Miriam spits out blood. "Women, too. And I don't kill them. I don't kill anybody."

Louis laughs.

"You keep telling yourself that, little lady. Whatever helps you

sleep at night. Remember, just because you're not pulling the trigger doesn't mean you aren't a killer."

"It's fate," Miriam says, red drool swinging from her lower lip. "It's not me. It's how fate is. What fate wants–"

"Fate gets," Louis says. "I know. You say that a lot."

"My mother used to say–"

"It is what it is. I know that old chestnut, too."

"Fuck you. You're not real."

"Not yet. But just shy of a month, I will be. I'll be another skeleton in your closet, another ghost in your head. Dangling and swinging and moaning and groaning."

"I can't save you."

"Apparently not."

"Go to hell."

He winks. "Meet you there. Watch out for that–"

The shovel comes down between her shoulder blades. She feels something break deep inside of her. Her thighs grow wet. The pain is intense.

"– shovel."

EIGHT

Die Jobs

The morning after.

Five men (counting the frat-tards). One death. Lots of violence. A banner night for Miriam Black.

Hands on the sink in Ashley's bathroom, she stares at her reflection in the mirror. She smokes a cigarette, blows the plume against the reflection, watches smoke meet smoke.

All told, it's the orgasm that really bothers her.

It isn't the sex. Sex happens – hell, sex happens often enough that it's a hobby for her like scrapbooking or collecting baseball cards is for other people. Who cares? Her body is no temple. It might have been once, but it lost its sanctified status long ago (just over eight years ago, that wicked little voice reminds), with too much blood spilled at the altar.

The orgasm, though. That's new.

She hasn't had one in… she takes another drag of the Marlboro, tries to figure it out. She can't. It's like doing hard math half-drunk. It's been that long.

And then last night? Boom. Bang. Fireworks. Fountains shooting off. Twenty-one gun salute, rocket blasting to the moon, a Pavarotti concert, the universe exploding and then imploding and then exploding again.

A blinking red light. An alarm going off.

And what was it that did it?

She presses her head against the mirror. It's cold against her skin.

"It's official," she says into the mirror. "You're totally broken. Unfixable." She has an image of a cracked porcelain doll being dragged through puddles of blood, mud, and shit and then punted into mid-air, its arms cartwheeling, until it smacks headlong into the grill of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. The doll looks like her.

(A red balloon rises to the sky.)

Time to do what Miriam does best.

"Time to dye my hair!" she chirps.

This is her true gift: the ability to shove it all out of her mind. Just crowd it out with hard elbows and headbutts. Zen and the art of repression.

She opens her bag, takes out two boxes. She bought them a few days before at a grimy CVS in Raleigh-Durham, and by "bought," she means, "with a five-finger discount."