Victim, Mademoiselle, Corner

Stream of consciousness prompt #2.

Inspired by the above 3-word prompt from the criminally talented Edith Bow.

.I wake up in a snowstorm. I don’t know where I am what’s going on. I’m cold and wet and cold again, snow pressing against me, easing me down to the ground until I can finally, finally rest.

I’m supposed to be dead. He wanted me dead, tried to make me another one of his dead. Another victim another treasure. Hoarded and kept in the ivory tower. Taking a person and making it into an object. 

Leaving me to bleed out in the snow. 

My throat is cut. I can’t speak, beyond a wheezy sort of sob and I want to laugh at my new necklace.

I don’t want to die out here in the cold. 

But I’m not dead. I’m alive with bright pain lancing up and down my throat my body. The blood has slowed. I fumble with my scarf, handmade and heartfelt. Press it against my throat. It hurts. I’m glad. Means I’m alive.

Means I’m going to get out of here. 

There’s not much snow on me. Light dusting. I can see fresh footprints walking away.

Must have been interrupted by the storm. 

He’s right around the corner. Through the white. Grass under the snow. Brittle and dead and dying. I’m not dead though. Might be dying but who isn’t, really.

The wind slaps my face, stinging shards of ice and my hair is soaked. He left me my jacket. 

I stagger to my feet. Tie the scarf tight against my throat, so tight it digs into the wound and I have to gasp through the pain. 

Black spots burst in front of my eyes, blinding against the white snow and for a second I think I’m going down, and he’s won after all.

I sway but don’t fall. Everything hurts. I’m covered in blood and my jeans are torn and I like these fucking jeans.

Such a small indignity in the scheme of things, but somehow worse than the gash around my throat.

If I don’t find people I’m going to die. It’s as simple and basic as that.

But he’s still out there. He’s going to walk away and he was going to leave me here where no one would ever find me. Like he left the others.

Men, women. No rhyme no reason. 

Middle aged father of five.

Elderly woman, alone in her house and found days and days later. Only press at her funeral.

The French exchange student who was still warm when they found her.

Au revoir, Mademoiselle. 

Adult man in a big coat who needs better situational awareness, apparently. 

In my defense, I had a lot on my mind. 

Rushing water and guns with no bullets and all the victims, mine and his and this doesn’t get to be his story.

I head out after him into the cold. It’s a wall of ice and it hurts like a sandstorm and I don’t care, because I am going to corner him and kill him and it will be an end, in a way.

I could die before I find him, die out here in the cold where even my big fucking coat won’t be able to stop the freeze of death and I’ll fall asleep, finally rest.

I know I won’t. 

His tracks are easy to follow. I focus on each step one after the other. Following his steps and putting my feet in his and soon I hear him, hear him walking out there in the cold.

We’re in a field or a forest but it doesn’t matter either way. Sometimes there are trees and sometimes there aren’t and either way I stumble, I can only see the footprints.

There’s so much snow. 

It’s different when I do it. When I end things. When I come and clean up a mess, when I eliminate issues, it’s not personal. It’s business. It’s a contract. An agreement, made in broad daylight because I’m not ashamed of what I do. 

I may enjoy it, but there’s no shame in liking your work, right?

Trap them in a corner, watch the fear in the eyes and the rabbit-frozen posture and see the exact moment they realize they don’t get to walk away, not this time.

I’m very good at my job.

He’s a fucking hack. Weekend warrior when it comes to endings. Thinks he has a big dick because his kills end up in the news. Fucking loser. It’s not about that, not if you do it right. He gets off on it, and because he gets off on it, he’ll fuck up. Brain addled by lust and arrogance and power and the wet hunger of cruelty.

People make mistakes in the heat of the moment.

I was a mistake. 

I’m getting closer, can hear his footsteps, heavy and slow. Uncertain. He’s lost. Fucking lost, and I could leave him out here in the endless white, leave him and let him freeze and die. 

I could get help. I could get my fucked up neck sewn up, rag doll made sort of whole. 

My throat doesn’t hurt much anymore. Distant pulse of pain. I can’t tell if that’s a good sign or a bad one.

There’s a small patch of trees, looming in the white. He’s leaning against one, a heavy set man with a shuffling walk and hunched shoulders. Tiger masquerading as a turtle.

He was walking a little ahead of me down the sidewalk, shuffling under his ugly brown jacket and too-big khaki pants.

He was a slow walker. 

I passed him without much thought. I was new in town, just there for the night on business, and none of this was supposed to happen. 

I turned a corner. I turned another corner. I was lost and I wouldn’t admit I was lost and the sky was dark as an omen and my hands were cold in my pockets but I was to find this fucking hotel on my own.

There was no one around to ask. After a while I heard someone walking behind me. Shuffling steps and heavy breathing. Nerd in the ugly jacket. I could ask him for directions, probably should have, but it hurt my pride.

I turned another corner. An alley leading to a dead end. No doors no windows and I hate this fucking city, what sort of buildings don’t have fucking windows, what sort of sadistic fucking architects had done this to the skyline.

‘Shit,’ I said. Before I could turn around, maybe even ask that sweaty fuck where the hell we were, something heavy slammed against the back of the neck and the world went away.

Like I said. Bad situational awareness. This is the first time. It will be the last time.

I’m getting closer. I slow down, taking my time. I still don’t know where we are but I don’t care. 

I touch the knife in my pocket, the gun. My wallet is missing. I don’t know why he left my weapons. 

The air is silent and thick and I can’t hear anything or see anything through the white and it’s more than white it’s blank, a lack of something, opposite of a void. 

But I can see him and he hasn’t seen me. I’m better at this and older than him and I’ve survived a hell of a lot longer. Will. 

Because he doesn’t get to have any more victims. 

He doesn’t deserve them.

It’s still white but there’s the passage of time, the sense that somewhere the sun is moving beyond the clouds, and I don’t care because I’m getting closer. Closer and closer and let’s see how he likes being the victim for a change.

A noise to the side. I’m not alone.

There’s another dark figure out there. Walking walking walking through the snow and the dark and the hazy snow sky. Walking towards me or away from me and maybe it’s a rescue. Maybe it’s freedom and safety and I can walk away from this.

But he’ll still be out there. Still hunting and still walking and he doesn’t deserve to fucking breathe. 

My throat doesn’t hurt anymore. I touch my neck.

The scarf is gone. The skin is slit, but there’s no blood. No more blood, anyway.

I don’t know if I’m being hunted and I don’t know who I’m hunting and none of it matters because I have a goal and a purpose and I can be crime and justice all at once.

He’ll die trapped in a corner of this place. Eventually we’ll reach the edge. And then I’ll step forward out of the snow. He’ll see me for who I am or what I am, see me and try to stumble away and I will show him how his victims felt before the pain started.

There are other shadows now. Lost and lonely and looking seek finding hunting.

In the distance someone screams. Muted by the snow and the wind. Then it’s gone. Might have been an illusion, a fantasy.

I’ve never been a fan of fantasy.

I don’t know who the others are, if they’re victims or villains, and I don’t know where I am and who I am is starting to soften around the edges, blur in the snow.

Feels like I’m disappearing. Step after step and one day I’ll be gone, and no one will remember me. And that will be my sentence.

But before then, before I drift away, forgotten and unmissed and a shadow on the real lives of real people, ones I passed and ones I eliminated, I’m going to catch him. 

I don’t know if the shadows are walking towards me walking away from me hunting or fleeing, seeking help or chasing pain, but none of it matters now.

I’m getting closer. I know I’m getting closer.

I’m not cold anymore.

Raising the collar of my jacket against the cackling wind, I follow him into the storm.