The bright city lights went out one by one, and only the dim flashlight of a moon remained. Weeds growing through cracked roads thrived at night. Ants crawling around searching for survival didn’t.
Blocks away, a man named Carnell is drowning in a stranger’s red lipstick—the cheap Dollar Store brand that tastes like metal. Black nail polish is drying under his eyelids, and the strands of orange hair wrapped around his windpipe are making every gasp inaudible. He breathes in the dust mites on the mattress and devours every fiber like it is the last supper. The wind is blowing softly on his bare ankles, and the cracked wooden floor is still creaking as the moon trembles in the sky.

Hera walked through the streets like a dog trying to stand on two legs. If a man tried to get as close to her body as the ripped green dress she was wearing, he’d have a two minute hearing and an eternity behind bars. She was a slut; a desperate, pathetic, worthless slut. Yet as the moon was raised high by the visible stilts reaching from her limbs, she opted to collapse on a street corner. The park benches snickered as they rejected her from their wooden mattress, she wasn’t good enough for them.
A few drunken whistles and oblivious taxis later, she found herself in a convertible under the grip of a man that yanked her forearm and shook her legs. He had empty eye sockets and skin so thin the cracked bones underneath were visible. He ducked under the ugly gravel falling from her limbs as he positioned her for the drive.

As she remained silent, a scream finally escapes Carnell’s throat. It turns baby blue, the color of an innocent infant’s bedroom walls.

Hera accepted the man’s forceful push to the mattress, all while never even uttering a sound. Likewise, Carnell’s chance to scream had been long gone. The whites of his eyes were now stained black. Each of his limbs snapped like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree branch, he choked on his teeth and his tongue was paralyzed.
Hera only opened her eyes once. On accident, the man looked in them and smirked as he was buried under her dark eyelashes. His bones began snapping like toothpicks, and his eye sockets were becoming filled with paint.
Hera left her orange hair on the pillow and hit the replay button on the soundtrack of creaking floors and soft wind.
She left the man there as the sun was trading the moon for her stilts. Her eyes screamed, “I know something you don’t” as she left the naked bedroom and walked past the park bench.