Prologue

For years, she'd researched different ways to wash blood out of white sheets. She'd done it under the guise of "research writing," swearing up and down that she was in the process of writing the next Great American crime drama. She'd found dozens of methods, dozens of laundry detergent advertisements, but nothing worked better than good 'ol fashioned peroxide. She watched it set into the fabric, dripping over the garish red stains. One day, she'd learn not to buy fucking white sheets.

"Please...let me go..."

Emma Swan looked up from her dirty sheets, raising an eyebrow as the weak little voice hit her ears. It was almost disgusting, really, watching her prey struggle on the floor. Blood flowed freely from gashes on the man's chest, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head, hands weakly trying to cover the weeping wounds.

Emma Swan scoffed at his plea, picking her knife up from the bedside table. Blood clung to the blade, drying on the smooth surface. She appraised it favorably, a smirk tugging the corner of her lips.

"Let you go?"

She said, sauntering towards him, boots clicking nosily against the hardwood floors. Hardwood floors were a godsend, and she praised herself every day for choosing an apartment that had them.

"If I were to let you go, what would you do?"

She circled him like a vulture circles its prey, her metaphorical claws bared, lips curling over her teeth in a snarl as she watched him cower more and more the closer she came.

"You can't even stand. You're a fucking mess. If I let you go, you'll just stumble around like the piece of shit you are, and then you'll die."

She shrugged her shoulders, holding the knife by the tip with two fingers. She let it dangle precariously, watching the man whose name she hadn't bothered to learn pant and wheeze in front of her. Normally, she at least looked at her victim's wallet, so she had something to call them while she ripped them to pieces. But not tonight, not with this man. She'd seen him in a bar, had let him order her a drink, and within the hour they were at her apartment, stumbling in the door. They were all tongue, teeth, lips and shed clothing.

He hadn't asked for her name, she hadn't asked for his.

Emma knelt beside him, already dressed, and she wanted to laugh at his nudity. She'd kept him bare, she'd kept him exposed. She wanted his humiliation delivered to her on a silver fucking platter. And she got it. She had a habit of getting whatever she wanted, with whatever means necessary.

"Please don't do this,"

His voice was barely more than a whisper, and he extended a bloodied hand to Emma, fingers shaking erratically.

"I-I don't know—what I did, but...I won't tell, just...take me to a hospital? We'll say it was an accident-"

She pressed the flat of the blade to his lips, shaking her head slowly.

"You are the accident."

The blade made the most beautiful noise as she flipped it around in her hand, gripping the hilt tightly. She sliced his throat, skin tearing like paper. Emma watched him gasp, hands instinctively moving to his throat, a last-ditch effort to keep himself alive. It was always fascinating, she thought, to watch her victims die. They always did everything they could to preserve themselves in those final, tense moments. Emma watched with bated breath as the light left his eyes, and she swore she could hear his heart stop beating as blood flowed freely from the jugular vein she'd sliced. She wrapped her hand around his neck, skin red-hot as she squeezed, moving on top of him, both hands gripping his neck with as much force as she could muster. The knife lay forgotten beside her, and the anger that bubbled up inside her was enough to make her ache.

He's dead, she reminded herself, trying to convince her grip to slacken. It's over, she told herself, breath coming out in short little puffs, her fingers aching as they pressed against his skin harder and harder with each agonizing second.

"I am safe," she whispered, taking a deep breath that burned her lungs. They screamed with the effort to give her oxygen, but she managed to get enough, plenty, so her hands could fall from around his neck. Emma looked down at herself, sighing remorsefully when she realized she'd have to get blood out of her white tank top, too.