The first cut
687 Words
Jessie stood in the center of her basement, blood still drying beneath her fingernails, the air thick with bleach and silence.
The warehouse kill should have satisfied her. Kyle deserved what he got—every stitch, every scream. He was a parasite, a predator, a trafficker of broken girls. One more monster off the street.
But something was wrong.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
The word she had carved into his stomach—GUILTY—burned in her mind’s eye like a scar she couldn’t scrub clean.
And behind Kyle’s face, twisted in agony and panic, another face had emerged.
One from long ago.
Her father.
Flashback
She dropped the scalpel in the sink with a clatter. Her reflection in the basement mirror looked pale and distant—like someone else was wearing her skin.
She tried to shut the thought down. She really tried.
But it was too late.
The lockbox in her mind had already split open.
And the memory poured out like blood.
Eight Years Ago – Echo Pines
She had been fourteen.
The bruises were never on her face. He was too careful about that. Ribs. Thighs. Back. Places clothes could cover. Places her mother didn’t have to see. Or pretended not to.
Every time Jessie worked up the courage to say something to whisper the truth, her mother would sigh.
“He’s under stress.”
“He didn’t mean it.”
“You always provoke him.”
So Jessie stopped asking for help.
She stopped asking for anything.
But she never stopped planning.
The Camping Trip
Her father liked the outdoors—loved pretending to be a good man when they were alone under the stars. Jessie knew it, and she used it.
She told him she wanted to reconnect.
“Just us,” she’d said. “Like we used to.”
The smile he gave her made her skin crawl.
They drove two hours out to a secluded site near Echo Pines. No cell service. No neighbours. Just forest and silence and a firepit surrounded by rotting stumps.
Jessie packed the gear: tent, cooler, firewood, and something extra.
A hunting knife, stolen weeks earlier.
A bottle of whiskey, laced with ketamine.
The night air was crisp. He drank by the fire. Told jokes. Laughed at his own cleverness. She forced a smile, watching his eyes grow heavy, watching his words slur.
When he slumped sideways in his folding chair, Jessie stood and picked up the knife.
The Kill
She dragged his unconscious body to the edge of the trees, her breath ragged from effort and adrenaline. She knelt beside him, brushing his hair out of his face like a daughter might do with love.
“You told me no one would believe me,” she whispered.
His eyelids fluttered.
“You were right.”
The first cut was small—just across the abdomen. Enough to wake him. Not enough to stop him.
His eyes flew open. He tried to sit up, but his limbs were jelly.
She held the knife over his heart.
“I believe me now.”
Then she slit his throat, clean and deep.
Blood sprayed her hands. Her face. Her shirt.
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t cry.
The Cover-Up
She dragged his body into the ravine behind the camp.
Poured out the beer cans beside him. Made it look like he’d wandered off drunk and alone.
Let the wolves finish what she started.
At dawn, she ran barefoot to the ranger station.
Cried. Screamed. Told them her father had gone to pee and never came back.
The search lasted three days.
They never found him.
End of Flashback
Now
Jessie opened her eyes.
Back in her basement. Back in her real life.
She stumbled to the photo board and found it—her father's old newspaper article. Faded. Yellowed.
“Local Man Vanishes in Woods—Family Left Devastated.”
She scrawled one word beneath the photo in red ink:
GUILTY.
It was always the same word.
The first.
The one that started it all.
And now that it was remembered, it would never leave her again.
- Writer
