By A.J. Newsom
Content Warning: The following is a piece of micro-fiction satire in response to The New Yorker. This work contains themes of sexual assault.
I heard on one of them crime shows, once you kill or rape, you can’t stop. Not true. I know some people killed one time, raped one time. Done. Killing electrifies me. When I’m keyed up, an aluminum bite curls my tongue like a pucker. I was clumsy the first time. Some half-drunk twat in a bar from a town where no one knew me. I went there looking for someone like her. Drunk. Alone. In the back of her car, she said, go easy killer. Funny. I stuffed my sock in her mouth as soon as she pulled her panties down. I took the sock out. I couldn’t take the smell of my own feet, like mildewed cheese as I rocked inside her, tearing her, while my hands tightened around her throat. She couldn’t scream, not when I had her pinned like that. Her throat felt so delicate, like a bird I rescued from the garage. Heart beating staccato against my palms. Dark panic in her eyes. I try not to look at their eyes anymore. Killing’s an acquired taste, not pleasant but not unpleasant either. No telling you’ll like it until you try it. It’s like baking soda. Like biting tinfoil. Like licking a battery. And there’s a stink people get when they’re scared. Some pee. Some do other things. It ain’t for everyone.
A.J. Newsom (she/her/hers) is a fiction writer from Maine. She has an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She spends countless hours chipping away at her first novel. Maybe someday she will finish it. Her writing has also appeared in Islandport Magazine and Stonecoastreview.org.
She can also be found on Instagram.