My aunt Sara taught me how to use a blade
She had me stand out in the yard at midnight
Two hours after my parents were murdered
Cheeks still stained with denial
Remorse making my hands sweaty
Bare feet, wet grass
The nightgown I slept in splotched
With the blood of my father and mother
Sara handed me the sword
Tonight, she said, you have a choice
I sniveled
I shook my head
I wanted to crawl into the earth
And become the dirt
I wanted to wait for my parents
To be buried with them
Why wasn’t I dead?
Because the man they hired to kill my father and mother
Didn’t get the memo about a bedroom in the attic
Or the little girl who slept up there
My father made a few bad business deals
With a few bad people
And so there I was
With Sara, my mother’s sister
The one who would become my guardian
Not only because she could protect me
But because she could teach me to protect myself
You have a choice, she said
Right now
You either become a victim of something
Or a survivor of it
The way she said it, I knew there wasn’t really a choice
Aunt Sara wasn’t going to take care of anybody
She would house you and feed you
And tolerate your presence
But she wasn’t going to be my new mother
She wasn’t going to hold me and kiss me goodnight
And assure me that the world was a sunny happy place
That wasn’t her way
That wasn’t who she was
So I wiped away the remorse
And I took the sword
Years later, a man is lying on a bed in a hotel room
A stack of hundreds next to him on the nightstand
He’s old
Much older than I am
And I look even younger
With my short blonde wig
And my white lingerie
He’s already tied up
But he thinks it’s part of the game
The Naughty Businessman
And the College Girl Who Needs to Pay Her Tuition
He licks the sweat from his upper lip
The blindfold slipping down just enough
So that I can see his eyebrows
Grey and bushy
Just like the hair on his chest
And back
He left his holster in the chair
By the window
Maybe it’s the same gun that killed my parents
Who knows?
Men are sentimental about their guns
When he’s tied up nice and tight
I go into the adjoining room
And roll in my suitcase
It only has one thing in it
I take out the sword
He can’t see it
But he can hear the blade
Sliding out
Like an eel
Like an omen
Like something from the past
I take off my wig
And his blindfold
But before he can say anything
I put my finger on his lips
And he goes silent
Tonight, I say, you have a choice
He looks at me
His right eye twitches
And I say—
Which part of your body
Do you want me to cut off first?
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