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Friend. That's a funny word, friend. Friendship connotes trust, and the ability to rely on each other. So it struck me as ever so slightly confusing when I looked down at the hand holding a dagger to my throat and saw my best friend's tattoo emerging from the sleeve.
"Emily? Emily what are you-" She clapped a hand over my mouth to shut me up.
"Shut it." The voice, it was hers, but it also wasn't. Emily was holding a dagger to my throat, yet she wasn't.
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I look down at my hand, clutched within Emily's.
The hand that's holding a dagger to my throat.
She's trying to get me to skip around with her, tugging on my hand.
The hand that's being held behind my back to stop me from moving.
I give in and she starts skipping.
On legs that will be used to approach me from behind. To hold a knife to my throat.
"Emily, Janice, come inside! Lunch is ready!" Emily groans in complaint.
"But Mrs Janice's Mum, she just agreed to skip with me!"
Words coming from the same mouth that just issues the threat to remain silent.
"Well you can play later! Lunch first!"
"Ugh, your mum has no joy." I laugh, becausethat'd what friends do around each other, they laugh.
They don't try to kill each other.
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Emily pressed the blade closer to my neck, deep enough to draw blood but not cause any irreversible damage. "You killed my mother. You killed her and you're not even sorry!"
I tried to relax my breathing so I didn't accidentally impale myself. "Emily, I swear, I had no idea what was gonna happen on that trip, I didn't know she was gonna get hurt!"
"YOU DID! You said she should go to this new coastal resort! You said she would have a blast there! You knew it wasn't safe! You knew the place would flood!"
"I DIDN'T! I promise you, Emily, I had no idea that the tide would rise so high, and I never, for a single goddamed second, believed that that would happen and she would drown! I heard about some new fancy shmancy new coastal resort, thought of how she always wanted to go on holiday to those kinds of places, and said she should check it out! I was just as devastated as you were when I found out what happened to her!"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP, YOU DUMB BITCH! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID I KNOW YOU KILLED HER I KNOW I KNOW IT I KNOW IT I KNOW IT!" In her madness, she unintentionally held me closer to her, and drove the blade ever so deeper into my throat.
"Emily-" I croaked. "Emily, please- Emily I can't- I can't-"
"JUST SHUT UP!"
"EMILY NO-"