Ex-Pression
A version of this story first appeared at Trembling With Fear (9/13/2026).
The air was cold enough outside Palms that she could see her breath. He was wearing studded boots and a bracelet with carvings that looked like veins.
Someone asked in a hushed voice if they wanted to go somewhere after the show. Sarah wasn’t sure who had said it. Only that the voice wasn’t hers.
He introduced himself as Erik—tallest of the group with a head of short, ruffled blond hair. He had sharp cheeks and an almost angular grin.
She should have been curling up watching a reaction to a scary movie on her phone, not going out to—
Round Two at a diner. And the conversations flowed, although she couldn’t remember what had been said, and at some point the last friend in her group had parted ways with Sarah and Erik with a meaningful furrow of her brow. Sarah had dismissed her with a wave of her hand. She’d be safe. The friend knew where they’d last been seen.
She couldn’t remember how it had happened, but they’d wound up back at her apartment. She’d asked to see his ID before he entered—a precaution. Seemed legit.
He pored over her books, which were toppling across shelves, splayed across her desk next to the open laptop. He looked over the many films, sparkling translucent blue cases lining her shelves.
“You do a lot of reading.” His voice sounded like cool air. “Fill me in?”
And she did—she filled him in on all the stoning and burning and tooth-pulling, all sorts of other grisly outcomes from tenuous accusations covered by her dissertation. His lips were locked to hers before an awkward moment even had time to hang between them. She pressed back.
The two fell asleep after kisses and light caresses, a barrier of blankets between them. His skin was so cold. Or was that the room?
He crept up in the mirror behind her. Well, not crept. Sauntered, the action not so much threatening as lackadaisical, dream-like. She reached down for the tube of—
Mush?
Toothpaste.
She had gestured toward it and he’d thoughtfully picked it up, proffering it to her with an outstretched hand. Morning brain.
Erik grinned sheepishly. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, which she realized must still have smelled like sweat and stale shampoo. His tall body was framed behind hers.
He had to take off soon. But, he asked, voice deep but somehow shy, cherubic—could he see her again?
Was this what they called l—
Interest?
She decided it must be. She liked the way he laughed. She liked the way he liked her bookish self.
She found it hard to concentrate. She dropped bullet point after bullet point onto the page; they splattered it like ink.
She continued to see Erik. Bowling alley, combination bar-pizzeria, her place, hi—
They never went to his ap—
His room.
“Do you ever forget, just, simple words?” she asked while picking at a plate of nachos. The streetlights outside were lumino—
Bright.
“Bright, baby doll, you’re so bright,” he said in that deep, cherubic voice of his, crunching into a chip in turn. When Erik said it, he tinged it with the right amount of insincerity to make it feel—
“You’ve been working too hard. We all have moments like that.” He raised his hand up just over shoulder level, flagging the waitress for a drink.
She couldn’t find the bookstore where he worked. She’d been hoping to surprise him with two coffees whose sugary scents licked the air.
Pumpkin decorations, plasticine and lustr—
Colorful, still hung from lights and awnings here and there.
She went to the address her app had called up based on the name he’d shared, but all she found was an old deli.
Strange. It took her a moment to read the sign. The shapes adorning it seemed foreign. She squinted. Curves formed into meaning.
C-L-O-S…
E
It clicked. She pulled her gaze away. She could have sworn she felt something boring into her—like eyes.
“Where were you?” Erik was flipping through the book adjacent to her computer near her desk, showing genuine—
Interest in her wor—
Stuff. She apprec—
Liked it. How could she not?
She got up. She tried to explain to him, point after point, the connections between ancient methods of accusation, information extraction, and parallels in the pres—
Now.
“Here.” She was pointing to a bullet point on the screen before she knew it. She wasn’t sure why.
Erik scrolled through, nodding. His skin was so pale. Almost alaba—
White.
“Oh, baby doll, baby doll, baby doll.”
Erik had come over to console her. She hadn’t made progress all week.
He was looking over her screen, standing over her shoulder as she typed.
“Academic pressure,” he said. People in these programs often had breakdowns. Well, not breakdowns, he clarified. It was the stress. He’d known people in them. He’d even been in one himself. He could provide a jumpstart, perhaps.
“There,” he said. “‘Discrepancies.’ There, ‘conflagration.’”
Her fingers click-clacked on the keys.
His breath was hot on her neck. “Asphyxiation.”
“You’re worrying too much,” Rutvi said. Wisps of steam rose off their tea in their shared office space.
Her thesis advisor looked up with concern.
She grabbed paper, a pen. Maybe her body would remember. She etched notes onto the page but could tell by the shapes they were jumbled. No ideas emerged. The final line looked to not even contain letters, but a shape in the squiggles—a silhouette?
She ran down the streets from campus. Billboards and signs no longer held meaning. Words she couldn’t read passed by her. She stopped just to breathe. Everything—when had it started? Everything was—
Incompre—
Wrong.
She couldn’t speak. She knew. She knew. He’d told her, hadn’t he? He’d known people in programs. All of it poured in in images. A face, a sym—
She was certain she’d been shouting, but nothing had come out. Just small squeaks.
Her mother was calling. She could only make out the “M” on the phone.
“Are…?” She could hear the softness. But the sentiment poured out as sludge.
She felt her tongue wagging. It was all soft tissue. No wo—
She put the phone down. Breath—
Hurti—
She pressed Erik’s icon. It hardly seemed an instant before his lanky frame was lurching through her door.
Angular grin. “What’s wrong, baby doll?”
Enjoy the call with your
mom?
Dark now. She had to check herself into a hospital. She was cer—
No. Erik was g— mis—
What was he—taking?
not here.
She tossed herself out the front door, still dressed in pajamas. Something sharp and heavy pressed against the inside of her wrist. She gripped the handle. Concealed inside a shirt sl—
tube.
She ran through the market.
Erik had sent her a text. Car. Green grass. 4.
She could still see the number on her screen.
Erik was waiting in the parking lot by the train tracks. Standing in front of his black car, jacket gliiiist—
sparkle, bright.
He walked toward her, arms outstretched. “Baby doll.” He leaned in close. She wasn’t sure what he was saying, but she understood the tone. “Just leaving.” Her ea—
Hearing pricked. Hot.
Breath.
“…said you wanted me to go. I took you for your word.”
Her arm had raised before she even felt the muscle twinge. The knife stuck him—not in the heart, where it would kill, but the stomach, where it would hurt. She felt something run down her arm, warm and sticky. She felt it pulsing beneath her skin.
He didn’t so much as stagger, but stood upright, eyebrows raised, grinning like he was about to laugh. Something black poured out of him.
She hoped she never—
The words appeared one at a time.
He was still standing, so she kneed him once in the stomach and twice in the crotch. More black substance bubbled from his lips.
She turned and ran, looking back only once. He wiped the blood from his mouth. The thought struck her, so clearly, that she hoped she never saw him again.
