...everyone falls for this, I knew it, I knew it.

Some of them were easy. Some of them were so trusting - and why wouldn't they be? They thought they knew. They thought they knew sweetness and light. They thought they knew a little innocence, a little naivety. A little song, a little dance, a play put on for them to watch while machinations were set in motion.

They really had no clue.

It started with Takeshi - a simple slip, a little accident, a little push, a fall, a sprawl atop a too sharp rock.

Oops.

And of course, there'd been the alligator tears, the consoling touches, the murmurs of reassurance.

It was an accident. It had just been a horrible, terrible accident. She could not be blamed.

From there, it had been nothing but child's play. A pied piper couldn't've played it better.

It was a dirge, a funeral pyre put on display.

The attention she showered on the skull of her once lover bordered on affectionate, for love had never once entered into the equation with him.

"You always thought you were smarter than me," she murmured in an ear that would never heard her again, "didn't you?"

The small doe straightened, looking at the long line of corpses, bloated bodies growing fat with gas. Soon, she'd be able to count the crows that pecked out their eyes.

It was enough to make her smile.

This time? She meant it.