Touch

First

TOUCH

Katie Pops thought she was an ugly girl.

She was quite beautiful, actually. She had inherited her mother's tightly curled, brown-black locks, rich chocolate eyes, and golden-tinted skin--hallmarks of her Latina ancestry. Katie's father had doted her with a smattering of freckles, a lean, athletic body, and very kissable lips.

Yes, she was beautiful.

But the only explanation Katie could conceive, the only reason that, in her mind, might explain why, for nearly every one of the twenty-two years she'd been alive others had shunned, taunted, or despised her, was rooted in her startling lack of self-esteem.

She had to be ugly.

If she'd been thinking harder, rather than making her reflection in the mirror pout and pose, she might have wondered whether her social woes were not due to her arguably contemptible behaviour instead. To put it mildly, Katie Pops was an incurable prankster, and she had accomplished next to nothing with her life. She had no future plans. Living with her parents meant free everything, and no need to work. The Pops never pressured her to do, well, anything.

It was an easy, pampered life, and it showed. Katie's ensuite was a grand, white affair, with a coffered ceiling and almost bursting vanity cabinet. The countertops were grey and the plants an artificial green; the tiles under her bare feet, smooth ivory; the tub huge, freestanding, and oblong; the mirror in front of her shaped like a crescent, or "half moon." (This was the term the interior decorator had used, along with others that had flown over Katie's head like "feng shui.")

Her bathroom was a palace and she should be its queen; instead she felt like a lowly maidservant. She did not feel lucky, or fulfilled, or superior. She didn't pose to flaunt her beauty, didn't revel in her privilege.

She felt worn, like a piece of paper you scribble on, then clear, writing, then erasing. Eventually the eraser marks themselves are what soil the used-to-be clean surface.

The thought made her face burn. She leaned into the sink and turned on the water, patting her cheeks with cold liquid to calm them. Her fingers were about to turn the faucet back when a hand grabbed her face.

The hand was strong, dark, and quick. It squished her nose and dug into her, pulling her toward the sink bowl. Katie managed a short, high-pitched scream; an instant later, the hand covered her mouth, freeing her eyes.

Her next scream was not muffled by the hand over her perfect mouth. It was silenced by sheer terror.

The hand that held her jutted out from a long, twisted forearm that projected itself out and down the sink faucet, like bad Photoshop in real life. It was a left hand, with six too-long, gnarly fingers. The arm and hand were thinly muscled, shiny black, and their texture was that of hard, wet rubber.

Impossible.