“Ow!” the girl screamed. “Ah–Ow!”
Alexa tried to sit up, but Miki slapped her left hand over the girl’s mouth and pushed her back down to the floor. The back of Alexa’s head bounced off the dirty tiles. Miki closed the shears over her wrist again, squeezing the handles with all of her might. She could hear the blades scraping her fragile bones. She wondered if she could amputate her hand with the shears.
Alexa pulled her arm away from her, widening the wounds on her wrist. The blades—buried in her flesh—pushed her skin up to the base of her hand, causing it to wrinkle. She was degloving herself by fighting back, but it was her body’s natural reaction to the pain. Her fight-or-flight response was now telling her to run.
The girl’s legs hit the stall door and walls as she spasmed. She even hit her head on the toilet. Her tears shined on her cheeks as well as on Miki’s black leather gloves. Yet, she kept screaming—screaming and screaming and screaming until her lungs burned. Her strangled voice barely reached the baseball field outside.
Miki closed the blades over her wrist again, then she turned the handles from side to side. Blood sprayed out from her inner wrist and landed on Miki’s sleeve. The girl’s wrist was mangled, bones and veins exposed to the bathroom’s dirty air. Dark blood drenched her arm. It reached the short sleeve of her blue shirt.
Alexa stopped screaming. The light started to fade from her rolling eyes. She breathed deeply through her nose, yellowish mucus leaked out of her nostrils, and foamy saliva oozed from under Miki’s glove.
“Wow,” Miki said as she ran her eyes over the wounds. “You know, I tried to do something like this to myself before. I used a box cutter instead of these shears, though. I just felt like… like the box cutter would get the job done. I think I saw it in a movie or a show once. But I didn’t realize I was supposed to cut myself up and down, not side to side. Vertically, you know? That’s how you really make sure you die.”
She paused, as if waiting for Alexa to respond. Alexa mewled and shivered, cries distorted by Miki’s hand.
Miki said, “You want to know something else? I used to think it was easier for a person to hurt themselves than to hurt others. I was wrong—very wrong. This was much easier.”
Alexa whimpered. She cried for her parents, but her words were unintelligible. The loss of blood and the hot pain left her pallid and weak. She was listless—almost lifeless.
Realizing she had stopped fighting back, Miki took her hand off her mouth and said, “Shh, everything’s going to be okay. It’s almost over, sweetie.”
“Ma–ma–ma–mommy,” Alexa stammered, her voice so soft that it couldn’t be heard in the neighboring stall.
Miki opened the shears. She pressed one of the blades into the crook of Alexa’s elbow. A bead of blood seeped out as the blade punctured her flesh. Then she dragged the blade down to her wrist—a long, vertical slit. It was as easy as cutting through paper. Arms trembling, Alexa grimaced and whined. She didn’t have the energy to scream.
Miki stabbed the crook of her elbow again, then she slowly slid the blade down to her wrist, following the curves of a vein. She stopped at her wrist again. She cut her a third time, cutting an artery at the edge of her elbow and tracing it to her wrist. Blood shot out of that wound, spraying onto the tile floor and Miki’s boots.
The cuts on her right arm were lethal. They were grisly, but they weren’t as gruesome as the wide, horizontal wounds on her other arm. Both of her arms looked like they were dipped in barrels of blood, but the vertical wounds bled more. The dark blood flowed in the grooves between the tiles around her.
The door hinges squealed.
Miki turned her head slowly to face the stall wall to her left. Alexa could only see the base of the toilet from her position.
“Help,” she said feebly.
A teenage girl walked into the room, music blaring from her Bluetooth headphones. She entered the neighboring stall.
Miki smiled mischievously. She thrust the closed shears at Alexa’s neck diagonally just as the girl started to cry for help. The blades severed her jugular, punctured her esophagus, and sliced her trachea. A geyser of blood shot out of her throat as the shears came out. Alexa squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. She reached for her neck, but she could hardly lift her mutilated arms.
She gargled her own blood while wriggling on the floor. The sound of her blood splashing wasn’t as loud as the splashing of urine in the neighboring stall. They were singing a duet of bodily fluids.
Miki grabbed some wads of toilet paper and placed them in the grooves between the tiles to stop the rivers of blood from flowing into the other stall. Meanwhile, next door, the teenager wiped herself. Miki stabbed Alexa’s lower abdomen five times with the shears. Only grunting and gurgling sounds came out of Alexa’s mouth.
She passed out after the fifth stab. Her face and arms continued twitching. She had slipped into a dreamless void of darkness—practically dead—but her body still reacted to the pain.
While the teenager gathered her belongings in the other stall, Miki stabbed Alexa’s stomach ten more times. Although some of the wounds didn’t bleed much, blood erupted from two cuts under her ribs, shooting two feet into the air. She wondered if she had penetrated her stomach and spleen or if she reached her kidneys
Alexa died with the eighth stab.
The teenager washed her hands for ten seconds, then checked herself out in the mirror for five minutes. She didn’t hear a thing over her music.
Miki used that time to slice Alexa’s cheeks open with the shears. Then she propped the girl up on the toilet, blood dripping from her fingertips. Her left hand looked like it was barely attached to her arm by some cracked bones.
The door hinges squeaked again, announcing the teenager’s departure.
Miki exited the stall. She cleaned her shears at the sink, then she washed her bloodied gloves thoroughly with hot water and soap. She wasn’t bothered by the footsteps outside of the restroom. They grew louder and then faded away as she scrubbed the blood off her boots with a wet paper towel. She was emboldened by the murders, apathetic and audacious.
After cleaning herself up, she took a tube of lipstick out of her purse. She used the red lipstick to write a message on the mirror, then she exited the restroom while humming cheerily.
Scrawled in capital letters, the message read: AM I BEAUTIFUL?
15
SHELTER AT HOME
Adam sat at the end of the dining table, index and middle fingers hooked around his coffee mug’s handle. An expression of shell-shock—pure fear and awe and devastation—was written on his face, as if he believed the fresh sausage on his plate were made from the human flesh of his loved ones. He lifted his gaze to the other end of the table.
He saw Riley sitting on her highchair and Amber sitting next to her, helping their daughter guide the oatmeal and strawberry slices to her mouth. He didn’t hear a sound from them. Despite everything going on in the world, they looked happy. But, for the first time since she was born, Riley couldn’t bring a smile to her father’s face with her innocence.
Amber asked, “You okay, hun?” Adam stared at her lips, as if he were trying to read them instead of listening to the words coming out of her mouth. Raising her voice but maintaining her bubbly tone, Amber said, “Adam, are you okay? You haven’t touched your food. Is it bad? Too much salt? Not enough?”