And certainly, nobody will remember him.
The man took a book from the shelf and I followed carefully, taking the stairs on the opposite side. I didn’t want to see the girl again, for she might remember me. The girl who kissed me.
I remembered only her eyes. They were brown and sad. I cannot tell you anything else about her, though. She came and went like any other woman in my life, in and out before I could care enough to remember. My thoughts were only on the syringe in my pocket and the man whose life I would steal away before he harmed the world any more than he already has.
Maybe his wife will remember him, I thought. I smiled. I thought of myself as a kind of assassin, one who worked for free. A pro bono hit man. Charity work, not murder.
We were down the stairs. I followed him to the counter and out the door. He had the book in his hands. He would never get the chance to read it. Poor characters in the book. They would die too, being left unread.
He crossed the parking lot and I followed him, checking around the library. Nobody was there. I could do it tonight, yes. The preparations were nearly done. Why not? I deserved a bit of respite from the shadow.
Sometimes the world makes itself just right. The wind blows a certain way. People walk with puppet strings attached to their limbs, and I feel like the puppet master. That was how he walked, across the parking lot toward the place where I would take him.
I had made up my mind. I would do it tonight, a week early. It was the perfect opportunity, and I would not pass it up.
He was at his car and I was there at my car next to him where I had left it, trunk unlocked. Before he could open the door, I spoke out loud, angrily.
“Did you see who parked on the other side of me? Some asshole keyed my car door.”
The man raised his eyebrows and came around to my side of the car. He was curious. Perfect.
We’re all excited to see destruction, of course. We all want to stare at the damage someone else has caused. I’m just more honest than everyone else. I don’t wait for the damage to come to me. I go out and find it.
Oh, the man. Yes. Him. One plunge of the syringe was all it took, and he was already unconscious. It only took a second more to toss him into the trunk. The book went on top of his limp body.
Patience had gone out the window. I was so lucky to have had a clear shot, and the adrenaline that rushes through me when I took it – it was like nothing else.
Excitement pumped through my veins as I got into the car and drove away, the body in my trunk. Tonight I would cut off his abusive hands and carve a knife deep into his skin until the tendons pop. I expected that he would cry. Most of them do. I expected that he would beg for mercy. The shadow would retreat with the sounds of his screams. I would hurt him for myself, and for the people he had hurt. He would beg me to let him live.
And then, later, he would beg to die.
Kat
Jules was right. I was boring as hell. I wrote my phone number down on a scrap of paper and ran downstairs after the guy to give it to him, but I couldn’t even bring myself to follow him outside. It looked like he was going to talk to that other guy, the professor with the creepy mustache who always checks out the legal thrillers.
I didn’t want to bother him. Bother them. I didn’t want to be a bother to anyone.
When I die, they’re going to write it on my tombstone:
Here lies Kat, the boringest girl ever and totally chickenshit. At least she didn’t bother anybody.
I don’t know if you’re allowed to swear on gravestones, though.
Sighing, I threw the rest of the audiobooks down into the crate to go out for interlibrary loan. Stupid me. I should have run after him. Even if he said he didn’t date. That night I lay in bed and thought about his eyes. Thought if I should have gone after him. I’d never felt that kind of chemistry with any guy before. What if he was my one true love, and this was my one chance to get with him? Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but still. I started looking at every guy who came through the library doors to see if it was him. He didn’t come back.
The next day, I felt somewhat better about not giving him my phone number. What kind of a guy kisses a girl back in an elevator? Even if I did start it, , I told myself that I needed to kiss another guy and get over it. There weren’t any cute guys in the library, though, and the only person who got on the elevator with me was a sixty year old professor with white hair tufting out of his freckled ears. I sighed and pushed the cart back into the storage room.
“Still thinking about Fabio?”
“Ugh, Jules, shut up.”
“He dropped something up in the stacks yesterday.”
“What?”
Jules pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it over to me.