Here Be Monsters - By M T Murphy Page 0,9

lips were dark red. It looked like the blood of the jay.

Later. I'd have time to kill her later. I would pin her hands to the tree and slit her throat quickly. I'd wait until she bled dry from her hands before the actual cutting, and then I would bury her somewhere under the moon she admired so much. Her pale dark eyes would close, and she would never look at me again. She would not suffer like the bird had.

She grew curves, her breasts before her hips, and her cheeks hollowed out. Her dark eyes grew darker, her black hair blacker, and still she loved me. I found the cat under my bedroom window, stomach slit from its genitalia to its chin with its innards artfully arranged amongst the flowers. They were concentric circles, perfect and bloody.

Boys asked her out. Girls asked her out. She never said yes, and she spent her nights with me while I watched television, while I cooked and ate dinner, while I cleaned the house. She didn't often speak. I saw the words in her eyes and her movements. She seduced me with her silence in its infuriating grace, and I wondered if she seduced the animals with her sweet princess charms before the slaughtered.

She finally grew to the age I'd been when I'd first found the bird. She dressed like a slut, the little tease. Children came to our door asking if I had seen their lost dog, and I said no. But I knew she had buried it by the river. She took her kills further away as she got bigger and could walk further.

Father died that year. The police didn't know what happened to him. I found him in the forest, his skin eaten away by animals and his skull bleached by the golden sun.

Later would be too late.

I studied her long legs and slim waist and sturdy arms. She could match me now. She was too fast, too strong. I'd have to do what I had to do while she slept.

I went into her room, where she slept on her back tangled in silk sheets. Her bare breasts reflected the moonlight splashed through the window. I thought of the grinning baby, the grinning toddler, and even in sleep I thought she grinned at me.

She didn't wake when I took the paring knife and the nails from the kitchen. She didn't wake when I straddled her hips, looking down at her blank face. Her black hair made soft circles around her head, like the cat's guts. I would slit her open like she had slit open the cat, and crucify her like she crucified the bird, and bury my knife in her stomach like she did to Father.

She finally roused when I nailed her palms to her bedside tables. Her eyes were wide, afraid, but I put my hand over her mouth to keep her silent. She tried to bite me when I shifted to smooth my hand over her sweaty brow.

I knew then that I had always waited—later, always later—because I loved her.

It's for the best, I told her.

She shook her head. No.

I pressed the knife into her blossoming vulva, where black curls opened to the slit between her thighs, and sawed it up her gut and stomach and chest. I had to press harder on her breastbone, but it eventually cracked, and I slipped the blade along her cheeks to give her a final bloody smile.

Her eyes were open, but she didn't shake her head or try to fight anymore. Blood dried on her hands like it did on the mockingbird’s wings. I could see the way she had cradled it lovingly while she tacked down its limbs. I could imagine how she spread the cat’s stomach and intestines in the flower bush. I could even see how Father had died, how he had begged, and how he asked for her to spare me. Or had he begged me to spare her? It was all too confusing. I couldn’t tell anymore.

It's for the best, I wanted to tell her again. But now she was gone.

There was something wrong with her.

The Reaver

India Drummond

© 2011

All rights reserved.

Edited by M.T. Murphy

Krel went to his private gallery to think. He walked among the delicate hovering globes and tapped the thin glass with an extended claw. The souls within shimmered as a perfect tone echoed off the stone walls. Each orb would produce a different note, dependent not on its shell, but the timbre