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Fictionista, Foodie, Feline-lover

Friday, January 7, 2011

For Cormac and Nicole--

This is a story inspired by Cormac and Nicole's "Icarus Flight to Perfection" fiction challenge. Hope you like it:

Up Close and Personal

They always get sloppy. Always.

It’s just not possible to be vigilant all the time, to remain hyper-aware, to sleep with one eye open. There’s always a place where even the most paranoid feel safe. If they go there, I will find them. And if I find them, there will be blood.

I will kill them quietly and efficiently. I will use a knife and I will leave the weapon behind. It is the way I sign my masterpieces. Yes, I consider myself an artist. Where Rembrandt painted with oils and pigments, I paint in blood and pain.

When my prey is frightened, his aura changes color. Rage changes the color too, and so does despair. By the time I am finished with my work, I will have seen the whole spectrum of human emotion spilled out onto my canvas. Pain is a sunset color, an amalgam of orange and pink seldom seen in the physical world, except perhaps in the petals of a perfect rose.

The pain is important, but so is the blood. When it first flows, it is shockingly hot, spilling across my flesh with the heat of a summer sun. As it chills and thickens, I rub it into my skin as it if were some exotic lotion. As it dries, it leaves pigment behind, the stain of life ended. Blood. I revel in it. I wallow in it. I immerse myself in it.

The only way to get that quantity of blood is to use a knife. And that’s why I don’t own a gun.

4 comments:

  1. Chilling like the wind in Chicago.

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  2. Chilling indeed and darkly delicious. An excellent story in so few words. Well done, Katherine!

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  3. Thanks so much. I really do love a fiction challenge. They're like shiny little pebbles distracting me from the boulder that is my unfinished novel. So really, Cormac, it's all your fault that I haven't finished MISBEGOTTEN.

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  4. Such an intense and terrifying peek into the mind of evil. Beautifully done in so few words, Katherine.

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