Leg bouncing impatiently, eyes nailed straight to the same doorway, Blue hardly flinched as she spilled coffee all over her hand. It didn’t burn her. Rather, she pretended it didn’t burn her. Or, more accurately, she didn’t have the RAM to care. She wiped the soiled hand on her black jeans. Set her half-sipped coffee beneath her chair. Adjusted her grip on the spare. And her knee just kept on bouncing.   Suddenly, the familiar thin man burst through the door. She smiled at his coffee-less hand. Had he come to expect her? She jumped up. “Detective!” Positively beaming to herself for absolutely no reason. Hoping he couldn’t see the blood pooling beneath her thumb nail where she had bitten it a bit too short.   “Ms Pierce,” He forced a stiff smile as she thrust the coffee towards him. The lid had crusted over with spilt foam. But the paper body was still hot. “I appreciate the gesture, but servicemen drink free at the café next door—yo

Laid out on the couch, a hand splayed across her stomach, Blue was sure all the roundness couldn’t completely be the baby. It seemed sealed behind a thick layer of fat. Squishy in her palm. Folded in a roll beneath her ribs. She ought to fix her posture. She looked like an eccentric armchair. Still, the tie of an empire waistline dress tight around her sides, she imagined the baby kick. Screwed shut her eyes. Fixed herself with a grimace of great concentration. Wondered if she felt the infant’s heartbeat of the pulse in her own fingers. And felt rather foolish for deciding she was emotionally ready for a child. At eighteen. How laughable. She stood.   “Blue?” Her summons was muffled. Vincent would have been downstairs. Locked away in his study. Sat in the half-darkness. Surely, she’d imagined it. That shut door meant just that. She couldn’t go in. She had never tried to. She missed their apartment, knowing all too well only because he couldn’t escape her there.

Blue had been sat in the bath for quite some time, though not because she’d woken in a fit of terror as she had the last time. She didn’t dream of an arranged marriage in her short nap. A life where her child fondly called Richard “dad”. Her mother’s only purpose was to ruin her life. She hadn’t seen Vincent in years. Though she still had a strange dream. She had been at the breakfast table, nursing a bowl of porridge. Her parents were sat side-by-side as they always were. She could see the scene from an aerial view as though her soul had long since left her body and possessed the overhead lightbulb instead. Staring down at them, Bradley with a knife to the hilt in Marian’s back, he twisted when she fell silent, urging her to say something cruel and nasty to her daughter. This time, he tugged the knife out. Thrust it at the side of the woman’s spine, blood spraying the backs of the dining chairs and dripping steadily onto the floor. “God, you look terrible,” She spl

She had to dig for quite a while until she struck gold—though it could more realistically be considered a landmine. Her diploma sat bronzed and shining, tucked away in a crinkled plastic sleeve that had torn as she’d jammed more and more useless documents into the spotted cardboard gift box. She considered it uncharacteristically mature of her to take it with her when she silently moved from home. Mind you, she had forgotten all about it until her brief stay with Marian again. By brief, she of course meant half a night. “I’m sure it’s here,” her bathrobe was slipping further and further over her shoulder as she riffled through the untidy stack beneath the diploma; a tombstone for all of the more heinous envelopes. A statement from her now-defunct trust. A parking ticket she’d stolen hoping Marian would be slapped with a late fine she could so clearly afford. Her yearbook. The marriage license she had stolen from

“Good book?” Vincent wrapped a hand around his wife’s foot, flopping lazily in the air. Laid on her stomach, chin in her fist, she hardly seemed pregnant. Though Vincent knew better. She had a smell about her, certainly something he’d conjured on his own. A sweet smell. Her hormones mixing with his. Her breasts bulging from her shirt. Skin soft and sticky much the same way well-rested dough was.   “Alias Grace. Ironic, I know.” Blue closed the book. Peered over her shoulder. Kicked against his hand playfully.   “Never heard of it.”   “It’s about caring more about getting someone in prison than committing the crime,” She paused. Staring blankly at the cover. “Well, it’s mostly about only finding women interesting when they’re whorish or evil.”   “Maybe you should be reading something happier.” He was now sat beside her, the mattress bending to his weight, her dress crept up the backs of her t