Consequence

Click.

The sound echoed through the empty alleyway. She stopped in her tracks.

“Scream, and I’ll cut you.”

Slowly, she turned.

He was of average height and build, just as the papers said. No distingushing marks, only the switchblade in his hand mimicking the desperate, maniacal glint in his eyes. A sea of insanity, tinted a familiar blue.

They stood prostrate for half a moment, and he jerked her to the wall, snapping the rubber band on her wrist. He held the blade to her throat as he unzipped. She looked down at his joke of a manhood, standing upright like a child on his tiptoes, attempting to look taller.

He ripped off her jeans and forced his way in.

“Is it in yet?” she laughed. “I’m getting pretty fucking bored here.”

He slapped her, splitting her lip open. The metallic taste left her head spinning.

“Sheesh. No need for that. After all, you’re the one who should be slapped.”

He pushed his hand over her mouth and continued to thrust. His short, jerky bursts reminded her of an insect that had somehow found its way out of an espresso machine.

God, is he done yet? This is one of those moments where a cigarette is pretty damn necessary.

He continued to push in and out. Then, as he finished, his rancid seed dripping out of her, he carved his signature X into her cheek.

She touched her face, the blood dripping through her fingers. Her mind reeled back to her childhood, running her fingers down those same lines…

“Fuck you.”

She wrestled the knife from him with ferocious strength. She began to bite his arms and scratch at his face, until a fingernail to the eye sent him reeling backward. She pushed him to the asphalt and grasped the switchblade.

Disregarding cartilege and skin and teeth and eye, she carved. An X began to appear, and she stood back to admire her handiwork.

He stared at her through blood and carnage, and whimpered through what was left of his mouth.

Then she leaned down and whispered in his ear.

“Twenty years, you’ve been stealing the lives of innocent women. Maybe you can consider this a consequence, Daddy.”

- – -

Two months later, four slivers of plastic sat in the wastebasket next to the toilet.

Three positives and an inconclusive.