Love You to Death

This is how it starts:

A beep. Just one. Then another. Text message, unread.

Where are you?Miss you.Call me.

And it’s sweet, right? Romantic. You think it’s just some poor girl sitting alone on her couch, bundled up in a hoodie three sizes too big, staring at her phone like it’s a lifeline. You picture her biting her lip, glancing at the clock, waiting for that reply.

Like she’s hanging on your every word. Every pause. Every silence.

But here’s the thing: her name isn’t Sarah or Lizzie or whatever cutesy, wide-eyed, love-drunk name you’d give her. She’s Ruth, as in Ruthless. And this isn’t a love story. This is something else. Something with teeth. Something with claws.

And that couch? Empty. No blanket, no hoodie. Ruth’s not sitting around.

Ruth’s in her car. Parked outside your apartment, right now. Staring up at your window.

This isn’t about love.

This is about territory.

There’s a drawer in Ruth’s bedroom. Bottom one, hidden beneath the old sweaters and ratty T-shirts she hasn’t worn in years. In that drawer are the trophies: your missing sock. A crumpled Post-it note you scribbled your grocery list on. A bent Starbucks straw. The hair you cut off in a drunken fit last summer, wrapped in plastic, tied with a little blue bow.

Little pieces of you.

You’d call it creepy. But to Ruth, it’s like holding on to pieces of a dream. Little shards of glass that used to be a mirror—your smile, your scent, your you-ness.

Ruth collects these things like a serial killer collects bones.

Because Ruth doesn’t want to date you.

She wants to consume you.