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Tender touches at the wrist, tracing the path of his fingers, clearly outlined in streaks of purple. A silver smile and eyes slanted and dark with bitter secrets. The scent of old water in the air. It smells flat and tepid; she can almost see it lying in dark corners, green fuzz growing at the edges. It smells like him, the scent of his hair when he drags her head back until tears come into her eyes.

She sits on his bed; the bare mattress is dirty and slightly come stained. A single naked lightbulb lights the dim room, scaring the shadows into the corners where they lurk and stare. Her mouth is slightly open and she stares in fascination of the picture of the woman on the wall. The edges of it are scratched and worn. The woman in the picture is naked and crucified; the picture blood looked like red paint. The woman's mouth looks sticky and her eyes are two blank chalkboards.

The girl puts up one grime covered hand and touches the face of the woman in the picture. She could feel the screams that lay trapped within, the screams that sink into the walls and the whimpers that lay broken on the floor. She knows that he would lie on the bed and look at that picture while touching himself. His breathy groans like dirt in her ears. She would try not to look, to touch the scabs on her legs and pick them away until he lay silent and spent.

Of course they fucked when he felt like it. She never did. It was as if what was between her legs had died. She remembered heat and pleasure. It was a long time ago when she used to touch herself when the house lay sleeping. That was before she had met him. When they had sex now she closed her eyes and pretended that she was stabbing him to death. One stab for each thrust, he had pinned her small body to the mattress and he grabbed her small breasts. Tracing a hand over the ribs that stuck out. He said that her thinness was sexy, it turned him on.

She would smile over the cold rice and would try to choke it down. Sometimes she would put yellow mustard on limp salads and pretend she didn't see the flies lighting on her food, rubbing their front legs together. The kitchen was small and it stank of old food and decay. She sometimes would try to tackle the dishes but then the nothing would call her and she would go out and play. It was better to stare blankly at the wall and pretend she wasn't there than to throw herself into this life.

There wasn't anywhere to go. No friends to see, no family to meet. He never brought friends over and she wouldn't ask when he smelled of perfume. He was the ugly center of her world and she was determined to make her world stop spinning. It would fall over on its side and lie like a dead rabid dog. The worms would come eat her soon after, blank white faces probing into the hollows of her cheeks.

She would play with his gun, touching its cold body. It would look up at her with one dead eye. That eye was black and it reminded her of those times she would sit in the closet under the dirty clothes, the lights on, and look at the dark coming in from under the door. The gun never spoke to her except when he would cock it and point in at her head. The empty click that smirked and echoed in her mind. That one black eye haunts her dreams; she can hear that click over and over again.

She lies on the bed, only clad in white panties. His knife lies next to her on the bed, its edge winking up at her. It demands acknowledgement and she stares and she thinks and it stabs at her mind dully. She picks it up and puts the flat of it on her arm, the metal feeling like a cold grin on the skin of her arm. She kisses it with unadorned lips. It is her teflon coat and she wants to make love to it.

The edge is sharp on her arm and it peels away the skin and leaves a blank white space in her arm. Slowly that space fills up with spidery droplets of blood that skitter down her arm. She wants to spill her picture blood like that woman, it would be like fresh paint that lays glimmering in a bucket. The pig’s blood that was spilled on Carrie.

It is cold and beautiful, distant and so close she can smell its copper mix with the flat water smell in the room. The smell makes her nauseous. She puts one clawed hand to her mouth and tastes herself on it, licks the blood off each thin finger. She likes that taste, she dreams of it. She thinks the woman in the picture has her mouth sticky with blood. Perhaps if she tried she could lick it off.

The seconds slip by and the blood slips down between her thighs, painting the mattress a dull red. She carves surely and delicately, thin spidery shapes. It is cold and she is cold. In her mind she can see that one black eye.

She gets up, the blade slipping out of her hand and falling to the floor. In the closet the finds his gun and feels it cold and dangerous in her hand. When she sits back down it is in a puddle of her blood, her wrists weeping red tears. It makes her grip on the gun unsure.

Carefully she places it in her mouth like he placed his cock so many times. It is cold and she can feel it pulse with energy.

She takes off the safety and cocks it, the sound very loud in her mind.

Click.

Empty.

Click.

The sound resonates in her mind, it sounds sharp and foreign in her ears.

Bang.

Her brains splash out on the mattress and wall and the gun slips from her hand. End game.