She knew she couldn’t simply walk out of her apartment door tonight—it certainly was connected to an alarm—go down one floor, and gaily knock on Zhen’s door—also probably alarmed—to invite herself in for a late nightcap. She had scoped out her balcony, and that of Zhen’s apartment directly below. She thought she could climb over her balcony railing, lower herself as far as possible, and take a swinging drop down onto Zhen’s balcony. If she mistimed her swing, or if her hands slipped, nothing more would matter. They were nine stories up. Dominika had searched her apartment for any possible weapons. The kitchen was not stocked; there were no chef’s knives. She had found a small toolbox in the utility closet from which she took a box cutter with retractable blade and a medium-weight claw hammer. Both these potential weapons were close range and inefficient, but that’s all she had. She retracted the blade, tucked the box cutter into her bra, and stuck the handle of the hammer into her waistband. Time to go poison-bird hunting. She remembered to unlock her apartment door from the inside so she could get back in after she settled with Zhen.
The Grenville House building was totally dark. Dominika was relieved to find that by hanging by her fingers she could actually touch the lower balcony railing with her toes, and was able to drop quietly onto the dark balcony of Zhen’s apartment. The balcony door was open and she tiptoed in, passing into a wall of
Dominika peeked into the bathroom. Flickering candlelight was barely enough to see through the fogged glass partition of the big walk-in shower. Zhen stood with her back to Dominika beneath the rectangular rain showerhead luxuriating under the soft deluge, arms above her head, muscles in her buttocks bunching as she moved, wet hair slick on her skull. Dominika tried to remember the locations of the major veins and arteries in the human body, knowing the box-cutter blade was only an inch long.
A wave of rage boiled in Dominika’s gut for what she was about to do, for what They were forcing her to do. She measured the distance through the opening of the glass, and felt for the box cutter, thinking
Zhen’s toes drummed against the shower wall; her breasts, brown nipples, and pubic delta flattened against the wet glass, her fingers scrabbling at the material around her throat, but the soaked silk had tightened into an impossible knot, the loop pulling her head ear-high, and she shook like a fish side to side, and tried to push off the glass with her feet, her thighs flexing. Rasping grunts came out of her open mouth, but the noise of the shower covered the sound. After three minutes of violent thrashing, as the oxygen in her brain was used up, her kicking slowed, and her hands fell away from her throat, and she quivered for another three minutes, head canted sideways, spittle drizzling out of the corner of her mouth. Rivulets of water ran down the glass as Zhen stared through it dead eyed and openmouthed at Dominika, who had sat down on the bathroom floor with a thump, feet braced, holding the belt, her arms screaming, staring back at the wet corpse.
Five minutes, ten, an hour later—Dominika couldn’t tell—she made her cramping hands let go, and Zhen slid down the partition, her pancaked breasts squeaking on the wet glass, normally a bawdy and erotic sound during shower sex, but now it was ugly and final. Zhen flopped on her back, chin up, legs splayed, the shower water filling her mouth and dribbling down either cheek. Dominika turned off the water. The
