Winter break assignment for a class was to write a one page contemporary interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood set in NYC. I was kinda pissed with the length limit and came up with this out of spite. Not exactly what that says about my psyche...
Rachel can't feel her fingers, or any other part of her body at this point, which is kind of odd because she'd always believed that it would hurt more. But it doesn't. Isn't. Dying seems more akin to getting drunk in a tub of ice, a dizzying lightheadedness coupled with overwhelming numbness, rather than the blinding pain shown in those horror movies she had loved.
That, and everything's getting brighter.
Even now though, she can still hear Ralph's disjointedly childish giggles, so out of place when coupled with his smooth voice. A rhythmic cracking, similar to a large knife on a cutting board, suddenly joins it and she really doesn't want to think about that. She's dying. She can taste the metallic tang of blood and what is most likely spinal fluid in her mouth and she don't want her last thoughts to be about what this man is doing.
Bitter and mocking, her last conversation with Iris flickers through the hazy cloud of her mind.
'Trust me on this Rachel; take the R train to get down to that theater group of yours in by Washington Square. I don't care if you've walked it before; it's the middle of the freaking night! You're just asking for trouble doing this...'
Of course, Rachel being Rachel, this advice had been ignored entirely.
All she had had to do was waltz down Park Avenue till she hit 8th Street and saunter along it to McDougal, after all. Getting to Greenwich Village wasn't exactly going to the moon after all. But then, she ran into Ralph. Literally.
It had been one of those silly crash into hello scenarios straight out of one of those straight-to-video chick flicks. Rachel had walked into him, sputtering curses like a sailor, and he ever so suavely laughed it off and helped her to her feet. A gentleman, introducing himself and striking up a flirty conversation that had trailed off far too soon for her tastes, Rachel'd blurted him where she was headed and invited him along. Ralph had declined but in turn advised her go check out the Judson Church nearby.
'It's lovely there this time of night, trust me.'
And she did.
He was there when she wandered in three hours later, exhausted and high off the paint fumes from the theater's sets, sitting there in the front row like a painting. Snickering she'd waltzed up to him commenting about how he looked like an old woman perched there so reverently. And then…
And then…
And then she was here, bleeding to death on the floor of a church thinking about how much of a moron she is for not listening to Iris.
His feet come into Rachel's view as the last part of her argument with her sinks in.
'…And for God's sake Rachel, don't wear that red coat. You always seem to have these real psychos following you whenever you put it on.'
She really should have listened to her.
"You look delicious Rachel," Ralph grins, his teeth bright in a smile far too large for his round face, and brings her arm up to his mouth, kissing the inside of the wrist once before biting down hard.
And all she sees it white.
Fin.