by Peter Fang
To hide her heinous hobby, she did the torturing outside the house and away from her parents. Her parents lived in the countryside, and they owned a ten-acre farm. They raised chickens, cows, horses, and other livestock, and sometimes when the urge was strong, she would take a few of the smaller creatures into the barn nearby to relieve herself. Later on, she found a secret hideout in the nearby forest area and made a small five-by-five foot shallow underground chamber––-it took her almost a year to finish, but it was her sanctuary, a place to truly be herself.
Elise secretly trapped small animals in the forest and subjected them to torture. She didn't know why she did it, but she got a rush from watching the animals suffer. She saw her dad’s eyes in those struggling, helpless animals. The moment when the tormented animals died, they all had the same look as they drew their last breath––-it reminded her of her dad, and she was amazed at how numb she felt in the face of torture.
She showed no sympathy towards the animals no matter how brutal the pain inflicted was, yet she was caring and attentive to the animals on the farm. The torturing gave her a sense of being alive, a sense of being in control—the fine line between life and death had always intrigued her. What is life? You could see a bunny alive and well one day, and then the next day it could be dead. It was the soul, but what is the soul? She studied all the relevant materials online and at school but didn’t find anything that really explained what the soul was.
Her boyfriend took her to a shooting range once and was surprised by how natural of a shooter she was. She soon realized she had been born with the ability to know instinctively how the weapon worked in her hand. The breathing technique, the best way to hold the gun––-both hands or one-handed––-she just knew. The weapon became part of her when she held it.
She was able to hit the bull’s eyes with a pistol at fifty yards. Her boyfriend nicknamed her “Deadpan” because she could hold her breath for an extended period while shooting and never flinched.
She was then later drawn to martial arts and learned various techniques. She loved martial arts because the discipline gave her solace to quiet her inner demons. At age sixteen, she explored her creativity by taking on tattooing, but she only committed to one tattoo on her body. The design was an intricate vine surrounding the heart-shaped scar from her dad; she added a haiku for the vine:
I’m my own demon
I worship it with my life
It devours my soul
She skipped high school and college and instead worked at local shops. She tried to do drugs once, but her body seemed intolerant to all of the drugs she tried, so she decided to get into the business of drug trade. She met a local drug dealer who supplied her with the goods while she ran the street for him. She met an elite college student name Mary while selling her illegal pain medicines, and they hit it off.
Mary reminded Elise of Maria; they even had similar names.
One day when she and Mary were near an alley, two men tried to rob them for cash at gunpoint. It was the biggest mistake they ever made. Like a well-oiled machine that sprang into action, she disarmed the man with the gun and broke his jaw in one swift move. The other guy tried to stop her with a knife but instead got his face sliced open before he even knew the knife was taken from his hands. The two men ran off on a motorcycle, but not before Elise got a good look at their license plate. When she turned around to check on Mary, she found her lying in a pool blood. She applied pressure on her friend’s wound, but she couldn’t stop the bleeding. Instead of feeling fear or grief, the violence aroused her. She saw the crimson blood pouring out of Mary’s chest and there was a powerful urge growing inside her mind, something terrifying––-she wanted to see the inside of Mary’s body. There was an almost irresistible sensation growing from her fingertips, yearning to explore the internal organs, to reach farther into her chest and feel the ridges of her spine. Using her fingers, she navigated inside Mary’s chest until she found the bullet. Fighting the urge to go in deeper, she pulled her hand out with the bullet. Like a drug addict recognizing an old addiction, she recalled the sensation she had when she was torturing small animals. That night, something awakened in her––-she knew a beast that she had suppressed had been released, and there was no way she could stop it now.
Mary unfortunately died from blood loss. She was her only friend and the only one who knew the secrets of her past.
During the funeral, Mary’s mother blamed her for their daughter’s death. The mother took her aside and told her not to get close to Mary’s grave again. The mother said the biggest failure on her part was not being able to keep her daughter away from drugs, and Elise.
“Scum of the earth!” The mother slapped Elise. “My daughter took pity on you because you have no friends. Now get out of this place.”
Elise was left out in the rain after everyone else gathered inside the funeral home.
Several days later, she received a letter from Mary. First, she thought it was a hoax, but then she realized it was a surprise birthday present. The day of the funeral happened to be on Elise's birthday.
When she opened the present, she found a necklace with a small iron ore in an ornate box. There was a birthday card inside, and it read:
For Elise, like this piece of iron ore, you have to decide what you need to be in life. It’s one of a kind in this world, just like you. Forge your own destiny.—Mary
Since the incident, she pondered about her life, and she wondered what her destiny was. She never figured that out, but she knew her journey up to that point had molded her into the way she was, and part of her core would never change.
She went to local a blacksmith and made a custom fixed blade with the iron ore from Mary. It was similar to the K-Bar that belonged to her dad, but more tapered and shorter. She named the knife Kizu, the shortened version of the Japanese word kizuato––-scar.
On a windless night against a backdrop of a fierce summer moon, she let her darkest beast out. She recalled from memory the license plate number. With the help of one of her hacker friends, she found out where one of the robbers lived. She followed the man to a strip club. She seduced him and brought the guy back to his own car. The guy thought he was getting lucky that night, but Elise broke his arm to find out where the other guy lived. She drove to the address and found a back alleyway to break into his apartment.
When Elise set her foot in the kitchen through an open window, the man was lying on the sofa with a naked girl, passed out next to a pile of drug paraphernalia. She walked past them gingerly and noticed there were no guns on the table. She figured that if the man woke up, she could take him out so long as he didn’t have a gun. There was only a thinly veiled curtain from the window, but the bright moonlight was covered by a transient cloud front that turned half of the apartment into an inky space. The dark room made it difficult for her to see, except from a single light source in the hallway. As she approached the light, she found a magnificent fish tank. It was no ordinary fish tank created by amateurs; it was a custom-built 100-gallon Dutch aquarium. The image reminded him of her grade school friend Edwin, a friend whom she had known before her parents went insane. He was always nice to her when everyone else in school called her a freak. One time when she was walking home, she got ambushed by a group of bullies. She fought them off but she was bruised and sustained a bloody nose. Edwin was with her mother and saw the fight. Edwin’s mother took her home so she could help clean her up and call her parents. Edwin showed her the beautiful fish tank his family had. He said it was the crown jewel of his dad’s hobby. Elise remembered giving Edwin a small kiss before she left his house, and Edwin’s innocent smile was seared into her mind.
A stir alerted Elise; she felt someone was watching her. She turned and saw the man who was sleeping on the sofa now sitting up. His eyes looked glazed as he propped himself up near the edge; he gave her a wry smile, then slowly got up and stumbled across the room.
As the man passed her, she could make out his face clearly.
“Edwin?” she called out to him half surprised, half angry.
The man stopped and turned to face her with a set of bloodshot eyes. “Edwin…no one calls me that name except…Mom?”
Elise did not reply but only stared back at him with a sense of pity.
Edwin saw her with the knife and laughed. “Ma’am, you here for the loan money?”
Elise shook her head.
“Good, then I need to pee.” Edwin lumbered into the bathroom and closed the door halfway. Edwin grunted in pain as he peed. The long pee was decorated with a lace of expletives that punctuated spasms of pauses.
Elise went to the bathroom to look and saw that the toilet water was bloody. She was about to leave when she saw in the mirror’s reflection the girl on the bed was pointing a gun at her.
Instinctively, she ducked to the right before a shot missed her by an inch. In one sweeping arch, Elise threw her Kizu at the girl. The blade went into her left eye socket before she could pull another round. The force snapped her head back and she fell back into the sofa. Elise walked over to the girl’s dead body and slowly pulled her Kizu out. The blade made a sucking sound as it cleared the wound. Elise stood over the girl’s body and waited. But even after all of the fighting, she felt nothing.
“Can I get back to my bed?” Edwin asked politely, his voice half awake.
Elise moved aside from the girl’s body.
Edwin staggered across the room; then he fell face-down onto the bed, shifted his body sideways, and began to snore.
Elise never forgot a face. She could still recognize Edwin’s squarish face: the aristocratic jawline was still here, except it was longer and wider, but it was definitely the Edwin that she had met on that faithful day.
What happened to you, Edwin? Elise wondered how someone like Edwin with such privilege in life could have ended up like this. She wondered if it was best to take Edwin’s life; no one would care if he died, just like no one would care if she died. She hovered her Kizu’s tip over Edwin’s eye but hesitated. She thought she would let Edwin live, but her friend’s face resurfaced, reminding her why she was there.
Elise left town that night. Her drug dealer gave her a tip to relocate back to Seattle, where there was a chance for her to face her past. She didn’t bother to go back to her apartment at all. It had too many memories that she didn’t need.
When she arrived in Seattle, the first stop was the house she grew up in. It had been over a decade since she left. The house had a different color exterior; the original red front door was replaced with a solid oak door with a golden lock. The front lawn had changed also; it looked like a different house with no trace of her past. She felt a relief and sadness—it was like her past never existed.
“Maria, where are you now?” Elise asked.
“You had already ended one girl’s life, and you will not repeat that again,” she answered herself. She decided on that day that she would not seek out Maria. But if one day she was called upon to sacrifice herself for her sister, she would do it without hesitation. Elise felt somehow they would meet again one day.
5
Maria
After the tragic incident, Maria suffered from PTSD, and she suppressed her memories. Maria was adopted through social services. Her Chinese parents kept her first name, but her last name was legally changed to Huang. Her new parents told her she had an older sister name Zaele, and she saved her life from drowning once, but unfortunately she passed away. As she grew up, she knew something in her past was not meant to be visited. Her nightmares began when she was in her teens. In her dreams, there was a beautiful dollhouse, and she could hear familiar voices in the room with her––-someone she loved, someone that was a protector. She recalled from her dreams being locked up in a cage and fighting against drowning sensations. Her dreams made her believe something in her past contributed to her fear of soaking in the bathtub. It took her twice as long, but she preferred doing a wipe-down with a towel every night.
Maria grew up to be a beautiful, crisp-looking girl. At five feet six inches, she was average height, but somehow she stood out in the crowd. Her face had clean lines and dark eyebrows as if someone sketched her out on a white linen paper. Her slender face, naturally curly, dark brown hair, and light hazel eyes almost belied her Asian heritage.
She was twenty-four years old when she met Ansen Yang at a business conference. He was a handsome man in his thirties with an athletic build. His handsome face wore a confident smile and he had a full head of hair.
Unlike the other guys she met, she could not read Ansen well. That was really exciting for her because Ansen was a package of mystery––-a rare find in her life. This inability to read through Ansen both frustrated and excited her at the same time. The best part about Ansen was that he could not swim, another thing in common with her. But when Ansen found out that she was afraid of water, he decided to take her to the nearby gym and asked her to join him to learn to overcome their fear. That was something she really didn’t enjoy. She managed to get near the pool and dip her legs into the pond, but she refused to get in. Ansen would spray water at her from the pool, and she would just look on with dismay.
One day, Ansen decided to get Maria to join him in a therapy session to overcome her hydrophobia. However, she didn’t want to get into the pool, and Ansen eventually pushed her in. With a scream, Maria plunged into the water. The pool was not very deep, but it felt like drowning to her. As she splashed helplessly about in the pool, flashbacks from her past emerged: a man was pressing her head into the water, causing her to choke. She vividly remembered the man’s eyes, her dad’s eyes.
She broke the water’s surface panicking, gulping down water and spitting as she raised her arms for help. The instructor and Ansen had to pull her from the swimming pool. She didn’t talk to Ansen for more than a week.
After the near-drowning incident, Maria decided to force herself to learn to swim because she did not want to give up. She hired a swim instructor to get over her fear, and while taking swimming lessons, Maria met a girl who worked at the animal shelter. They became friends, and the girl invited her to visit the shelter. Maria never thought that she would be attached to animals until she met the animals at the shelter.
Volunteering at the animal shelter became her summer job. It was clear from the beginning that Maria had a connection with the dogs. She was called the “Dog Whisperer” by her co-workers because she could tame even the most feral dogs. As much as the dogs loved her, cats hated Maria, and they would run away to hide whenever she went into a cat’s playpen. She was soon asked to only work with dogs. That was when she met Joey.
When Maria met Joey, he was not social and did not respond to commands. He sat in the corner all day and refused to eat. He would attack the cleaners if they got too close. The vet said it would cost a lot of money to treat Joey’s skin disease, and there was no budget for the treatment, so the adoption center had no choice but to put Joey on death row. Maria decided to treat Joey because she saw something in him that was unique. Unlike other dogs, Joey initially did not respond to Maria, and he would even growl at her. All of the dogs loved Maria at the center except Joey, and Maria couldn’t help but want to solve the puzzle. She spent countless hours with Joey, and eventually, Joey opened up to her. No one knew why, but Joey’s skin disease healed itself soon after he opened up to her. They became inseparable, and she did the logical thing and adopted him.
6
Fly
Apartment 2-C and its entire contents were a source of anxiety for Maria. She felt a churning in her stomach every time she passed the second floor. The apartment’s tenant was obnoxious and gross, with equally obnoxious dogs. She took the elevators whenever she could to shield herself from the garbage in the room, but every once a while, she had to make the painful journey up the stairs, and that meant passing the hallway of Apartment 2-C. It was one of those days when Maria found out that the elevator was out of service. What was worse, she had Joey with her and that was her mai
n concern.
Maria stood in front of the elevator and muttered, “Are you kidding me?”
Telepathically, she sensed Joey’s anxiety first, then heard the worried whine in Joey’s voice.
“You too? Yes, I know.” Maria felt the same dread in her stomach. She thought about not going downstairs, but that was not an option. She had to get some allergy medicine for herself. This reminded her about bringing up the conversation with Ansen again about moving out of this place. She wondered why Ansen insisted on staying here just a bit longer. “End of the year,” he would say every time Maria brought it up. But then another month would go by, and no actions were taken. At some point, Maria knew she was going to move out, with or without Ansen.
She listened and did not hear any barking downstairs, so it could be safe to go. The dogs in Apartment 2-C always tried to charge and bully Joey until he lay down with his belly up––-a sign of submission. Then there was the dog’s owner, Riker Jones. A Caucasian in his late twenties, Riker had a skinny frame and a constant jerky movement. His blue eyes looked half-open and bloodshot, and there were abscesses and scabs dotted across his face.
Even though Riker often held late-night parties and had god knows what in his apartment, there were very little open complaints from the residents, and people stayed out of his way. The cops showed several times and found nothing. Finally, Maria convinced the building managers that Riker was breaking all the rules in the building and needed to go. Slowly but surely, she built up enough evidence that Riker finally got the eviction notice. But somehow she knew deep down that she was going to run into him again before he was out of the building.