I kiss my way down his stomach, the flesh loose and greasy beneath my mouth. I can feel the bile rising in my throat, but I push it down. I only think ofJulie. The real Julie. It probably wasn’t even her real name. I don’t need to know her name to know what he did to her though.
His pants are around his ankles now. He moans, his head lolling back. “That’s it, baby. That’s what I—”
He doesn’t finish.
Because when I rise up, it’s not with my mouth.
It’s with the knife.
Small, sharp, the same matte black as my boot heel, and sheathed in a small leather case to avoid cutting my skin. I’d tucked it in at the last moment before I left my apartment. My fingers curl around the hilt, my heart as cold as steel.
He blinks, confused. “Wha—?”
I straddle his chest, lean in so close I can smell the panic starting to seep through his sweat. I smile.
“This one’s for Julie,” I whisper.
And I start to carve.
He screams the moment the blade bites into skin. I shove a balled-up corner of the dingy blanket into his mouth to stifle the noise. I drag the knife slow, deliberate, from his collarbone down to the start of his gut. The J is messy. He’s thrashing. The U gets cleaner. By the L, I’m soaked in blood. I work through his cries, through the begging moans, the muffled shrieks that bounce off the walls and seem to crawl back into him.
Julie. In thick, screaming red.
He bucks, trying to break free, but the shirt sleeves hold.His face is mottled, panicked, soaked with tears now. Good.
I lean in again, voice calm. “May you never forget.”
Then I bite.
His earlobe splits between my teeth, and I feel his blood gush hot down my chin. He screams harder.
I wipe the blade on his chest and slip it back into my boot. I climb off, straighten my dress, sticky and soaked now with his blood. The red fabric hides the truth beautifully but I slide my black cardigan over my shoulders anyway.
I don’t look back.
I walk downstairs slowly, each step measured. In the bar no one glances at me. No one notices.
I push open the front door and step out into the night.
Amsterdam Avenue hums with taxis, sirens, and drunken laughter.
My dress clings to me, wet and dark.
The perfect camouflage.
Crimson justice. And no one the wiser.
My cell buzzes with an incoming text message then. I fish it out of my clutch and find another message from an anonymous number.
I wonder how your husband would feel if he knew the truth.
Eighteen
Ellie
I don’t check my email for the next three days. I don’t dare. I’ve avoided the newspaper headlines, avoided Aubrey, and even Jack—which hasn’t been hard because he’s been escaping to work since our last fight. I’ve done my best to cover my tracks—disposing of the knife I used to slice up the Surgeon General in a dumpster off of 73rd on my walk home and washing the little red dress soaked in blood three times. I don’t know how to cover up a crime, but I did what I could.
Truth be told, I’m afraid to check my email for a few reasons: one because I don’t want to know what happened after I left that bar, and two because I’m afraid of my next target—afraid because there are never any instructions on how to deal with these encounters. I’m left to my own devices, and maybe carving up the Surgeon General went too far. But I didn’t kill him. I just left him with scars that will last a lifetime. I’m particularly pleased with the fact that if these men try to report me, there will be mutually assured destruction. The Surgeon General can’t report me without disclosing the reason behind my mutilation.
