The little girl is only nine years old, but she knows blood when she sees it. She remembers that day she fell off her bike and grazed her knee.

She takes another bite of her apple and watches the blood pool in the fresh fall of snow—it reminds her of raspberry ripple.

She has been there, alone, for a very long time. Nobody pays her much attention when they arrive. They don’t know her name is Kimberley, nor do they care that her mother is not with her. They are more interested in why their little town has suddenly been visited by such carnage. Icy chatter passes amongst the voyeurs: frightened whispers.

A crowd gathers quickly where the snow meets the pavement, but nobody sees the too-small footsteps frozen on the blanket of white. Soon every person in town is wondering how eighteen stone Bob Harris from Parkhurst Street managed to get up there.

One of them calls the cops.

Another pukes.

High above the ground, his body droops from a web of branches, his torso sliced from sternum to pelvis. Spaghetti guts hang down and glisten in the winter sun like a ruby river.

Kimberley had told him not to touch her.

Twice.

And twice he had laughed; his brown teeth resembled broken headstones; his hands were sandpaper against her skin.

She watches as the grisly rain of blood drip-drips from the branches.

He isn’t laughing now.