She looked across the room at her husband. She thought of all of the good times and the bad, the delicate, intimate moments, and the screaming and violent ones. They all seemed so long ago. She had spent her life making sure that he and the kids were cared for, or at least she hoped she had. As Annie Janes looked across the room at her husband, Scott, blooded and bruised and hanging from his wrists, she asked herself how she could have let this happen.

She forced herself to look up at Scott. Shame made it hard to look at his eyes, but she forced her eyes toward his. “I’m sorry,” she said through tears.

The gag in his mouth prevented him from answering, but he didn’t need to — she could see the confusion and the fear in his eyes. They told her everything she needed to know and it was unbearable. The ropes burned her wrists when she tried to bring her hands to her face, but she also felt them loosen slightly.

As she wallowed in self-pity, a rough-looking, tattooed man wearing sunglasses burst in the room. He was accompanied by two German Shepherds that he led by chains around their neck. The dogs whined and pulled toward the puddle of blood that lie directly under Scott’s bare feet. His cold gaze focused on Annie.

“Is this how the Orphan treats her family?” he said. “You let him suffer for you? I thought you were better than that… or was you just pretending?”

“Fuck you Miguel. You know it wasn’t me. You need to leave my family out of this.”

Miguel let the dogs loose of their leashes. They did not sprint toward Scott, but they went and sat underneath where he dangled — waiting for the right command from their master. Miguel grabbed a tire iron off of the workbench and began walking slowly around the garage. “You see… I like you Annie. I really want to believe you, but I’ve known Hector since he was damn near a baby. A lot of people want to lie to me, to take advantage of me. Hector though? He’s family and I…”, pointing to tire iron to his chest. “I know what family means.”

“You’re wrong… you can’t trust him. He made it look like it was my idea because I found out the truth about him. Please! Let my husband go and leave my family alone. This is all on me. If you just give me a chance, I can show you what I mean.”

As Annie was pleading her case, Miguel moved slowly and deliberately across the old garage. He stopped to peer at the old shelves and containers as if there might actually be something new in them, but it was all just to feign indifference to Annie. He wanted her to be nervous. He wanted her unaware of what was coming next. He wanted her to tell him everything she knew; he wanted a confession.

He was standing next to her husband as she finished talking. “What do you think brother?”, he asked her husband. “Should I believe her?”

Scott tried to respond, but the gag prevented him from uttering a coherent word.

Miguel laughed, “Oh, I’m sorry brother. Let me help you with that.” He pulled the duct tape from his face and fished the blue handkerchief out of his mouth.

“Leave her alone!” Scott slurred through his swollen lips. Annie sobbed harder — mostly from guilt, but also because she was pulling as hard as she could against the ropes.

“What’s that gringo? I couldn’t understand you.” Miguel replied knowing he wouldn’t get a response. “You see… I know this is all new to you. Your head aches. Your mouth is sore. You are confused. You thought your pretty little wife right there was just out doing whatever cute little white girls do, but what you didn’t know was that this cute little white girl has a dark side.”

“Stop it! Just let him go!” Annie pleaded.

“Oh no girl… you gonna have to let me have my fun while I ruin your little party here.” He rubbed the curved end of the tire iron along her husband’s stomach, up his chest, and around the back of his neck. He pulled Scott toward him with it and continued, “Oh yeah, you in for surprise my man. This girl here… we call her the Orphan. You know why we call her that?”

Scott looked at him through his bloody face and shook his head.

“We call her that because this cute little frame is so cold that she won’t think twice about murdering someone for next to nothing. Hell, she even murdered her own family. I bet you didn’t know that, did you brother?”

Scott gaze turned to Annie with a look of confusion. Miguel laughed; relishing every minute of the mental pain he was causing her. Meanwhile, she was still working the ropes as hard as she could. She nearly had one hand free.

“I know you thought your wife was doing community service or some shit every night, but let me tell you my man, what she was really doing was helping us stomp out our competition. It turns out she’s got a real talent and that talent is murder. Pure untraceable murder. I ain’t seen nothing like it before man. She is the real deal.”

Scott looked at his wife and if his face wasn’t bruised and swollen from the beating, she would have seen a look of horror. Annie didn’t need to see his face to know that is exactly what he was thinking though. His eyes told her everything. Miguel’s smug grin showed that he was thrilled with the chaos he had caused his once dependable partner he called the Orphan.

Scott looked at Miguel with a look of defeat and says, “Please… just let us go. My wife is not who you think she is. She couldn’t be. She’s an innocent woman.”

Miguel gives him an amused puzzled look and began hysterically laughing. “You crazy gringo! You think this little woman. This women tied up right over th…”, he stops suddenly when he sees the empty chair.

“You mean this woman?”, Annie says from behind him, pulling the sunglasses from his head.

He raises the tire iron, swings around, and is stopped cold as he sees her eyes brighten to a light glowing green. As they change, he sees what resembles tiny little black lightning flashes traversing violently in and around the whites of her eyes.

Before he can say anything, she places her hand on his cheek and he is caught in her trance. “I tried to tell you Miguel. It wasn’t my fault. I was going to go easy on you, but you went too far when you brought Scott into this.”

Miguel could not look away from her gaze. He saw a million horrible things all happening at once, all entering his mind. He could feel madness inhabiting him… not just in his mind but in his entire body.

“All I wanted was a little excitement, and if someone got hurt, at least they were low people. But Hector… the family you mentioned… he told me your real plan. Even though it’s despicable, I was going to take it easy on you. I just wanted out. I couldn’t be part of it.”

Miguel could feel the blood throughout his body violently shaking like it was boiling, only it wasn’t hot. It felt like millions of tiny little pebbles vibrating in his veins. His arms stiffened as the tire iron clanged to the ground. His legs stiffened next as he fell sideways onto the ground.

Annie stood directly over him. “But you made it personal,” she said. “And I can’t let that be. I just want you to know one thing — this is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt bad.”

The glow in her eyes turned even brighter. So bright that his eyes were in agony, but he was helpless to close them. The pebbles he felt shaking in his veins turned into minuscule little shards with razor sharp points and their shaking increased until tiny little blood drops started appearing on his skin.

The skin on his arms pulsated up and down as each tiny little shard poked its way through his skin. The Orphan methodically controlled the shards as they progressed from his arms, down the sides of his ribs, and to his feet nearly liquifying his body as it passed through leaving only his chest cavity and his head.

She leaned close to him one last time and whispered, “You deserve every bit of this pain.” She then let shards take the rest of him. Moving them as slowly as she could until he was no more than a pile human mush on the floor.

She stared for a moment longer as the glow retreated from her eyes and the tears crept in. She dropped to her knees sobbing as she faced the mass of flesh that was a human being a few moments earlier. Without turning around, she said through her sobs, “I’m so sorry Scott. I should have told you.”