Her shoulders heave with each deep breath that enters and exits her lungs. She closes her eyes and slowly leans her head back till her face is parallel to the night sky. Sharing eye contact with the waxing crescent moon as her eyelids pull back apart. In this moment she and the moon as the closest two souls can ever be; forbidden secrets on display like a whorehouse in midday. Her eyelashes flutter as she bathes in the light. Then reality hits.
The ringing in her ears subsides and turns to crickets and cars careening down the nearby dirt road. A little close for comfort this time, she thinks to herself. The first thought after breaking the delusion always stings the most. “I’m not this stupid why did I do this here?” She mutters to the moon under her breath before reluctantly dropping her shaking gaze to the murdered carrion that lay before her. She feels her upper lip tug up into a sneer as she rubs her face with her sleeve. What was once human life is now no more than a deer carcass in the spattered woods, at least, to Kimya. She kneels gracefully, in a way only a trained dancer can, and leans her face close to the viscera. Her lips find the corpse’s ear, one gust of wind away from making skin to cold skin contact, and she grins. A whispered quote falls from her tongue to the body below; “I don’t respond well to ‘no’, ya know?” She stands back up slowly. Her body is fluid and separate from herself, thoughts and actions now no longer in correlation for the moment. It feels free. It does not last.
Backpack falls from her shoulders as she rummages around for the supplies. She was already wearing gloves but she pulls them off in the way doctors do as to not touch the contaminants on the gloves to your skin; the kind of method they teach you in highschool lab projects. She replaces them eagerly and takes a deep breath, vision tunneling to point out each misstep she’s made. She wasn’t prepared to kill him but sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them too. Kimya’s impulse control has never been very good; she rolls her eyes thinking about what Lincoln would say if he knew. He won’t know. At least not the whole story. Elijah either; he’s a blabber mouth.
Focus.
Right.
Despite not anticipating this kill, Kimya is always prepared. She pulls off her black puma sneakers and places them into a plastic bag, then into her backpack. She feels the dirt under her socks and shivers. Gliding across the dirt in the area, she smudges her footprints leaving no chance anyone could figure out what shoes were at the crime scene other than the victim’s. She places a slow calculated hand onto the grip protruding from the corpse and with one hard pull she dislodges a standard hunter’s knife, a gush of blood spitting from the wound before slowing to a stop. Kimya glances around the area as she places the knife into another plastic bag then the backpack. The air is silent save for the crickets and branches of a nearby tree swaying the the wind. Perfect.
Time passes and Kimya finds a familiar peace in her craft as she finishes doctoring the crime scene. There would be no time nor material to bury him nor chop him up so she left him to rot into the grass or be found. Picked at by the animals. But by the time anyone could come across him there will be no trace of her left, not even her vanilla champagne body spray lingering in the air; and that’s all that matters. ‘No one will miss him anyway’, she thinks in the back of her mind. She stands above the sad remains one last time, sharing a cold gaze with it. There’s a certain intimacy suspended in the thick night air; the humidity condensing in her lungs with each calm breath that left her lips. Her eyebrows knit together as her eyes search the corpse and her hands tighten quick to red fists at her sides. A silent scream radiating from her body as if her skin were to come aglow from the rage set deep within her. Yet not a word dare escape from the prison of her teeth.
Eyes closed, she leans her head back to face the moon once more. With unfurling fists her eyes flew back open, a glaze of tears shining in a film over them. The moon stares back without answer and Kimya composes herself, releasing her anger in a breathing exercise burned into her memory from years of dance; the memory of her practicing in her room flutters by… enough. Focus. Her dark eyes distance themselves from their home in her body and she steels her gaze straight ahead, Hello Kitty backpack slung back over her shoulder, and she walks. Miles back. The darkness of the city wrapping her in embrace and adrenaline armoring her skin as if it were stone. She is untouchable on this walk back and she loves it, no, needs it. It fuels her spirit. Any man or woman that passes her by would be gone in a moment if one dirty look flew from them. Hate radiates off of her like a sticky fog that repels even the menial cat callers that usually give her a shout here and there as she travels down the sidewalk. Loose gravel rolls underneath her pink and white polka dot socks as her hands search to pick lint in the pockets of her faded pink zip up jacket, hood half settled over her hair. Her feet ache. She pays no mind.
Eventually she finds herself standing at her front door. She stares straight ahead, summer bugs flying across the door in the porch light, paint cracked and peeling on the doorframe. She blinks, expressionless, hand now grasping the doorknob. Are my hands sweating?, the thought echoes somewhere in her head. They are. Sometimes things feel like they never change. As she turns the knob, she briefly hears the shouts of young kids as she walks in but she snaps back to the present once she opens the door to a quiet, dark house. It’s hard to get used to a quiet home. She drops her bag by the door, turning the lock firmly. Lincoln and Elijah must be in bed. Or also out doing crimes… or whatever it is they do…
She rolls her eyes and breathes out, tension releases from her body like a shackle now broken. She brings herself to her shower and lets the sins of the day wash from her freckled and bruised skin. She remembers that water signifies purification and here she is indeed pure. Clean and next to God. Finally. She dresses.
A small smile cracks her lips as she skips down the hall to her room quietly and embraces her bed once again. Nothing matters anymore, just this feeling.
