she didn’t get blood on her clothes, either. but the red on her hands made her sad.

He smiles, and it makes your toes curl, but not for the reason you wished they would. Your stomach churns, and you dance with the possibility that he drugged you. It was a controlled environment, he said, you'd be safe with him no matter what happened.

But if he was the danger in this so-called "safe" environment, there was no one to protect you but yourself.

A part of you wonders if he'd prefer you dead in his bed, compared to you being alive. There's nothing more pretty than a rigid pillow princess in his eyes - what's the difference if you're breathing or not? As if you'd want to breathe in the smell of a man past his prime. Too proud to hide the stench of alcohol emanating from every orifice of his body, so you suffocate. Booze has never meant anything to you, but to him, it's the damn world.

You choke back a laugh as he brushes his hand against your cheek. He moves a stray hair behind your ear. You look past his eyes while he stares, "lovingly," into yours.

You wish you could kill him. He drowns in booze and eats girls so young that they could call him "father." Or one of the variations for it, at least. You'd rather choke than call him any name other than "the scum on the bottom of my boot."

You close your eyes when he bites. A part of you wishes you were dead - or that he was. But you lie there and pretend that you can't feel him on you. You didn't want to get blood on yourself, after all.

So you wait until he's finished, and you thank and curse whatever higher being there is because he didn't feel the knife under the mattress.

When he moves to leave, you press yourself to his back. You feel the knife puncture skin and pray that you get one of his lungs. He doesn't scream - he's too shocked, and the fact makes you want to laugh. You pull the blade out of his back only to stab him again. He tries to speak, but blood is the only thing that gurgles out of his mouth.

After he falls, you open the door and move to crack open the window.

"I think I'll clean the sheets," you say aloud, and you hear footsteps coming toward your room. You watch in your periphery as the man's limp body is dragged out of the room. The quirk of your lips is hard to hide.

You fold your comforter. There is no blood on the sheets.

You wash them anyway.