Body Count

Men like to ask about my body count. They joke about the bodies we’ve buried, and the chuckle we share lasts a moment too long. It’s funny because we know we aren’t killers—of course we aren’t; how ridiculous that would be. Our laughter, tacit agreement.

I relax my face and shoulders to show I’m unbothered by the question, and I say my body count is five. They all love five. Five means I’m neither a prude nor a slut.

They smile really wide at my respectably low number, their expressions somewhere between predatory and proud. They talk about my being worthy, refer to themselves as high-value men. My heart always leaps because it means that I'm right, that the dude flexing his crossed arms with elbows on the table is indeed a grade-A douchebag.

When I ask what his number is, he puffs up his chest. Ha-ha, it’s different for guys. I don’t know, maybe a hundred?

What I really want to ask is: And how many of them wanted it? Have you made anyone come?

But that would raise his hackles and make him dangerous—or worse, he’d make a scene. So I say nothing because I want us to blend into the wallpaper, beige and brown, with a pattern so dated it’s easy to imagine in someone’s grandma’s house.

I’m like the hero’s wife who always dies in a movie, a human cardigan who’s forgettably pretty. That’s why the dude believes I will be easy to impress with middling Italian food at a chain restaurant. I don’t even mind because I love the breadsticks, soft and garlicky, greasy with melted butter. Then he says, Wow, you sure like those. But do you need so many carbs? His comment feels like a warm hug, reassuring me that I’ve made the right choice. That today I get to add another mark to my tally.

Someone might ask why I do what I do. I could say it’s revenge, and perhaps it once was. But it isn’t for me because nothing, nothing happened to me. It is for someone close to me, so I know of the abandoned house in the woods back in my hometown, and of the dirty mattress where teenagers used to make out, and I know of the party, what an innocuous name that is, a party, five boys and a girl, and I know of the laughter and the drugs and the booze. I know of the rusty smell of blood and the musky smell of cum. I know all sorts of things, I do, but I don’t feel them because they didn’t happen to me—they didn’t—they happened to someone else, someone from long ago. And I know she was left on the mattress as drunken laughter receded into the distance, alone, listening to her breaths quavering on the exhale.

I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and half the time the dude puts something in my drink. I relish in the certainty that he’ll get what’s coming to him. I approach him from behind, my glove coated with gel, and I brush my fingers along the back of his neck. He says, Ugh, your hands are still wet, and I make a big show of grabbing the napkin that helps me take off the glove, and I coo, Sorry, you looked so handsome. I simply had to touch you. He preens while the neurotoxin starts to work, and I’m astonished at how easy this is, so easy it’s almost not fun anymore, but then I remember the first five tally marks I scratched into the walls of a dilapidated little house, and I think, no, it’s still fun, it is the greatest fun, a high body count means you’ve lived life to the fullest. And while I wait for his tongue to get heavy, I grab another breadstick and whisper, So handsome, you are so handsome. So handsome, I could just eat you up.

BIO: Maura Yzmore is a Midwest-based author of literary and speculative short fiction. Her work has appeared in Factor Four Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, trampset, and elsewhere. Her first story collection, Dangling, will be published in 2026 by Anxiety Press. Find Maura at https://maurayzmore.com or @maurayzmore.bsky.social on Bluesky.