2019.

The whole ride home on the Titan Metro Bus, Gracie kept checking her phone to see the midterm grades. Only her math class had posted so far — a 98. She had never gotten a 98 on anything in high school, not even her art class, which had been mostly based on participation.

That had always been her weak point, participation. She rarely showed up and even more rarely handed in assignments. School never seemed important back then. None of it tied into any kind of future she could imagine for herself.

All school meant was not being home for the day, and so long as she wasn’t home, she could be out in the woods behind the teacher’s parking lot with the other equally unmotivated kids. They had things to offer her, things she needed—acknowledgment, belonging, laughter, comfort, and safety, or at least the feeling of it.

Sure, sometimes Biscuit would be off his meds and try something especially dangerous like attempting to light his farts on fire, but three or four voices would talk him down from most of the worst of his ideas. Somehow, Biscuit still managed to rip off his eyebrows in one super-glue-related incident. But those grew back.

Teachers and counselors always said the same thing to her: “You’re so smart. If only you applied yourself…” Who’d have thought, years later, they’d turn out to be right? Certainly, not Gracie.

The glow of that grade, that 98, cast a warmth over the grim faces of the Titan Metro. If she could turn out not to be so bad, maybe the whole world had pleasant surprises awaiting. The exhausted mother with her children fighting over a noisy device might someday celebrate them as valedictorians. The waitress, still in her apron, sleeping against the window, might soon pay off the debt that kept her on her feet for too many hours. Gracie was feeling so good that when she got to her bus stop and the corner boys in their puffy jackets called out, “Hey, beautiful, what’s up?” she didn’t even flip them the bird as she walked by.

But nearing her apartment building, something felt off. The dogs she heard barking in distress sounded just like Kristen’s dogs, Jerry and Joe. And then she saw them — in the yard, not on leashes, their attention fixed on the front door, angry at being forced outside. Gracie broke into a run, sprinted past the dogs, and flung open the door.  

The apartment was a cramped, cluttered shoebox of a place. Its walls bore the ghosts of old tenants’ picture hangings, and cracks spiderwebbed out from their corners. The ceiling, yellowed from decades of other people’s cigarette smoke, loomed over thin, colorless carpeting that did an amazing job of holding on to dust and dog hair, in defiance of repeated vacuuming.

Jerry and Joe rushed in, barking at Zack, Kristen’s boyfriend, who they never liked, but this was a whole new level. He slouched on the couch, watching zombies gnaw flesh off the living on TV, a half-empty bottle of Medusa’s Head rum in hand. The milk crate coffee table in front of him was littered with an empty pizza box, junk mail, and plastic cups that might walk themselves to the sink any day now.

Zack winced at the dogs, scrunching up a face marred by a growing bruise and a fresh cut above his eyebrow. “The fuck, Gracie? Why’d you let those shitheads in?”

“These shitheads live here,” she said. “Unlike you. Where’s Kristen?”

“Sleeping it off.” He nodded toward the bedroom he shared with her, rent-free.

Turning that way, Gracie’s eye caught the remnants of some kind of catastrophe spilled across the kitchen floor — overturned milk bowls, multicolored cereal pieces, broken glass — and blood.

She didn’t stop to ask why.

Bolting toward the bedroom, Gracie called out, “Kristen?” No response. 

As she threw the door open, a shaft of light pierced the dark to reveal a shadow tangled in the sheets of Kristen’s bed. Gracie crouched down beside her roommate and called her name again, more softly this time. “Kristen?” Then she reached out to brush the hair away from her face and felt something wet, sticky.

Gracie switched on the lamp.

The wound on the side of Kristen’s head had been bleeding long enough to paint dark red streaks across a face swollen with bruises. Drool bubbled on her torn lips, an indication she was still breathing at least. Gracie didn’t need to be the world’s greatest detective to figure out who had done this to her.

She wheeled back to the living room and found Zack was on his feet, Jerry and Joe barking at him. 

“That’s it!” he shouted. “I have fucking had it with you two!” Zack raised the bottle of Medusa’s Head to bring it down on one of the dog’s skulls. But he never got the chance.

At a full run, Gracie grabbed Zack by his greasy, sweat-stained shirt and drove him backward, into the wall. “What did you do to her?” she snarled.

“Get the fuck off me!”

Gracie slammed him back into the wall once more. “Answer me, goddamn it!”

“She fucking knows better than to talk shit to me! She knows what happens if she does!”

The scream that came out of Gracie didn’t even sound human. “I am going to fucking kill you!”

Zack lifted the bottle to swing at her, but Gracie shifted and flung him aside. He crashed to the floor, and the weapon fell from his grip. Then Gracie pounced on his chest, driving a fist into his cheek. Blood spattered over his shoulder. She struck again. And again. And again.

Zack managed to shove her off and staggered upright. Gracie launched herself at him, once more, but he grabbed an ashtray and hurled it at her face.

The explosion of ash choked her, stunned her. As she coughed and gagged, two sharp jabs from Zack sent Gracie stumbling backward into the kitchen. She landed in the mess of cereal, milk, and shattered glass.

“You think you’re tough, little bitch?” He kicked her in the stomach, and she doubled over.  “She’s my girlfriend! Mine!” Another kick. “And what I say goes!”

Gracie reached blindly. Her fingers found the neck of a broken beer bottle. When Zack moved to kick her for a third time, she drove its jagged edge right into his shin. Zack howled and lost his balance, falling backward. His head smacked the corner of the milk crate coffee table, and he was suddenly silent and still.

Jerry and Joe kept barking at his unmoving form. Gracie forced herself upright. Her vision swam and her whole body burned with rage. She couldn’t feel anything else.

Gracie looked down at Zack — unconscious, helpless. The milk crate had given at the force of his fall, softening the impact. From what Gracie had seen in movies, hitting his head like that on a real coffee table might have ended him…

She looked at the broken bottle in her hand. His blood dripped dark from its edge, down the bottleneck, down her fingers.

This fight, this night — it wouldn’t change anything. Zack would just hurt Kristen again. Maybe worse than hurt. But Gracie could make sure he never hurt anyone else ever.

How hard would it actually be? What would it cost Gracie to remove a piece of shit like Zack from the world? Would it be worth it?

All she had to do was to do it. Don’t think. Just do. It could be like carving a pumpkin — one simple, decisive motion. One line. Ear to ear.

Gracie tightened her grip. She hadn’t noticed the dogs going quiet.

And then she saw it — tendrils of a spectral mist began to curl around Zack’s body. The fog engulfed him and reached outward, expanding into the room. It smelled sharp, sulfurous, and at the same time sickly sweet. And in that otherworldly haze, she saw a figure, hooded and cloaked.

A voice seemed to resonate in Gracie’s bones. “Don’t…”

He stepped out of the fog like he was stepping out of the cover of Nights of Justice — the Crimson Wraith, right there in her living room. 

His clothes were the same dark hue that had dripped its way down Gracie’s wrist. He wore tall cavalier boots and leather gauntlets. A black belt with silver skull-shaped clasp wrapped around his waist over a doublet with black brocade. And from within the shadow of his hood, the white skull gazed at her with darkened sockets that showed no eyes, no mercy, only the cold promise of reckoning.

Gracie blinked. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”