the WOMAn in red

Ulani Doyley

Glass shattered along the marble floor as the rage she bottled up exploded from her depths.

She would cry for the last time, she would suppress her emotions for the last time, and she would get rid of all the vermin she could find.

The vermin weren’t the rats nor the roaches crawling along the cupboards but the dark and ugly souls inhabiting the no-good establishment that boasted about their revolutionary treatment. It was a lie. It was all a lie.

The drip of a faucet echoed through the halls, putting the deranged hiding residents on edge. The woman in red’s heels tapped on the floor, her long red fingernails trailed along the worn walls, and her sweet smile sent a shiver down the spines of rats scrambling from the sharp knives on her feet.

“Hello,” the woman in red whispered. “Is anyone home?” she said with a smile.

She suddenly stopped at a doorway and peered inside. The room was empty besides the ragged furniture, decorated with trash and a splash of mold. As she stepped inside, the young man hiding in a small cupboard breathed heavily through his mouth, frozen in his position, too afraid to move. The tapping of her heels came to a stop in front of the cupboard, and his breath stopped immediately.

Although it was a warm summer night, the air suddenly went cold.

“How long were you going to hide in that cupboard, Timmy?” the woman said as she opened the cupboard door with her cold slender fingers.

Pale as snow, the man’s eyes widened as big as the saucers the woman had smashed before she went feral.

Caressing his face with a dainty white hand, she tilted his head and set her sights on his neck, what she wanted, what she craved. His blood.

The only thing that fueled her to kill.