Page 10 of My Violent Valentine

She turns from her friend, just now noticing Aidan. She looks at him like he is a tiny gross bug that she’s examining under a glass.

“That’s nice,” she says, turning back to her friend.

“Did you like my valentine? I made it special for you.” Aidan says, not yet understanding he’s striking out hard with this brat. She is a cute kid, but he could do better.

“Oh, was that from you? The one with the little drawing of two stick figures holding hands, and all the glitter?”

He nods, hopefully.

She just rolls her eyes. “I have a boyfriend already. His name is Brayden, and he’s in Mrs. Hancock’s class. And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be your girlfriend. You’re weird.”

She giggles, and turns back to her friends who giggle with her. I want to burn the school down right now, but I reign in my psychopathy.

Aidan is about to start crying but he gets up and runs from the class before the tears can fall.

I am enraged right now. I know she’s just a kid, and kids are like this, but I really want to do something... bad. I’m disturbed by my insane reaction to this childhood rejection. It happens to everyone. It’s normal, I tell myself. I have gotten way too enmeshed in this kid’s life. It’s unhealthy. It’s psychotic. And it has to stop. Why am I watching him?

Why am I checking up on him all the time? What the fuck do I hope to accomplish here? I have to end this imaginary parent-child relationship I’ve made up in my head. What the fuck is wrong with me?

One of the moms chases after Aidan to make sure he’s okay, and I use the opportunity to slip out of the classroom. I go down the hallway in the opposite direction from where I can still hear the kid’s sniffling. I’ve got a job to focus on, and it isn’t being Aidan’s fake dad.

I am so glad I get to go kill some people now.

6

MINA

I stare out the window, and I’m sure I look like a sad kitten from an ASPCA commercial right now. The snow is coming down hard and the flights are grounded. I know because I already checked. The hit isn’t until Monday, so maybe we could fly in a day or two. We’d still make it. But this storm system is insane. I don’t know if anything is flying out of here before Valentine’s Day.

Fuck. I need to be some place warm. I’ve been hanging on by a thread, knowing that at least I’ll be able to get this brief reprieve from winter. And now it might not happen. I’m about ten seconds from just flinging myself onto the ground like a toddler and having a fit over this new turn of events.

Now we’ll have to figure out a new way to take these two out, and there’s no guarantee of when we’ll be able to catch them both together away from their people. We could even lose the contracts to someone else—someone local to the area. We promised a Valentine kill, after all. They aren’t going to want to wait beyond that, but if we can’t even get out there…

The hamster running feverishly on the wheel in my head stops abruptly, his little cartoon eyes bugging straight out of his head as I notice Brian coming toward me with intent. I have literally forgotten all the thoughts in my head and probably couldn’t even reconstruct them on penalty of my own death.

Sure, he’s got the same violent and terrifying vibes as normal, but I have to say, it’s not landing the same way it normally does right now.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” I ask under my breath when he reaches me. And I’m really trying not to laugh because we’ve made every strong effort to maintain Brian’s image and my demure submission to the Big Bad Wolf. And we have been more-or-less successful up until now, but I’m standing in the cafeteria—a common gathering space for the girls at the house—so we have an audience.

And he looks like… God, I don’t even know what he looks like… He kind of looks like a suburban dad, the kind of guy who shows up to every soccer practice because he doesn’t have a high-powered corporate job to focus on. But why? My mind can’t even begin to conceive a reason he would need to dress like this.

The whispers in the cafeteria grow louder and Brian shoots them a menacing glare.

“Listen ladies, if you think I won’t get the khakis dirty to punish bad girls, you’d be wrong.”

The whispering abruptly stops, and they return to their tea. Oh yeah, in the afternoon we have tea time. Just after the new year, Phyllis got on this whole scone kick and demanded all these adorable mismatched tea cups and saucers and little plates, and so now we do afternoon tea, like we’re all proper and shit.

They go back to their tea time ritual and I turn my attention back to Brian.

“I’m kind of into this whole dad vibe you’ve got going on… but I have questions, first among them… do you want me to call you Daddy now?”

“No.”

“So what’s with the wardrobe?”

“It’s not important,” he hedges.

I pout. “Come on… you can trust me.”

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