Run Red

Josephine knocked frantically. Frantically on the first door she came across. She absorbed herself into the shadow of its awning and held her breathe in hiding. Hiding from from the mangy, maniacal man who was chasing her, cackling. Cackling like a coyote. His hair was matted and parts of his skin appeared to be scratched off. Josie worried the man would smell the scent of her menstruation or hear the beating of her heart against her ribcage, like the beating of wings against chicken wire. Wire coyotes gnashed through to kill her families hens and scatter their feathers about like tiny tombstones.

In a final effort, Helen kicked her patent leather slipper against the mystery occupant's door. It only nudged open, making a sticky, shrieking sound, that startled both the young, smooth skinned Helen and the middle aged man contently sunken into his sofa, watching television. She watched, through the slit between the door and it's frame, the grizzled man heave his dimpled girth from a concaved sofa, wincing at his back pain and cursing the imbecile interrupting his private home screening of "American Psycho." The night was ruined and his popcorn would be cold! He puffed his chest. Floyd also fancied himself an American Psycho. A poor man's Patrick Bateman perhaps, but just as psycho.

He devised murderous options that became more sinister with each step towards his door; For strangulation he had paracord rope, left over from his military days. For shooting, he had a SIG Sauer, he bought from a veteran's garage sale. For Stabbing, he had a large pearing knife, the last gift he received from his daughter before she severed contact. And for bludgeoning, he carried his late mother's rusted old can opener in his pocket. He liked the weight of it and the weight of her memory that came with it. He called it "five head" on account of how many heads had been hunted with it.

Floyd pried the door open further, getting a look at his next victim; the little minx standing on his door mat. "Six," his mouth slithered, trying out his can opener's next name. He hated the little minx. A Minx too old to be wearing a school girl skirt and too young to be wearing the mascara running down her cheeks. She was already crying. Crying made Floyd despise her even more. Floyd became uncomfortable around emotional people and people in general. This girl was both.

His trained ears registered a faint cackling in the distance as he reached into his pocket and brandished the rusty can opener. The can opener that would make the minx run red with blood. Run Red. Run Red. Run, Helen demanded of her legs, but all they could do was step back. Step back into the arms of the mangy coyote man, cackling. Cackling like the coyotes in the hills surrounding her childhood home after their first kill.

The coyote man leapt and bound away over piles of garbage and pools of rats with Josephine on his hip. Floyd let him get a head start before unholstering his SIG Sauer and shooting him square between the shoulder blades. Coyote man met death amongst the rats. They nibbled at his mangy ears and crawled over Josephine's smooth skin.

Floyd walked out of his apartment for the first time in six years to collect his bounty. He didn't bother to step around the rats, he just kicked them aside. He took the coyote man by the scruff of his neck, and Josephine by her delicate ankle and dragged the two back, one in each hand. The man with the can opener had a very strong grip and Josephine could only let herself be dragged back in to his den.