Kismet and the Boy

She walked with a Colt in her purse, for she was hunting a monster. Because she didn't know why she hunted it she called herself Kismet. She dreamed often of cornering and hurting the monster, of blood and blows and bruised skin. In her dreams the monster was a kid and had her face.

He avoided knives when he was nervous. He was always nervous. It began as sadness and grew up to anxiety. By the time it was fear he was trembling both inside and out. The trembling outside he could control, the trembling inside he had to bring to his skin.

Knives helped. The boy called himself Boy, and never took off his shirt where somebody could see his scars.

Kismet found her monster in a coffee shop, which was stupid, because she had looked for it in the bars her father used to go to. It didn't have her face, nor her father's face like she had in her dreams, but she could smell the blood around it.

It was trembling inside with hunger, and there were claws under its shirt where nobody could see.

She approached it with a bait-smile, keeping her hand away from her purse, ignoring the begging of her father's gun. Another one, it pleaded.

Not yet.

Boy would have run away from the smiling girl, had he been able to. She was nice, relaxed, normal, and at first it made him feel edgier than ever. Ugly inside, and always two seconds away from saying the most stupid and hurtful thing words could say.

She kept smiling, though, and talking with him. The flow of her words felt as true and familiar, as real and anchoring, as the flow of a blade through his skin, and it calmed him just as well.

Boy walked the girl to her apartment.

Kismet invited the monster in.

He took his shirt off, she took her gun out, and he found his peace and she found her blood, and it was Love.

.finis.