throat slitter

2020-10-26

There was a little girl who was friends with a little boy.

One day, with no reason or provocation, she cut the boy’s throat with one slash of a sharp knife. Not so much that he might die, but she severed his vocal cords, and he never spoke again.

The little girl ran away, and the little boy grew up mute and neglected by his father, who would not teach the boy to read, write, or sign.

Years later when they were grown, the girl was hired as a caretaker for the same boy. She read to him and taught him to read, and she taught him to sign. Simple words at first, and then phrases. And soon the boy awoke from his isolation and took to the life with new vigor.

At some undefined point in their relationship, the boy and the girl became known to each other for who they were. Unspoken apology and forgiveness were exchanged between the two of them through acts of service and devotion and they grew closer and more fond of each other than they ever were as children.

Once the boy was able to communicate through print and sign, he became visible to his father again, and the father took pride in his son. He grew to love the girl as well for the change she had brought about in his son, and he gave affection to both of them.

Eventually, the girl felt she must confess and ask forgiveness of the father as well.

When she told him that it was she who had wounded his son in the first place, the father became enraged and turned on her.

The boy tried to stop his father from becoming violent, and the girl fled in fear.

She climbed into a nearby car, thinking to escape, but the father appeared beside the car and held up the keys in his hand for her to see.

He locked her in the car and started the engine, and then started remotely piloting the car. He drove it up to a concrete wall and then accelerated, slamming the car into the wall. He backed up and did it again, ramming the wall over and over with the girl inside until the car could no longer run.

Badly battered, the girl climbed out of a broken car window. The father was nowhere to be seen but she could sense his presence nearby.

She ran and started climbing flight after flight of stairs. She could hear the father climbing behind her but each time she looked, he wasn’t there.

When she finally reached the top of the stairs and walked out onto the roof, she was alone.

But then a slow, loud series of booms shook the roof. And she knew then that the boy’s father had gotten ahead of her somehow in the stairwell, and that in his hatred he had done something irreversible that would condemn them all.

She turned and fled back down the stairwell, passing each floor in reverse: the blue one, the yellow one, the one made of glass, the one on which you must jump over every third step. She flew, taking wild leaps and jumping the handrail where she could.

The building continued to boom and shake around her.

When she reached the ground floor, she blew through the exit out onto the street and ran as hard as she could away from the building as bits of debris started to fall behind her.

She only paused after she had gotten several blocks away and ran into a crowd of people who had stopped and were staring and pointing behind her at the building from which she had just escaped.

She turned and looked and the entire top of the building had vanished beneath the bulk of a giant writhing, flailing thing that seemed be all appendages, reaching and groping, made of large orange stones cobbled loosely together which at the same time seemed to shimmer and flutter and flap as though the stones were covered in fine feathers or scales.

Thanks to lucidiot for editing. +10 points!