In Plain Sight

She had only looked for a kindness. A smile, a greeting, a polite word. Anything would have been enough, but always just barely out of reach.

He knew that. He saw it in her eyes, just the same as all the others. He was good at compliments. Empty platitudes, that's all they were but for a woman so unfamiliar with the real thing they might as well have been confessions of love.

He came to her, with the most beautiful smile she had ever witnessed. There was a hollowness to it, a doll's practiced smile, but she took it all the same. He asked her to join him for a meal in the woods. She said yes.

He almost pitied the women who fell for his act. Almost, but the threads never quite connected over that chasm of nothingness that wrapped so tightly around his heart.

Only anger and disappointment could pierce through that numbing veil. If they weren't so stupid, they wouldn't fall for his act in the first place. Really, he was doing them - and the world - a favor. Was that a flinch? He fixed his smile and glanced at her, relieved. Had she known, she would have run.

A crack in the armor - no, a hunter's cover. Was she to be the deer, then? She didn't mind, her heart had stopped beating long ago. Would it start again, just to bleed her out? She smiled. It mattered little. Someone had seen her, and that was enough.

The dagger's hilt was warm against his palm when he raised it at the unaware sheep. His heart had never beat so strong. And though disappointment held a grip about him, he took solace in the hope that one day someone might see him for who he was and accept him.