Sondra Kaufmann – a name so rare it was destined for immortality, one way or another, bound for stardom.
We first crossed paths in middle
school, when she had yet to reach her full potential and become the person she
was now remembered as. Her auburn curls used to drape over her shoulders, and her
crimson lips used to be plump and temptingly kissable.
I liked her. She was an outcast,
a miserable spirit just like me. And, being a hot-blooded teenager, I was naturally
drawn to her pretty face and sharp mind. She was my dream girl, only darker, more
dangerous. My dream girl, evil.
Nothing happened between us,
though. I don’t think Sondra was, you know, interested in other people in the
same way we normal humans were. She kept a low profile until graduation and
remained a mystery – not just in my teenage mind, but in the minds of every
other boy in our year.
Everyone was in love; Sondra
wasn’t. I don’t think she was capable of feeling those kinds of emotions.
Funny to think about it now, but
on the day of our graduation, I actually planned to confess to her. A stupid
idea, I know, but it didn’t seem so bad at the time. As I said, she was pretty
– petite and classy – and I was into her edginess. I mean, I was a six-foot-tall
metalhead. I blame the hormones.
Anyway, the point is, I never
confessed, and Sondra, being the eccentric girl she was, didn’t even show up to
her own graduation. And like that, ladies and gentlemen, that love story ended right
then and there – as it should.
I studied mechanical engineering
later in life and sold my baby, my Gibson Les Paul, to focus on
my studies. That hurt like hell, honestly. I mourned its loss for weeks.
My girlfriend at the time, Lily,
thought I was being overly dramatic for no good reason. But I’m telling you that
guitar had been with me forever. It was like a child to me.
I broke things off with Lily
after two years of dating, for unrelated reasons, of course, but honestly, I
don’t think I ever really forgave her for saying those things back then.
Don’t get me wrong. Lily was a
good girl – too good for me – but she could be a little… How do I put it?
Borderline obsessive? It wasn’t that she wanted to be in my life;
she wanted to be my life. Well, you get the gist of it…
Fast forward to my first real
job – a paid internship at one of the largest corporations in the country. I
didn’t earn much, but I got by pretty well compared to a lot of my classmates,
most of whom were still unemployed.
I ran into Sondra again, purely
by chance, at the tube. I never thought I’d see her again, but there she was,
standing right in front of me. She looked exactly the same as the last time I
saw her.
To say I felt nothing would’ve
been a lie. She was beautiful, disturbingly unreal, and I was attracted to her
all over again!
Just like a scene from a
romantic film, it felt as though we were the only two people in the world, completely
lost in the moment. I was the first to speak. I said her name without even
realising why. She smiled, and I knew she remembered me.
We spent the night at a nearby
motel. The walls echoed with our passionate whispers, creating a memory that
would linger in our minds for a very long time. But as dawn broke, we parted
ways, and the morning air erased every trace of our intimate encounter.
Two days later, a notification
appeared on my phone. It was a friend request from her on Facebook. Do people
still use that platform these days? Well, I suppose that’s beside the point.
We started dating.
Sondra moved in with me after
just three weeks, and everything seemed perfect. We even adopted a Golden
Retriever from a shelter and named her Golden – pun intended.
I had never felt such
overwhelming happiness before. I wanted to show her how special she was to me,
shower her with passionate love, and make plans for our future together.
That was… until I discovered her
secret. Or should I say, ‘secrets’?
Sondra, though an intelligent
woman by nature, had dropped out of university shortly after enrolling in
medical school. When her patriarchal, narrow-minded parents found out, they cut
off her monthly allowance and, in her words, ‘disowned’ her.
I couldn’t understand how any
parents could just cut ties with their child like that, but I believed her – I wanted
to believe her. But this wasn’t even remotely close to what actually ended our
relationship.
Things took a turn for the worse
on the evening of my birthday. We had just had sex when she received a message
on her phone and abruptly jumped out of bed. That was the first time she had
ever done that.
Though I had no reason to
suspect she was cheating on me, this incident kept me on edge for a long time.
So, when I got the chance to check her phone, I took it and risked everything.
I knew her password – she didn’t
bother hiding it from me – but what I found was beyond disturbing: grainy
images, taken from what seemed to be some kind of photo album. The images
showed people in disturbing positions, some naked, some intoxicated, and others
seemingly stiff, like corpses.
All her messages, sent and
received, were deleted, and she didn’t have a single phone number saved in her
contacts – not even mine.
The nature of the images, especially
those I believed depicted real human cadavers, made my blood run cold. Why did
she have those images, and who the hell was sending them to her?
What disturbed me most, however,
was that all the victims were people of colour.
I confronted her the same night.
Although I wasn’t sure how to approach it, since I couldn’t predict her
behaviour, not after seeing those pictures, I hesitated for a solid two hours.
Her response – I can still hear
it clearly in my fading mind – chilled me to the bone. She said it with such
calmness too, in such a nonchalant and detached manner, that I struggled to
process whether she was aware of the morbidity of her own words. But, boy, she
sure was!
“My slaves,” she said. “They are
our slaves, don’t you get it?”
Dumbfounded, I stood there, and
it took me a moment to recover before she repeated herself. I couldn’t believe
it. She was dead serious.
“W-What?”
“You don’t understand! We’re
superior, Elijah! We come from a noble and pure race! We have to preserve it!”
Disgusted by those words I’d
never expected to hear from someone this special to me, I instinctively stepped
away.
“Are you… are you okay?”
Her features softened as she
noticed the confusion in my voice, inched closer and let her finger run down my
cheek. Even now, as she said those disturbing things, even as I saw those
messed-up images, I couldn’t help but feel attracted to her.
“That’s why I chose you, Elijah…”
I let her kiss me, even for a brief second, relishing in her wet kiss before I
pushed her away. “Together, we’ll retain our race and make it pure again—”
You’re not well.” I paused,
glancing away to gather my thoughts, muttering more to myself than to Sondra.
“This… this is madness. You weren’t like this before. Just—what happened to
you?”
“I opened my eyes to the truth,
Elijah! Don’t you see? Those people don’t work, don’t pay taxes, don’t
do anything! They’re rats! Filthy rats living off people like us.”
I couldn’t believe what I was
hearing.
“Rats? They’re people, Sondra,
just like you and me. Humans! Humans who deserve to live an honourable life
just like anybody else!”
“You call those people our equals?
Muslims, Indians, Asians – they’re not like us. They never will be!”
“You’ve lost your goddamn mind,
Sondra!”
“Open your eyes and see the
truth for what it is! There are mosques everywhere! Mosques, for crying out
loud! And those stinking kebab shops on every corner, and-and—"
“What's your problem with people
praying, working hard, and trying to make a living in a world where people like
us have an advantage? You can’t just label the entire population as bad and
others as good. That’s not how this works. There are good and bad people, not
good and bad groups or races of people.”
“You call stealing our jobs,
taking over neighbourhoods, breeding violence, and polluting our race people
working hard? Babe, our vets are homeless and barely scraping by after serving this
country, while those-those rats are taking our hard-earned money!”
“Polluting?” I couldn't help but
crack up. “You sound like a 60-year-old bigot—or some 20-year-old online incel.
What the actual fuck, Sondra? Since when did you start hanging around with
people whose only experience of people of colour comes from the news?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“No, I fucking don’t! And I
think you’re ill. This isn’t you, Sondra. We went to school in the ghetto
together! In the bloody ghetto! You know those things you're saying
aren't true! We both know.”
“That doesn’t change the fact
that those people are threatening our existence!”
“Fine! Let’s pretend
you’re right. Even if your twisted theory holds up, what do you actually lose
if our ‘race’ becomes a minority? Think about it. Weren’t you going to be a
doctor? Explain to me how this makes any sense to you.”
“I’m telling you, our race will
disappear—”
“That bloody race talk
again? Fuck! Okay. I'll let you believe in that bullshit this one time,
but by the time you and I cease to exist, we'll both be long gone, don’t you
think? Who knows? Maybe a better race will come out of mixing races? Isn't that
what survival of the fittest is all about? The greater the complexity of our
genetic makeup, the higher our intelligence and capacity to adapt will be. If
we all get stuck trying to preserve an ancient noble race there’s no fucking
evidence of, humanity itself will cease to exist!”
“I can't believe I actually
considered marrying you! You’re a lost cause, Elijah! And you’re no better than
those bloody rats living off of us!”
“And I can’t believe someone so
intelligent turned out like this! It’s a pity. Really. I… I really liked you. I
wanted this to work and… never mind. It doesn’t even matter now, does it?”
“No, it does, babe! I’ll give
you one more chance to do the right thing.” She paused upon seeing the smirk on
my face. “Don’t give me that face, babe, ‘cause I’m not fucking smiling right
now.”
“One more chance? One more
chance for what? You expect us to work out after coming out as a racist?”
“Is this your answer? Elijah,
babe, look at me.”
She cradled my face in her
hands, those deep-set eyes boring into mine. Her face card was strong – impossibly
strong – and her kissable lips hovered just inches from mine.
“Is this really what you want?”
“It’s not about what I want,” I
said, stepping back again, fighting to stay grounded, to resist the spell of
her voice, her touch, her everything. “I can’t be with someone who sees people
this way. I’m sorry. I really am.”
Her expression hardened. Cold. Unreadable.
Something in her changed. Those seductive eyes of hers, warm and teasing, went
dead. Hollow. Predatory. Then she said it. The line that twisted something
inside me:
“I didn’t want to do this. Not
to you, Elijah. But you leave me no other choice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
My throat tightened. “Sondra? What the fuck is that supposed—”
Her eyes flicked past me. Quick.
Too quick. Like she’d spotted something in the shadows. And then… she smiled. Not
a grin. Not a smirk. A smile that made my skin crawl.
I whipped around.
Click.
A camera shutter. And
just like that, with a single click, I was gone. Just another soul in
that cursed roll of film.
My final memory? A saw. A clean
cut. My head leaving my body.
Then – darkness.
Just... darkness. And nothing
else.
No God.
No angels.
No demons.
Just the endless click of the
shutter. Out of reach, just beyond the veil. There and not there. Real one
second, smoke and mirrors the next.
The footage never stopped.
The saw never dulled.
My severed head never stopped
rolling – thumping across the floorboards, trailing crimson like a signature.
And I watched her. I watched her
keep going. Collecting more. Luring them in. Always the same setup. Same smile.
Same bed. And those lips—
Still kissable.
Still killing.
