Killing Ann

It is 2005 when I first try on a woman’s skin.

Sheets of paper spill from my backpack and scatter into the asphalt. I lunge after them, swearing under my breath. I should’ve skipped meals, skipped showers, saved enough for a proper briefcase. Maybe then people would look at me differently, with the respect I deserve.

The wind flips the papers over one by one, exposing the same verdict in red ink.

Rejected. Rejected. Rejected.

A small hand snatches one of the pages right before it reaches the gutter, where it rightfully belongs. A girl, maybe eight, maybe nine years old, with long black hair, studies me for a couple of seconds.

“Here,” she says, her voice small.

I take the crumbled paper, nod once.

Even a child can see how pitiful I am. This is what my life has come to be. Pathetic.

Heat crawls up my neck as I shove everything back into the bag. When I’m done saving what cannot be saved, I drop onto a bench hard enough to make the wood shudder.

Somewhere behind me, children laugh. Oh, to make that sound of unburdened joy. Children aren’t expected to tally rent and electricity and water and taxes and gas, and and and…

I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to remember what it felt like to live unburdened, before numbers started corrupting my dreams and robbing me of sleep. I pull out my notebook, rest it on my knee, and take a sip of warm beer.

Yesterday, I asked my mother how she does it. How she smiles like the world isn’t burning, slipping into chaos and degeneracy.

“I’m smiling because,” she said, laughing. “God has put food on our table. And he has given me an incredibly talented boy who’s going to put out the fire with his books.” She said it with such confidence, like God had descended from the heavens just to deliver that divine revelation to her.

Maybe that’s it, I thought. Maybe I’ve been…starving my characters. Maybe they deserve something better than pain and misery.

The thought hit me like a fever. I grabbed my notebook and wrote until my grip on the pencil grew weak. I wrote about a woman. A wealthy woman yearning to become a mother. Using her natural beauty, she knows how to move through men in power and find the best candidate to be the father of her child. Luck clings to her like her dark vanilla perfume. Doors open before her knuckles even rise to knock. But what she really longs to do is grow a child in her womb.

I read it back, and a laugh slips out of me. I tear the page free, crumple it, toss it toward the trash. There’s nothing to this story. No friction. She has no teeth, nothing to push back against, driving her to be better, stronger, deadlier. Who wants to read about someone who doesn’t touch the chessboard of life, who’s never been hungry for something more?

I turn the page, ready to abandon her, chase a different idea—maybe a man driven by ambition, hungry to reach the very top of the world—and there she is again, staring up at me from the margin, sketched in rough graphite lines.

You’re just too beautiful to let go.

“I’d rather eat than be eaten,” I write beside her face.

That could work, yes. Beautiful but deadly.

“Ann,” I add.

What better name than one that means God has favored me?

Poetic irony, I think, as I write about how her family is slaughtered when she is too young to understand the concept of death, but old enough to remember the sound of a knife entering flesh. She moves from house to house, suitcase half-empty, learning early that nothing and no one ever stays. No bedframe belongs to her; she grows with no one on her side and shapes her life around a single purpose: to find the man who killed her family, give his face a name, and take revenge for the life he stole from her.

I keep writing, and the pen doesn’t slow.

It is 2006 when my dreams come true, arriving not with confetti and champagne but with signatures and handshakes. A lot less celebratory than I imagined, but I can’t exactly complain.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you, Nick.” My manager smiles, gives my back a single, approving pat. “We expect this book to fly off the shelves.”

Expect.

I nod, not because I expect it, but because I know Ann will take the world by storm. Through the glass door, I watch my team lean over drafts and layouts. One of them—a female artist whose name I keep forgetting—holds up a cover mockup.

Ann stares back at me. Her eyes are drawn with a precision that feels like they could cut a person open if their eyes lingered too long on her body. Her face is untouched by wrinkles, untouched by age; it’s flawless, spotless, innocent. Whatever damage she carries lives hidden under the fabric of her rags, buried where no one is allowed to look—except her fiancé, a down-on-his-luck journalist with a heart of gold who can help her uncover the face of her family’s murderer.

Killing Ann. My debut novel. At last.

It is 2007 when I buy myself a penthouse.

The massage chair tilts back with a mechanical groan as I sink into it, a magazine spread open in my hands. My own face looks back at me from the cover, lit just right.

“Exclusive interview with the man behind the newest literary sensation,” the headline declares. “A story that has readers of all ages by the throat and refuses to let go.”

I let out a quiet breath, a proud but bashful laugh, and then flip the page.

The first photo is of one of the printing houses. Endless rows of machines churning out page after page. Hundreds of thousands of copies, boxed and shipped across the world.

Ann. The nation’s darling. Look at you.

The next photo is of me at a signing table, pen poised mid-stroke. I’m smiling wide enough to show my new teeth (freshly whitened), leaning toward a fan just out of frame.

It is 2012 when my inbox floods.

Messages stack on top of each other faster than I can open them. Fans, relentless, asking for the next installment, then the next, then the next again. Haters, cursing me for the greatest sin on earth—being born a man, of course. Friends, checking in on me, asking, are you alive? Where did you go? Is everything alright? One of them has sent me a link to a blog, one of the big ones. I click it and watch the view count tick upward in real time.

“The book series that took over the world nears its eight-year run. Fans anticipate the new release, with heavy speculation that this will be the final installment. Will Ann finally find the man who killed her family, or will she die trying?”

My fingers press into my brow, and a dull ache spreads behind my eyes.

“S-sir?” The voice comes from behind me.

I don’t turn. “What do you want?”

“The—uh—your editor is asking about the chapter outline again.” The boy edges closer, and I can hear the hesitation in each step. “He wants something concrete by the end of the week.”

“Just because it isn’t written down doesn’t mean I don’t know it,” I snap. My temple pulses, and I groan.

“He mentioned that, sir. But…We’re not sure if that’s the right ending. Killing off Ann without revealing who murdered her parents…it won’t give readers any closure.”

I turn then. “And you think you understand this story better than I do?”

“No, sir, I—”

“Well, none of you have managed to write it better, have you?” I spit the words out and watch as the entire room goes completely silent.

Keyboards go quiet one by one. My assistants, my graphic designers, all the people who helped build this from the ground up, or at least kept it from collapsing, are staring at me.

“You’re all dismissed for today,” I say, my voice tight, my eyes dropping to the floor. “Everyone out.”

There’s a brief silence. A collective glance passes between them, then chairs scrape back and laptops shut. Not even two minutes later, the door closes with a soft click.

A scream tears out of me. I groan, sit up straight, drag my keyboard closer.

Ann’s blood paints the floor crimson.

The man in black stumbles back, the knife slick in his hand. Ann is dea—

I press the letter D, but it doesn’t appear on the screen. I press it again. It flickers for a split second, then deletes itself. I press again. Harder. Faster. With every keystroke, more of the sentence disappears.

“No…no, not again,” I whisper. My hands start to shake. Not again.

I grab my phone and open a new message.

Ann is dea—

A thin curl of smoke slips from the phone’s seam. It goes black.

It is a week later when I walk into the publisher’s building, wearing the same clothes I’ve slept in, argued in, sweated through. Half my hair sticks out at angles, the rest lies flat against my forehead, clumped and damp.

People turn as I pass. I clip a shoulder, then another. The elevator takes longer than I remember, each second stretching, dragging, until the doors finally slide open with a high-pitched chime.

Killing Ann: First Editions.

Boxes are stacked in rows, each one holding the same copy of the same cursed story.

I pull the pocket knife from my jacket and drive it through the first box. Books spill out, thudding against the floor. I open another, splitting open the cardboard. And another. And another. Ann’s cutting gaze keeps finding me, staring up from every cover as I rip through box after box and dump the contents into a growing pile.

My hands shake as I flick the lighter open, but the flame catches all the same, from paper to paper. It licks first, then bites, then devours. The pages curl inward, collapsing into heaps of ash. Ink bubbles and runs. Alarms scream overhead, but I don’t move an inch. Lights pop, one after another, loud bursts in the rising smoke, and I still keep my feet firmly rooted to the ground.

The heap of ash moves. At first, I think it’s the fire playing tricks, but then it happens again. From it, a shape emerges, a…body pulling itself together out of ruin.

My eyes widen. I know that silhouette before it finishes taking form. I’ve described it a hundred times, corrected it in sketches, sent a thousand emails going over every detail.

“Ann,” I breathe.

The letters from the books, my letters, weave into her veins. My ink, her blood. It runs through her. My words, my sentences, everything I poured into her, solidify and become her skin.

Her gaze finds mine.

I stumble back, my heel catching on cardboard. I crawl backwards as she rises to her feet, swaying in place, looming above me.

The knife.

My breath hitches. I lunge for it and drive it into her abdomen. The blade sinks in with no resistance. I freeze, hand still gripping the handle, waiting, hoping, praying.

Ann lowers her gaze to the knife. The way she studies it is almost curious, but then she wraps her fingers around the handle and pulls it free.

“This isn’t real,” I say, though my voice betrays me, splintering on the words. “You’re not real. I made you. I can…” I whisper. “I can unmake you.”

She looks at me. Her eyes are deep, lightless, bottomless pits. “M—my God?” she croaks, testing her voice. Her brows draw together as she studies me. “You’re my God?”

I swallow. “I should’ve never made you.” My mouth tastes like ash.

“But you did.” She steps forward, one leg dragging slightly behind the other. “You made me. You broke me. Again and again—you broke me.” Her voice cracks as she spits out every word. “You wore my skin, sold my pain. You built your life out of everything you took from me.”

“You don’t understand—”

“You killed everyone I ever loved!” she shouts, close enough now that I can smell the charred paper that makes up her skin. “And now I’m useless to you? Now you decide I should die?” A humorless laugh tears out of her, wild, so unlike the voice I gave her. “First, it was poison.” She counts on trembling fingers. “Then the truck. Then the man with the gun. The brakes in my car. Again and again—I thought I was losing my mind.” She fists her hands into her hair, yanking hard enough to pull strands loose. “I thought God had abandoned me.” Her head snaps up, her eyes locking onto mine. Ink spills down her face, black streaks carving a path in the gray of ash. “And it was you the whole time?”

“You were supposed to die in book two!” I confess before I can rein in my words. “That was the whole point of the story! Your fiancé was meant to lose you so he could carry the sequels. It was about how violence breeds more of it. I kept you alive because readers liked you. That’s all. I realize now I should have ended it sooner. Ended you sooner.”

She laughs, dry. “I’d rather eat than be eaten,” she spits out and moves before I can react. The knife is at my throat in an instant, the cold of it pressing into my skin, her grip on it firm despite the tremor running through her.

“You couldn’t do it anyway,” I say, and I smile at her softly, pitying her. “You hate killers, remember? That’s how I made you. Righteous. You drag criminals into the light and make them answer for what they’ve done. That’s why readers love you.” I take a step back until my shoulders meet the burned wall, heat bleeding through the fabric of my shirt. “You don’t have it in you to cut down an unarmed man out of anger. That isn’t who you are. Every step you’ve taken, every decision…you didn’t arrive at any of it alone. I was the one pulling the strings, every time. If you want to kill me, then do it. Go on, Ann. Can you?” I reach up, wrap my fingers around her wrist, and pull the blade tighter against my throat.

The metal bites in.

And we wait. We wait. We wait.

Her eyes widen.

I laugh and drop her wrist.

Ink spills faster down Ann’s cheeks. She wipes at it with shaking hands, smearing it across her skin. Clenching her jaw, she grabs my collar and yanks me forward hard enough to steal the air from my lungs.

“What is his name?” she screams, her voice breaking apart. “Tell me his name! Tell me why he killed them—why he took everyone I ever loved!”

Oh.

Oh, Ann.

For a moment, I just look at her, and despite everything, fondness blooms across my chest.

I shake my head, slowly. “I don’t know his name, love.”

“What—what do you mean?” She jerks back as if I’ve struck her. “What—”

“He wasn’t a person.” I lift one shoulder. “He was a narrative device. A way to move you forward. The girl with a dead family, pushing through a world that keeps trying to grind her down.” I meet her eyes and hold them there. “There is no killer, Ann. There never was. He doesn’t exist.”

“Then think of one,” she whispers, her voice hollowing out. “Make one up. Right now. I don’t care who he is. Just end it. Please. End the story.”

I smile at her, softer this time. “The story can end only two ways, my dear. Either you die…Or I do. And you won’t kill me. You can’t. Because it’s not in your nature. You’ve never killed and never will.”

She gazes at the floor, murmuring under her breath. Then, like a snare snapping shut, her hand closes around my throat. For a split second, I think she’s going to squeeze, but instead, she leans in. Her tongue drags across my skin.

She licks, then bites, then devours.

My scream tears loose as her teeth sink in. Blood pours down my chest, splattering the floor, the walls, her face. I drop to my knees, hands scrambling, useless, trying to push her away. I try to call for help, but my voice drowns in her cries.

She bites again and again, tearing my veins open. She scratches. She claws. She eats. Because I didn’t make her to be eaten.