why would you even bother telling someone your secrets before killing them

self_composed

Bella hops into the driver's seat of her nice warm car. Well, nice dry car. She turns it on to cause warmth.

edgeofyourseat

Alice tucks himself quietly into the passenger seat.

self_composed

"You look pensive," observes Bella.

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"Yep," says Alice.

self_composed

"You know what's great? How you're so consistently informative and helpful and I spend almost no time in your company uncomfortably curious," says Bella.

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"...I genuinely cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or not," says Alice.

self_composed

"Yes," says Bella. "Yes, I am being sarcastic."

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"Oh." He glances at her and smiles. "Sorry. ...This one's kind of a long story, though."

self_composed

She shrugs. "If Theo appears and interrupts you, I won't blame you for not having finished your long story, I'll just expect you to pick it up the next time we talk."

edgeofyourseat

He drums his fingers on his knee.

"...Can I borrow your notebook again?"

self_composed

She hands it over, and a pen.

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Alice flips to the same page he used previously and starts...

...drawing.

self_composed

Bella peers over his shoulder, puzzled.

edgeofyourseat

A sketchy, scribbly view of an alley - brick walls, a Dumpster. A figure walking along it who might or might not be Alice; the scribbles of hair suggest that it is.

Next: a hand landing on his shoulder. Just the hand, and a bit of arm, and the shoulder and a bit of neck.

Next: he pushes the hand away. No one's face is visible, only his shoulders and the two hands.

self_composed

Bella watches the sequential art unfold in silence.

edgeofyourseat

Next: the hand grabs the front of his shirt.

Next: he shoves the other person away, both hands on their chest; it's a man wearing an open jacket that might be denim or leather.

Next: Alice's shoulder/neck area again, this time with the other man's arm wrapped around him from behind, holding a knife to his throat. (No one in this sequential art seems to have a face. The image ends at the line of Alice's jaw.)

The placement of the knife aligns precisely with the scar under Alice's jaw, which does not exist in the picture.

self_composed

Bella swallows. She doesn't say anything.

edgeofyourseat

Next: Alice's lower back, his shirt and jeans both visible, the latter half falling off and bearing a slash across his hip that goes right through into the flesh underneath. A few lines of background suggest he is pressed against a flat surface.

Last: Alice's hands, flattened against asphalt, decorated with drips of what is presumably blood.

This sequence has taken him to the bottom of the original page, all the way down the other side, and halfway down the next one. He draws a sharp slashing line across this page, under the final image, and hands Bella her book back.

self_composed

Bella "reads" through it again.

"Someone hurt you," she says. "And you didn't want him to."

She flips back a page, forward again. "When was this?" she murmurs.

edgeofyourseat

"Back in New York," he says. "Remember when I said 'got caught hooking' was making a really long story really short? Yeah." He gestures to the notebook. "There's the rest."

self_composed

Bella's holding the notebook kind of tightly. "You sure you want this drawn? I told you people've stolen my notebooks, before."

edgeofyourseat

He shrugs. "Rip it out and burn it if you want. Or do whatever with it."

self_composed

"I don't have a scanner. So I can't really put it in the computer." She's still looking at the drawings. "What got you thinking about this just now?"

edgeofyourseat

Alice takes a deep breath, slowly.

Looks out the window.

Says, very quietly: "I get off on getting hurt."

self_composed