THE FIRST SCRATCH
The law student's laugh still resonated inside Mann's skull—offensive, smug, and slightly off-tune, like a scratch on Cassette. He had seen this a few days ago: this man sauntered into the cafe where she sat, his voice cutting into the silence she had created, drifting his hands onto her table, demanding her attention. She had flinched, polite but tense, and Mann watched from the corner, his coffee cooling, fingers twitching for the blade in his pocket. 'Noise,' he thought, and now the word was burning inside him, echoing here in the alley.
The night was clammy, the cobblestones slick with rain, the air thick with putrescence and gasoline. The law student was trudging along, drunk, the tie loosened, laughter somewhere between wet and rasping. Mann trailed behind, walking soundless as a cat on the stones, the warmth of the switchblade still in his palm. He had waited for the man to stop, fumbling with a cigarette before making his move—quickly, like a coiling shadow. As the blade slipped out and flickered silver, it sank into the man's throat upon flesh with a wet, sucking wrench. Blood sprayed, hot and coppery, to spatter on Mann's face, on his lips, where he licked it off, tasting iron and destruction while the student gurgled, his eyes widening and hands clawing at the wound.
Clean but far from tidy, the kill. The man staggered, cigarette dropping to hiss in a puddle, and Mann flicked the blade deeper, feeling cartilage snap, trachea collapse. Blood pumped out in quick bursts, painting the stones, drowning Mann's boots while student sank to his knees and faced the ground, cheeks smacking against the wet earth. Mann knelt watching blood, transfixed by the rhythm—it throbbed like her heartbeat, it breathed like her. He pressed his fingers into the wound, sticky and warm, smearing the blood against his own chest beneath the shirt, a private tattoo—"He was noise, Cassette, a skip in your song. I carved him out so your quiet sings—my love's a blade for you alone."
He stood, the alley now silent, except for the drizzle of rain and the distant sigh of the dead man's last breath. The blade clicked shut, slick with gore. He pocketed it while his hands trembled, not in fear, but in the intimacy of it, the way that it would connect him with her. He saw her now, asleep in her bed, with her lips slightly parted, with her dark hair spilling across the pillow. "For you, Cassette," he whispered, and that thought of her stirred him, dark heat pooling low.
She stirred not at all when later, with a practiced hand, he opened by the lock to her apartment. He hovered over her, the metallic taint of blood still clinging to him, faint under perfumed lather. Her chest rose and fell, soft, and he knelt to place a kiss on her forehead, tender and possessive, his hands hovering over her body as if he were a sculptor afraid to mar his work. "You're safe now, my muse," he breathed, and slipped under the covers beside her, being careful not to disturb her. He curled around her, his arm heavy across her waist, fingers tracing her ribs through her thin shirt as she seeped her warmth into him.
She sighed in her sleep, moving closer, and he buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of lavender and her, his body aching with a need he would not satisfy—at least not yet. The blood on his chest, dried, felt like a pledge pressed against her back, and he traced the slow, lingering kiss on her neck, his lips skimming over that pulse he had killed for. "No one shall scratch you again, Cassette," he murmured, bass-like, and pulled her closer, while the darkness in him purred as she slept, oblivious, in his arms.