SHREDDER

Stone shut the door behind him and didn’t bother sitting down. He said, “Where’d you find that girl, John?”

       “Who?”

       “The Intern. Yours.”

       “Oh.” John set down his pen. It was blue-gelled. He said, “She found us online.”

       “She’s a looker, Johnny. I wanna give her cute little ass a squeeze, just to hear the sound she’d make.” 

       “Jesus, Stone. Don’t say that shit.”

       “What?” Stone shuffled a bit, adjusting his belt. “I’m not actually gonna.”

       Three easy knocks on the closed door. John said, “Come in.”

       The intern’s name was Carly. She had a high voice, fawn eyes, and blue bubblegum hair. Stone looked her up and down. 

       Carly said, “Something’s wrong with the shredder.”

       “The shredder,” said John. “What’s wrong with it?”

       “I dunno.”

       Stone adjusted his belt again. John shot him a look. He stood, and said, “Carly, come with me. Stone, please get something done today.”

       The shredder was on the other half of the office. Carly trailed behind him with these little, ballerina steps. 

       “I dreamt about you last night,” she whispered. 

       John looked over his shoulder. “What?” 

       “Nothing,” said Carly, giggling. 

       When they reached the shredder, John asked her, “What’s the issue?” 

       Carly tapped one of her knife-sharp, jet-black nails on top of the old thing. They didn’t match her. She said, “It’s stuck.”

       John pressed its big green button and the shredder screeched. Georgia and Tim, from sales, peeked out of their cubes to look at them. John pressed its red button and the sound stopped. He turned to Carly. 

       “You only put paper in it, right?”

       “Yup.”

       “No staples?”

       “No staples.”

       “No paper clips?”

       “Of course not.”

       John sighed. He went to his knees and clicked the bottom latch of the machine. As it popped open, ribbons of paper leaked all over the carpet. It was dense stuff, overflowing—it should have been emptied out shreds and shreds ago. 

       “Carly,” said John, with a little heat. He looked up at her. “How much have you been shredding?”

       Her cheeks were the perfect strawberry pink. “Well, Lily basically handed me her entire office. All the old papers, policies—it’s all online now. So, she didn’t need any of it. And, you know, I didn’t know how to say ‘no,’ and then, you know—”

       “It’s gotta be emptied almost every hundred shreds,” said John. He gathered the mess into his hands. Georgia and Tim were back to work. 

       “Oh,” said Carly, meeting him on the carpet. She gathered some of it into her hands, too. She was eighteen—nineteen, maybe—but she seemed younger. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a soft, genuine way, and there was suddenly no reason to be frustrated at all. 

       “It’s just a little paper,” said John. 

       Carly met his eyes. “What if I broke it for good?”

       “You didn’t,” said John. 

       Carly nodded then, melting a bit. She smelled like rose and coconut and the top of her thighs peaked out from under her cute little office skirt. 

       John was right; the shredder hadn’t broken for good. They emptied the paper into two trash bags, and when they started the machine back up again, she hummed her usual song. Carly smiled. She had perfect skin, perfect cheeks, and perfect teeth.  

       John told her, “When you finish shredding, Tim has some filing for you. Should’ve been done four years ago.”

       She gave him a funny salute, still smiling. “Aye aye.”

       John nodded, turning.

       “Wait,” said Carly. John looked back. 

       “My mom has an eye appointment today,” she said, “so she can’t pick me up, and you know, I don’t have a car. And I really don’t want to wait here all night for her. Would you mind dropping me off on your way home?”

       “You’re over in Trotwood, right?”

       “Right.”

       John said, “That should be no problem.”

 

*

 

Georgia and Stone came by for lunch. Stone didn’t mention Carly again. He doesn’t say shit in front of Georgia. 

       “—something’s on the loose in the city. Bodies bent at odd angles, bits of their limbs clawed off, cubed, sliced up. I haven’t left my place past eight for a couple weeks, just to play it safe.” 

       “Something?” John asked. “Not a person?” 

       Stone laughed. He was eating Doritos and a long stick of meat. 

       “It’s not fucking funny, Stone,” spat Georgia. She sipped on a gray-colored smoothie and spoke with her hands. “It’s horrific. It’s supernatural.”

       “Not a person?” asked John, again. 

       Georgia glared at him. “It lures its prey right outside of the city—it gets them there, somehow—and kills them in remote, private places. No obvious motivation, no connection between the victims, no fingerprints, no trace. It leaves wounds that couldn’t have come from a knife. Think siren. Think werewolf. Something out of mythology. They’re calling it the Dayton Shredder.”

       “Who’s ‘they’?” asked John. His wife packed his lunch: ham and cheese on wheat bread, sliced down the middle, with carrot sticks on the side. 

       “Well,” said Georgia, blushing, “there were just some people theorizing online about it.”

       “Theorizing,” said John. 

       Stone laughed again. Georgia rolled her eyes and sipped her smoothie. The conversation didn’t last much longer. 

 

*

 

Carly skipped into John’s office six minutes past four. Her lips were newly glossed pink. She took the guest seat on the other side of his dark-wood desk.  

       “You still busy?” she asked. 

       John looked at his laptop. It wouldn’t be fair to keep her too long. 

       “Busy, yes,” said John. “But I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes.”

       She sat there the whole time. She took out her phone, fidgeted with her sleeves. Her smell filled the whole room—candy-sweet, sunshine. It would probably linger on the fabric of his chair for a couple days. A week, if he was lucky. He’d never touch her. Stone might. But, he was a better man than Stone. 

       Carly giggled. “You’re never going to finish if you keep staring.”

       John adjusted himself, clicking out of the spreadsheet he’d been playing with. He watched his screen for two more seconds, shivering, and then shut his laptop. 

       “I’m done,” he said. He pushed off his desk, shuffled on his coat, threw everything into his briefcase, and thought about his wife. Then, he looked at Carly—her lips, and her neck, and he swore, she was not so beautiful yesterday, or this morning. 

       She stood up, stretched, chin down, drowsy eyes. Blue like her hair. John flicked off the lights and she followed him out.

 

* 

 

“—everything we learn in class seems pointless, and the days make me so tired.” Carly slipped off her cardigan, revealing the silver skin of her collarbone, the rise of her tits, and her chest, all defined and elegant. 

       “It gets better,” John said, starting the car. 

       “School?” 

       “Yes.”

       Carly made a small clicking sound with her tongue. “I hope so.” 

       John got them out of the parking lot. 

       “The boys are even worse than the classes,” she started again, a minute or so later. “They’re so slimy, you know, and they only want one thing.”

       John kept his eyes on the road. “Do you want to put directions into the console?

       Carly shook her head. “No need. I’ll guide you. It’s straight for a few more lights.”

       As they made their way out of the city, the bush to the sides of them thickened. Unkempt, expansive, and the old yellow-green color of Ohio. Somehow, John said, “They’ll get better too. Boys. They take a little more time to mature.”

       Carly smiled. She fiddled with a strand of blue. “I bet you didn’t used to be like them, though. You’re so reserved, you know. So thoughtful.”

       “You’d be surprised,” John told her. He shouldn’t have. She gave him this playful pat on the arm and crossed her legs. 

       “Would I? If you’re this handsome now, I can only imagine your face in college. I’d probably make an exception, if you really were like those boys. Just to kiss you.”

       The car nearly swerved. “Don’t you think that’s kind of inappropriate?” John said. 

       “Because you’re my boss?”

       “No,” said John. Although, yes.

       “I’m nineteen,” said Carly. “Not twelve. I can say any shit I want.”

       John was thirty-seven. He shifted in his seat, and said, “It’s been a few lights.”

       “The next one,” she said, in a new voice. When they got to the light, she said, “Left.”

       The trees grew around them. The road narrowed. The sky was pale and heavy with a coming storm, and their tension eased into neutral silence. John broke it with: “Why’re you living way out here?”

       “Ask my parents.”

       Thicker trees. Deeper greens. “Another left up ahead,” said Carly. 

        It hardly looked like a road. “Really?”

       Carly breathed a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

       There hadn’t been other cars for a mile, or two. The houses were sparse already, and down the left turn, the forest was so dense that it left no room for structures. “You can’t live back there.” 

       “I don’t,” she said. “I wanted to show you something.” 

       “Carly—” 

       “My favorite spot, John. Live a little. It’ll only take a second.” She was giddy like a kid, blush low, hair loose and falling against her shoulders in perfect curls. Without thinking too much, John turned left. She smiled ear to ear, squealing a little. 

       “Oh, you’re a doll, John,” Carly said, grabbing his arm again. John thought about his wife, and then, he looked at Carly’s tits.

       The spot was maybe five more minutes into the woods. They came upon a cozy open pocket of the trees, a creek beside a rotting wooden bench, and she told him to stop. If he were younger, he would have found this place too. Brought his guitar and a joint. The sky was darker now. They probably had mere minutes before it started to rain.

       John parked right off the road and followed Carly to the edge of the water. She took off her lovely blue flats, danced into the shallow, and didn’t cringe at the cold. 

       “Come on,” she told John. Her ass was perfect in that skirt. She looked over her shoulder and blinked at him. 

       “I’m not going in,” he said. 

       “Ah, you’re no fun. You dragged me all the way out here just to watch.” She reached out, grabbed him by his tie, and pulled. “Play with me.”

       “I didn’t—” John stumbled, regaining balance just in time to keep his shoes dry. “I didn’t drag you out here. Do you know how that sounds?”

       Carly rolled her eyes. She was almost a new person in the woods, under the sky, leaves and branches painting shadows on her skin. She brought her hand to John’s chest, laying it flat on the space beneath his tie. Her nails, like claws, dug in hard enough to hurt. The touch left him breathless. She led him back a while, and when his thighs hit the bench, she pushed him down to sit. 

       “I know how that sounds,” she said. And then she knelt before him. 

       John coughed. “What are you doing?”

       Carly grabbed him beneath the knee, picking up his entire leg, and set his foot on her thigh. She fiddled with the wiry laces of his shoe. “Taking these off of you.” 

       The ground was muddy, almost wet. “You’re gonna get dirty.”

       Her blue flipped in the wind as it got stronger. “I’m not afraid of that.” 

        John was dizzy; the trees closed in, his stomach flipped, and he didn’t stop her—even when she walked her fingers up the side of his thigh, even when she started fiddling with his belt, cheek against his knee. Deep in the forest, some old beast howled.

       “Carly,” he said, thinking about his wife for the last time. She met his gaze and it started to rain. 

       “Nobody’ll find us here,” she said, and then her body was right between his legs, both hands reaching to cup his face. Those nails jailed him in place, one set of them sliding around the back of his neck and the other holding his jaw. It hurt. Maybe that was when he should have started running, but then she took him by the mouth, and she was saying something—no, laughing. She was laughing. John grabbed her waist and pulled her flush against him. Nobody would find them here. And he wanted to feel her skin, that skin, and he scraped beneath her little blouse, and—

       Scales. John dropped the fabric and tried to push it all away. “Jesus,” he said, “Why do you feel like that?”

       Her eyes were the first thing that changed, from fawnish to serpentine, black-blown to vertical slits, blue to blue. She carved her claws into the back of John’s neck and purred, nuzzling his shoulder. He tasted blood in the back of his throat. 

       “ ‘Play with me?’ ” she said. “That’s what did it? John, love, look at me. You’re disgusting.” 

       Carly’s skin twinkled, all of it turning rapidly to scales. Purple-blue, silver as ever. She grew. She was bigger, smaller, more of an animal. She lifted him by the neck like he was nothing and he dangled there, mouth open, one shoe on and one shoe off. She twirled them both and pushed him onto his knees right at the edge of the creek. He was all wet, muddy, slacks destroyed. 

       “Don’t you have a fucking wife?” she said. The rain was really coming now. Carly’s hair floated above her head, glowing, like some mad-scientist from a children’s picture book. It was godly, blue-light coming from the head, everything blurring beyond the halo. 

       She grabbed him by the jaw and tilted his head up as far as it could go. The wound in his neck pulsed, pain he’d never felt before, and his eyes were closing for good. “I told you to look at me,” she said. She shoved two fingers all the way down his throat.