Your day is coming, you polished bastard.
I turn the key, and the engine stutters, rattles alive, groaning like an old man. My hands tighten around the wheel, nails catching the chipped polish I never got around to fixing.
His face flashes behind my eyes, and bile rises. She hasn’t opened her curtains in months. The bruises are gone but the terror isn’t. That Ivy League face he carries? I’m erasing it soon.
Streets blur, and pale rows of nothing pass in slow succession. I’ve lived in this city for two years in a little studio apartment with one window and a dozen candles whose scent can be felt on the entire floor.
The car squeals as I pull into the lot, and Russ yells from his window, with no shirt, as usual. I don’t even know if he owns any. “You should sell that thing!”
“It’s my baby,” I say, locking the door. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“It’s pink,” he grumbles. “Who would want a flashy color car in a city like this?”
I pat the hood. “She’s special, like me.”
He disappears, muttering about therapy, but I don’t care; I do need therapy, but not because of my damn car.
I take the stairs slowly, making sure whoever’s home hears me coming and going, so that everyone can recognize the way I walk, because a routine and alibis are your best friends when you are thinking about committing a crime.
The apartment is small, clean, cozy, and perfect to show off how sweet and caring I am. A bed smothered in pillows, fairy-light vines drooping along the walls. Cute. Feminine. Disarming.
Exactly the kind of place nobody would suspect hides a monster.
My bed is shoved under the window with so many pillows I barely fit there, and there’s a TV on the wall that I barely use unless I’m playing my Switch. I only own one game:Minecraft, and I love it because it’s a world I can control, piece by piece with no surprises, where monsters follow the rules, where Creepers hiss before they blow and Zombies groan.
You see them and you end them; it’s simple, it’s how it was supposed to be in real life too, but the real monsters in our world wear suits, sit on boards, and host fundraisers with smiles that look innocent and caring.
What a joke!
I need to calm my nerves, so I throw waterin a pot, making noodles tonight. Again. It’s my comfort food—noodles, a boiled egg, maybe some cheese if I’m feeling fancy—it helps me to relax and to plan my next move.
When the noodles are soft enough, I take the bowl to the bed. There’s a little table with two benches that I bought thinking I would have some dinners here with friends and colleagues from my job. Although I work from home, I do have one friend who, like me, enjoys eating more on the bed than on the damn table.
I place the bowl on the nightstand, reaching behind the print of a cat sleeping on a porch on the wall, and pull out my pink notebook with no label, just plans written in code. I flip it open and lean back into the pillows. The fake vines hanging around the bed shift with the fan; they give the illusion of being a forest. Unfortunately, the real ones die as soon as I get them home. It’s either too much water, or too little, or I breathe funny around them. I don’t even know, but I’m not getting any more.
I look at the time, and my hands shake, not from fear… Well, maybe it’s a bit of fear mixed with anticipation. No amount of notes in my pink book can prepare me for the first time blood will actually be on my hands. I take a sip from the bourbon bottle Russ gave me when I moved in; it burns going down. I feel like my throat is closing, and it makes me cough out a lung but does nothing to calm me.
I change into my tracksuit with my hoodie up and backpack, take one final deep breath, and run down the stairs like I do every Thursday and Sunday. Always the same loop, the same shops, and the same faces. I run slow enough to be seen. The bodega clerk nods, and the dog walker forgets my name again but knows exactly what I look like. It’s more than enough.
I build my alibis as I run through the streets. My heart is beating so fast I can barely breathe. All this running for almost two years has kept me in great shape, that’s for sure, and by the time I reach the docks, the night’s turned cold, the salt stings the air, and it still smells like burnt wood and fabric. No one comes here anymore, not since this place burned down eight months ago, so now I use it as my little hideout since part of the building still stands.
Second building on the right, second floor, and the third door. I know every step in the dark, every creak. I installed the lock myself on the door and paid in cash at some little store outside of town.
I step inside and flick on the lamp; the place is quiet, with dust in the corners and some ashes resting near the windows. I strip off the hoodie and trade it for black jeans, a fitted top, combat boots, and my leather jacket. My hair goes up tight and high, the silver wig slipping over it like a mask. The makeup does the rest, erasing me, hiding the girl underneath.
My reflection on the cracked mirror shows the new me, the person who is getting ready for revenge.
Heading to my second car, my hands shake; they are sweaty, and I keep cleaning them on my jacket, one final deep breath before I enter my second car, which happens to be even older than my pink one, a black Ford Focus, beat to hell but loyal. The plates came from a man who called himself Luigi, smelled like vodka, didn’t ask questions, and accepted cash. He was so high I doubt he can even remember selling them, let alone to whom.
The streets are alive, lights flicking as I drive by, everyone enjoying the night while I fight the urge to vomit.
I park at the club’s back alley, which is always half-lit, half-forgotten; the staff uses it once their shift is done. It's a safe way to leave, avoiding the drunk clients in the front door, and it helps me to leave without being noticed.
The line wraps around the block. I lift my chin, set my shoulders, and smile, all flirt and sweetness, and the bouncer grins when he sees me. He’s a big guy with wandering eyes, gives me a once-over, then waves me through.
“Come find me for a drink later,” he says.
“Tempting,” I answer, already moving while he chuckles.
