Meredith looked right into the guy’s dull brown eyes before she killed him. She saw herself reflected in their shine, and she got a good look at the evil she had become.
Her long, straight black hair was a tangled wildly around her face that was as white as the snow around them. Her bright emerald eyes were glowing with feverish excitement.
She could have turned away; could have seen what she had become and decided not anymore. But instead she got one step closer to the revenge she desperately craved.
Meredith laughed maniacally as she sliced the policeman’s throat with the sharp little knife she always carried upon herself. She grinned with sick joy as the man gasped and gurgled, his eyes shining with tears of agony. She felt no sorry emotion towards the man as his hands reached out towards her feebly and as floods of dark red liquid cascaded down from his neck to smother his revolting uniform.
When he had finally finished dying, when his boring eyes went from pained to blank, Meredith stood up from straddling him and walked away.
Before she left the empty field, she turned back to see the scene she had created. The corpse was lying crumpled next to the old stone wall, hidden by the shadows of midnight, but she could see him with her enhanced eyes. She could see how his blood looked black against the snow, like ink soaking into paper. She could see how he looked like a perfectly ordinary man, even in death. He probably had a wife and kids, waiting for him in a nice, cosy living room. But how could she be sure? How could she know that he wasn’t the policeman that had killed her and her family five years ago?
Meredith convinced herself what she had done was right, cased her conscience in ice, and turned away from the dead body.
As she trudged bare-footed through the farmer’s fields that were thick with snow, she stared at the sky. She looked at the tiny little stars twinkling up above her and wondered if there was anybody that would understand her, anybody that could even stand to be near her if they knew what she’d done. Then she quickly changed her track of thought because she knew she didn’t need anybody, she didn’t want anybody to understand.
Instead she tried to remember what it was like to be alive. When she would’ve had to wear more than a tank top and denim hot pants to protect herself from the freezing, crisp air of winter. When she never would’ve been able to take down a fully grown armed man. But then, if she had never died, she wouldn’t feel the need to.
She carried on wandering around the fields, thoughts of her past life swallowing her. She remembered her little sister who looked just like a smaller version of herself, her mum who had laugh lines at the corners of her mouth, and her dad who always had his nose in a book. She allowed herself a little smile before it was quickly wiped away with the memory of the drunken policeman. The one that had stormed into their living room uninvited and unexpected, and had shot each of them down one by one, no questions asked. Meredith flinched as she remembered waking up in her living room, the bodies of the only people she cared about lying stone cold on the floor around her, the policeman wasn’t in sight. She’d spent all of her time since killing as many policemen as she possibly could.
Meredith let her quest for revenge settle back in her mind as it wiped away all the sentimental thoughts that had pushed through her barrier. She let her anger push her forwards towards the nearest town, a sadistic grin twisting her face.
She was close enough to a village that she could see the street lights, when she noticed a small folded piece of paper lain on the stone wall next to her, ‘Meredith’ marked clearly on the front.
She stopped suddenly in her tracks and made her way cautiously over to it, her eyes shifting all over the open countryside, searching for the person who had left the letter. When she reached it, she made sure nobody was around before unfolding it and scanning the cursive script quickly. When she had finished reading, she was more shocked than she ever had been since she’d died.