He had the gall to look scared of me.
Him. Scared. Of me.
I don’t know what he was expecting.
Maybe he thought I’d be older. Or younger.
Who knows?
Not me.
I made him work for it. I fought. I didn’t know I had those reflexes. They just found me when I needed them. When he leaned over me and my elbow had a clear path to his nose.
I went for it.
He ducked before my bones could make contact with his. But the sway it had over him, this one tiny thing. The spark of life on the other end.
He was rattled.
I think he was mad at himself more than me. I have a daughter, he told me. I have a—I have a someone. A tenant. I have a life.
He told me he had a life. I didn’t say I did, too.
He knew.
And then he did it. I fought, and at the end of it all, he still did it.
Like he had decided I was a force of evil and he needed to end me.
The last thing I remember: him, staring at my face like it was an abyss.
Clinging to my body like it was the end of everything.