Jon Athan - Am I Beautiful?

Miki laughed as muffled popping and crunching sounds came from somewhere on the mangled limb. She couldn’t tell if she had accidentally shattered his kneecap or if his tibia had broken into smaller pieces—or both.

Evan lifted his head from the floor and unleashed a long, pained rasp. The numbness in his leg was replaced by a fierce pain. He had never felt anything like it before. The heat from his blood scared him, too. He felt like his leg was on fire. And there was so much of it. It pooled under his broken legs, turning darker as it mixed with the dust.

His eyes rolled back as he fainted again. He stayed unconscious for nearly three minutes. When he awoke, Miki’s face was just a foot away from his. She gently slapped him and said something to him, but he couldn’t hear it. He blacked out, then he woke up two minutes later. Miki was gone. He drew a deep breath, then he sobbed.

“You’re awake. Again ,” Miki said, crouching beside him. She took a drag on her cigarette, then she blew the smoke at Evan’s legs. She said, “You’re a fighter, like me. When I was beaten like you, I got up, fell, and got up again. I respect that… but you should have just stayed asleep. It’s only going to get worse for you, kid.”

Miki pressed the lit cigarette against the boy’s smooth forehead. Evan shook his head to try to dodge it, but the cigarette just slid across his brow, blazing embers crumbling on his skin. It left a bright red circular wound at the center of his forehead, and a red horizontal mark across it. It looked like a narrow skid mark or a dotted line, separated by small gaps. The cigarette butt fell out of Miki’s hand and rolled into the boy’s hair.

Evan writhed in anguish, floorboards creaking under his body. He wept and wheezed, the pain rendering him speechless. His grunts and groans sounded unusually deep and hoarse, as if the noise were coming from a man suspected of demonic possession. A nasty, pounding headache seized him. He lost control of his body. He saw flashing lights and ominous shadows, but he couldn’t identify any other objects in the room. Then he saw the glittering ruby in his vision again.

Miki had lit up another cigarette.

She grabbed Evan’s face—palm on his nose—to stop him from moving. With her pinky and ring fingers, she pried his right eye open. Webs of vibrant red veins infested the whites of his eyes. His eye rolled up, but she could still see part of his blue iris. The color reminded her of Adam. She sneered as she stubbed the cigarette on Evan’s eye.

Evan’s mouth widened, but he didn’t scream. His eye hissed as it burned. Within seconds, it appeared as though every blood vessel in it had burst. His eye and eyelids were completely red. His eye swelled up, a size too big for its socket. It looked like it was about to explode. The burning ashes clung to the corner of his eye like sleep crust in the morning.

Evan passed out, mouth open, neck arched, and chin pointing up at the ceiling—what was left of the ceiling, at least. Blood lined his eyelids like red eyeliner. A tear mixed with blood rolled down the side of his face. Miki flicked the cigarette butt at the floor next to him. She watched the boy’s unconscious body for a moment, then she sighed and glanced around the room.

She heard cars outside, plenty of people stayed home during the lockdown, but no one came to his rescue. No one even called the police to report all of the screaming. The Good Samaritan was a dying breed, replaced by internet activists. People minded their own business, even when children were being tortured.

Miki said, “Sorry, I don’t have any more time to play. I have a friend to visit.”

Evan stayed unconscious. Miki took the shears out of her coat pocket. She cut his shirt open vertically down the middle. His ribcage was pronounced. She ran the blades down his chest, then she stopped under his sternum. She looked at his face, as if she were expecting him to awaken. She thrust the blades into him, cutting through the cartilage under his sternum.

Still unconscious, Evan bounced.

Miki pulled the blades out. She opened the shears, then she forced one of the blades back into the wound at an angle. She snipped away at his chest, clipping through the cartilage connecting his ribs to his breastbone. She heard his bones cracking and skin crinkling. Streams of blood ran across his chest. She cut an oval around his sternum.

She thrust the blades into his chest again, driving them under his breastbone, then pushed the handles down like a lever. The sternum popped out. She removed it, revealing his heart. It was still beating, albeit slowly.

Admiration glimmering in her eyes, Miki whispered, “You really are a fighter, huh?”

She poked his heart with her finger, then pulled her hand away quickly, as if she were afraid it might bite her. She laughed. She cut around the heart with her shears. The boy passed away seconds later. The blades easily ripped through his pericardium, the blood vessels, and the ligaments. Blood shot out of the gaping hole on his torso and filled his chest cavity. After cutting around it, she yanked his heart out.

It was motionless in her gloved hand. She was amazed by it, running her eyes over it as if it were an alien artifact. The human body was a fascinating thing.

“Thanks for the gift,” she said as she put it in one of her coat pockets.

Like her other victims, she gave him a Glasgow smile, cutting his cheeks open with her shears. She left his body in the abandoned building and walked through the streets of Los Angeles with Evan’s heart in her pocket. Most of the streets were vacant as the residents secluded themselves in their homes. The few people wandering the neighborhoods—kids, teenagers, transients, cops—paid her no mind.

Holding her head up high, proud and arrogant, she headed west. She was sure no one could stop her. She walked for nearly four hours before arriving at her destination. She was exhausted and overjoyed at the same time. She ended up in an affluent neighborhood near the beach, surrounded by beautiful, multi-million-dollar houses with contemporary designs.

The house across the street had a flat roof. The driveway dipped into a garage below the rest of the house, making it a three-story home. An SUV and a sedan were parked in the driveway.

As she stared at the home, a wry smile behind her mask, Miki whispered, “Hello, handsome. Did you miss me?”

Adam’s iMac was open to a document. THE TRUTH (ver 1), the filename read. It was a page long with his name, phone number, and address written at the bottom. In the letter, he described his trip to Tokyo, Japan in 2017. He confessed to his affair with Miki, reported her harassment towards him, and admitted to attacking her in her apartment. In the last paragraph, he presented his evidence connecting Miki to the recent string of violent murders in Los Angeles and pleaded for help.

He minimized the document and maximized another one. The other filename read: THE TRUTH (ver 2) . He wrote it as a confession from Dallas’ perspective, but he didn’t sign it with any names. ‘ A friend went there… My friend did that… ’ He poured his rage onto the page, assassinating Miki’s character and placing all of the blame on her. He called her every name in the book: Liar, stalker, cunt, slut, psycho, bitch, psycho bitch. It was as if it were written to hurt her instead of to help himself or anyone else.

He opened both documents and aligned them next to each other on his monitor. He read them one after the other and almost went cross-eyed trying to read both of them at the same time.

“Which one do I send?” he whispered.