Monday, October 29, 2007

From My Dusty Files

A short story which I just found. Could trigger.



Die, Bitch

It was dark for a summer night. She walked fast along the sidewalk where old maples spread out more darkness under their vast canopies. The streetlights barely shone through, swaying branches causing them to blink on and off like the eyes of someone who knew something you didn't.

Her heels clicked on the concrete. Her toes struck an empty can which careened into the darkness. The trees rustled; a distant siren wailed and then suddenly cut off.

She shivered; the weather was turning chillier and her party dress was skimpy. She hated the deserted late night streets, the black window panes, the gates creaking to and fro. The party had been a failure, too, and no-one wanted to share a taxi with her. Her ankles hurt from the high heels she hardly ever wore, and the silent streets seemed to watch her going by.

She was unnerved by the silence, then by the smallest noise, by the crouching shadows of the shrubs in otherwise empty front yards. Just a few more blocks. Then she'd be home. She walked even faster, turned a corner

and suddenly he was there, a dark crouching shadow attacking, a light glinting from a blade, a smell of something sour, heavy, desperate. 'Die bitch,' it said and the light moved, charging toward her breasts, her throat. 'Die.'

She reacted. She had practiced this a thousand times in the dojo, a thousand times until the shining blade slowed down, became a target, until her body knew the dance of death, effortlessly, surely. She moved into his arms as into an embrace, grabbing his knife-holding wrist, turning in the circles of the dance macabre, spinning, spinning, seeing and not seeing his suddenly frozen gaze, sending him off to welcome his own blade. When the body met the concrete with a dead thud, her pirouette came to a halt, her high heel above his now silent throat.

It had worked. Just like it had worked a thousand times before. But this time the attacker wouldn't get up to exchange bows. This time there was blood, guts, astonished fear in unseeing eyes.

Holding herself together, barely, she dialed the emergency number. Time enough to collapse later, to regret, to shudder, to cry. This time the bitch didn't die.