a r k a d e

Ella sunk forward on the balls of her feet, gripping her hilt tightly as Prava stepped into the light from within her granite den.

She looked like a silhouette as she prowled closer, her dress clinging to her hips and stomach like stripes on a tiger. She wore the gown like a sheathed knife. The wide strips of tar-black cloth shifting as she walked, flashes of pale skin beneath breaking through sunlight past a shroud of leaves. Scarlet wool divided the fabric into a myriad of slanting diamonds, the lines cutting across her form in a dangerous cascade of Vs and Xs. To Ella they just looked like hashed guidelines for where she should cut. The gown may as well have been a placard hung upon a butcher’s wall—lines sectioning beef.

Dead bitch. Prava’s eyes lingered, the black fabric of her gown splitting into windows of snow-white flesh as she bent forward menacingly. Foolish, stubborn, meat.

Ella’s thoughts swirled with revenge and death, Prava was simply prey and she was the assurance of her death.
      

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