The boy’s shadow lengthens, and lengthens, and lengthens on the ground. Maisie Watson’s knees quiver, so she shifts her feet wider apart. The warmth of his body already hovering over her skin. She can smell him from here, spicy like cinnamon and red pepper.

How old is he? Grade eight? Can he be classified as a child?

Her muscles taut tight, the breath stuck in her throat. Her eyes affixed on the edge of the board, waiting for the first glimpse of skin.

Doesn’t matter. She’s here, he’s here. It must happen.

Quick and clean, she tells herself, causes no pain.

She squares her jaws, straightens her shoulders, grits her teeth. That’s a trick she has learnt over the years. The waves of emotions won’t hit her as long as she pretends to be a rock.

She feels the voice she has stunned into silence long ago stirs awake and rises, sweeping the pathetic self down.

The footsteps stop short.

“Miss, come out.” He says gently, but there’s a hard force in his tone. His voice sounds much deeper and grater up close, like the grittiness and ruefulness of West Bass landscape, like the River’s rushing vein at night, like Kai’s voice.

Maisie Watson swallows, twice, before saying, steady, “You come close.”

“You come out.” The boy snorts.

Gingerly, Maisie Watson peeks out, only reveal a third of her face.

Her eyes quickly skim over the kid’s high nose, low cheekbones, full lips, tilted eyes. He looks vaguely familiar, but she can’t put a finger onto the memory. He’s about her height, but his feet are twice huger than her own. But his neck is thin and long, delicate.

He wears a weed-colour knitted cap, warm with a black waterproof jacket with collar turns high, his hands curl inside his pocket. The only visible skin is his face. His skin is a light bronze shade of pure West Bass boys, grew up running along Southern shore and grinning studiously at girls with skirts hitched too high. The nose tip redden. A small cloud steams from his nostrils.

Her chin quivers slightly as she thinks.

“You sick?” He asks. Sick. The single syllable penetrates through her. Sick, as in Crazy, Moron, Nutcase.

“I’m quite fine, actually.” Maisie Watson says.

The boy’s lips twitch, betrays his calm, indifferent expression. “What are you doing, hiding here anyway?”

Maisie Watson silently slips the syringe and the knife into her pockets, blinking at him. “There’s a wounded cub I’m taking care of.”

He laughs, although she isn’t sure whether it’s out of amusement or disbelief. Doctor Vu also likes to laugh like that. Usually, she would feel a sting in her chest, but in this case, she inwardly breathes out a sigh of relief.

Maisie Watson lowers her voice, locking her gaze with the boy. “Did you boys hurt her?”

“Hang on, Miss. We ain’t hurt nobody.” He says, eyebrows shoot over his forehead.

Aras. That’s his name.

“He has wounds on his body. I bet you throw rocks at him.” She waves her hand at the empty space behind, pretending not to jolt as the boy guffaws at her accusation.

The boy scrunches his nose, mouth already opens to rattle off more defends to a fault he isn’t at.

“I’ll show you,” She cuts him down, pursing her lips. Scooping up the plastic bag loaded with canned goods, she turns, striding toward the ditch.

The boy doesn’t move at first, only shuffling forward a bit to peer at her back.

Somewhere in her, almost a white noise, a tiny, shaky whisper begs the boy to turn and run away. Run back to safety, it cries, Tell all your friends to go.

Maisie Watson turns slightly, jerking her chin at the direction she’s heading at.

“Well?” Maisie Watson snaps, her voice echo off the abandoned ground. She crushes out the stupid inner mumble, finally has a clear head. “You want to see how bad the cub is?”

Aras tugs his bottom lip with his teeth and finally shrugs, walking up to her. They’re now approximately fifty feet from the entry hole.

She beckons him over behind the hollowed cylinder tubes, motioning for him to bend down. “Here.” She points.

The boy resists an eye roll, dips, one foot plants on the slope of the ditch, an arm placing against a cylinder’s wall, squinting into the darkness. A thin, narrow patch of blotchy skin appears at Aras’s nape and the jacket’s collar.

She’s slightly on a an-inch higher ground.

Behind him, she drops the bag with a heavy clunk.

“There ain’t anything—” Aras is saying, straightening up.

Maisie Watson raises the knife and braces herself. She has her eyes open all the while as she brings down the sharp object onto his slender neck. The boy gasps, scrambling off. His feet slip against the wet mud, sliding helplessly, smooth sneakers’ soles can’t grip onto the dirt particle. She snarls, steels her arms straight like two metal rods. Aras slams himself against the cylinder’s hole, the blade misses him only by a breath-width.

They lock eyes for a split second.

Maisie Watson notices his cap slips out of place, crooked, reveal a portion of his wired hair. The tip of his nose and his cheeks now turns pale, as if somebody accidentally dumps a box of silver glitter over his face. His mouth hangs open in a deranged O, lovely heart-shaped lips, ones that back in her days rebellious girls like to kiss swollen.

She wonders what does he see in her now? A sick woman, still?

Aras’s leg shoots out, closing the two feet distances between them, hitting her square in the stomach. She clamps a hand around his ankle. Gritting her teeth, Maisie Watson rotates her wrist and plunges the knife point deep into his fleshy calf.

Aras shrieks, thrusting his foot harder, frantic, until his toe almost knocks her teeth out. Biting back a gag, she grips the knife handle slippery with blood and drags the edge from his knee down, his navy corduroy pant leg already tainted ink-black. The boy howls at the sky, clenching the grasses around him for life.

“Aras! What’s happening?”

“Rookie,” Aras yells hoarsely, tears and snots run down his face and chin. “Rookie, call the police.”

“What? What?” She hears the screen leaves crackling, the boys’ mutters filter through.

Maisie Watson drops the boy’s leg and swiftly presses a leg over his chest, taking out the syringe. He sputters, gasping and gulping, eyes rolling to the back of his head. His fingers twitch. She presses a palm over his mouth, stifling his panting.

“Remain out there,” She says as she uncaps the needle and tip Aras’s head over, exposing the upper bits of his scalene muscle. “The dog is mad. It will attack you.”

“What dog? There’s no bark.” Rookie says.

“The dog has no tongue, but his teeth are as sharp as knife.” Maisie Watson replies, level. “You dare come in and he will tear you to bits.”

She can literally hear the boys exchanging guffaw glances.

Maisie Watson thumbs the plunger, watching as the clear liquid drains away. She considers for a moment. “Your friend is fine. The mutt didn’t bite that deep, I’m doing CPR on him. Find me some rocks and wood and clothes. You boys call an ambulance. I’ll restrain the dog.” She says slowly. The boys mutter amongst themselves.

Underneath her, Aras gapes up, pupils unfocused, his brass-coloured eyes glazed over, his parting lips are pale-paper colour. His body fragile like a delicate glass swan. The drug is mingling into his system.

“Tell them you’re fine.” She says coldly, snapping her smaller knife open. “Tell them. And you’ll be able to come out of this alive, I promise.”

Aras rasps. “Adults lie.”

She smiles. The boy’s bloody leg lays limp on the ground.

“Help.” Aras struggles to lift his voice over a groan. “Help. Police.”

“You hear your friend, boys. Bring me the stuff. Hurry.” Maisie Watson says. She doesn’t wait for the kids’ scattering footsteps. She only has a few seconds.

She lifts the boy’s right eyelid until the tiny channel of blood vessels pulsing visible. There’s a weak hunger in Aras’s irises, a mixture of vengeance and fear and brave. She can feel his heartbeat at his neck hammering away, flushing toward his brain and faces.

Carefully, she inserts her index between the edge, and pushing her nausea down the ankle of her ankles and ignores Aras’s scream of agony, Maisie Watson slides her finger in deeper. The gel substance squishes and compresses around her invasive finger. She finds her way blindly around, prying the eyeball out of the socket. The optic nerve holds on, stubbornly. Tears shimmer out of Aras’s eye corners as his blood dyes her gloved hand crimson.

Using the pad of her thumb to protect the front of the eyeball, she spread her other hand over Aras’s face for leverage and tug the jelly thing free. The disgusting wet and slickness sear through the thin latex material. She digs out from her handbag the glass cube and fumbles to screw the lid tight, not letting the preserving water sloshes out.

“Oh my God.” A choking sound snaps her attention away from Aras. She twists around, catching a glimpse of a mousy-looking kid, shaking like the tree branches hovering at the edge of their peripheral field. “Aras?” He croaks, stepping back from one of the house support he’s hiding behind. He flinches when finally registers that she spotted him, immediately bolts away from her.

“Rook,” Aras inhales sharply. He gathers the last of his strength to pull a plea. “Please, Miss. No.”

With a grunt, she hauls herself up, crumbs of dead grass pricks her palms. She swoops the heavy canned-good up and races after the mousy kid. His short limbs pump faster. His feet cut channels in the barren, weedy ground, running for the hole.

“No,” The foolish, feeble Maisie Watson springs up. “Wait, wait, please, I can explain,”

The kid glances over his shoulders, his steps faltering a bit. A gust of wind sweeps across, pour down a fresh bucket of sharp needle-like rain that pierces through the skin for blood.

The crane hanging above them grates, the hook swings slightly.

“Watch out.” She says, alarmed.

Rookie pauses, tilts his head up.

One, two, three.

Taking three broad steps, Maisie Watson closes in on him from behind. Winding her elbow back, she swings the deadweight in an arc. Her triceps flex tight. The bulky bag rotates slowly through the air.

She holds her breath as time renders to slow-motion, each second stretches tight over her face like a plastic bag, suffocating.

The heavy mass smashes the boy’s head from the side.

So hard that she can physically see his skull deforms from the impact.

Rookie tumbles like a sack of rock, curling his hand around his ear. Maisie Watson kneels, winding the plastic straps around her wrists and weaving them between her fingers. She holds the bag with both hands like a holy object, careful to turn the side with the edges point downward, and brings it down, again and again and again and again. For every smack, the weak-willed self of her cries out, keep repeating the same useless apologize. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Maisie Watson hits harder and doesn’t stop until blood spurts from the boy’s nose.

She pants afterward, slumps back on her heels. Taking out the knife, she digs the blade through the layers of flesh and muscles, sawing at the cartilage and finish off to the other side. Each slice sends forth a stream of warm, bubbling liquid.

She hears boys running back now. Quickly, Maisie Watson gathers the canned-goods plastic bag and moves back to where Aras lays motionless.

“Why did you kill me?” He asks, voice already cracking and exhausted and bitter. “What did I do to you?”

She unzips his jacket and places the knife tip over his left chest. “In Chinatown, you don’t know when you will die and you don’t know why did you die.” She stabs Aras and draws the blade across his chest, then repeats with the right side, forming an X.

Ambulance sirens whoop. Maisie Watson glances around her for the last time before stands up and jogs to the far end of the land. She parts the glass blades and looks for the real official entry to the construction site, flanking by two gigantic wheels of the tractor. Poking her head out and checking both ways, she shakes off her stiffness and starts down the empty walkway. As she walks, she digs out tissue papers and wipes the blood clean off her raincoat, her knees, her shoes, and swaps out the stained most-outer plastic bag. She feels like she might vomit, as she watches the blotches of red out-bloom the gray area.

She has killed two boys. Two.

The number etches into her conscious.

Today, two boys, two boys with bright future and a loving family and friends, are now gone. Because of her.

Because of me, she repeats, rolling up her latex gloves the way Doctor Vu taught her so that none of the victims’ blood accidentally wipe on her skin, Because of me, two boys died.

Stop being ridiculous, the other voice says harshly, This is for Doctor Vu. You’ve killed before. Two boys ain’t nothing.

Maisie Watson cannot summon the strength to argue. The hell flame of guilt burns through her body, tearing her apart.

She exits the adjacent block without casting another glance at colourful, stronghold, precious China Market. She walks with her head bows in shame, feet scuttling against the sidewalk, trying to walk as far away from the Aras’s and Rookie’s splained dead bodies as quick as possible. She clutches her handbag tight to her ribs, fearing that the world would know that inside her handbag are a ball of bloody mess, blood that is too dark to be her own.

A police car races opposite of her direction, tails closely by a white news van.

It takes her will to not run after them and yell her bloody confession.

Maisie Watson arrives back at Doctor Vu’s home at three thirty, the sky is still a stretch of damp gray, still raining and windy, as if nothing has happened.

From the end of the driveway, she spots Doctor Vu stands at the window, hands behind his back. She trudges slowly up the cobble steps and opens the door, stepping into the pool of murky darkness, illuminated only by the broken light shards fallen through the windowsill.

“Sir,” She says. But that’s it. Her mouth too dry to form a comprehensible word.

Doctor Vu walks to her side and drapes his humongous hands on her shoulder caps. His solid grip anchors her to the ground, forcing the tears to retreat to the back of her eyes. She bites her lips, choking down a sob as she weakly shakes him off and presents him the glass container with the boy’s eye. The brown pupil floating in the middle of the clear liquid, staring at her. Accusing. Inculpate. Unjustified.

“You did well, Mai. You did very well.” Doctor Vu clasps the container, pleased. The lines on his forehead visibly relaxed. The corner of his lips even quirks a little.

But Maisie Watson doesn’t feel proud. Not at all.

With a heavy heart, she delivers the item.

“I’ve to cook,” She says, sidesteps.

“No, you must be tired. Go home early, Mai.” Doctor Vu says, gently touches her forearm. “I need to do something in private.”

“OK,” She nods, not looking at him, not looking at her hands, not looking anywhere in particular. The Doctor squeezes her arm.

Maisie Watson gathers her coat, scarf and umbrella and steps out of the house, back to the bitter chill. Before shutting the door, she catches Doctor Vu glancing at the altar tablet.