George

She’ll have me, he thought. I’ll take her; I know she wants me. Florence was walking through the park and it was 10.22 pm – not too late, but the park was gloomy and open. She’d just been to see a film and was walking the five-minute walk home.

            He lurked behind the big elms in his black, felt cape, which he entertained was velvet; he’d purchased it from a fancy dress shop. He was sixteen, and he’d masturbated over a picture of her he’d got from Facebook that afternoon – he’d done it in the school toilets, although his friends didn’t know.

            She liked the Twilight series. He knew that. He wondered whether she ever... touched herself. Did she touch herself in bed? Did she think about him when she did it?

            He had the chloroform in his pocket, and a rag; he’d stolen it from the chemical cupboard, along with other noxious things he kept at home. He had a razor and plastic tubing, and he had a condom in his back pocket that he’d stolen from his elder sister’s room.

            Florence heard light footsteps near the trees. He came out: ‘H-hello,’ he said. ‘Excuse me, I'm a bit lost, I....’ Wait, she thought, aren’t you –

            He lunged at her. She struggled, but he had the cloth over her mouth and she was beside the path now, muddied and struggling vehemently. He climbed atop her and worked his knees in between her shoulder blades. She lost consciousness. He dragged her over towards the wall and opened up her wrist; then he heard something across the way.

            A voice was shouting out. ‘Who’s there? What’s going on?’ It was a man’s voice, and the man was running over. George fled, leaving behind his things.

            The man had heard the girl’s stifled screams. When he got to her, he found she was unconscious but alive. He turned over the body and tapped her flushed cheek lightly. And that’s when he saw the blood: one of her wrists had been punctured. There was a length of fat tubing beside her, bloodied at one end, along with a spent razor.

            He called the ambulance. The sky hung lightly with patches of cloud, the moon was not out. Sirens convened upon the serenity from far away and gathered like a point slowly finding itself, moving gradually to where she lay beneath the dark and hazy night.

            George got in and went to bed. ‘It never happened,’ he told himself. Of course she’d be at school tomorrow – the same as always. He turned his face into his pillow. His dreams were peaceful, but he awoke to a pulsating tide of crimson. 
            He always did, and it filled everything.