My End is Only Your Glorified Beginning, Darling

She rose from her seat, a plush leather recliner of red. It had cost her a hefty sum to get the color, but to her, such was only chump change. Lit by the warm orange of the fireplace, she stared straight into a mirror of shattered glass, features untouched by time—a pair of white eyes and red hair, over sickly-pale skin. To some, she was known as Alina; to her coworkers, Doctor Einzberg—but to those of the underground, Doctor Death. A knock came at her door, followed by a pair of rough smacks—a dynamic change of their signal. She rushed over to open it, almost tripping on needles and syringes and boxes she had not cleaned up. As she did, a man dressed in a leather trench coat and black shades stood— his fashion sense could use some updating, we don’t live in the Matrix anymore—she thought. “Nice place you’ve got here,” he said. His lips were curved into that of a smile, although she could tell it was most definitely— “Fake smiles again? You never do learn to go with the times do you?” she said to him. “Don’t you prefer kindness over cruelty?” “No, I prefer realism. In fact, I prefer if you leave my property for the rest of our godforsaken lives.” Her face was contorted, and those blue eyes had now earned lines of red running amok. “The client ain’t happy with your dealings, woman, but at least you got the job done. He’s offering you this as a compromise,” he tossed a bag of double-wrapped plastic. It felt oddly heavy, as if she was paid double her typical fee. “He said he won’t accept failure from you.” As the man dressed like a middle-aged Neo walked away, she found herself out of breath as she fell to the wooden floor of her apartment. How could she have known that the man had ingested a ton of methamphetamines and wouldn’t die so easily? God, she wished she never even thought of the job she was doing now. Being just a doctor should’ve been more than enough for her. Unwrapping the plastic, she found it hard to undo the adhesive—black duct tape that stuck like flytrap paper unto the package. As she finally did though, no relief came to her, only a split second reaction of throwing what was in her hands and running behind that damn red recliner.

Just as she anticipated, the package exploded with a deafening blast. But her body moved—inch by inch she dug her way out of the blasted rubble. Everything she had soiled her hands for, now nothing but ashes and blackened scraps. The mirror still hung from the center wall of the building, almost as if untouched by the explosion. Its cracked glass reflected her bleeding flesh, shrapnel and third-degree burns covering those once graceful elements of her figure. Now dear patients, sickly and weak in your lavish comforts of life, the doctor is in— and she’s out for blood.