***
The morning routine of Tommy Hargrave went as follows. Every five A.M, when the O’Mallery Park in Suburnia was empty, he would jog for three and a half miles at a rate of six miles per hour. Unlike most his friends who typically ran in groups each morning, Tommy liked to run alone because it allowed him the peace and solitude to think. About life, nature, people, whatever topics interested or troubled him. Five o’clock was his hour of Zen. And for someone who spent as much time with people as he did, it came as something of a relief to have an hour with nothing but the sound of nature and his own internal monologue.
Rain had started to hit Suburnia from the morning hour of four, and was predicted to go for as long as the entire afternoon. Tommy welcomed every second of it. The warm steam of sweat on his clothes was suppressed by the chill pellets of rainwater, making running in the rain significantly easier than on any other occasion.
On his regular runs, he would wear as he did today a long pair of track pants, and on cold and rainy mornings such as this, a fleece jacket to cover his body. He jogged idly along the lonely trail clad in blue, admiring the natural beauty that remained around him, not knowing that in a manner of minutes, blue wasn’t the only color he would be wearing.
Waiting several yards ahead of him was young Alex Frost with her back against a tree, its bark wide enough to cover her shape. Her clothes were quickly getting soaked from all the heavy rain. She wanted to move to a drier area beside her, where a few elongated branches blocked the pour of water. But Alex dared not move. In order to tell where Tommy Hargrave was and at the same time not give away her location, she had to remain absolutely silent and pay careful mind to the sound of his feet on the ground as they stomped in a distinct pattern. Left foot, half a second, right foot, half a second, left foot. So on and so forth. She ran her thumb along the pointiest tip of her blade. It was so dangerously sharp that she didn’t even feel the knife as it pinched the outer layer of her thumb.
Alex reconsidered what she was about to do, pondered it over. Rather than question the moral implications, her focus remained on the chance of her success. Alex had never done anything like this before. There was no guarantee that all or even any of this would go as planned. And if she failed, she knew full well that she wouldn’t have a second chance. Her life would be over in the blink of an eye.
In the end, even with the consequences in mind, Alex was dead set on what she was about to do. She forced away the negative thoughts, kept her attention undivided on the hunt.
He was closer now. She could feel the heated sweat pouring out of him, his voiceless breaths of air, short and steady. All she had to do was remain calm and focused. And while for any normal person this would have induced volumes of fear and stress, for our girl without a soul, it was no task at all. She remained calculated. She knew what she was going to do, and the thought of it didn’t leave the slightest hint of trepidation.
Tommy quickly passed the other end of the tree, and he came into view. Alex caught a glimpse of his hooded face, then vaulted, knife behind her back.
As he watched her suddenly appear in his line of sight, Tommy flinched, immediately stopped running. He had so little time to register her that by the time he noticed the knife, it was already inside his chest.
“Aagh!” Tommy yelled, more out of horror of what was happening than the pain that accompanied it.
He squirmed, but made no effort to move or run away. Tommy was dazed, as if he couldn’t believe what was going on even with the six inch pinch on his torso. Alex controlled him via the handle sticking out from his chest. She forced him to a steady row of trees and bushes for cover. He swore, but complied obediently for no other reason than to limit the stinging affliction that was coursing through his insides. He raised his lips, tried to replace his screams with coherent words.
Why are you doing this? He wanted to shriek. But before he had the chance, she unsheathed the knife and plunged it again. A mess of blood splashed on her hands, and some of it got on her clothes.
“What are you doing?!” Tommy squirmed, his yelling only getting louder until Alex finally decided to end him with a slash to his throat. At that point, all that came out of his mouth was his own blood. Judging by the way his throat gasped for air, his lungs were drowning in its nearly endless supply. With five continuous stab wounds placed chaotically over his upper body and one slit throat, Tommy gave up and fell on his own accord.
As soon as the now-dead Tommy hit the soil covered ground, Alex waited for something to happen. Anything to indicate whether she took any joy over what she had done.
Just then, a slight tickle began to bloom inside her. Faint, but for the girl whose inner core has always been empty, noticeable. She couldn’t know what was happening, for she had never felt it before. She had never felt, before.
At that instant, what little thing was swirling inside came to grow, expand into her senses. Alex felt the rain pouring over her in tiny pellets, and she liked it.
She.
Liked.
It.
The girl took a breath of air, blinked her eyes, and the world started to change.
Blood covered half her hands in red. A liquid warmth radiating an otherwise cold body. The deep and bitter smell of copper seeped thick into her nose. And like one that adorns the smell of gasoline, or a child that clings to the scent of sweets, Alex absorbed the salty smell with glee.
The odor mixed with the profound aroma of newly wet trees. Nature pervaded her senses. And aside from the steady rumbling of bushes in the cold winter breeze, there was nothing to listen to but the wind and the mindless droning of crickets. Such a calm and healing place. The isolation of it all was nothing short of breath-taking.
“Ah.”
Breath-taking. A phrase that she only now began to understand. She closed her eyes, released herself and let the rush of life fill inside her. Alex stretched her lips until she was smiling. Not the fake, diplomatic smile that she’d gotten so used to plastering on her face when the need arose. This was real.
For the first time ever, our girl without a soul could feel. And the first thing she felt with her newfound ability, was alive. For the first time in her life, Alex knew what it meant to be taken in with pleasure. If she had things her way, she swore that pleasure would be all she ever felt. What went in and out of her was a high unlike any other. One that sent her spirit floating high up the sky, basking in its own weightlessness.
Eternal bliss.
Unfortunately, as we all know, nothing, not even air, is weightless. Everything gold can’t stay, and what goes up must come down. And so slowly but surely, Alex’s floating energy feathered back down, and the steady stream of joy subsided. Sooner than she’d wished for it, Alex was back to her soulless, cold hearted self. She no longer understood what had gotten into her. Feelings vanished, and the void came back. The rain no longer mattered. The smell of blood, of nature, no longer mattered.
Alex Frost Meets The Killer Page 12
