The floorboards creak outside the broom closet’s door, a girl cowers behind a rolling bucket, the stench of chemicals burning her nose.

“Alyssa,” she hears him coo softly, his Nikes squeaking on the school’s polished floors. “I know you’re here. I just know…”

She hears the scrape of his pocketknife on the painted cement blocks as he turns the corner, only inches from where she hides. She squeezes her eyes shut and holds her breath as he approaches.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” he says softly, chuckling at his own joke.

The door to the closet pops open, the silhouette of his figure propped against the frame. “Alyssa, come here…”

The knife clicks against the metal trim like a clock, ticking down her minutes of life. He slides forward, pushes back the bucket, yanks her by the hair, throwing her into the school hallway.

“Jermaine, please,” she wails as he pulls her and slams her on the floor, a knee at her throat.

“Did you go with him?” He says in an arid tone, eyes nearly empty.

“No, nooo…”

“I saw the pictures, Alyssa.”

“They were fake, fake!” She wails.

“Do you know what I could do to you?”

“Please Jermaine, please…”

“Do you know?” He yells, knife shaking in his right fist as his knee smashes her windpipe, cutting off her airways.

She doesn’t say anything as he pulls away, rubbing his stubbly chin, leaving her laying on the hallway floor.

He spins around suddenly, his cold blue eyes boring into her as she lays perfectly still against the polished white marble.

“You’re so small… I should crush you like the roach you are,” he whispers, grasping her hair and pulling her to her feet. “Or I could open you an like a can of beans and devour every. inch. of. you.”

He pushes the blade against her jugular vein, feeling the throb of her racing pulse against his forefinger.

“One push and you could die, Alyssa. How does it feel to be scared? How does it feel to know you’re going to lose something, babe?”

“Please, don’t-“

The blade cuts across, a tingling sensation at first, until the blood rushes down like fire, burning it’s way down her shirt, like a tall glass of alcohol.

“God, I love you,” he whispers, kneeling down beside her as the life bleeds from her bones.

Strangely, Alyssa doesn’t cry. She simply holds a hand to her throat, choking sounds gurgling from her raw windpipe and she struggles to breathe. She’s drowning in her own blood.

“You look so pretty,” he whispers, brushing back her hair as she slumps, her lifeless eyes gazing at something she can no longer see.