Her eyes go wide, fear detonating in hazel irises like a chemical bomb. She tries to scream again, but I clamp my hand tight over her mouth, crushing the sound to a muffled howl almost too animal for a human.
“You probably won’t believe me when I say…” I lean in until my black painted mouth is at her ear. “I’m doing this…for your son.”
The blade moves—fast, clean, final. And the entire world reconfigures around the blood spilling down her neck.
Her body jerks once, a sharp, surprised spasm, then goes still. The sound that comes out of me is a wet gasp, nothing more as blood pours hot over my hand, down my wrist, soaking the glove. Her weight slumps against me, and I hold her there like I’m trying to keep her heart beating. As if I have a choice of undoing an inevitable calamity.
I lower her gently to the ground, like she’s fragile even in death, and I don’t even realize I’m going down with her until my knees hit the concrete next to her hard enough to bruise, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything except the shaking—violent, uncontrollable, like my body is trying to tear itself apart from the inside. The knife is still clenched in my right fist, slick with her blood, and I can’t make my grip loosen. It’s fused to me now, part of the shaking, part of the ruin.
I stare at her face. Her eyes are wide open, locked on nothing. The terror is still there, frozen in the pupils, in the way her mouth is parted like she was still trying to scream when the light went out. The line across her throat gapes like a second mouth,red and glistening, the edges already darkening at the corners. Blood has run down her neck in thick, syrupy trails, soaking into the collar of her apron, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. It looks like spilled wine.
It looks like something I did.
My vision blurs. Hot. Wet. Tears carve tracks through the paint on my cheeks. I can’t tell what’s mine anymore. My tears. Her blood. The paint. The shame. It all runs together in one violent sweep through my bones.
I want to scream.
I want to claw the mask off my face and scream untilmythroat bleeds too. But the sound that comes out is small—a choked, non-human thing.
It hurts. Everything hurts. The boy inside me, the one who waited for his mother, who believed in things like safety and home, is screaming too. But he’s so far down now I can only feel the echo of it, a dull, endless ache that radiates out from my sternum like a second heartbeat.
The metal box is cold against my palm when I reach into my pocket. I don’t remember deciding to take it out. My fingers are numb, clumsy, shaking so hard the powder spills across my knuckles before I can tap out the line. I don’t care. I don’t wipe it away.
I bring my hand to my nose, blood and coke mixing on my skin, and I inhale deep. So fucking deep, the burn is instant. White fire exploding behind my eyes, racing down my throat, searing every nerve it touches.
My head snaps back. My vision whites out for a second, and it’s pure, blinding nothing. When it comes back, the alley is sharper, louder, more real than it’s ever been. The slam of a door somewhere up the block. The shrieks and laughter of sugar-drunk kids, and cackling of costumed revelers. The hollow, dead thud of my own heartbeat.
The drip of blood is deafening.
My breathing is deafening.
The silence inside my skull is deafening.
I look down at her again. Allison Greene. Her eyes are still open. Still empty. Still accusing. Dead. Allisonwasa person who became a problem I solved. A mother who will never know that the alternative would have been far worse for her. A mother who will never know I chose her kid over her. Would she still damn me to hell if she knew?
I reach out with shaking, blood-and-coke-stained fingers and close her eyes, the lids cold and heavy under my touch. Then I collapse, sliding down the brick wall until my ass hits the concrete, legs splayed like a broken puppet. The alley spins slow, lazy circles around me, and for once, I don’t fight it.
The coke is in me now, blooming like fire through every vein, every nerve ending lit up gold and electric. I fucking worship it.
I worship the way it hushes the screaming in my skull, smothers the boy who was still begging in there, wraps the whole bloody mess in soft white noise.
I worship the rush that lifts me out of this skin, this alley, this night—the way it makes my heart thunder like a war drum and my skin feel too tight and too alive at the same time. Everybreath tastes like metal and lightning. My fingertips buzz. My teeth hum. The blood on my gloves looks almost beautiful, glittering under the streetlight like dark jewels.
I tilt my head back against the brick and let the high roll through me, wave after wave of clean, bright nothing. No guilt. No boy. No mother with her throat open. Just this sweet, chemical grace that makes the world soft at the edges and the pain feel distant, like it belongs to someone else.
The numbness is perfect.
I worship it like a god that never answers prayers.
The alley is still quiet except for the low hum of the cleanup crew’s van idling at the mouth. Headlights cut through the dark, painting the walls in cold white, but I don’t move. I’m slumped against the wall, legs sprawled, blood drying sticky on my gloves, paint cracking and flaking off my face in slow curls. The coke is still riding high, making every drip of water from the eaves sound like a gunshot, every heartbeat like a drum in my skull.
I’m not shaking anymore. I’m vibrating.
A second set of lights sweeps in—long, sleek, black. A limo. I know the engine note before the driver even cuts it. I know the way the back door opens without a sound, the way the interior light spills out gold and expensive.
A stiletto heel emerges first—black, razor-thin, sharp enough to draw blood just by looking. Then the leg, long and pale, the slit in the black dress parting high enough that if she shifted an inch more her pussy would wink at the streetlamp.
The dress clings like sin, silk and shadow, hugging every curve she’s spent years weaponizing. Dark, curly hair tumbles loose over her shoulders, catching the light like oil on water, and when she steps out it’s slow, deliberate, every movement choreographed for maximum effect.
