Hush

That was the overpowering emotion. Orion was so damn terrified, she tasted her own bile in her mouth. Her bowels turned watery, and her bladder cried out for release. She had gotten herself into something, into bone, flesh, and blood. It was everything that she had promised herself it wouldn’t be. Messy, quick, amateur.

He was on the ground now, his back to the wall. It was stained with blood. He wasn’t dead yet. He was making sounds. Wet, coughing sounds. Trying to talk. One arm weakly raised toward her, trying to fight or begging for help, Orion wasn’t sure which.

“You’re her,” he grunted, blood lining his lips, pooling on his soiled shirt. He forced a smile, the blood smeared across his teeth. “You’re that little cunt . . .” He coughed, more blood, more saliva, and then wheezed.

She stared at him, cocked her head, smiled back.

He looked confused, but only for a moment. The confusion was replaced with frantic pleas as she unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.

“Wh-what are you doing?” he muttered, his voice rasped, the blood really pooling in his mouth now.

She pulled his flaccid cock from his pants, and in one swift movement, she severed it with the knife.

He gurgled out a scream, but she silenced him by stuffing the detached appendage in his mouth, and then ramming the blade of the knife into his neck.

As the life drained from his eyes, she held on to the vomit crawling up her throat because she could not leave DNA at the crime scene, and she could not let the death of this scum have such an impact on her.

Orion had planned on saying so many things to him. She had planned on taking it slow. She had planned on him seeing her as the monster. But there was no time for that. Her mouth was stuck shut, unable to utter a fucking word. So, she just stared at him blankly, the bloody stump of his penis showing between his lips, until he died.

Then she wiped the knife on her jeans, flipped it closed, and pocketed it. She walked to the mouth of the alley slowly, peeking around the corner. She saw no one. The other direction was clear as well.

With her body feeling as if it carried a hundred extra pounds, she ran as fast as she could to the street where she parked her SUV, trying to keep the vomit down that threatened to explode from her lips.

Her hands shook on the drive home.

They didn’t have any blood on them. Her leather gloves did. Winter in Missouri was the only thing that stopped her from leaving prints everywhere. The rest of her body was equally wrapped up, her hair tightly braided then tucked into her black beanie.

Orion had put a lot of thought into it, even the stalking, which was what that was meant to be. She had planned everything to a T. Their case was everywhere, wildfire across news and social media alike. He’d known that they were alive, that they were in his hospital, yet he still roamed the halls without fear, without shame. That said something about his arrogance. About his power. It told Orion what she already had suspected, even then. If she’d gone to the cops with no evidence but a memory, nothing would’ve been done. And she would’ve lost her chance to kill him because she would’ve tied herself to him. It wouldn’t have taken them long to look at Orion as the lead suspect. She’d done the right thing.

Tonight, she’d made one of the stupidest decisions since she decided to bike home alone that evening ten years ago.

Someone would find the body, that much was obvious. There would be publicity, not just because of the grisly, messy way she had killed him. This doctor was someone important. She’d learned that by watching him, researching him. He was well-known, well-respected. Business meetings and golf outings. Cigar rooms and happy hours. But there was the other side too. The side that frequented strip clubs routinely, staying for hours on end. That would certainly work to her benefit, and raise questions about his character, and what kind of people he was mixed up with.

Regardless, his family, his buddies, and his colleagues would all want his killer brought to justice. They would fight to catch the monster who took the life of a beloved doctor, father, and family man.

They would never know what a monster he truly was.

But that wasn’t Orion’s goal. She had no grand plans of exposing him to the world. She didn’t need the world to condemn him, and she knew such a thing was too hard if not impossible. She had done her research—she knew how easily rich white men got away with sexual assault, how many victims were made into liars. Jeffrey Epstein got thirteen months. She had read all about it. All the accusations, all the reports. The evidence was damning. And yet, he spent thirteen months in a county jail, thirteen hours of work release, six days a week. That was not justice. That was white male privilege. That was the rich living under a vastly different set of standards. And it was unacceptable. Orion wasn’t going to leave it up to a judge and jury. She wanted him to pay. She wanted him dead. And though the killing filled her with an intense, visceral fear, it also gave her a jolt of adrenaline, a rush unlike anything she’d felt since she made Thing Two bleed.