Bitchin'

I

Hannah Gehringer was the first person in my life - and, until today, possibly the *only* person in my life - whom I hated so much that I wanted her dead. After what she had done to Thomas, after it sank in that she had destroyed his life, I saw her face in every dream I had. I became obsessed. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about her, from staring at her on college campus whenever she passed me, from parking my old, shabby VW Polo in front of her student's home at nights. I would sit in the shadows, watch her window and try to collect enough courage to climb out of my car and knock at her door and, when she eventually opened, beat her up.

I could have done that, you know? I'm a woman too, but you can bet your ass that I could have kicked the shit out of Hannah Gehringer. I'm neither helpless nor frail.

I was exhausted at that time, because I worked in three different bars. I still needed to earn money to pay my rent and pay for college. College was important to me, because my family consists of losers of all sorts, and I wanted to break that circle of fuckuppery. I didn't want to be a loser for the rest of my life. I wanted to achieve something.

Which is exactly why I never climbed out of that car: Hannah Gehringer was the antithesis of what I was: She came from a rich, influential family. She was set to be successful and live a meaningful life. She was a blonde, very pretty, small girl with a winning smile and large blue eyes and tiny white teeth. She was member of an influential fraternity. Everybody loved her and she was untouchable for someone like me.

Messing with her would mean that I deliberately would fuck up big time. If I hurt her, if I only did as much as to *attract her attention* and make her my enemy, she would be able to get me into all sorts of trouble. There was no way that a girl like me could win against a girl like her. And so, trying to do the wise thing, I never approached her in those months.

But there are mirrors in bars, and when you work in three(!) bars you see yourself in these fucking mirrors all the time. Here is what I saw: There was this alt girl in the mirrors, tall and in pretty good shape, with strong arms and a nice grin, her short hair dyed blue, her nose and lips and ears pierced and tattoos on her forearms and the sides of her neck. She looked like a tough girl, one you didn't want to mess with. But I knew that her looks were just a diversion from what this alt girl really was: A fucking coward who wouldn't even stand up for the boy who had been her best friend.

And that's why, one evening, I was in my car again, and the car was parked in front of Gehringers' students home again, and I was kind of drunk again, and the anger was boiling in my stomach again.

Usually I would just sit there while hours passed, and finally I would start the engine and drive home and hate myself for being such a douche. But this time, around 3 a.m. on a weekday, I saw a lonely figure climbing out of a cab, paying the driver and, as the cab drove away, turning towards the house.

It was Hannah Gehringer. She wore a black designer dress and held in her hand a black purse of the kind that looked minimalistic and still would be worth at least two of my monthly wages. How much would the diamond-encrusted ring on her hand be worth? I didn't have a fucking idea.

Gehringers had her hair tied into a simple ponytail and still looked fucking great. She walked in her high heels as if she'd been born in them. She looked so confident, so beautiful and so pleased with her life that I had a pretty hard time keeping myself from jumping out of the car and screaming at her.

But as it turned out that wouldn't even be necessary: She had just passed my car, which was parked on the other side of the street, when she suddenly stopped. She turned her head and looked right at me. Her eyes narrowed and she began walking towards my Volkswagen.

The fact that after all this time *she* came towards me was so absurd and so shocking that for a moment I felt the impulse to start the engine and get the fuck away from her. But I managed to fight that impulse down and I got out of the car as Hannah Gehringer approached me. I stood there and was absurdly insecure about what I was supposed to do now, when she put her small hands to her waist and cocked her head a bit to the side, mustering me.

"You know, I'm not fucking blind. Why are you stalking me, punk?"

I didn't know what to say. This was the first time that she spoke directly to me and I was just surprised about how sharp her voice sounded and how intensely she looked at me. I had imagined our confrontation pretty different.

"I'm Jennifer", I said insecurely.

"I don't give a shit about your name, punk girl", she immediately replied. "I just want to know what's going on here. Are you a fucking lesbian?"

I did the worst possible thing: Instead of saying anything I just shook my head, totally intimidated.

"Well, what do you want from me then? I know you from campus, and every time we pass each other you stare at me like a fucking weirdo. And I have seen your car - or what you *call* a car - too often in this street. You come here at nights and I can see your shadow on the drivers' seat, and you look up at my window for hours. So what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm friends with Thomas", I said weakly. "That's why..." My voice trailed away. I had thought that I was tough and now had to realize that all it needed was a girl two heads smaller than me, with that kind of attitude, and I couldn't do shit.

But now Hannah was confused. "You are friends with Thomas? So what? Who is Thomas?"

The shock finally managed to get my out of my trance. "What do you mean, 'Who is Thomas'? Thomas was the boy you dated. *Thomas is the guy who nearly killed himself because of you!*"

Gehringer blinked, still needing a moment to understand what I was talking about. Then, after two or three seconds, she began to smile. It wasn't a pretty smile too... it was a bit weird, much too amused and somehow cold, and definitely not what you would expect to see on such a pretty girls face. Her mouth smiled, but her eyes did not.

"Oh, you mean *Ratboy*. I remember him, of course. Hey, that was months ago."

"His name isn't Ratboy. He's a punk, not a rat. And his name is Thomas, and you broke his fucking heart. Do you know that he overdosed because of you?"

I so hoped she would say no, that she had not known that, and that she would apologize and be heartbroken. I felt sick and I had just realized how stupid my obsession with her had been. Had she told me she had not known about his condition then I might just have gone home.

But instead Hannah Gehringer laughed. Like her smile, the laugh was not at all pretty. It was a sickening sound, amused for all the wrong reasons, and soaked with poison. I began to ask myself if this was a sane woman.

"I know that he overdosed, but what the hell do I care? He was a joke to me, just someone to shock a friend with. Do you know why I said yes when Ratboy asked me out? I had to attend the birthday party of a girl I hate. Going there with Ratboy was like bringing an ugly dog to shit on the carpet, to make a special kind of statement." She shrugged. "You know, he was funny for an evening. I told him that later, and I thought he'd be cool about it." She cocked her head a bit to the side, mustering me very interested. She wanted to see my reaction, it was obvious. "And your friend Ratboy started crying and told me he was into me. *Into* me!" She laughed again. The sound made me feel very cold. "I just hate it when men cry. Don't you too?"

"Thomas was my friend, you damn bitch! He had problems, but he was one of the best guys I've ever known." I didn't know what else to say. My hands had turned to fists without me noticing it. "He was my friend, and he overdosed because you broke his fucking heart, and he's in a coma and you don't give a shit?"

"Oh", she simply said. "I assumed he had died in the meantime. Well, I guess Darwinism doesn't always hold up to its promises."

There had been one last mental thread holding me back from attacking her. Now it snapped.

A curtain came down in front of my eyes and now I saw everything in shades of red. I grabbed the bitch by her shoulder without thinking, and I raised a fist to fundamentally rearrange that pretty, sneering visage of hers. I didn't plan to kill her, but I was furious and filled with rage. It's very possible that I would have accidentally ended her life had I gotten the chance.

But something curious happened: As I grabbed her shoulder she moved so surprisingly fast, especially for a high society girl who could not have a lot of fighting experience (or could she...?). She whirled around, evaded my fist and kicked me so hard against the body that I stumbled two steps backwards and felt a sharp stinging pain in my ribcage. Hadn't I been energized by anger, I might have collapsed.

Instead I flung myself towards her again, smashed into her and grabbed her for good this time. Since I was larger than Hannah I was able to push her backwards. She wasn't smiling anymore by now, but she was definitely less scared than I would have expected. And that was *unsettling*. While we wrestled she planted two, three very fast punches with her little fists against my ribcage and each of those felt as if was wearing leaden gloves. I buried a fist deep in her stomach and she made a wheezing noise as the air was forced out of her lungs. But she did not yet give up: her hand disappeared in the small black purse that was still dangling from her shoulder, and when it reappeared she was holding a small, black device with a bright blue, flickering flame at its tip.

Had I not blocked her in the last second, she would have thrust the taser right into my face.

The crazy bitch was baring her teeth like a dangerous animal. She tried to hit me with the taser again, and just barely I managed to grab her wrist, bend it to the side and protect myself from her attack. We struggled with each other.

"Why so angry?", she asked me with a hissing voice that finally persuaded me: This woman was a psychopath. The pretty mask she showed hid nothing else than insanity and cruelty. "Is it because you wanted him to date you and fuck you and have little ratkids with you? Aaaww did I spoil your..."

I lifted her up, more hateful than I had ever been in my life, and threw her. I threw her against the side of my Volkswagen, and she smashed against the car with her head and her back and then fell to the ground.

For a moment I thought I had killed her. The night around me was very silent, and very dark. I wished it would swallow me.

But then she started moving again. She moaned and sat up on the asphalt. Her hair was like a yellow curtain in front of her face. I couldn't see her eyes, but I could see the pearly shimmer of her small teeth as she grinned. With one she touched the back of her head, and when she looked at her fingers I could see that there was some blood sticking to the tips.

"Game over", she said amused. "You just tried to kill me, and you'll go to prison for this. You are even going to pay for all my medical bills. And I will have a lot of medical bills." She giggled, in the same sickening way as before. "Game over", she repeated. "I'm going to destroy your fucking life, slut."

The taser was laying half way between us on the ground. I took it with a hand that felt ice cold. I could not think straight, but it also wasn't a panic reaction. At that day I had no idea what the fuck it was that drove me to switch the taser back on.

Hannah Gehringer looked up and saw it in my hand, and she was just slightly confused. She furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to ask something, and right in that moment I pushed her back against the car, rammed the taser against her body and unloaded it into her.

She twitched and shuddered, I could hear her teeth gnashing as the electricity shot through her muscles and cramped them. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, her hands grabbed for my face, but she didn't have them under much control and so I could just turn my head a bit to the side and evade them. I switched the taser off and she slumped against me, but still tried to move. She was wheezing and moaning under her breath... I could hear her whispering what a bitch I was. "You're... sso... ffucking... dead...", she mumbled.

So I unloaded the taser into her again, sending her into the same frantic twitching as before. This time, when I deactivated it after a few seconds, she couldn't move anymore. Her eyes had rolled backwards, her body was limp. She was still breathing though.

I looked around, lost in utter disbelief about what I had done. It was like a small miracle, but the street was still deserted and there also didn't seem to be any spectators in the windows of the students' home. I had to get out of there. I didn't know what to do next, but I did know very well that I had to get the fuck away from that house and off that street. And I could not leave Hannah here.So I opened the trunk and put her inside, and then I got into the car and started the engine with shaking hands, and I drove off as fast as I could, with my thoughts racing.I had fucked up my whole life and it seemed that the only question left would be: In what way did I want to go down?