qu’est-ce que c’est?

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Taylor recoiled at the sudden cold, wet impact on the back of her neck, tensing further as the freezing meltwater began to drip beneath the collar of her jacket.

“What the hell!” she shouted as she spun around, the snowy ground crunching underneath her boots as she turned.

Monica was grinning with mischievous pride a good twenty feet down the bank of the frozen creek. Even if she hadn’t been the only other volunteer within pitching distance, the chunks of snow clinging to the loose fuzz of her mitten gave her away as the culprit behind the snowball. Even still, she feigned innocence.

“Oh no!” she shot her friend a mock pout. “It looks like some snow must’ve fallen off one of the trees!”

Taylor made the fatal mistake of looking up towards the bare branches above them, long since blown clean of any overhanging snow. In doing so, she failed to notice the second snowball Monica pulled from behind her back until it was halfway to her. Taylor locked an unamused expression on her chuckling friend as the loose powder burst across the rainproof cover of her jacket and fell silently all around her.

“Are you done?” Taylor raised her eyebrows as she asked. “Because some of us are actually here to do a job.”

“You’re the one who dragged me out for garbage pickup in the middle of January,” Monica pouted back, “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

With that, Monica pulled the long, spike-ended stick out of the snowy ground beside her and gathered the thick black trash bag up in her other hand, following her friend upstream. The two walked in silence for a few minutes, the frozen landscape and high walls of the creek banks muting the world around them. It made each of their movements feel disruptive to the scene, the crunch of snow beneath boots, the rustling of the garbage bags, the occasional punchy crinkle of some plastic speared off the ground. Even the creek itself refused to make a sound as it flowed beneath the layer of ice.

Monica had just thought up a new subject of conversation when the two were startled by a sweet little chime and a buzzing in her pocket. She pulled her phone out and lit up at the notification.

“Hey, they approved my credits!” she called up to the girl ahead of her. “I didn’t realize it’s been four hours already.”

Taylor felt a little shiver go up her spine as her friends words sunk in. “How many does that put you at?”

“32,” Monica said, tapping at her phone. “That puts me over the threshold!”

“What threshold?” Taylor balked a little at this. 32 credits wasn’t enough for anything worth doing this kind of work for. “What do you want to use them for, exactly?”

“Well,” Monica started weakly, “You know the mall up on 17th? I… I almost got caught shoplifting there a couple months ago.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. Shoplifting. How pointless.

“Well, I figured if I’m gonna keep doing it, and let’s be honest, you know I’m gonna keep doing it, then I should probably have a shoplifting charge worth of credits banked, just in case.”

Having known Monica since grade school, Taylor was indeed certain that she would keep doing it.

“You know that won’t work, right?” Taylor said after a long, exasperated sigh. “They never haul you in on one charge, ‘cause they know people bank credits for that. They always wait until they have evidence for three, four, sometimes five, and then hit you with them all at once.”

“Fuck, seriously?” Monica stopped in her tracks. “Do you think they already have some on me?”

“I don’t know,” Taylor replied, “What do you mean when you say you ‘almost’ got caught?”

“Well, this guard walked right by me while I was pocketing these earrings,” Monica gestured up at the little blue stones in her ears. “but he didn’t say anything, he just kinda rolled his eyes and kept walking.”

“Monica…”

“Yeah. Saying it out loud…”

“Yeah, babe. They definitely have you.”

“Fuck.” Monica stamped at the snow faintly. “I really liked that mall.”

The two continued up stream for several minutes, the quiet settling comfortably on both of them. As they went along, the banks of the creek eased slightly, until the flat ground of the park around them was roughly at head hight, and they could see a few of the other volunteers off in the distance. The snow-free asphalt path through the woodlands snaked towards them, reaching the bank up ahead and crossing the water by way of a small stone footbridge. It stuck up about six feet above the creek itself, with a round culvert underneath. The culverts opening, however, was covered by a set of thick steel bars. Just as Taylor turned to scramble up the short bank towards the other side of the bridge, her own phone chimed and buzzed away in her pocket.

“Sounds like your hours got approved as well!” Monica said brightly. “What does that put you up to?”

“I’m not sure.” Taylor’s heart skipped a beat as she tried her best not to do the mental math.

“What do you mean?” Monica cocked her head. “Four hours on trash duty is eight credits, just add it to your total.”

“I don’t know my total,” Taylor tried to keep her voice steady. “I only check it when… when I’m around the right kind of person.”

“You don’t want to check it around me?” Monica was a little hurt at the idea that her childhood friend wouldn’t want her to know something so basic. “I just shared mine with you.”

“It’s not like that,” Taylor glanced back at the girl, noticing for the first time that day how Monica’s cheeks were flushed red in the cold, how the light shined off of them, how the little heart-shaped tattoo on the side of her neck stretched with her skin as she cocked her head. “I only check it around people I can use it with. Just in case.”

Monica’s brow furrowed at the remark. “What, I can’t be your partner in crime? You’ve known me, what, 20 years? You think I can’t keep a secret?”

Taylor tried to suppress the smile twitching at the corner of her mouth as she watched her friend flush more with anger, hot red blood coursing into her face, radiating out into the cold air around them. It had been almost five months since last time, she had to have enough saved up by now. More then enough. Her rational mind tried one last time to get some semblance of the point across to her friend, but her control was waning fast.

“I just,” she started, “I just don’t want either of us to do something we might regret.”

It was weak. It was barely an attempt. The ember glowing in her gut had long since won the battle, and it was nothing more then a little self-assurance that she’d “tried”, for whatever that was worth. Monica, for her part, just looked at her friend with frustrated bewilderment.

“Here, you tell me how many I have.” The now smiling Taylor said, beckoning her friend closer and handing her the phone as the two huddled in the shadow of the bridge.

The two both dropped their spikes and bags beside the creek as Monica took the unlocked phone and opened up the public service tracking app. The notification filled the screen, “Congratulations, you’ve earned 8 credits today!”, before the girl swiped it away to view the total.

“What the fuck?” Monica blinked at the number on the screen. “You have nearly eleven hundred credits! Holy shit, that’s enough to get away with-”

Monica’s words were cut short as Taylor grabbed the collar of the girls jacket and slammed her head into the stone arch of the bridge. There was a dull crack as her skull fractured at the impact and blood began to flow from her scalp, followed by Monica’s slurred attempt at speech.

“Whaatheheeerdooin?” she squinted up at her friend and her eyes went wide at the sadistic grin plastered across Taylors face.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” Taylor tackled the stunned girl, slamming her back down against the ice atop the creek, to a louder, hollow crack. “I was so careful… I don’t fucking know why. I should have done this ages ago.”

Monica couldn’t make out her words as her head rung with the second impact against the ice, but as her body switched to running on instinct she began to kick and claw at the girl now straddling her hips and pinning her against the ice.

Taylor chuckled at her friends limp attempts at fighting back. She preferred a victim that could put up something of a struggle, but she would take what she could get from Monica.

“You thought a little freezing water down my back was funny,” Taylor stuck her tongue out teasingly, playfully, and only for herself. “Lets see how you like it.”

With that, Taylor yanked Monica up suddenly by the arms, and slammed her down against the ice. This time, the fractured surface gave way beneath them, and Monica’s torso slipped into the freezing water. Disappointingly, the fight vanished from her as the shock of the cold joined the shock of the head trauma, and she quickly slipped from consciousness. Taylor, straddling the gap in the ice, quickly realized that holding the girl down against the creek bed was doing nothing, and pivoted to dragging her back out.

Monica woke to a sudden sharp pain across her cheek. A second pain at the top of her scalp joined it soon after, and as the world came into focus she realized two things at once. First, her jacket, shirt, and bra were all long gone. Second, the only thing holding her out of the water was Taylors hand, wrapped around a fistful of her hair.

Before she could react, Taylor plunged the disoriented girl back down, enjoying the sensation as Monica’s body writhed beneath her, pinned down by her hips, between her legs. Even through Taylors fleece-lined jeans the sensation the sensation of the poor girls twisting, bucking hips was heaven. It lasted only seconds, though, before Monica went limp again. Just as before, Taylor pulled her up above the water, and slapped her hard across the face.

Nothing.

She tried again, and got a little twitch this time. A third slap, and the half-naked girl shocked awake, another pleasing jolt rushing through her body and into Taylors.

With her free hand, Taylor groped at the girls breasts, slowly massaging her back to full consciousness, watching for it in her eyes, and plunging her down again as she saw it come alive. This time, Monica would not stay under quite so easily. Her body growing better braced against the freezing shock, she squirmed and fought beneath the water, but the added force to keep her pinned was only further opportunity. Taylor let go of her hair and took up in each hand a fistful of the girls breasts, roughly fawning over them as she pressed the girl down deeper into the hard, frozen riverbed.

Taylor rocked her own hips back and forth, dragging her cunt across her friends wriggling body as she began to pant atop her. Each time Monica’s waist twisted one way or the other, her hip bones ground hard between Taylors legs, and every time she bucked up from the lack of air she inadvertently dragged her body over Taylor’s clit.

Monica’s hands darted back and forth between trying to pull Taylor off her breasts and trying to push herself up out of the water, but she had the strength for neither, and the more she fought the more oxygen she burned through, until all sensation once again faded into the black.

When consciousness returned, she was still in the dark, more or less, and the biting cold against her head had lessened, but any hope this gave her lasted just a fraction of a second. As she began to get her bearings, she realized where she was, and once again began to weakly try and push away her killer.

Taylor reveled in the feeling of friends face starting to move against her now-bare cunt. She had been grinding on the ridges of Monica’s face for a good ten minutes before the girl began to wake, and as soon as she did Taylor ground down into her hard. Monica was well past broken, her brain a mess of hypothermia and blunt force trauma, but Taylor still enjoyed the feeling of grabbing the poor girl by her wrists and pinning her helplessly against the ground beside the creek, and as she felt her climax build, she reached for the small multitool clipped to her belt.

She flicked the small blade from the tool, and without a hint of warning to her friend, plunged the knife into her throat. Monica’s already muffled sounds turned to gurgles as blood began to pour down into her lungs, Taylor sawing the small knife back and forth, further around her neck with every stroke. In her panic, Monica’s freed hands reached up and began to try and claw Taylors arms and thighs, but Taylor was utterly unconcerned. Taylors orgasm ripped through her as she bucked her hips against her once-friends face, flooding Monicas mouth with slick, clear cum, and coating her in it from forehead to chin. Monica sputtered beneath her as the glow began to fade, and in seconds the dying girls strength began to wane. As she regained composure, Taylor made quick work further back, tongue still lolling slightly from her mouth in the blissful afterglow, uncaring for her dying friend who stared up at her cunt in still-confused betrayal. The last vestiges of her life still clung to her mind even as Taylor slipped the steel point between her vertebrae, severed the nerves of her spine, and finally cut her head free of her corpse.

Taylor stood up, shuffled the body over to the hole in the ice with one foot, and let the small current drag it underneath. The snow around her ranged from pink to crimson, and her own clothes were absolutely soaked, especially with the head still dripping onto her. She grabbed it by a fistfull of its hair, scrambled up the creek bank, and walked back towards the entrance of the park.

A volunteer event organizer startled at the site approaching him, but quickly regained his composure.

“I assume you had the credits for that?” He asked, gesturing at the head with his clipboard.

“Yeah, account 11059K.” Taylor said matter-of-factly.

“And your… her?” He gestured again at the head.

“Monica Andrews, her info’s in here.” Taylor said, handing the man the wallet she’d fished out of Monica’s clothes while undressing her.

The man made a few notes on his clipboard, then pulled out his phone, tapping through the screens and typing in some information from the dead girls ID.

“Alright, that’s a thousand credits out of your account, and she’s registered deceased.”

Taylor gave him a nod, and walked off to her car. She tossed the head in the back seat and lay back as the heater began to warm the car. The frozen blood drenched garments slowly turned warm and sticky, then dryly stained, before she sat back up and started the drive home. She’d always hated getting wet in the cold.

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Thanks for reading!

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