Excerpt: Detriment

None of the Kingdom Guard around the chamber could fathom why someone would do... this— this hideously ugly, twisted, fundamentally evil thing to such a lady as it was apparent that the girl was. Suddenly, the girl moved. All the Kingdom Guards— all eight of them posted at each point of the octagonal chamber— riveted their attention on the girl... no, the lady, as she dipped her right hand in the blood still leaking out in waves and forming a puddle encompassing her. Then, she winced, but gritting her teeth against the pain, wrote three words in the floor.

Kill Me Now

The three chilling words were in English, the Kingdom Guards' native language, but it seemed to take a long time for the meaning of the words to sink in. The blood-chilling words— along with the substance they were written in, of course— seemed to have stopped the Kingdom Guards' mental functioning and brain processes. The girl sighed and dipped her hand in the blood again.

Kill Me Now

She wrote the words again, this time in French. Then again, in Arabic. Then in Russian. Then in Spanish. Then in Japanese. Then in Korean. Then in Cantonese, then in Mandarin. Then in Turkish, and in Azerbaijani. The lady kept dipping her hand in the blood of her left arm and writing her chilling phrase in every language known to man. When she had finished, she sat back and bowed her head, as if expecting the coup de graçe, or the killing blow, at any second. When it did not come, she gestured at the guards and then at the blood forming letters on the floor. She saw the impassive faces, staring straight ahead, and realized that she was not going to die. Not now, at least. She felt oddly disappointed at the fact. She knew full well that she would probably not survive the night bleeding as she was, and yet, oddly, it didn't bother her much. She thought about death and the prospect of it with a kind of impassive amiability. But a nearby voice shook her out of her reverie.