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This story contains sensitive themes. One of two prompt responses.

I prayed that he would die, then God answered those prayers. Now his body’s flesh is rotting from its bone in a cemetery six miles from the San Diego Zoo. I wish they’d fed him to the lions, or turned him into chum. Who’s the monster, now?

He was ever-present in those first few weeks. I’d go on walks around the park, and feel him in the gust of passing runners and the beep of locking cars. The hair on the back of my neck would prickle. Are you horny for me, baby?

I hate that word. Raspy in my buzzing head, his fingers painting clammy lines at the nape of my neck, making bile swirl in my stomach and at the back of my throat. I had squeezed my eyes shut, like that could keep him out, hoping that I could make myself disappear by holding still. Are you horny for me, baby?

I’d fantasized about feeling his blood, breaking every bone in his body, the sharp heat of palming his nose. Then I’d inhale and remind myself: you’re safe, he can’t get you here; if you don’t tell anyone what happened then you can pretend it didn’t.

But I had told someone. I was getting coffee on a winter morning when a friend texted: did you hear? His cancer’s back. and I thought good but replied oh no, and the barista had to call my order three times before I snapped away from our dorm and his voice in my ear.

Four months later, someone answered. While the group chat swapped fond memories, I sat on a bench at the edge of the beach and watched the tide break on the sand. I couldn’t tell them how I felt without telling them everything. I couldn’t tell them everything without having done so long before his death.

I skipped rocks into the ocean; everyone in the group chat moved on. He killed me long before my prayers killed him. The me he birthed relaxed her shoulders for the first time in her life. Are you horny for me, baby?

Standing at the edge of a pier, I brought a smooth rock to my lips. I saw a flash of floral sheets and the upward cone of the lamp’s illumination on the wall. “I hope you suffered,” I murmured against the stone, before I tossed it as far I could.