Janus

Summer starts with red lips. A pretty girl in an ugly place with lipstick the colour of sunset. Her flesh is bound tightly in cheap cloth and she wears heels like thick black spikes. I brush by her and she’s warm like bath water. Her skin is as smooth as baking paper. I look her in the eye and she stares back with huge, dark eyes that send a thrill of excitement through me. Is she the one? Will she be the one I take home with me tonight? Yes. She is. I whisper in her ear, and her mouth parts in a half moon grin. She takes my hand and her fingers are round like bullets.

We go back to her place. It’s cluttered and filthy and this elicits a happiness inside me I had not felt in a long time. Not since my hike in the mountains, where the air was so thin and clear and everything was silent.

The pretty girl moves toward me, her eyelids lowered seductively. My hand moves to cup the back of her neck and I move forward. Suddenly her eyes stretch wide and those red lips part in a strangled gasp. I twist the knife deeper, watching her writhe in agony in my arms.

I yank the blade out and let her fall. The blood on the knife is thick and drips like molasses to the floor. I lift it up and slide my mouth over it, relishing the metallic taste. One down and five to go. Summer starts with red lips.