With the enthusiasm of a child set free in a toy store, our heroine strolled into the headlights of police cars, with her hands above her head.
Until she dropped them, as if she was standing on a stool with a rope getting cozy with her windpipe, and couldn't bother to hold balance.
Until she reached behind her belt, for her gun.
Her finger brushed the trigger, a mother's kiss on an infant's cheek, before she gave them up for adoption.
Guns fired, and the mother departed from her infant, falling to her knees with a wide grin.
Her shattered skull hit the pavement, and this is where we say goodbye to our heroine. Her life didn't have the time to replay in front of her eyes. The bullet cut through soft flesh like a heated knife through butter, passing through too many memories to notice any.
But if our heroine had the time, she'd think back of one particular memory. And if the bullet slowed down its ruthless pursuit of physical laws, it would reflect the memory in its metallic sheen, and if it could wonder, perhaps it would wonder about that one day…

-

Our heroine, before being the death of many, a haunted criminal and a boogeyman at the disposal of angry mothers, used to be a little girl.
A girl with scraped knees, because she ran too fast and didn't care to be careful. A girl who was oddly fascinated by the blood welling over her wounds, like water spilling from a boiling pot.
Earth made mere six years of turns underneath her feet, but she already thought she understood too much. She was already fed up with everything. Her curiosity was continuously frowned upon, her brilliant ideas written off to youth. As if to be young was a crime, and until you underwent a certain manner of redemption by aging and therefore agreeing with everyone else, others would look at you only through their fingers.
But she knew she'd not shed her youth for the sake of conformity.
My parents shouldn't be together.
You cannot say that.
Why?
You'll understand one day.
I don't want to go on a family trip, it feels like a pretense.
You are my child, and you'll do what I say. And keep talking like that I'll make you wish you kept silent.
Why?
You'll understand one day.
Dad, I don't want to learn English with you, could we just play?
You brat, this is what I get for making time for you? You should learn to be grateful.
Why?
You'll understand one day.
Mom, I saw dad hit you.
Oh, sweetie.
Mom, why don't you leave him?
You know he wouldn't like to hear you talking like that.
Why?
You'll understand one day.
Our heroine leaned down to ruffle the fur of her family's oldest dog, Fila. Six pups hopped around her feet. She wondered how it felt to work the whole year, only to sacrifice the rest to raising another group of pups. At least she had only two nipples and didn't have to worry about six offspring to feed.
Not that she'd want children. Ever.
The girl lured the pups away from their mother, Fila used the opportunity to nap. Around a corner, where bushes leaned in to whisper secrets and grass reached the girl's scraped knees. A butterfly landed on one pup's nose and the other's dove for him. Just as the butterfly flew off the pup's reach, the girl snatched it and carefully dusted off its wings. She blew it from her palm, towards the open maws of its death.
One pup stayed a little behind, watching its siblings rather than engaging. The girl picked it up by the skin behind its neck, so their eyes were level. The pup nipped at her hand, its tail touching its soft belly, eyes averting hers.
She switched her grip, holding its hind leg and swinging it side to side. She turned in a circle, the pup a crying clock's hand.
Disgust clenched her gut. The pup was so pathetic, so soft and defenseless. She could do anything to it and it would let her. It would never outrun her. Never outsmart her. It was too young and too foolish to understand anything.
She pulled on its tail and it bit her, slim sharp teeth knitting her skin like little needles. She dropped it, nursing her scratched hand. The pup landed on the roots of an oak and whined.
Her nostrils flared, she picked it up again, ignoring the whines of its siblings and hurled it against the ground. Picked it up and did it again.
This is what you get for being weak. You can't see it, but I'm helping you.
Curled in a whining ball in her shadow, the pup refused to move, to save itself. She nudged it with the tip of her boot, imagining how easy it would be to crack its tiny ribs. And if they would make good toothpicks. She kicked the pup and it landed in a patch of daisies.
"What are you doing? That's no way to treat a dog."
The girl whirled around, horror clenching its greedy hand around her guts. She braced herself for rebuke. For all the explanations and shame. But her father was already turning away.
"Dinner is ready," he called over his shoulder.
The girl returned the pups to their mother and walked inside of the caravan on stiff legs.
The caravan was cramped with secret memories of children who were not legally allowed to live there. But her father listened to laws, as one might listen to their irritated wife. Not at all.
She sat down on a wooden floor next to a low table. Her younger brother already took the chair they battled over daily. He dangled his smug smile in front of her like an insult to her entire bloodline, waiting for her to start a fight. But she only fidgeted with the torn sleeve of her favorite shirt. Her mother insisted she threw the old thing out, but there was a white horse on her chest, and that was as close to her fairy-tale fantasy as she could get. And her father wore torn clothes all the time, so why couldn't she. The dinner was not ready yet. Her mother bustled a few meters away in what could be called a kitchen, sweat beading her brow.
And so the girl sat there, praying her father wouldn't tell on her. Her gaze slid up to him, he was reading and already forgot about it all.
As time ticked by and her father joked about their mother's clearly irritated manners, she joined in, her grin spreading wider as the realization settled in. She wasn't in trouble.
And perhaps one day she'd understand why not.

-

Our heroine pondered the memory times and times again throughout her years of blood and crime. She had wondered if it all began right there.
And she wished her father would deem it important to tell on her.
She tried to understand so many things. She lost herself in a hunt for understanding. In the screams of the wounded. In the smell of blood. In gore and dirt. In the grips of fear.
She shrugged off her personality like an old cloak and became a ghost searching for its body.
But with each new experience, everything made less sense.

-

Our heroine used to ask her mother what animal she would choose to be. And her mother always wanted to be a bird, to fly over the ocean and disappear. Our heroine didn't consider her mother's motives until she grew older. Until her mother left the family for a young lover. Leaving her cubs behind with the unreliable predator.
An afternoon sun stroked her back with the eagerness of an unfaithful lover, who knew he'd never see her again. She barely fit into the swing's seat, but she made it work, just so she could pretend she could fly.
Our heroine drove to the playground from her mother's funeral, after eating too many cakes in a nearby diner. As if an overdose of sugar could fill her numbness. A little girl built a sand tower and left to find a flower to use as a flag, seemingly oblivious to her bickering parents. The pair stood off to the distance, not even bothering to watch their daughter.
Our heroine jumped down from her swing, landing on the tower. She shadowed the girl.
The child picked daisies and chased butterflies. Our heroine leaned against a nearby tree and watched.
The girl finally noticed her, halting in her tracks. "Hello?"
Our heroine slipped a wide smile on her lips, it pushed up her plump cheeks, making her look the picture of innocence.
"Hi. I came to tell you, that boy," she gestured over her shoulder to a boy playing with a pair of cars, "he destroyed your tower."
Our heroine's curiosity sat at the edge of its seat, salivating as the girl's brow furrowed, her fists clenched.
The girl marched over to the boy and pushed him to the ground. She knelt and punched his face.
The boy was whining like a troubled pup, holding his bleeding nose. The boy's parents pushed the girl away, and the girl's parents remembered they had a daughter. "What did you do?" asked the father. "That's no way to treat people." He was gripping her arm a bit too tightly. And our heroine smiled. Perhaps there were good people in the world.
"But he ruined my tower!"
"Oh shush," her mother said, offering apologies to the other parents. The girl was chided as they left, but soon the parents forgot all about her and resumed their former argument. The girl trailed behind them like a wayward shadow.
Our heroine whistled, peeking from behind a tree. "You forgot this." She lifted up a bunch of daisies.
The girl glanced at her clueless parents and ran to our heroine.
"I knew he deserved it," our heroine said. "They simply don't understand." The girl sighed, taking the daisies. "I don't think they even want to understand sometimes."
"Maybe one day they will."
The girl ran off, to where her father was gripping her mother a bit too tightly. To a future where her father had an accident, as ungrateful fathers sometimes had, at least in the better fairytales. The girl and her mother received a generous sum of money with only one condition. The girl's therapy would be paid for.

-

You'll understand one day.
Only that day was always there.
No matter how many hearts our heroine carved out, she never got wiser than her young self. The girl who knew too early why people lied and where the truth was.
Who read the messages between the lines and understood too much.
Only to be convinced to think she understood nothing at all.
But do not be sad for our heroine. She might have not lived happily. But she died happily.
Because she finally understood. That she was always right and there wasn't anything else for her to find. She had it all this time.
So what if she rid the world of a few unattentive fathers, there'd be always more. And perhaps in the end, it wasn't the light of police cars she saw, but the white mane of a fairytale horse who finally came to her rescue.