I moved like a shadow, the knife stucked in between my hand. The room smelled of stale chips and warm sweat; the football's commentary continue to thuddling from the television like a distant heart. Just as my blade dipped forward, his hand shot out and caught mine. A second of contact. Metal against metal — and then something cold and unfamiliar pressed into my palm. He had a knife I hadn't seen. He'd been waiting.
Part of my plan had been misread; part of it had been anticipated. His grin spread slow and cruel, a thing that turned the room colder. I twisted away, breath going thin, and he lunged. The blade found flesh in his shoulder and he howled. A hot spray, a high, animal sound, and then the red that always said too much. I'd nicked him in the shoulder again; the wound bled dark and quick.
He looked at the blood as if tasting it, fingers coming away stained; then, with an expression that made bile climb my throat, he put his finger to his mouth and licked it. Red gleamed on his teeth like an obscene mask. This man was less than a man; he was predator , monster and prey braided into one.
He struck for me, hands like iron closing around my throat. Panic slammed my head like an accident .For a breathless moment I could feel the world narrowing to the pressure at my neck and the frantic flutter of my heart. The thought of being overpowered, of his weight crushing the life from me, jolted something savage awake. I forced my fingers to the small thing in my pocket, the one I'd wrapped and kept for a tint of luck and pressed it into his face, muffling his sound. The effect was immdiate.He slumped to to the floor like a heap, breathing shallow and ragged.
I coughed to clear my lungs, my red face stinging from the choke, and breathed the house's stale air .The knife in my hand smelled copper and warm. I dragged him. Heavier like a sack , to the dining room and secured him to the chair as best I could, making sure he couldn't lurch up and snatch at me again. The chair held him like a small island of sin in the middle of that room.
I sat opposite him and ate his snacks with slow, deliberate bites, the crunch of each chip loud against the thump of my heart. Every mouthful steadied me. Between each chews, I watched him. How I would make life unbearable for him.The house hummed on, oblivious, and the television commentators droned about offside plays as if nothing at all had happened. The house had become where I had claims to make.
He woke after five minutes, fumbling at the ropes, coughing, eyes wild. When he realized he couldn't move and that someone else was in the room, his expression shifted into something thin and terrible — amusement.
He looked me up and down and laughed, a sound that scraped the walls.
"Your mother was a lover girl," he spat, amusement bright in his voice.
"She'd do anything for love… but she birthed a monster." He laughed again, low and cruel.
One of my rules was never to let him see me break. I kept my face a flat mask and let my fingers trace the blade's spine, feeling the cool ridges under my skin. He blinked at that and something like surprise crossed his features, but he was far from done.
"You still got more to say?" I asked, my smile thin, my eyes locked on the glitter of the knife.
He leaned back in the chair, as if settling into a confession he'd been keeping.
"I would have been your foster father even if I'd never married the woman you killed," he said, voice slippery.
"I knew you killed her. But I was happy another monster is in my house. I would have killed her myself if you hadn't. I killed your mother too."
The words dropped like stones. For half a breath my world thinned to the sound of blood in my ears. Then something colder than grief moved through me. I breathed out, slow and steady, and folded the reaction back into a smile. .
"You're free to continue," I said, voice level.
"But you won't have much time." I kept my calm because whatever came next — confession, bargaining, or death — had to be owned by me.
"My name is blood now," I laughed and hissed, and the rage inside me uncoiled like a living thing. All the control I'd kept while he talked snapped. I drove the knife into his chest while he still breathed and carved a single word into the hot skin: SINNER. His screams filled the room and hit nothing. The house swallowed them like it always had. Blood spattered my face; I wiped it with my tongue as if tasting justice. Justice if served well is delicious.
I went up to my room and came back with something hot. I pressed it down on the carved words and he howled, but still the compound slept like a baby. No one came, no knock, no shout and I realized the rooms had been sealed against sound: a final cruelty for his private sins.
"Enjoying that?" I asked, returning to my chair. My gloves were streaked, the red wiped from my palms but not from my head. He panted, sweat beading and falling, a trapped animal.
"Is that all you can do?" he rasped, voice thin with pain.
"No," I said. "That was for my mother. For everything you stole from me." I plunged my fingers toward his face and the world shrieked with his misery. He screamed until his voice broke into raw, hollow sound. Even so, the fool tried to speak.
"You have no womb again," he croaked , a final, vile jab meant to wound. The cruelty in him cut deeper than any tool. I swallowed the poison of his words and let them fuel me.
I fetched a can and poured a smell that tasted like winter and ignition around him. He screamed and clawed at the air with teeth bared, and while the house filled with the loud, terrible sound of someone caught in the flame, I stepped into the darkness I'd planned for and walked out a different person with my cigarette in my mouth.