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Coming, ready or not.
She is cleaning her teeth, looking at herself in the mirror. She sees me in the reflection and freezes. She drops the toothbrush.
“What are you …” she starts, but the sight of the knife makes her stop.
She takes a breath in to scream, and that’s when I strike. I step forward, jabbing the knife toward her middle. She sees it coming and deflects with her hand, but she’s not quick enough. I’m too close. The knife hits her forearm, cutting into the flesh, sharp and efficient. She cries out, blood splashes across the sink, across the mirror as she flails with her injured arm, panicking.
“Please …” she begs. But there’s no point in her pleading. She’s seen the files, the previous victims. She knows how she’ll end up. It’s just a matter of time.
She backs away from me, but there’s nowhere for her to go except into the white tiled cubicle of the shower. She’s crying now, her hands outstretched in front of her. Sobbing harder as I push the bathroom door shut. She sinks down into a crouch on the floor of the shower.
“I’m sorry,” she says, but I don’t know what for. The blood from her arm streaks her skin, running down to the drain. Her position, curled into a ball below me, makes this difficult.
“I don’t want to hurt you more than I have to,” I say, and she looks up at me with those big green eyes, disbelieving. “You know this is coming. You don’t need to suffer.”
She blinks, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please,” she whispers. “I don’t want to die.”
“We all die,” I reply. Her eyes dart to the door. I know what she is thinking.
“I only want you,” I say. “But shout and scream—make them come running—and I will kill them too. Do you want that?”
She closes her eyes, tight. “No,” she says softly.
I gesture with the knife. “Then stand up.”
She starts wailing now. I can see her body shaking. I smell her urine as it spills onto the shower floor. “Please,” she says again.
“Stand up,” I repeat. “And I’ll make it quick.”
But she doesn’t move. She stays, knees up to her chest, crying, burbling platitudes.
I am getting angry. “Do you want me to take you apart, piece by piece?” I say. I feel the familiar tensing, my hair trigger about to explode. “Because I will. Carve the flesh from your arms. Slice the fingers from your hands, one by one. Cut off your ears, your nose. Take your eyes while you’re still alive?”
She shakes her head, over and over. “No,” she says.
“Can you imagine how those other victims suffered? How much they screamed as I cut them open?”
She doesn’t say anything, just continues to cry, big wracking sobs of snot and tears.
“Do you want that to be you?”
“No,” she wails.
“Then stand up.”
She lets out a long cry—of anguish, of fear and sadness—then slowly puts her hands out to the walls. They slip at first, blood streaking the tiles, but she pulls herself to her feet. Her teeth chatter, her whole body shakes; her eyes dart from the knife to my face and back again.
But I am true to my word. When the knife goes in, it is quick and sharp. It punctures her soft stomach like butter, blood coating my hands, my arms, and I pull up hard. But it could never be painless. I see the agony in her eyes, feel the tension in her muscles. But it doesn’t last for long. She didn’t have a chance.
She crumples slowly back down to the floor, her legs slipping out underneath her in the wet. I pull the knife away and the rich blood flows.
I reach down and grab her by her upper arms, pulling her out of the shower and onto the bathroom floor. She resists slightly, moaning, so I push the knife in one more time, hard, through her chest into her heart. The resistance of muscle, the bubble of air as I catch her lungs.
Blood is coming fast, a slip-sticky lake on the floor. She is motionless now. Gone. My job here is complete.
I am ready. I am ready for you.
CHAPTER
