#11 - Wr8

People are so fake, aren’t they?

Society acts like the concept of masking is a behavior exclusive to neurodivergent people, the ones who more easily have theirs slip. The ones that don’t slip up can go on pretending their façade is normality itself, their true face only ever seen by their disgruntled exes, or the broken children they send out into the world.

There is a lie about what people are like, so ingrained in our culture, that it gives every human being impostor syndrome, thinking they’re the only misfit, desperately playing a character afraid of being found out, unaware that their perfect little performance puts the same pressure on the shoulders of the people they worry might figure them out.

My name is Eve, and the truth of what I am is incompatible with this cultural liar’s view of humans.

If you were to lay eyes on the things I do when no one is looking, you’d probably call me a monster. As if ‘human’ is a label you can simply strip away like an in-group subculture identity. Simply because the zoological truth, that something like me is of the same species as you, would be too much to handle.

I know what you would call me, how you would look at me, how you’d talk about me. But I also know why. It’s because I am, in fact, human. All my savagery is relatable, a dark mirror of what goes on in your own head; what would happen if something just slipped down the wrong corridor in your palace of bullshit.

A real monster would be a different species, and you wouldn’t judge it the same.

When a man puts his arm into a lion’s cage, and has it torn to shreds. Does he think of the animal as a monster? Does he blame it for acting according to its nature? No, of course not. He’ll return years later, pointing in laughter with the one arm he has left, as he retells the story of the elegant predatory beast that got him.

I don’t get the luxury of having my nature be viewed in that light; powerful, predatory, elegant. If I were to rid you of your underutilized useless little limbs, you’d forever think of me as the evil bitch that ruined your life, with disgust, rather than the reverence I deserve.

All because of the projection that comes into play between one human and another, because I disobey the façade we all agreed upon. It says more about you than you realize. It reveals that, deep down, you know all this pretense to be a lie; a carefully maintained construct.

In a world full of clawed eagles pretending to be dainty little robins, I am truth. At home, I keep not a shrine to incident, but a temple to purpose.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, as I stepped up to the café to meet my handsome little date. I was scanning tables outside for a sign of this insignificant little life-form, when I was helped by the arm of a young blonde woman rising to wave at me, while she bore an expression of annoyance. Of course, the little shit had a babysitter accompanying him.

Knowing the real identity of Robin Marrick through the access she gave me to her social media, made it easy enough to find information on all her tiny friends; Jade Wislow, Oscar Davis, Elena Curtley, Elias Hatner, Theo Brecker and Simon Elwind.

I know who they are, where they are, the types of people they are, or posed themselves to be, and I knew a desperate little pervert like Simon would be the easiest to snatch from his nest.

I stepped up to the woman and the tiny man in front of her, with a warm smile, that I lightly infused with hints of embarrassment. “Oh, hey, there you are! Is this your sister?”

“Yeah, don’t mind her,” the little guy said. “She’s sort of like my maid.”

The smile that followed wasn’t one I had to fake. His distasteful nature was laid bare without even an attempt to hide it, unlike the pretense many other modern men engaged in; it was honesty.

I knew all about these distasteful parts of his personality, his radioactive insecurities, how those made him an outlier among his friends, and made him a walking repellent to any self-respecting woman. I knew how close to home these idiosyncrasies would be to his friend Theo, whose secret online footprint revealed a much worse history.

I imagine sweet little Theo might have tried to teach his friend some self-awareness, in hopes of making sure Simon wouldn’t end up in a similar place, but different experiences breed different complexes, even if the outward behavior may seem the same.

I pulled back a chair, and sat down in front of them. “I gotta say, you’re even cuter in real life. I really gotta keep myself from just- ah!”

I stretched and pulled back my manicured fingers, making an overwhelmed face of giddiness that screamed cuteness-overload in classic millennial fashion. I worried the quirky act might not go over well with a college-aged kid, a generation younger than me. But in the case of Simon, the idea of dating a woman in her early thirties was part of his little fantasy.

“I’m sorry if it’s weird,” I said. “I just have a thing for tiny men. The idea of a handsome little guy like you fitting in my palm makes me just so-”

“Nah, I like that about you actually,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “It’s nice to finally be dating a woman who doesn’t put up a shallow height limit. Y-You know I used to be six-foot-two before I got nerfed?”

“No way, really?”

I looked to his sister, to see her rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

I let the little guy do most of the talking. He seemed more interested in flaunting his feathers to impress me than he was in asking me anything about the person I was, which made things easier; less need for me to explore the character I was playing.

Throughout his incessant yapping his stare would crawl all over me, the little guy was over the moon and who wouldn’t be?

I was dressed to kill; an open black jean jacket layered atop a tight dark red crop top emphasizing my large tits and laying bare my perfect waist, while dark-grey three-quarter jeans tightly squeezed my thick legs, beneath which I wore the out-of-touch black flats I had kept in pristine condition since high-school.

My long nails were perfectly manicured with matte, dark maroon nail polish, matching my even darker lipstick, which was applied and outlined to make my lips look bigger. My cold steel-blue eyes were accented with classic cat-eye wings, and fake lashes. My wavy raven black hair extending past my shoulders with a glossy shine.

I was the millennial femme fatale a man like Simon would ask his gooner AI to roleplay. The lie he wanted. Meanwhile at home, I’d be what men like him would refer to as a messy hag, a failed woman past her prime, living in her witch’s den like a cat-less cat lady sipping wine. None of that mattered, the fantasy of me was all he needed. He wouldn’t live to see me remove the make-up.

Simon just went on and on, “Anyway, it’s too bad I’m too small to hold a guitar now, else I’d play you some tunes.”

His sister was trying to pass the time with her phone, it was clear she wanted to be anywhere but here, and that’s all I needed.

“Hey, I was wondering,” I said. “Seeing as your sister is just uncomfortably third-wheeling, wouldn’t it be better if we let her do her own thing. I don’t mind bringing you home later. Maybe you can spend the night at my place?”

Simon’s little eyes lit up, his blond head turning to his sister, who was his only obstacle to being taken home by this absolute goddess.

His sister frowned, “I don’t think that’s safe. Don’t take this the wrong way, but this woman is still a complete stranger.”

Simon gasped, his hands and arms making an explosive ‘the fuck’ gesture. Getting him on board was the easiest part, unlike his sister, he wasn’t attuned to the danger of an enticing stranger. His horny little boy-brain had never been confronted with even the idea of someone predating on him. Danger like that hadn’t existed in for him until a few weeks ago, and he had spent those two weeks isolated from this new world, which would eat him alive.

“No,” the young woman said. “Mom and dad told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, you’re the one always calling me a creep,” Simon shouted. “Yet here you are, dutifully willing to watch me do it with the woman of my dreams.”

His sister’s nose scrunched, “Eww, yuck. Don’t even-”

While the sibling hostility was an absolute joy to listen to, I knew this wasn’t going to go the way I wanted, unless I gave it a little push. I leaned forward, locking eyes with the blonde girl, as I felt the black mark on my right thigh burning.

I spoke with words beyond, “What is it you want to do?”

The anger and disgust she had for her brother faded, as her face returned to complete neutrality, “I want to hang out with Jess and Rachel…”

The blonde woman’s chair slid back, with a scratchy sound, before she stood up and walked away without another word.

Simon shouted at his sister’s back, “I appreciate it, tell mom I’ll be fine!”

The tiny guy turned his attention back to me, locking his fingers and swaying his shoulders in what no doubt was an attempt to exert some white-boy swagger.

“So, just us now, where do you wanna take this?”

I slowly lowered the back of my malevolent claw down on the table to offer a ride, as if it were a gentle hand. “You know where. Hop on cutie~”

The drive was longer than the little guy expected, we had to cross state lines, and it took another few hours before we finally got to my cozy secluded little house. He was starting to notice something was up, asking all these annoying questions, about how he thought I was a local, asking how much longer the ride would take; nothing I couldn’t handwave away with a sweet voice, and the promise it would all be worth it.

There was no reason for me to keep up the act at this point, but I wanted to. I had planned out exactly how I wanted the realization that he was in danger to hit him, and I didn’t want to deal with him screaming and crying in my car for the entire ride home.

I carried him inside and pulled off my flats, wriggling my toes in the white invisible socks, which kept the top of my foot bare, their soles had been grayed and turned soggy by the long drives I made that day. I’m such a sweater.

“You got like a nice place,” Simon commented, his tired mind struggling to find small talk.

“Thank you,” I said. “I can’t wait for you to meet my boyfriend.”

“Y-Your boyfriend?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re not really together anymore.”

“But he still lives here?”

“I wouldn’t say he lives here,” I said, unable to contain my grim excitement. “Might be best if I just showed you.”

I carried him to my little hobby room, where I kept my gaming desk, and shelves full of knick-knacks and broken little trophies. I brought him closer and closer to those shelves, as I watched him try to make out what he was looking at, this weak little thing, slowly beginning to tremble against my cold palm.

“What’s that,” he said, as if he was hoping there was still a chance this wasn’t what it looked like.

“These are all the idiots that came before you,” I said, with a gently cooing voice. “Well, maybe calling them idiots isn’t fair to them, most weren’t stupid enough to come willingly. My boyfriend is up here somewhere, but I forgot which remains are his.”

I raised him up to one of the shelves, to give him a better look at my collection; a bloody sock with unrecognizable gore dried into the fibers, the dead body of a tiny woman held up by the six toothpicks I had impaled her with, a wide variety of twisted beaten and broken bodies, some loose limbs of the ones I couldn’t fully peel off my skin, and my favorite ash tray, full of burned bodies, some of which I had just held above my lighter, while most had been poked to death by cigarettes. I don’t make a habit of smoking outside of play.

“What the fuck! No. No. fuck!” Simon shouted as he crawled backwards on my palm.

There is nothing more amusing than watching someone try and squirm away from you, when the very surface they’re squirming away on is you.

“Oh, you should see this,” I said, pointing to a jar of my own puke. “I call this one the exo-vore jar. Eating someone is fun, but I really like to watch them drown or melt away in my stomach acid.”

“You’re a fucking psycho!” Simon squealed.

I let my face sink into a sad and hurt look.

“You think I’m a psycho?” I said with a vulnerable voice, before picking up with huffing laughter, “no one’s ever called me that before!”

“No, God! Why are you doing this?!”

“Because Robin told me I could have you.”

“What?”

“Your friend Robin,” I said. “She’s a friend of mine too. All those other tiny friends of yours, she’s already butchered them all.”

I could see the gears turning behind his shocked and horrified little face, “No, no. Robin wouldn’t. She didn’t! Call her! There’s been a mistake! She’ll tell you we’re friends. She wouldn’t want you to hurt me!”

I smiled with wicked glee as I recounted his friends’ obituaries, “I think she slammed Elias’ limbs under the buttons of her mechanical keyboard. Strangled Theo with a lock of her own hair, almost severing the little guy’s head. Jade became a red streak across her ass-cheek, and Oscar, oh Oscar, she chopped that guy up into little bits before snorting him up like a fucking line of the good stuff.”

“No, that’s not- she didn’t-”

I answered with a miserable sorry pout and a baby voice, “All your friends are dead.”

I turned to a whisper, as I lowered my lips down closer to the mentally shattering victim in my hand, “All that, and she didn’t even invite me to join in on the fun. But she told me to come and find you; said you’d always been a miserable little incel who couldn’t pull any women, that you’d be easy enough to lure out. She told me she only ever put up with your shit, because Oscar liked you so much, but deep down she fucking hated your guts so much, she didn’t even want to spill them herself.”

As I leaned back a bit, I could see it in his eyes, the warped little twist I gave to the things I knew about her friends were clicking into place, he was starting to believe me. The horror of Robin’s betrayal combining with the fear of what I was about to do to him made for such a juicy cocktail of chemicals in his mind.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” he said as he turned into a whimpering mess.

“I was starting to doubt if I should,” I said. “The more I heard about you, the more I felt I could relate to you in a way none of these creepy decorations ever made me feel. We’re both discarded and disowned by a society that left us behind, with an air of moral superiority.

I could see his eyes widen, that little spark of it. Oh, how I adore the push and pull of giving and stripping away hope.

“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t agree with her calling you that horrible ‘incel’ word, it’s kinda crude and dismissive of men’s issues. Everyone is always talking about the glow, but who is out here caring about the loneliness epidemic?”

He didn’t budge, his eyes were still wide in hope-fueled terror, his body still locked up solid like a deer in headlights.

“Little Simon, who never fit in anywhere, and had to play the role of jester just so he could connect with others. Then all these people start getting sensitive about everything, and turning the one social-in you had into a minefield. Women, looking at you in disgust. Men using you as a social punching bag to get in the good graces of those women. It’s not fair.”

“Here you are, discarded like trash by a person you trusted, into the hands of a sadistic monster, who might be the first woman to actually see the real you,” I continued, as I reeled him in like a fish, “All you ever wanted was warmth, to be treated like a human being, to be desired by a single woman the way you desire so many of them. All you wanted, was a love.”

I reached out the index finger of my free hand, my digit turned upwards, wondering if he would bite. His head shakily turned to my shelf, as he reassessed the horror he was in, before turning back to look me in my empathetic eyes. I was the monster at the fringes of society, seeing him, offering him the very companionship, which I had denied so many others. A loner’s perfect fantasy.

Simon’s tiny little hand reached out, carefully touching my fingerprint. I titled my head, and smiled at him for the few seconds he’d need to imagine a future with his psycho mommy, then I let my thumb pounce on his hand with a tight squeeze, under which I felt all those intricate tiny carpals bones give way. He screamed in pain.

“You pathetic little loser. Did you really think I believed any of that?” I laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand you. I understand everyone.”

I began to press my thumb back and forth, really grinding the little hand, as the tiny boy kept screaming.

“Lonely men, activists, racists, tiny little queer people. No one ever admits to themselves how easily their mind is played with by a friendly voice, an ally, someone unlike all those nasty other folks.”

“It hurts! It hurts!”

“Women, am I right? You give them a hand they take-“

I squeezed my thumb forward, making sure I had a good grip on his lower arm, before I ripped the whole limb off his shoulder, as if he were a flimsy scarecrow. His scream of agony alone was enough to make the entire drive to-and-from worth it. Blood came gushing out, and I knew I wouldn’t have much time left to tease him.

“Oh, whoopsie,” I said, as I brought the limb back, and poked his face with the bloody stump of it. “You want it back? Here take it. Take it. Heheh~”

He fell back and squirmed, as his blood gathered in a little puddle, which poured out into the lines of my palm.

I lowered my hand a foot above the ground, before tilting it and letting him take a little tumble. He was such a noisy little squealer, I loved it. He rolled onto his stomach and began crawling across my floor with the little bit of strength and consciousness he had.

“Keep going Simon, you’re gonna make it.” I teased. “Come on all the way back home, you can do it!”

My words were enough for him to give up completely. He just laid there, crying, as he bled out.

“Oh, that it?” I said. “Are you ready for me to end your pathetic little life, like the worm you are?”

“Why?! I don’t understand. Why is this happening?!”

“I told you, you were dumb enough to befriend a sadist who gifted you to one of her sadist friends. I’m just living my truth.”

I shifted my big toe forward, raising it only high enough to envelop his lower body. I can only imagine how foul the smell was, how gross the squishy feeling of my humid sock’s fibers against his legs and lower back must have been. I wanted to bury him completely under the filth his ride had built up, but I had to leave the face intact, recognizable.

“Robin, fucking bit-“

I slowly pressed my toe down, the blood which poured from his mouth stopping Simon from cursing his final slur at the friend who, he believed, had betrayed him and his friends. The ones he toxically struggled to connect with, but cared about deeply.

I felt his spine, hips and upper legs collapse with a satisfying potato-chip-like crunch, under the casual force of my toe pressing into the ground, as I felt that warm gore seep through my sock.

There is nothing more exhilarating than feeling a human life ending against your hands and feet.

I scolded myself for being so quick to pull off one of his limbs, putting a bleed out timer on something that could’ve lasted hours if I had been a little less impulsive.

I raised my foot to look at the sticky red mess I left on my sock and floor. “Well, looks like I have a gift to wrap~”