@beautykillertaskforce ( from answer! )
Gretchen wasn’t especially fond of Aaron, but in most situations she would put up with him if she had to. This, however, was not most situations. This was more of a “We are standing over a woman strapped to a table, about to carve her up” situation, and having Aaron arrive to witness this would be… . inconvenient at best, catastrophic at worst. She hurried around the table to Roy and slapped him full in the face. “Get yourself together,” she hissed at him.
Roy hadn’t given this whiny cunt’s looks a second thought. She wasn’t very attractive to him, so what good would paying her face any attention do?
But Aaron had started complaining that she looked a lot like their third grade teacher--Didn’t she look like Miss Cunningham, Roy? Didn’t she just? What if she is? She’s not, is she? Is she?--and all his goddamn talking had started unhinging Roy, making his head go soft and his eyelids go heavy like he needed to sleep. And he was a little too fucking busy to sleep right now. Normally holding a knife so surely was enough to keep him grounded, but the chatter had just gotten too fervent.
Until Gretchen rounded the table, her thigh brushing up against where the pristinely constructed restraints were anchored, pulled her arm back and thwacked him, just like he’d all but asked. Roy fell half a step to one side, propped himself up against the table beside this woman who looked like who-the-fuck-cared’s head, cradling his weapon close to his belly like it was some small, needy, newborn animal. Flashbacks coursed through his mind and made a dreadful shiver traipse visibly down his spine, though it probably just looked like the slap had excited his young buck vitality a bit.
You think I’m playin’ with you? You look at me when I’m talkin’ to you! What on God’s green earth were you thinking, you little shit?
Ah, perfect. Perfect.
Roy opened his eyes up a little wider, the fog not completely gone but fading fast as his pulse beat across his cheek. He could taste blood oozing from his cheek, the stuff just starting to paint his bottom lip. He licked it away.
“Don’t you tell me what to do.” He held the knife up and thrust it down hard, the blade coming down just between the woman’s two middle fingers, just knicking the inside edge to spook her and make it start to sting.
