st. alia vone reaches an understanding

she dresses in black. all the time. black shirt, black jeans, black ribbon to tie back her black hair. she’s got white skin and wide grey eyes. thin lips, wild mouth, and sharp cheeks. she hardly ever listens, but she does hear everything you say.

i met her at the video store. we both wanted to hire the same movie, and i had it on reserve. she looked me up and down, and i felt my superhero powers shiver. deciding i was relatively harmless, she offered to let me watch the video at my place. she also offered to let me pay for it, which i did.

she told me her goal was to collect pieces of the men in her life, and to keep each piece in small jars of liquid preservative, just as mementos. i offered her a nail clipping or a piece of my hair. she smiled, and her mouth was too wide. “i’m collecting more appropriate body-parts than mere incidentals,” she said.

we watched the rest of the film in silence. at the end, she thanked me for being quiet, and left. two days later, she returned. she scraped a piece of skin from my knee and placed the flap in a small glass container. i watched, fascinated, as she stitched my knee closed, and covered it with a bandage.

she told me about her last boyfriend.

“it wasn’t my fault he was allergic to knives.”