibrant color engulfs my fingertips, painting a grotesque mockery against my freshly manicured green nails.
The wound gurgles and squishes. The metallic scent of his dirty tainted blood fills the air like a grim perfume.
This should be repulsive, I should find this gross, but instead, it's strangely intoxicating. Gratifying. I feel…powerful. In control. I feel everything and nothing at all, all at once. It’s hard to put this feeling into a single box.
All I know is that I don't want it to end.
I look into the man’s eyes. Empty and hollow. Fucker. He got what he deserved. I don't feel guilty. Not really. He hurt me and now the scales are tipped. There's a twisted sense of justice in that, a warped logic only I understand.
My heartbeat slowly stabilizes. Tranquility. I feel like I’m flying. Floating. All I feel is bliss. Victory. No guilt.
No guilt.
No guilt.
No. Guilt —
“H-Holly?”
I turn around.
Camille stands at the opening of the alley. “Oh my…God…” She’s staring at the body with wide eyes and a pale face. “I…I saw him leave right after you did…I came to check…if…if you…”
Her voice is so gentle. I think she’s genuinely concerned for me.
I wipe my bloody fingers on the side of my dress and stand up.
I don’t know what to say. How do I get out of this?
I don’t think I can. I don’t think I want to.
It’s a little funny. I didn’t even mean to kill him.
It sort of just…happened. Too easy. Too tempting.
And it felt so good. It still does. Like the aftershocks of a powerful earthquake. I want to do it again.
Camille licks her lips and takes a slow deep breath. She takes a step forward and grabs Dead Man’s legs. “Grab his arms,” she tells me.
Her expression is entirely unreadable. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it sure as fuck wasn’t that. We lift his limp and heavy body and move it next to the dumpster, before putting him down to take a break.
“Um, Holly?” Camille says, panting and wiping a sheen of sweat off her forehead.
My pulse speeds. Shivers spread. My heart stutters. “Yes?”
She swallows once. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
This is it. She’s going to turn me in. She’s going to call the cops and I’m going to spend the rest of my life behind bars for killing a man who absolutely deserved to be killed. Fucking brilliant.
A full-body shudder runs through me as I raise my eyebrows to say, “go on.”
A minute passes. Maybe two. Camille just shrugs. “Think I can get your last name now?”