Slit
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They move among us and prey upon us.
Some are invisible. Some look like us.
Some are inside us.
Jimmy Temple was walking south on Central when he died.
He was heading home on a gray and colorless evening when the razor flew from an alley and sliced into him. Jimmy saw it just before it hit him. It wasn’t a solid object. Rather, it was a ripple, a blur, like a heat haze or the thinnest imaginable sheet of cellophane passing over the mouth of the alley. Then it was in him, slicing unstoppably, penetrating through skin, muscle, and bone.
A moment before, he had been wondering if this was all there was to his life. He had been thinking that there must be something more, something great, even wonderful, something that he couldn’t quite glimpse, out there, just beyond his grasp. Now he was frozen in mid step, blinded, deafened, every cell of his body screaming with a pain he had never thought was possible.
The razor took instant control of his nervous system and held him pinned in place while it completed its work.
He heard a voice speaking. It was a pleasant, well modulated, cultured voice. There, it said. That should be sufficient for now. You can start walking again.