She smiled at the sight of her breath freezing in the October night air. Winter comes early here. Or at least the cold does. It had been years since she'd been in Chicago. Years since she'd been this far north even. Twenty four months in South America. Most of it spent in Lima. Loved the city, the people, the weather. Spent too much time in
and not enough enjoying the sun. She was pale despite her best efforts.
Didn't find what she was seeking down there. Chicago, she thought, potentially, has answers.
She slipped off her heels and hopped up onto the railing of the bridge. She continued her casual pace north through the city skipping and twirling along the one and a quarter inch railing. Balance came easily to her. The fall, if she fell, and she wouldn't fall, but the fall, hypothetically, wasn't too severe. She glanced down at the murky green water ten meters below. Probably pretty cold.
"That would totally suck." She laughed. And laughed. Her laugh was gentle and high pitched. Harmless, but nonetheless awkward.
She continued to giggle as she kept moving forward across the bridge. A disheveled man approached in the distance. He walked with a sullen gait. He looked no fun at all. How wrong she was.
The man had clearly spotted her, but despite her outlandish appearance, hysterical laughing, and precarious balancing act, he walked on pretending to be oblivious.
She sped up and increased the severity of her motions hoping for at least some acknowledgement. No use. The man trudged mindlessly onwards.
"Liar, liar." She faintly whispered. The hesitation in step and
minute response in his neck told her that he had heard her despite the significant distance. He pretended he did not, turned his head away, tilted his neck back down to the pavement, and continued walking.
She spun, and twirled
awkwardly, yet gracefully on the railing and harped in a sing-song voice, "You pretend you can't see me. You pretend you can't hear me. But --" In her dancing and singing, her foot missed the railing. She felt her center of balance shift first gently and then suddenly over the edge of the railing. How silly she thought. She laughed.
How silly for me to fall. She laughed all the way until her body was entirely horizontal and the freezing water below looked more and more like inevitability.
The walking man on the bridge continued with his walking,
unphased. Such callous disregard. She thought about his wickedness. His cruelty. And she laughed more intensely than before. This laughter resounded and echoed and multiplied. She lurched supernaturally and was instantly stood in front of the walking man.
He stopped unable to continue forward, but continued looking down. Her face was inches from his. Laughing. His head rang from the sound. He wanted nothing to do with a druggie girl. He wanted to go home. "Excuse me."
She laughed with her whole body. Sickening,
convulsive laughter.
He surrendered and looked up
acknowledging her. Dark hair, tied up intricately. Creepy large brown eyes. A beautiful face that betrayed the rest of her look. Her clothing extravagant. Layers of textures. Whites, reds, blacks, purples. Her left shoulder bare. Her feet bare. Her limbs awkwardly long. Every inch of her exposed skin aside from her face was
tattooed.
Tattoos flowed from her neck down to her fingertips. He shuddered and quickly resumed inspecting the sidewalk.
She resumed her sing-song
talkiness. "Where are you going Mr. Walking Man?" She danced around him as she spoke, her hands grazing his shoulders and neck, more playfully than seductively. He resumed his walking as best he could while she danced around him on all sides.
Frustrated, she
lept in front of him again halting his progress. "Didn't you see I almost fell Mr. Walking Man?" He tried to sidestep around her to the left and she blocked his path. He tried the right -- again, she was far too quick. Short of knocking her over, he was stuck in the cold with this crazy girl.
He exhaled, bored and frustrated with the girl, "Please move."
She paused her motions, touched her hand to her chin, and turned her neck up as if in heavy deliberation. After a few seconds of seemingly pensive consideration, she put her hand on her cheek,
surprised at how cold it felt and stared sincerely at the man stopped in front of her. She grinned. "I don't like you."
Before he could begin to process a response, he felt the cold metal part the skin of his neck. She danced backwards as the blood sprayed out. He tried to cry out, but his voice came only as a garbling wheeze. She grabbed his head, the blood still spraying from the triangular hole in his jugular, and dragged the limp man to the railing of the bridge with no more effort than a child lifting a doll.
"I don't like you," she cooed. She slammed his skull into the railing. "I don't like you." Again into the railing. "I don't like you." Into the railing with a sickening, bone cracking crunch. The blood from his neck came less quickly now. She let the body slump to the concrete. The man's eyes had rolled back, perhaps in terror of the further mutilation to come, but certainly to never see again.
She was already covered in blood. Her outer white lace vest was stained with a vibrant red streak from the top of her right shoulder down to her left hip. Her extravagant layered bottom trapped little pools of blood like the leaves of some tropical plant.
She returned the knife to her hair without cleaning it. She felt a faint trickle run down the back of her neck. More blood ran down the entire length of her right arm, gleaming metallicly in the moon's glow. She frowned, dissatisfied with the splatters and streaks running up and down her arms, and gently rubbed her arms in smooth, controlled motions, from shoulders down to her fingertips, smearing the blood evenly across her skin. A smile formed on her crimson lips. "Better. Better. So much better," she giggled.
She picked her heels off the ground and looked down at the man, or what was left of him. Barefoot she climbed atop his dead chest. She felt the warm blood between her toes, and savoring the feeling she jumped and twirled atop the body, thoroughly amused by the cracking and crunching between her feet. Her right foot found his deflated neck, spraying blood up her calf and onto the bottom of her dress. She jumped up and down frantically like a child playing in a puddle, and it wasn't of the slightest concern that police lights now bathed the scene or that a young sergeant had already drawn his weapon.
Dan. His name was Dan. "Miss, I need you to ---"
"SHHHHHHHHHH." She lept off the body turning to face young policeman Dan. She could stand to play with another one, but she knew she couldn't stay out in public for too much longer. Cameras. Reinforcements. Trigger happy policemen. All things that were no fun.
She sang the four words the way that only she could. "Belmont chair playing violin."
And with the words, the audio processing in Dan's brain crashed, triggering a predictable but surprising consequence, blindness; his world went white. His eyes throbbed but felt no pain. He was however suddenly aware of them, his eyes. He could feel them. Feel them not working. His mind raced, his heart raced, his balance swayed.
A soft voice spoke, "I'm sorry. I took your vision. You did point a gun at me, Mr. Policeman."
He could smell the blood and knew she was close, it seemed on top of him, and well, he was right, she was, but he didn't dare move.
In her most juvenile, sing-songy voice, "I'm Mania. Who are you?"
Petrified by what he had seen, what he could smell, and what he could no longer see, he sputtered, "Dan."
"Dan? Dan dandan dan. Dannnnnnn. Policeman Dan. You're Policeman Dan!" She continued to repeat various combinations of his name many many more times.
She stopped. His vision slowly returned, the white replaced by blurs of colors, and eventually a girl's face. "Hold these, Dan." She put two knives in his throat and took his gun. Policeman Dan crumpled to the floor, with no sound beyond a simple thud, while she scrutinized the gun in her hands. "No deal." She dropped the gun and plucked the two knives from his neck before returning carefree to her journey across the bridge. There was still a lot to do tonight after all.
