The blood smelled like rust, warm and metallic, thickening in the cold air as it soaked into the pavement. It pooled around my sneakers, creeping towards the curb as if it had somewhere important to be. I had read that the human body contained about five liters of blood, but standing there watching it spill out of her felt like much more.

  The streetlight above flickered, bathing the alley in a sickly yellow glow and turning her skin waxy, almost plastic looking. The girl - because that's what she was, just a girl - lay crumpled against the wall, her hair fanned out like an ink spill. Her face was frozen in a half-surprised, half-pleading expression as if she was still deciding whether this was real, whether she was dying. I wondered if she could see me, if her pupils were still working if somewhere in that broken body she was screaming.

  I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears.

  It hadn't been planned. Of course, it hadn't. I didn't do things like this. My fingers clenched into fists, and my nails dug into the palm of my hand, just as they had dug into my wrist as a child when the world didn't make sense and the numbers didn't add up. Five steps to the door. Counting the tiles in the kitchen. Organize the books by size, color, and weight. Follow the rules and everything will be safe.

  But there was no time for rules tonight. No time to count, no time to think.

  For a moment I walked, gripping the straps of my rucksack too tightly, lost in the buzz of intrusive thoughts - did I lock the door? Did I leave the cooker on? And then she was there, grabbing my sleeve, her voice high and reedy, asking for something, money maybe, directions, something I couldn't hear because my brain was already shattering the moment into sharp, jagged pieces. A stranger.

  Touching me. Close. Being way too close.

  I didn't even remember doing it. My fingers wrapped around the cold metal of my key, the one I always kept between my knuckles when I walked home, and then there was movement, the sharp crack of impact, the stumble, the gasping inhalation that never quite turned into a scream.

  She hit the floor and I stood over her, still clenched, still waiting, still counting the seconds between each shallow breath.

  It shouldn't feel like this. Guilt. That was what I should feel. This was what normal people felt. I could almost hear the therapist's voice from years ago, the one my mother forced me to see after I started pulling out my own hair - 'What are you feeling right now, Kathy?

  I didn't know how to put it. The adrenaline, the sharp clarity in my head, the absolute, all-consuming silence. For the first time in years, the noise in my brain had stopped. No endless counting, no repetitive cycles, no urge to scrub the skin off my hands until they bled. Just silence.

  I exhaled slowly, watching the steam curl in the cold air.

  The girl was still.

  I crouched beside her, as I had seen people do in the films, and pressed two fingers to her throat. Her skin was clammy, her lips already a strange shade of blue. No pulse. Nothing.

  A dead girl, in a back alley, in the middle of the night. And I was the only one here.

  I should run. I had to run.

  But my knees stayed bent, my hands in my lap like a child sitting through a lesson. A quiet pulse of contentment blossomed deep in my ribs, curling around the edges of my thoughts, caressing them like a warm hand sliding down my spine.

  I pressed my lips together and stared down at the body.

  Something was wrong with me. I had always known that.

  And yet, as I reached forward and brushed a strand of hair away from her face, my fingers barely trembling, I realized something else. I wasn't afraid. The body was still warm.

  I didn't know why I was touching her. Maybe to prove to myself that she was real, that I wasn't trapped in some fever dream my mind had conjured up to punish me for being the way I was. But when my fingertips brushed the cooling skin of her cheek, I didn't wake up. I wasn't jerking upright in bed, gasping for breath, reaching for the bottle of pills I sometimes took but mostly ignored.

  No. I was here. She was here. And she was dead.

  The alley stretched around me, dark and silent, like a confessional without a priest. The world hadn't stopped for her. The cars in the distance still hummed through the city streets. The neon flicker of a failing motel sign still blinked on and off, an artificial heartbeat, steady and indifferent. A cat scampered across the pavement a few yards away, pausing to look at us - at her, at me - before slipping into the shadows.

  Nothing had changed.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I could still feel it, that slow, curling thing inside me. A warmth that spread beneath my ribs, melting into the spaces where fear should be. There should have been fear. That would have been the right reaction. Panic. Horror. The kind of sickness that made you collapse against the nearest wall and vomit up everything you had eaten that day. Instead, there was clarity.

  A stillness I had never known, not even as a child, not even when I sat in my room for hours, arranging my books in perfect symmetry, aligning the edges of the paper, counting my breaths, waiting for something inside me to click into place.

  All my life I had been waiting. For something.

  But it wasn't numbers or patterns or perfectly scrubbed hands that had stopped the noise.

  It was this.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose. Rust. Asphalt and sweat. And something else - something sweet, almost syrupy, like the smell of overripe fruit left out in the sun too long. It was under my nails. Dark, sticky crescents lined my cuticles, staining the soft skin beneath. I rubbed my thumb against my index finger, feeling the stickiness, watching it smear, clinging to me like an old lover.

  I should have been repulsed.

  Instead, my pulse fluttered, and a shiver ran down my spine, not from cold, not from shock - something far worse.

  A light flickered on in an apartment window above, a rectangle of gold cutting through the darkness. My breath hitched, my body already tensing, bracing for the sound of footsteps, the slam of a door, the scream of discovery.

  But no one came.

  The window closed. The alley remained empty.

  And I was alone again.

  My hands twitched, my brain already working through the steps, clicking through the routine like an old, familiar song. There was a process to it. A rhythm. I just had to follow it.

  1. Clean up the mess.

  2. Erase the evidence.

  3. Make it disappear.

  Simple. Logical. No different to scrubbing the bathroom sink until it shone, until I could see my own reflection staring back at me through the porcelain.

  I looked down at her body, my mind already rearranging the scene, picking apart the puzzle, breaking it into manageable pieces. A girl in, her mid-teens. Blonde. Thin. Dressed like she was meeting someone, maybe sneaking out after curfew. No ID in sight. No purse. Just a phone, the screen now splintered against the concrete, the light still flashing with a missed call.

  Someone would look for her, miss her.

  The realization settled in my chest, dark and warm.

  I could leave her. Walk away, fade back into the night, let someone else find her, let someone else deal with the aftermath.

  Or I could finish this.

  A slow breath in. A slower breath out. My fingers flex, curling into the fabric of my sleeves.

  Control. That's what this was about. What it had always been about.

  For once in my life, I wasn't spiraling. For once I was in control.

  I hovered over her body for too long. That was mistake number one. The second was that I liked it.

  The third? Well, I hadn't got there yet. But I would. I always have. My mind cataloged mistakes like a collector hoarding antiques - lining them up, dusting them, admiring the way they fit together in a perfect, grotesque display.

  I told myself to move. My brain screamed it, a sharp, pulsing demand cutting through the silence. But my body refused, frozen in place, rooted to the pavement as if waiting for something.

  For what? A sign? Some divine condemnation?

  I could hear my mother's voice, thick with contempt, slurring through the walls of my childhood bedroom - You're a burden, Kathy.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe she always had been.

  I swallowed, my throat dry, my lungs suddenly too tight in my chest. The euphoria, the warmth, the strange, thrilling rightness of it all was already fading, leaving me hollow, brittle, splintering from the inside out.

  I had to leave.

  I forced myself to take a step back. Another. Another. The toe of my trainers smeared through the blood, drawing it in long, thin streaks across the pavement. Sloppy. Another mistake. Another thing to obsess over later is to pick apart and analyze and hate myself.

  But later didn't matter. Just now.

  I squatted, fingers trembling as I reached for her phone. The glass bit into my palm as I lifted it, pressing my thumb over the flashing screen. The message was still there. A text.

  Where are you?

  My pulse skipped.

  I turned the phone over, and slammed it against the pavement once, twice, three times, until the screen went black. I shoved it under a dustbin, kicking a few stray pieces of rubbish over it for good measure.

  Not perfect. But better than nothing.

  The air felt colder now. Or maybe that was just me, the adrenaline wearing off, leaving only the ghost of it behind - a dull, static hum under my skin. I wiped my hands on my jeans, half registering the way my fingers were shaking, but I wasn't afraid of what I'd done. Not afraid of getting caught.

  I was afraid of what would happen when this feeling - the stillness, the control, the perfect, intoxicating silence - was gone. Because I already knew the truth. It wouldn't last, as it never did.

  I left because it was the logical thing to do.

  Because I had to. Not because I wanted to.

  The alley stretched behind me like a secret, dark and silent, sewn into the city's veins, hidden between neon lights and the hum of traffic. I shoved my hands deep into my coat pockets, and curled my fingers into fists, my nails biting into my palms. Grounding. That's what my therapist would have called it.

  I almost laughed. If only she knew.

  My breath fogged in the cold air as I slipped through the streets, weaving between groups of people whose faces were blurred by distance, by indifference. No one noticed me. No one ever did. I had perfected the art of being inconspicuous, having been a nuisance to most of the people around me in my childhood.

  Blonde hair, but not too blonde. Eyes too light to be brown, too dark to be blue - something in between, something forgettable. Clothes plain enough to blend in, movements precise but unobtrusive. A shadow, a whisper, a girl with no sharp edges, nothing to remember.

  It was how I survived. It was how I kept myself from crying every day. But tonight something was different.

  A hum in my blood, an itch just under my skin. Like a song without words, looping over and over, endless, insistent. My mind latched onto it, fingers tightening around the melody, unable to let go.

  I had to scrub my hands raw. I had to wipe my phone, burn my clothes, rearrange my books, check the locks five times - 9 times - count my steps from the door to my bed and back again until the numbers felt safe and my brain stopped screaming.

  But most of all, I had to do it again. The thought hit me like a shock of ice water, sudden and electric, spreading through my ribs, my throat, my very core.

  I had been waiting for this.

  I hadn't even known, not really, not in words or thoughts or plans. But the second it had happened, when my hands had closed around her, when her pulse had fluttered and stopped when her body had gone still, I knew.

  My fingers twitched. A low, shuddering exhale curled past my lips.

  I could stop. I could go home, lock the door, crawl into bed, and pretend this was a mistake, a one-off. I could cry over it, mourn it, feel guilty, tell myself I was a monster, and go through all the motions of someone who regrets something.

  But I wouldn't. I already knew that. It felt too good. And no one had ever taught me how to walk away from the things that made me feel good. It made me smile.