Fast-forward past all the bull shit of my youth to the time I met Geraldine. Geraldine, pretty Geraldine. Geraldine with the fury eyes and the sexy legs. Geraldine, whose body felt so star-bursting color-wonderful under mine as I slit her throat.
But I’d been tempted by others before her. Sweet Clara, with the soft hair and gentle eyes, rebellious Jackie with the thigh-highs and the mini-skirt, little Kayla, with the sweet voice and the pale skin. All these beautiful women whose photographs I would take and hide in a journal under my mattress. I would write their names. I would write what I wanted to do to them. I’d never acted out the things that filled my sweetest dreams, never ever. Until Geraldine.
Every time with these girls, these women, I would hold back. I would restrain. The effort of it wasted me, every experience left me drained and unsatisfied. I never wanted to hurt them. I wanted to obliterate their ugly futures. I wanted to leave them in utter perfection for all of eternity. I wanted to own them and devour them completely.
Fast-forward to when Geraldine would have been forty-seven; tired and drained from the business of living, a woman who once was something beautiful. This is when I finally tell her story. I tell them, she asked me to kill her. I tell them, she is beautiful dead. I tell them, she said she loved me. She is one of the ones they don’t ask about. They don’t even know she is part of my collection. It was so long ago. They’re not even sure I know what I’m talking about.
Stop. Rewind. To earlier that night when I encountered Geraldine, the goddess who rescued me from my torment. The goddess who transformed my life and showed me how to live sideways and speed up time and slow it down. Finally, I became unrestrained. I no longer held back. I was no longer a wasted supernova.
I saw Geraldine before she saw me. My heart raced. I knew her instantly. I knew she was my freedom. She had these big eyes filled with such violent fury. That’s what captivated me. Of course it was impossible not to notice her legs that stretched longer than the west coastline, or her hair. Her wild, beautiful hair cascading down her back and moving wildly about with her every movement. She finally looked at me, noticed I was watching her. I didn’t look away, even when those eyes (such eyes!) fixed on mine.
That night my sweetest dreams came true. Her hands on my skin, flesh against flesh. And she asked me to kill her. She said, “I love you.” She said, “I want this to last forever.” That was the same thing as asking for my blade in her throat.
For her, it would last forever. And the sweet sensation as I took the blade and with a thrust, a harshness, penetrated her sweet flesh with it. And then gently, ever so gently, pulled it across the delectable skin of her throat. You can’t imagine. You can’t ever understand. There had never been color before that moment. The world sang. I experienced synesthesia in its most beautiful strain. Everything was vibrant with such color, more colors than in any average human’s range of experience, and the beautiful sounds they made as they danced across my line of vision!
Fast-forward to eleven years later when I taste the forbidden fruit of innocent blood. That’s the only time I ever lost control. That’s my one regret. Julie. She walked in and saw my lovely work with her mother, Mariposa. And the screams, those shrill screams. I had to silence her. You don’t understand how she destroyed the beautiful silence of the death, the silence in which I could begin to hear vibrant colors with such clarity.
Rewind to Ariel, the Amazon woman, my dark queen of the night. The wild fight in her as she grabbed my knife and slashed across my shoulder and chest, shrieking and flailing about. Ariel, who stood taller than me and kissed me first with her big lips. I could feel the lip gloss on my mouth, I could taste her strawberry flavor. Ariel. I held my hand over her mouth and nose until she stopped moving. I let go, and waited for her to breathe again, unconscious. And then I bound her hands and feet. She had to be awake for the glorious moment. I told her when she woke, “You are going to be beautiful and wild forever.”
Women and girls, beautiful, sweet, wild. Alyssa, with the scars on her body who told me her secrets and whose haunted past was expelled through the wound on her throat. Yukari, with the dragon tattoo, who prayed to her ancestors and believed all was one. Mary, who died clutching rosary beads and chanting, “Mea culpa.”
All this and fast-forward to the screaming for my death. As if my death will give them back their lives. All the years I’ve stolen. Years. What would that give them? It’s absurd- obscene! To talk of such disgusting horror. Return these goddesses to average. Give them mortgages and toothpaste, give them dry skin and trash to take out, give them wrinkles and bony old age. Who would choose that over my gift of a sublime death? The chance for a perfect moment? They were never more beautiful as when I killed them. I try to explain this but no one will listen. They believe me to be insane.
Insane is living in one direction when there are a thousand. Insane is small talk when there are miracles to observe. Insane is speech when there are impossibilities to express and not enough words in any language with which to express them.
Insane. My life is vibrant, full of more color and sound and more sensations than you could ever dream to know. I saved these beautiful beings from mediocrity. I saved them from the suffering of wasted potential. I saved them from this cruel and vicious world that would drag at their skin and transform them, add lines to their face and weight to their hips.
Fast-forward to this box. They’ve tried forever to shove me into a box, all my life. And now, at least in the literal sense, they’ve succeeded.

She put lines of salt across all the doorways and windows. It kept the demons out, and the bad men. She covered all the mirrors in the house with spare curtains, sheets, blankets. The windows were all shuttered and closed. We lived in darkness. She could hear the demons outside, scraping and clawing, hissing. Telling her what to do, and what she had already done. She was afraid they would break through the walls, come in through the roof. She threw salt everywhere, kept some with her at all times. The cabinets were filled with it.
She hung crosses on every door, everywhere she could hang them from. She had rosary beads and mala beads everywhere, and always with her. She prayed in Latin and chanted in Sanskrit. Virgin Marys, dancing Shivas. Hebrew, Greek, Celtic. She slept in circles of salt. She began hearing their voices in her sleep, in her mind. She clawed at her skin. She pulled out her hair in clumps; her scalp raw and bleeding.
They put her in an asylum. They gave her madness a name. They found me in a chest in the attic, surrounded by a circle of salt. I did not tell them that I heard the demons too. I did not tell them I could see what she saw. I did not let them know that I was my mother’s daughter.
I never saw her alive again. They found her mauled to death. They called it suicide. I knew the truth and it haunted my sleep. My father was more afraid of the contagion of madness than even I had been. He looked at me, a child, and saw her. He sent me away. I found myself in a madhouse. I did not see my mother anymore. They told me my father died before they wrenched me away from the safety of insanity. There, the lights were always on and there were bars on all the windows. I was too young to understand that they weren’t trying to keep us safe from anything but ourselves.
Things flashed out of the corner of my eyes. Shadows passed across mirrors and windows. And I grew up with such fear. Soon I learned the things my mother had learned. I learned of secrets and power. I knew that one night I would hear the whispers calling and I would answer them.
It began when I was still a child. I knew when death was close to someone. I knew when disaster was near. I knew fear. I knew pain. I could hear suffering all around me.
I would wake screaming from nightmares. Myself, a wild woman with hair gone white from terror, demons clawing at my legs, and dead children all around me. A world blackened with fires and death and destruction.
The demons would offer me things, they would always know when I wanted something, or when I was afraid of something. They would offer me what I wanted. They would offer protection from my fears. The offers became more difficult to refuse. I would feel the weight of it; of all the heartache I could have avoided, all the pain. I knew how my mother had been driven mad with it.
But then I would wonder if I was consumed with sickness in my mind, if I was mad. I had read about this. People with voices talking to them, telling them to do things, to hurt themselves with rocks or blades, or drown their own babies, or throw themselves off of buildings.
And I could hear my mother calling my name. My darling, my baby, my sweet one. I could remember her arms around me as she shook with fear and tears streamed down her face. You can’t have her you can’t take her. Don’t listen, don’t look, they aren’t real, my sweet child, my innocent one. I could never know if the memories were real. Dreams faded and I did not trust my own mind anymore.
I would warn people, I would tell them, don’t take that bus. Don’t go to that interview. Change your flight. And things would just happen. People were afraid of me, the way they had been afraid of my mother. As if I was the harbinger of death and disaster. And I knew things, things no one should know. The children in my youth, I could see, a mother who ignored her daughter, a father who beat his son, a mother who drank and turned into a sobbing wreck. I could see the scars and the things no one tells. I could see the truth behind a bully’s disguise, a racist father who would rather kill him than accept him as homosexual. I knew a girl, her secret, that she took pills and had stopped eating two months ago.
I do not know if it was the demons or not. I do not even know if it was real. Even after the people died or bad things happened, or the truth was revealed, I could not trust it. Had I really known? Was I forgetting things? Was it real?
And why couldn’t people see the truth about me?