Human

So it was true.

He looks at the tiny form sprawled in the dirt. Her hair is matted, her eyes closed blissfully. She could be sleeping.

He knows she isn’t.

He isn’t usually an emotional person. He’s seen enough of these— things— to remain unaffected for the most part. Usually he gets what he needs and gets out. That's the only way, he’s told himself. The only way to survive in this world. It has worked. He is alive, he is breathing, he is unaffected.

But she is dead.

There should be tears. He should be appalled at the gash that adorned her temple. He should touch her blond curls, mourning the loss of someone so young. He should fall to the ground in grief at the senseless loss of life.

Should …

But he doesn’t. He can’t. He has to get what he needs and leave.

Carefully, slowly, agonizingly he lifts up the hem of her Hello Kitty shirt. Her stomach was bruised, beaten from the pale white that her mother had thought was perfect to hideous shades of black and blue.

There. The cut runs up the length of her right side. He spreads the opening with a gloved finger, like every other time. Only this is different than every other time.

He should be weeping.

He can feel it. Just like all the others. A small disk in a plastic case. He grips the edge in his fingertips and pulls, slowly. It slided out with ease, her blood not yet dried.

He would take the disk back to his apartment and watch it, just like all the others. He would remember that he should be sickened by what was on it. Remember what it was like to be human.

He doesn’t think he can be human, not after…

With the bloody disk safe in hand, he turns to leave the small patch of woods. The park is deserted this late at night. Of course it is.

These things are always planned so perfectly.

He is nearing his car when the shaking starts, finally. The blood on his hands is more than literal, marring his heart and his mind with its gruesomeness. He needs to wash it off.

It’s the first human thought he’s had in months. Years. Lifetimes.

The blood is gone when he finally gets in the car. The disk is clean, as well. His heart is a dark, tainted hole.

It never quite hits him. He never lets it really sink in. What he’d just done. What he’s about to do.

She was his daughter.

At least, she was when he still felt human enough to have one.