Loveland
Loveland, Colorado.
A quaint town.
A charming town.
Sister to Fort Collins, Colorado, it had the quiet spirit not shared by its crowded counterpart. Populated by the elderly and veterans with slightly racist predispositions, it bordered on suburbia - but just barely.
People often sent post cards to the post office for Valentine’s day, a cute tradition afforded only by the city’s name. Of course, there was also Loveland, Ohio - perhaps a more desirable destination than this little shithole.
Alice Brookes was born and raised in Loveland, Colorado.
From the corner of a coffee shop, she watched as old folk shuffled in and out, clutching their pearls at the stark differences of the youth. What had once been a refuge for the upper middle class had become a rundown cesspool of weed skunks struggling to afford their rent; with piercings, dyed hair, and tattoos - migrants from Fort Collins, no doubt - Alice chuckled slightly at slight tells of aversion to the younger generation.
Sipping on her breve mocha, she savored the rich, artery clogging creation - until she saw it: red, boxy dyed hair, a man too large to qualify as skinny but too thin to quaify as obese with that God awful neck beard.
It wasn’t him, of course - it couldn’t be.
He was up in Missoula, Montana.
Yet as the gentleman approached the counter to order, it took everything within her not to reach into her purse and gouge a pen into his neck.
It wasn’t him - but she saw red nonetheless.
It wasn’t him, but she clenched her fist against the arm of her chair until her knuckles turned pale white.
It wasn’t him...but just barely.
Torn between fleeing to her car and responding in violence only justified by the crime he’d committed upon her, she stared ahead at the lights.
She paid no mind to odd looks. She made no mind to the spare utterance or comment sent her way by strangers too self important to mind their own god damned business.
As the lights overhead began to turn orange, a strange sense of calmness overtook her. The man in the line wasn’t her rapist.
...She watched as he spoke over the woman beside him, interjecting her order with his own; she listened as he held money over her head, half tempted to offer to buy the damned drink herself.
She watched as the woman made herself smaller; shrinking to please him, to keep the peace, to placate him.
Alice Brookes was born and raised in Loveland, Colorado. A cesspool and a shithole on the outskirts of weed city, she knew all too well the kind of filth this sort of city could breed.
...And as she watched the couple exit the shop, the man not even bothering to wait for his partner as he left, letting the door shut on her, something in her clicked into place.
Raising her cup, she took a sip of her breve mocha. That age old, familiar mantra rang through her head like a sacred, private, quiet truth.
Men take.
On a sunny, chilly day in March, a woman sat in a café in a dying town, the town that reared her, but just barely.
On a sunny, chilly day in March, the woman pondered the man who’d assaulted her - the man who had been her final straw.
...On a sunny, chilly day in March, a killer was born.
