Chapter Text
There’s a grouping of bushes by the hotel building, nestled snug across the stretch of the parking lot. The asphalt’s wet from the rain, the chemical-sour smell of the city is muffled by the dirt beneath her shoes, her heels sunk into it a long time ago like quicksand, locking her in.
Wanda sits behind these bushes on this little bench, ash-stained, and watches. Patrols, one might say. She yawns and shakes her head, rolls it in circles to stretch her neck, mutters encouragement, mutters anything to keep herself awake.
Five cars in the lot turns to fifteen cars turns to thirty as the night draws on. She notes them each as they park, likes to bet to herself as she waits for them to step out, use all those exterior chocolate clues to guess the yummy cream filling. The expensive ones and the dented ones. Vibrant paint that reflects the hotel sign or dull, water-worn colors. Who will be the lucky one tonight? Which little bug will pop up from those fancy car doors, clean-shaven and unbearable, and fly himself right into the web?
This old spot practically fell into her lap. She saw a post on one of those creepy message boards she hates to love so often. A grouping of coordinates for suitable bachelors or vulnerable ladies, come one come all, climb those rickety stairs and climb into a rickety bed, let that rich man steal your dignity and then your purse, let that poor man stare at you until he wants to touch you until he touches you until you want to scrape your skin off. What a joke.
The Old Violo Plaza. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
This is where the creeps go to rest their heads after a long day of defilement. This is where they expect to rest without any interruption.
In truth, she took the trouble to find this place because she thought it’d be easy. She found this little bench with the perfect view, crawled up and took her post, the ideal place for manspotting. From what she saw on the forums, it’d be no time at all before a suitable target traipsed himself across the slick pavement and into that bright-orange lobby.
And, for the most part, she was right. Not a single sharp-shouldered body has walked down that long, dark strip of land that wouldn’t have it coming to him. In the way they walk, in the way they dress, deconstructed suits and short-sleeved button-ups, in the way they laugh to themselves like they’ve just won another game. They all welcome a knife to the swell of their throat.
That’s the problem: it’s too perfect. She’s having trouble choosing.
So, Wanda manspots for another hour. She checks her nails in the dark. She flips her palm over, tries to summon the pesky flicker of red light that never appears on her command. She still gets frustrated when it doesn’t show. She lifts her feet simply to hear the squelch of the mud underneath. She checks her nails again.
Her phone was abandoned a few months back and all of its mobile games went with it. Carrying a road trip bingo card with her on the road isn’t in the question either. The plane’s a hassle enough, tossing all her weapons in the woods behind the airport, starting over when she gets to her new destination. Blank slate every time. Useful but inescapably boring.
Boredom first. Excitement later.
A Corvette in the back right corner. A Ford in the front left. The men who park at the front are convinced they’ll never be caught, the men at the back are new to being shameless with their evil. They’re shaky on their legs, still teetering on the precipice of guilt.
Wanda yawns. Again. Long, it makes her eyes water, smudges her sight, smudges her makeup.
Corvette goes up to the top floor, a yellow light flicked on ten minutes after he walks inside. Ford must be roomed on the other side of the building, or maybe he just likes the dark. Hiding from any prying eyes.
She cracks her neck and it echoes. Truck, car, convertible. Motorcycle parked on the street. Check, check, check. She can see the ones with families based on the way they look around for audience. Can’t have anyone calling the wife about his presence at the Violo. Can’t have anyone checking his browser history.
At this point, she’ll be asleep before she makes up her mind.
There’s a man walking through the lot, right then. Right before she plans to curl up on the cold ground and rest her eyes.
She squints at him, steep-tall shadow in much less than a hurry. Then, to the cars around him.
She’d think she missed him pulling in but there’s nothing new. No new car, no exterior to analyze. Fine. It’s a tie breaker at the least—the only one without a car, without a trace left behind to worry about. It’s a tie breaker and, if she’s willing to go there, a sign.
The pale sign light catches the pale man in a rectangular beam.
A woman is sliding silently down the dirt slope and climbing over the concrete divider several feet behind him.
He doesn’t notice. He doesn’t even look around, really. He doesn’t scan, no air of paranoia to him, he doesn’t turn and show his face. That’s quite alright. She’s seen enough. Suit and blond and pale. Yeah.
Her heels click quietly on the lot no matter how carefully she steps, shaking free all of the mud. She walks fast, keeping with him, controlling the space between them like she’s tied a rope to his waist and is merely trolling behind him in shallow water.
He ducks inside, his hair clipping the top of the frame. The long-legged ones are frustrating to catch, especially once they start running. Wanda takes it into consideration. She smooths her dress down and jogs a bit to catch up.
The blurry silhouette of him practically glides across the smudged glass window, settling beside the reception desk. It’s an awkward stance she has to take as she huddles beneath to listen through the cracks. No chance is she missing his room number. No chance is she knocking around on every door to find him.
It’s been a long night. She deserves a little bit of simplicity.
The man’s voice is low, barely a rumble and a few runaway consonants. Great, long-legged and soft-spoken. Wanda’s nearly about to give up on him when the receptionist projects a tired voice atop the clatter of a hastily-grabbed phone—”Could I get someone up this weekend sometime to check on the air conditioning in 204?”
Wanda pushes her knuckles to her mouth to keep from laughing. Sometimes tragedies just write themselves into reality, like outlined book pages. Room 204. No investigation required, it’s laid in her lap like a dinner plate. The place and the time and the clean up crew. A handyman will arrives in around two days to find him, they’ll likely mop it all up and resell the room within twenty-four hours.
Maybe she can set up shop here for a week, pick them off. No one would ask questions, no use calling cops to a dirty hotel, it’d only invite unwanted attention. The forums will be a lot cleaner in no time, accounts growing quieter and quieter until it’s rendered a ghost town.
The man heads up through a mysterious door. The receptionist steps out for a smoke. Wanda slips past her in the jamb, no exchange or glance spared.
She found this dress on a hanger outside of one of those posh shops when she first arrived, a slick black cocktail with sickening ruffled sleeves. She doesn’t know how anyone didn’t see her drape it over her arm and wander off. Must have been the smile and the sway of the hips.
It pains her to have to modify it. But that’s the job, she supposes.
The sound of the ripping fabric echoes around the empty stairwell, her back braced to the door to keep it shut. She grimaces and bites her tongue, stopping the slit just beneath her upper thigh-line, just beneath the garter. She knows where guys tend to tear. She’s good at costuming. Lipstick down to her chin, mascara clawed down to her jaw. The innocent act, the damsel in distress, they like that kind of thing. The guys in places like this. The suited guys in places like this.
She climbs the stairs slow, practicing her sobs, practicing her lines. The breathing always makes her light-headed and the voice shreds her vocal chords but she forgot how fun it is to play dress up like this. Fun to put on a costume, fun to be assured that nothing can go wrong with a little bit of visibility. Nothing matters in places like this.
Wanda stops with her hand on the crash bar of the door, staring at the number two painted there in flaking white paint. She stares unblinking until the tears start to form, runs through her story again, a few fake whimpers for good luck, and then she’s walking out and into the hall.
Boo-hoo. Wail-sniff. She stumbles, her ankle bending in, falling into the wall with a cry and a thud. If he doesn’t hear that one, he’ll hear the next one. Sob-slurp. Her nails scratch the paint as she hobbles and weeps her way past 201, 202, 203.
The light’s on in his room. There’s a wide gap by the floor, she can see it shining through. Good, then he’ll have heard her performance.
Five hard palm-slaps to the wood of the door. She gasps in-in-in-in, sounding like a sputtering engine, sounding like distress concentrate.
“Helloooo!” she cries, hiccuping between the O’s, a couple more knocks for good measure, “Please, plee-ee-ease, hello, I—I need h-hnn-help, I…”
She slumps against the barrier. She sniffles and whines, watching the light in front of her feet and waiting for his shadow.
A few seconds pass.
Then, a few more.
The door’s usually open by now.
She doesn’t let that ruin it.
A closed fist banging beside the room number. She cries the entire time she waits for him. She can never be sure if the apertures are broken in old places like these. Maybe he’s enjoying the show. Oh, she hopes he is.
Wanda rocks herself back onto her own feet just in time for the door to open, the squeak of the hinge and the rattle of the knob.
She offers a well-acted jolt of surprise. A dainty gasp for good measure.
The man leans against the jamb. His shirt’s half-opened. His hair’s uncombed. She waits for his pretty blue eyes to melt into the sharp kind of concern, the type of concern that invites a desperate woman into his home and then his bed, but he just looks at her. Looks more inconvenienced than anything.
“Hi,” Wanda manages a gummy voice, fidgeting with her hands in front of her and shifting between her feet. The sound of her heels echoes in the empty hall. Maybe she should have broken one of the heels off. Damn. Maybe next time.
He does nothing, says nothing, barely even a blink in her direction.
“I’m s-so sorry,” she continues even still because she’ll be damned if she lets a good performance go to waste, “I’m… I’m visiting for the week—f-from the States—and I don’t know where I am. The, the hotel is so far a-and my… I don’t have my phone, I…”
He scans her. Then, again. It isn’t the attention she wants, though. Disinterest. She doesn’t like disinterest.
“But you’re not American,” he says.
That’s not what she wanted either.
“W-w-what?” She sniffs, pawing at her crocodile tears, smearing the mascara more. Her knife is cold against her leg. “I—I don’t—can I borrow your phone? Please? Sir?”
He drops his arm, fingers curling around the door, opening it wider, and she looks down to find his belt undone, “Curious.”
This is truly baffling. She almost regrets not picking one of the other randos, they’d not have given her this much trouble. He’s not drunk that she can tell, his eyes are crystal clear and his hands are steady. She’d not stick around if she didn’t think that, once she finds her way in, and she will find her way in, the look on his face when he feels the first pain won’t be beautifully satisfying.
There’s an obstacle between then and now, though, and it’s not the door but the man who holds it open. He’s too calm for her liking. She’s usually on the bed by now. That was the plan. Get on the bed and smooth her hands down her body, reach for the hem of her dress like she’ll pull it up, unsheathe the weapon instead.
She didn’t expect to have to cry for this long.
“M-my boyfriend, he—”
“You must know where you are. There’s no way you’re unaware,” he says, almost disappointed. Disappointment. That’s new too. Her frown’s slowly fading into something genuine. “Of any place to seek help, you’ve somehow stumbled your way into the worst. Statistically proven. To come to this building in search of assistance would require an almost calculated level of self-carelessness.”
‘Course she knows where she is. Violo Plaza. Just outside of Croydon. South London. She wrote the coordinates down on a napkin, memorized them, crumpled them up and tossed them into an airport trash bin.
“Oh,” she frowns, snuffing pitifully, looking around the hall on wobbly deer legs, “W-where am I?”
His mouth twitches. Did you not see the sign? He doesn’t ask.
“Go down to reception, ask for Room Eleven, they’ll get help for you.” He starts to step back inside again. “Mind how you go.”
“Help?” she asks.
“Yes. Police intervention.” Wanda thinks she catches a smile on his face in the dim light. “Unless, of course, you wanted to call someone else…?”
No, no. This is all wrong. He’s not supposed to talk about the police. He’s not supposed to talk about to talk about reception, about rooms that don’t exist, about the secret safety codes. He’s supposed to talk about the way this dress compliments the curve of her body, how she looks so tired, he’s supposed to call her a poor thing and invite her in for a drink.
“Can I—c-can I just come in? For a second?” She pushes her hands down her chest, squeezing and then framing, eyes straying to the walls as if she’s got no clue what they are, “I… it doesn’t feel safe out here. And—and you seem nice.”
He doesn’t seem nice, actually. If a pretty, crying girl shows up and asks to come inside, typically, people will accept. Nice people would offer their phone. But, at the same time, bad people would accept as well. They’d drag her in and tell her to lay down.
So, what is this? Who is this?
He doesn’t cave as easily as she expects. He doesn’t cave at all.
“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” he asks in that tone of voice people use for idiots.
“W-why?”
“I don’t know you. And you don’t know me.” He goes to close the door completely, “You’ll need to be careful here, you know. If a phone’s what you need, try reception. They’ll let you in for a dollar.”
She braces a hand on the door before he can close it, fingers splayed so wide that they hurt, “I… I don’t have money. Please.”
“And I don’t have a phone,” he replies. “Truly unfortunate. Goodnight.”
“Then,” she tries, almost through gritted teeth, pushing on the door slightly with a shaking arm, “just for company.”
His eyes roam. Finally. She almost gets to feel flattered, almost allows herself to believe that she’s finally got him, but he’s meeting her eyes again and she sees no sign of the fire she wanted, the fire she’s used to.
“That dress. Looks expensive,” he says with a curt nod. “It’s a shame it’s been ripped.”
And the door is clicking closed.
Wanda stares for… probably a full five minutes, she thinks. She stares at the grain of the wood in the space where a man had been standing, the outline of him still buzzing in her vision.
First is the confusion. She sniffs a bit, still reeling from a cry. She recounts his words, she recounts hers. She recounts his facial expressions and she can only count one. Indifference.
And second, she seethes.
Because it should be over, now. He should be on the shag carpet of his leased hotel room, staining the beige into a deep black-red, and she should be able to fit her fist in the hole she’s carved in his face—but instead, she just stands here in the hall. Frozen solid.
Her hand is burning.
She glances down and finds it glowing. Sparking. Anger that runs out of space in her body and leaks through her fingertips.
She shakes her hand out, extinguishes its fire, and pushes her way into the room, an invitation no longer required.
The door’s nearly ripped from its attachments, banging shotgun-loud against the wall, slamming shut with the same strength. She’s breathing loud between her teeth, breathing angry. She shakes her hand out again.
He’s standing by the tiny bed, his shirt fully opened, facing the other way. He doesn’t jolt. He doesn’t look over his shoulder. He does nothing but slip the belt from its loops, rolling it up, setting it on the nightstand.
It thuds.
Her eye twitches.
“So,” the man says, bending to undo his laces. She stares at the ridges of his back through thin cotton. Her hand is firmly poised against the steel under her dress. “Where are you from, then?”
She squints. The character has been broken but she funneled too much effort into it to let it go. The damsel’s just a shattered pane of glass, white and opaque and full of deep cracks, that hasn’t fallen apart yet.
“Of course I’m American.”
“A citizen, then. But not born there.” He drops his shirt from his shoulders, still not looking at her. “Such an odd thing to tell a stranger, especially when appealing for help. Didn’t have to say where you came from, yet you did.”
The shirt’s folded and set on the stand as well. He’s got a pretty back. As freckled as his chest. She thinks she’ll gut him, leave his spine untouched, roll him over for the handyman to find.
“In your accent. A bit muddled, maybe, I could hear it. Something neutralized, perhaps purposely trained out of you over a period of time, I’d say… ten years? Fifteen?”
It's almost enough to scare her. Truly. If she were a little less tired, maybe, or a little less angry, maybe she’d think more about this.
Because this isn’t creep language, not the kind she needs.
It’s knowledgeable language. More than one syllable per word. He carries a calm that implies something more than an idiot. A calm that implies panic button, that implies the authorities are on their way, that implies anything but victim. His attention, it’s heavier in all the wrong places. A deficit of lust, a lack of desire, he doesn’t close in, he doesn’t reach out, he doesn’t point to the bed, he doesn’t undo his fly.
Knowledgeable—but what could he possibly know? Nothing. He knows nothing. No matter how he smiles and stands and watches, he can’t know who she is or what she’s done or what she’s planned to do.
It’s almost enough to make her turn and walk away.
“Try twenty,” she says.
And that was her, through and through. No more games, she’s tired of games, she’ll speak as herself now. Her voice, her venom. She hates to use it. Hates the things they say after. Something new and beautiful is always refreshing, in a place like this.
He turns to look at her, smiling. “There you are.”
Different, he’s different. Too different. Makes her feel sick. She doesn’t want to savor him anymore, she doesn’t want to save any pieces of him, she just wants to lodge a sharp point into a soft eye, grab him by the hair and keep him upright long enough to let everything drain down his cheek.
She hates the way he talks. She’ll cut his voice box out. She’ll cut out whatever part of his brain the word neutralized came from.
“Your accent isn’t neutralized,” she tells him like he doesn’t know.
“I’m in London.” He doesn’t move. He just stands. “One might say I… thrive here.”
“Here?” She gestures to the room. “Thrive?”
“You’re funny,” he says lamely, points at her in a way that implies he doesn’t mean it. She sincerely hopes he keeps pressing his luck. His shoes clatter on the ground as he drops them, then he reaches behind him and presents a tissue box. “Here.”
She doesn’t even look at it. “I’m not crying anymore.”
“You were hardly crying in the first place,” he says, stepping forward. “I was more thinking this might be for the makeup.”
It’s a good time to take the knife out, she thinks. Yes, this is a good time. Swipe down the inside of his forearm, make him gasp and grab the wound, let him buckle down enough to reach his throat.
Wanda takes a tissue instead.
It’s the shitty kind, covered in paper dust. She presses her eyes, coating her face in powder that sticks to tacky cheap makeup and half-dried tears. She pats her face dry. He rests his hands on his hips and she’d almost forgotten his shirt was gone. Very intense gaze, this guy has. Too many thoughts in that head.
“There’s still an old payphone a mile out,” he talks idly as she cleans herself up, the paper starting to rip apart into streamers, fuzzy with fibers. “If you’re against making any more of a scene than you’ve already made.”
“Payphone?” she repeats, looking at him through a hole in the tissue. “Said I didn’t have any money, didn’t I?”
“Perhaps. But that could have been another lie.”
Fair is fair. She licks a corner of the sheet and begins to work at the lipstick on her chin.
“I’ve seen people in distress, you know. All kinds of people.” He pushes his hair back. It’s hot in here, a few runaway strands are glued to his forehead. “This is the first time anyone’s ever played American.”
“It’s a distressing time for them,” she spits. “I tend to go method.”
“It must work too well.” He says it like it’s such a bad thing. “All I see is the accent, I’m afraid. I don’t see any of the feeling. I don’t believe it.” Even despite the smug that pools in them, she knows these eyes. Puppy eyes. “I wonder what you could want from me.”
“Maybe you should keep looking,” she smiles.
“Yes, maybe I should,” he says, glancing down to the rip in her dress. “How lucky it is, that you’re still here.”
She smiles into the tissue. She hopes it looks shy to him as opposed to victorious.
Because that felt like a pickup line, didn’t it?
She’s never been around a man for so long, just standing, not touching, not moving. She was afraid there, for a second, that it’d remain that way. That he’d stand over there and she’d stand right here, each of them blotting their faces free of sweat, of paint, right up until the bitter end.
It's working, though. She’s chipping away at him. She knows she is. She has to be.
“Like what you see?” she asks because that’s what they like to hear.
He grimaces, taking a step back. His lips part in that disgusted way, like he’s going to say some prude nonsense, oh, please, have a little decency. Instead, he reaches for one of the drawers. Pulls out a thinner, softer shirt. Nice and white and pure. Like he’s realizing that he’s the one who needs to have decency.
Wanda drops the tissue. Her footsteps are muted on the carpet.
“Wait,” she says. He glances over at her, one of his arms already slipped into the sleeve. “The AC’s out, isn’t it?”
He stares.
“… Won’t you be hot?” she smiles sweetly.
He stares some more.
I didn’t tell you about the AC, he doesn’t say. Thinks it, though. Clear as the light on his face. Clear as the spots down his arms and the clench of his fingers around cheap fabric.
She steps closer, and closer, and around the corner of the mattress. He watches her approach until she gets close enough to feel his breath, to smell iron on him, iron and hand soap and hairspray. He doesn’t budge.
“I’ll be just fine,” he says softly.
They’re standing close now. Her feet fit between his. Her heels don’t make her tall enough. She tilts her head back, scans him up close, all those little details she couldn’t see through the crack in the door, through the rage she had felt.
They’re all the same. No matter how different they are, no matter how smart they want to be. She always ends up here in the end. His breath’s hot on her upper lip. Her skin stings from the scrubbing.
“Hello,” he offers in a whisper so gentle she nearly misses it.
“Hi,” she replies. Her lips brush his chin.
The man’s head drops and their noses touch. She thinks he’ll kiss her now. But he doesn’t. She watches his mouth as it curls into the implication of a smile. Her hand finds its place in the center of his chest like she plans to push him over, like he’s merely another door she plans on opening.
“I’m inclined to give you my name,” says the man, trailing up to touch her arm.
Wanda flexes her fingers lightly, “And why would you do that?”
“It’s my understanding that, when one is in danger,” he traces the bone of her wrist, “they are expected to humanize themselves.”
Far too late for that.
She can’t feel his heart beating under her palm but she assumes that means it’s close to stopping.
She wrinkles her nose a bit, “Probably shouldn't have said that.”
He holds onto her wrist, his hand’s hot, “Oh, should I not have?”
“Yeah.” She feigns a frown, shaking her head, really making a meal of this, really having fun with the moment. Didn’t take him too long to fold at all. “It gets so boring once you know something's wrong.”
“I see,” he nods. His hand falls to his side. “Well.”
“Well,” she agrees, and she’s so excited that her temperature’s rising in this stuffy room, so excited that the steel handle attached to her thigh’s about red-hot.
“You’ve got me, now,” he sounds serene, too serene, but maybe it’s heatstroke, maybe it’s destiny. “So, you’ll just have to go ahead.”
She’s thankful that he’s given her the permission she didn’t need. Only renders him worse off. She’s deciding in real time, she’ll make a mess of the place now, dice him so thin he’s a paste, see how calm he looks when he’s little more than a spatter and a suitcase that indicates it was once a life.
It's a first, being given permission.
Makes her unspeakably angry.
She flips the hem of her dress up, the frayed seam soft on her fingertips. This is her favorite part. She’s getting faster at this part. Pinching the edge of the handle, the grip of it, flipping the knife up and into her palm, clean, surgical, so fast you’d blink and miss it.
Her eyes stay on his. She clenches her teeth.
Pinch, grip, flip. Her arm jolts forward like it’s taking control, muscle memory, and she’s grinning, and her elbow’s locking, and the blade’s plunged into the center of his belly, just below a faded pattern of words she doesn’t have the care to try and read.
Wanda waits.
She waits for the gasp. She waits for his mouth to open, for him to shout, for his eyebrows to draw together, waits for the squelch and the warmth that flows down the back of her hand, the thud of a body.
But he stands. Just stands. He looks at her like nothing’s happened at all.
“Quite an odd way to thank someone for their company,” he glances down between their bodies.
Too swept by the tide of anger, focus locked on his face, she retrieves, she recedes, and she goes again. Harder. And again. Firmer. She stabs him until she realizes that there’s no resistance, there’s no firm flesh or pesky bone, there’s… but that’s impossible.
He tilts his head at her.
A growl stings the back of her mouth.
It takes her a moment to stop and think. It’s hard to think when she can barely see, when she’s expected a fountain and her hands are still dry. Too much momentum. By the time she’s got her knife above her head, prepped and poised to pierce him right in the heart, twist and gash until she’s got a clear view through to the other side of the room, it’s almost too late to notice it.
The reflection from the knife, so shiny and clean, catches him on the chin. A bright white beam. Unobstructed by… by…
Wanda staggers. She loosens her grip. She looks down at the knife, blinding herself with the light. Then, grasping a handful of his shirt and dragging it up under his chin, she glares down at his bare stomach.
No blood.
No anything.
Her pulse is in her ears. It feels like it might explode. “What…?”
“Would you like to try again?” he asks softly, fingers brushing up her arm and wrapping around her wrist for a second time. She goes to wring out of his grasp and stab and slash but he shakes his head, “I mean it. Go ahead.”
Wanda wants to scream. Wants to kill him more than she’s wanted to kill anything, and she’s angry that it’s him, the stranger with the smile and the suit that’s ruining everything. She wants to bite him apart. She wants… she wants to… She thinks of every method she’s used, every method that’s hurt, every method that’s lasted for days, and she stirs it all together in her belly because she knows there won’t be ample materials in this room.
“Fuck you,” she manages, and she’s tasting the blood she hasn’t even spilled yet. Maybe it’s her own. Maybe she’s gone crazy, for real this time. First the fire in the hands and now this? She’s in way past her head, that has to be it. It was never real. None of it was real. It couldn’t have been, it couldn’t have been—
“It’s alright,” his hand’s still on her and she wants to cut it off. “Here. I’ll help you.”
His grip gets tighter.
She fights harder.
“You’re fucking insane,” she says, the one who fake cried and ripped her dress and faked an accent just to kill one man, the one who put on a performance only to stumble in the final act. “You’re. You’re fucking—”
“Try.” He steps closer somehow, rests his forehead to hers, and his eyes are different than they were before, she could swear she sees them turning, like gears in there, like cogs. He guides her with a steady hand, pulling her knife up, blade-out, “See.”
Wanda tightens her jaw. Her eyes sting and blur and she’s horrified by this, somehow, no blood and no bone, just the sight of a knife sinking slowly into his shoulder. No resistance. No flesh. The shirt tears but his skin doesn’t.
She needs to catch her breath. She can’t breathe. His hand is hot and the room is hot and there’s something wet rolling down her cheek.
“There we are,” he says, “There you go. Do you see?”
Yeah. She sees. She sees his hand on hers, no longer gripping her, no longer guiding her, merely resting as she drags a weapon through a body. No wound is made. Pieces and fragments of his clothes fall at their feet. Pieces and fragments of her sanity pile on top.
She may as well be slicing through water. Through air. Through nothing.
He’s smiling at her when she finds the courage to look.
When he speaks, she feels it echo between her ears.
“Sorry,” he releases her hand. She cuts a shaking line up the middle of his throat. She chokes on a cry. She chokes on the words. “To disappoint you.”
Wanda steps away. Her hand slips out of the circle of his fingers. She steps away from his touch and his heat and the lack of matter and the lack of blood. Her ankle bends from the heels she’d forgotten she was wearing. It wasn’t on purpose this time.
The knife thuds on the ground as she drops it, her hand limp, her brain numb.
The man watches her warily. A watch your step on his tongue, don’t fall on the dagger you planned to kill me with.
Wanda presses her fingers to her mouth to keep whatever’s crawling up her esophagus inside. She wants to reach inside and claw out whatever this feeling is. She wants to speak but she doesn’t want him to hear her shake. She wants to ask him how he does it but she doesn’t think she wants to know. She wants to wake up. She wants to be dreaming. She wants to be in control. She wants to kill him. She wants to dip her hands into the ocean of his chest and feel around for something, a heart or a bone, something squishy, something alive, something to carve into.
If her fingers start to glow, she doesn’t notice.
She backs away, staring at the shape of a man that can’t be a man, a man in a shredded t-shirt, a man who touched her, he touched her, his hand on her arm, his nose to her hair, but a man made of nothing.
She’s leaving before she can even explain to herself why.
The hallway’s colder. Helps with the breathing. She walks herself out of her heels, discarded on two different steps, wipes at her eyes with her wrists, streaking them with black ink, black like the dress she wears, like the phone on the reception desk.
Lobby smells like cigarettes. Wanda sinks to her knees on that hard, stained carpet and stares at her hands.
“… Sweet?” asks a voice above her, a thin shadow and some nice red flat shoes. “Where are you headed? Have you come from the upper floor?”
She wants to ask for Room Eleven. She wants to ask for someone to check on Room 204, there’s a ghost living there, I tried to kill him. She wants to ask for the phone but she doesn’t know who she’d call.
She knows that she looks like a woman in distress.
No one ever believes the woman in distress.
“… I, um…” she wipes at her eyes, “I, I. I, uh. Um.”
She still feels it. Like static around her. She cut into him, she watched it happen. She cut him. She killed him. And he smiled.
“You shouldn’t be out here so late,” the woman’s voice is soothing, helping her to her feet, and she doesn't want it, but it doesn't matter. She stares into nothing. She sees him there, still. “Oh, look at the state of you.”
Wanda nods blankly. She nods until her neck aches. The receptionist has to prop her up on the desk.
“I don’t have any money,” she whispers, sniffing. She sounds like an innocent act. She sounds like a damsel in distress. “I don’t… I. I.”
“I’ll ring the brigade,” comes the sweet reply and a pat on the shoulder, “This place isn’t fit for sweet girls like you. Who knows what unsavory characters are lurking about out there?”
She knows. She was meant to be one.
Wanda staggers out into a cold night before the police arrive. She tilts her head back and looks at the sky. Her leg feels lighter without the knife attached. Her head feels heavier.
She trips down the lot and searches for a car that a ghost might drive.