A smooth skinning, a feeling of being peeled away. It’s swift, but uncalculated, and there’s a grimy, seeping moisture— she knows this too well, she thinks this too often. 

There’s a certain inevitability that comes with the fitting grip of a knife in her hand, she knows. A falling, free-falling, dooming excitement; one that tastes of the numbing potato skins, smells organically dangerous. 

Would they know? Can they feel her broiled insides curdling like heaps of salted, deceiving desire? 

Her knuckles tighten down, they smother. The metallic gleam of the tip digs deeper, it smothers. 

No. 

Her breath falls in heaps of stacked-up preparation and pebble-like shots of spit taint the jagged edges of the cutting block. 

Were those footsteps outside? Pinned eyes, pining ears; A sweet jingle of keyrings and a jiggle of the cold brass door handle that sound like an accelerated heart beat, or a one chance shot at release. 

A snuffed out second passed. Was that just the fan? 

She skins another leathery strip and watches it fall. An eye pops out next. 

Her vision fills with the bruising yellow lights, they flicker in and out, penetrating, numbing, pulling. They pull something out of her, take and keep. She can’t move away. They