"Knife"
By Emily Mills, 1/27/05


In the moonlight, his quietly rising and falling torso looked like a giant larval creature. She remembered eating a grub that looked similar once, on a safari with her father some ten years prior. It had squirmed in her mouth even after she’Äôd bitten it in half.

His chest was entirely bare of even slight traces of hair. The great stomach rolled gently with each breath, as though, somewhere underneath, there were waves instead of guts. Save the lump in the blanket that covered his groin, he might have been mistaken for a woman. She noted, without irony, that his breasts were quite a bit more substantial than her own.

The knife was only six inches long. She worried for a moment that the blade would be unable to penetrate any further than the layers of fat’Äîthat no vital organs might be pierced simply because overeating had given him such thick, organic armor. But still, she was determined to carry out the task she had volunteered for. This might be the only chance they got.

She crept up silently until she stood at the side of the bed, poised and ready, blade aimed at his heart. It was so fleshy, so grotesque, this business of killing by hand, she mused. The attraction of guns quickly made more sense to her. Most people, not inherently monsters, would find the feel of metal plunging into blood and bone abhorrent, nauseating. Too personal, too visceral. But a gun’Äîdeath from afar, a more impersonal act, it was almost easy. She wondered briefly if she could actually go through with it.

Her first kill. She hated this man; hated all that he stood for. It was he who had orchestrated the murders of her family, her friends, her fellow human beings. He wasn't alone in these ghastly acts, most surely, but he was their personal representative of evil. A figurehead. A target. The key to their freedom.

Once, she hadn't believed in the existence of evil. She didn't like to, even now. It was more of a defense, an adaptation of a mind badly abused for far too long. The body was a physical testament to this’Äîat that moment, flushed with adrenaline, she could still feel the spiky tingle of fresh scarring on her back. For a very fleeting moment, she wondered, wryly, if she'd ever be beautiful. If it would ever matter.

The man drew in a deep, labored breath and looked as though he were attempting to turn onto his side. But after a loud grunt and a few twitches, he settled once more into his prone position, defeated by his own weight. She ignored the cold beads of sweat amassing on her forehead and lip. She ignored the gnawing of an empty belly. She concentrated hard on the beast before her.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and the room was cast into an eerie, inky darkness. The sound of her own breath became almost unbearably loud in her ears. She looked down, trying to gauge the relation between her knife and his chest. If need be, she would do this without the benefit of sight.

An electrical signal in the brain’Äîfraction of a second’Äîand the right muscles responded. The knife cut down through the cool, still air, sending a wind buffeting up against her forearm. Then the meeting of steel with skin, quickly becoming fat then muscle then bone. The shivers of contact rushed up through the blade and into the palm of her hand.

She let go of the handle and took an addled step back from her work. The knife was buried up to the hilt in his chest, a wet pool of dark spreading out slowly.

The cloud had passed, returning the pale glow of the moon. She blinked and stared at the man on the bed. He hadn't called out, had hardly moved. Only the smallest convulsion had skittered through his immense body and, for a moment, she wondered if somehow he hadn't simply died before she even got the chance to stab him.

The body anticipates its own demise and, as a final at of pompous defiance, shuts down of its own accord before anyone else can have that satisfaction. He is fat enough; perhaps the extra weight has become sentient.

She laughed in spite of herself, but quickly stifled the sound, aware suddenly that she was alone in a dim, still room, laughing at a corpse. If she's ever to make it on the outside, God willing, she must not make this a habit.

A gun winked up at her from a holster that had been carelessly left on the floor at the foot of the bed. She took it and the pair of black leather boots it had been guarding.

She turned to leave, but a strange impulse overtook her and she quickly returned to the dead man's bedside. Fluid had begun to soil the sheets around his middle. His body had become a strange blueish color. Despite her better judgment, she found her hand waving out the sign of the cross over his face. It was not a motion that she was familiar with. But suddenly there was the thought that this man, more than many, will need redemption’Äîeven if it's in death. She can't forgive him, but that would be her burden. Someone ought to. Just not her.

She felt suddenly very cold, the sweat drying and cooling against her skin. She vaulted through the open window and ran silently toward the woods, the freshly polished boots and a well-oiled gun glinting in the moonlight.


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