Jaclyn stood there hating herself for a long time. Fresh, pink skin was growing like tiger
stripes on her wrists and baby soft roots pushed through her scalp beneath
crispy locks stained Black Licorice.
Even her eyebrow ring was slowly being rejected, as if her body wanted
to flip itself inside-out and start all over again.
She held a fillet knife in her hand, compliments of the
kitchen drawer, and it sneered at her as she contemplated the feathers that
still floated in the air. She had
been practicing.
Now maybe that particular knife wasn’t ideal, she admitted.
The metal was flexible and the point wobbled a little bit if you really tried
to stick it in something stiff, like a headboard, but no matter. She was going to use that knife because
she wanted to say she had “filleted the perv” when she told her story to the
press and to the other inmates.
She hid the knife under the only pillow she hadn’t
shredded. He would “visit” her
that night, for sure. Just like he
did every time her mom was gone. He would stumble in with his bottle of Crown, set it on the
stand next to her bed, and berate her for all the things she did wrong, for
being a teenage burden.
The feathers and the scarred bed-frame would really tick him
off. He would tell her to pay penance
for her bad behavior. But tonight,
she decided she would be the one playing God. The knife in her hand sent a surge of power through her
every time she held it. And, she
had been practicing.
Night came and she curled up onto her bed, never shutting
her eyes. Cars passed on the
street below, their headlights dancing like strobes through her curtainless
window as they came and went. A
little after 2:00 a.m., he arrived.
He was definitely drunk, because it took him forever to insert the key
into the front door and succeed in unlocking it.
She listened with rapt attention as he shut the door and
trudged up the stairs. Her heart
beat uber-fast and her breathing came in hard, short spurts. Fight or flight, she knew it was
referred to. She could taste the
adrenaline fill her mouth—a taste like rusted metal.
When he came near her door, she stopped breathing all
together. She was waiting for him
to turn the knob, and when he didn’t, confusion immobilized her. She heard his huge feet shuffling down
the hall away from her room. Then,
they stopped and she imagined him turning a knob she couldn’t hear. Then, it hit her. “Jamie!” she whispered.
She placed the pads of her feet on the ground and grabbed
the knife. Silently, she crept out
of her room and down the hall to her brother’s room. Her father had left the door open and didn’t hear a sound as
she edged up behind him.
He sat at the foot of Jamie’s bed, watching the little boy
sleep. Jaclyn’s eyes
narrowed. Her grip on the knife
tightened, as did her resolve. The
guilty would die before the innocent would suffer. After all, tonight she was playing God and she would make
the rules fair the way she saw them.
In one swift motion, she carved a smile into his neck. A thin, red line that vomited
life. He hit the floor hard, and
his head thunked like a bowling ball.
She cradled Jamie and jumped over the pool of blood that
slicked the ground. He never woke
up or opened his eyes, even when she buckled him in the back seat of the
car. She drove straight to the
police station and carried him in.
“This child is needs to be in protective custody,” she
announced as she walked in, laying him on the sofa. “My name is Jaclyn Spencer. I’m sixteen years old.” As she said this, she knelt on the ground before a
speechless office and tucked her arms behind her back wrists together.
She smiled. “My
name is Jaclyn Spencer, and I filleted the perv.”
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