Bite By Beth Cunningham

It took a long time before my bark finally became bite. For a long while, I was all talk, teeth bared towards my enemy, fists clenched, but everyone knew the first punch thrown wouldn’t come from me.  

Maybe it was the fear of getting socked in the mouth that held me back, as the ‘boys don’t hit girls’ rule was forever conditional on the basis the girls didn’t piss off the boys.  

Regardless, I couldn’t, wouldn’t fight back.  

But then you get to a moment—it could be when you’re in your twenties, or thirties, or even later—when you realise you just really no longer give a fuck. It’s easier to not care when you realise no one else does.  

All of this is to explain exactly how and why I’m currently sat with my legs wrapped around a man, choking him to death, but I fear I’m not doing too good a job of explaining. This man did bad things. Bad things to good people. And the courts, ever the same, did fuck all. So this is where I come in, slipping in from behind to finish the work the judge and jury were too cowardly to do.  

I realised long ago that I wouldn’t be the only one who was afraid to fight back. But unlike me, there would be so many out there who wouldn’t be able to grow out of it. Who needed someone at their back to help and to do the fighting for them. I’m all too happy to get my hands bloody for them.  

“Please,” the man tries to say, but with my legs crushing his windpipe, he only really manages to mouth it. 

“Should’ve listened when she said that to you,” I reply.  

The tears in his eyes only help to further make his confusion evident. He’s lacking too much oxygen to fully be able to understand what I’m saying or what I mean, but the way his eyes widen slightly just before he slips off into unconsciousness tells me he just might have a hint.  

Strangling someone in the movies always seems much more appealing than it actually is in real life. In reality, I’m so bored.  

But finally, after what seems like an eternity, his pulse flutters to a stop.  

I stagger away from the dead body, legs aching from being sat in the same position for so long. I make my way to his bathroom, fixing my misshapen dress as I go. My lipstick is smeared along my cheek, but in some ways, I like it.  

There’s a part of me that flinches when I walk past the body, on my way to the door. A part that acknowledges that I’m not normal, not when I can kill a man void of any guilt and walk away from it like it had been nothing more than a bad date. But then I remember their guilt. How they have none, even when they reduce women to mere ghosts of their former selves.  

 _________________________________________________________________________________

It takes a day before his death circulates in the news.  

‘MAN, 26, FOUND STRANGLED TO DEATH IN OWN HOME’.  

They have no suspects as of yet. No clues either. I search through social media and find a tweet from a girl he once knew, celebrating.  

Whatever unease or guilt I may have felt evaporates when I see that tweet, which is accompanied by a gif of someone celebrating. I did a good thing. Now that girl, and anyone else he may have tormented, can move on.  

I take a day or two off before accepting the next job. Mostly just so I can decompress and also to lessen the chance of anyone connecting these kills to me. I’ve had a few close calls. Police officers turning up at my door, asking questions that I can’t answer.  

But when I get right back at it, it feels like I never left. 

Another man who has outlived his relevancy, thirsting over girls barely legal.  

I find him the second I walk into the bar. He’s trying to chat up a girl who couldn’t be older than twenty, all while the wrinkles on his face tell me he belongs in a nursing home, instead of a bar. 

It’s not the easiest getting his attention off that girl, but when I manage it, she sends me a grateful look and then promptly leaves with her friends. I just hope she forgets my face when his turns up in the news in a few days. 

“You’re very pretty,” he tells my boobs, almost drooling as his hands grip my hips. 

“Why, thank you,” I reply back, trying my very best to sound flirty and not as if I’m about to throw up. He seems greedy, almost like he’s been starved and I’m the first catch he’s had in a while.  

I start to get a bit nauseated when we leave the bar, as this is when it becomes real. He’s the type of man to take rejection personally, and so I know that if I wanted to change my mind, it would almost certainly go wrong. 

He takes me to his place, staggering through the corridors of his tiny, filthy condo. It takes all my strength not to wrinkle my nose in disgust.  

“So,” he says, pulling my attention away from the mouldy plates on the counter to his face. “Would you like to have sex?” 

Dear god. I’m glad there’s no sexual tension because if there was, it would be gone by now.  

“Sure, just let me freshen up first.” I give him a wink and then slink past to the bathroom, trying not to gag on the various smells that accompany me down the hall.  

I give myself a pep talk in the bathroom, forcing a smile until I look downright psychopathic, then I pull my knife from my bag.  

“Babe?” I yell into the corridor. “I’m ready.” 

He doesn’t last two seconds before my knife plunges into his neck.