The sense of vertigo roused Angela’s consciousness, but only just.

She briefly surveyed her surroundings, and recognized the area. She was standing on the ledge of a large parking structure near her home. She was perhaps seven or eight stories up, precariously close to going over the edge. She felt a head high and could see hallucinations, though not the vivid images of demons or gore one might imagine when they hear the word. The types of hallucinations she had could only be described as errors in how she perceived reality, otherwise difficult to convey in language. They were the type she often experienced with her sleeping medication. She stared down at the ground below as the wind blew through her fur, and felt tears well up in her eyes as she started to recall the disjointed memories of that day and the night prior.

Last night, she had attempted to overdose on Ambien. She couldn’t quite recall what lead her down that path. Even the recommended dose of that wretched drug affected her memory, let alone twenty times that amount. In any case she had thankfully woken up. She then had enough sense to know she needed help.

At that time, she had been enrolled in a so-called Partial Hospitalization Program at a mental health facility some ways away. It was a step below being in-patient, where patients participated in the normal support and curriculum that they would when committed, but were allowed to return home at night. She had ended up there a couple of weeks ago after she asked, begged for help at an ER. She could not run away from the predator in her head, and she was terrified of what she would do next. Thankfully she had been listened to, and gladly accepted this treatment plan. She had been highly optimistic when the program started. And now, in a drug induced haze, she needed help again.

She had enough wits about her to know she needed help, but not enough to know she was in no condition to be driving. Nonetheless she had managed to drive herself down to the hospital with minimal damage to her vehicle, albeit a few hours later than the program’s start time. She wandered past the security guard who barely gave her a second glance, even as the metal in her belt and jacket set off the metal detector. After a few days of waving her with the wand during the start of the program, he was satisfied she didn’t pose any threat to anybody else. She stumbled into the elevator, and rode it to the PHP floor.

Her memory of what happened next was hazy. She must have encountered a therapist. She knew she would’ve asked for help – After all, it worked the first time, didn’t it? She thought she explained how she tried to overdose, how she still had a very dangerous amount of that drug in her system, and assumed help would follow.

This time she didn’t get what she wanted, what she needed. This time, she was scolded for being late. She couldn’t remember the exact justification, but she knew her near death related tardiness was a big factor in turning her away.

She would have ruminated on it during her hike – wait, had she hiked? Not near this garage, but on some trail­­­­­ near the hospital. Presumably she thought it would help clear her head, but all she thought about was how she did what she was supposed to and asked for help, only to be turned away when she needed it most.

And now she was atop a parking garage, with a similar view to what she had the day after the crisis that began all of this so many months ago. The day she nearly threw herself off a different garage, believing it to be a preferable alternative to ever hurting anybody else. That time she resisted killing herself because she had too many friends nearby for the convention she worked for, that would have been devastated if she died so close to them. This time she had no such restraint.

She also hadn’t actually asked for help that time. She had nobody to blame but herself. This time however, she had asked for help, repeatedly. She did the thing that so many people, friends, posters, doctors, and so on had asked her to do. The phrase “Ask for help” ran through her head over and over. How many times had she done exactly that, only to be ignored?

Despair slowly morphed into rage. That dismissive social worker hadn’t been the only person to turn her back on her, but within Angela’s head she quickly became the personification of every cunt of a therapist, psychiatrist, and others that had ignored her.

“Ask for help.” She thought, yet again. If only they had listened when she explained how scared she was of the predator. The predator was not a literal demon, nor was it delusion or hallucination; Indeed, the predator was present even when she was sober and lucid. It was the personification of the rampant violent fantasies that had been running through her head since her break. A creature of her own design that wanted her to be selfish. To stop asking for what she needs, and to start taking what she wants.

The predator seemed to consistently be the only one willing to listen to her, the only one that showed any compassion for her, and the only one that felt any anguish when she got hurt. He never commanded or forced her to commit any acts of violence. He only strongly suggested that doing such could bring her relief, and bring her justice. Every time yet another attempt to get help fell flat, she felt herself willing to listen more and more. In this moment, she realized she was finally ready to make the choice that she and he so desperately wanted to make.

She remembered screaming while staring down the large, shiny, private mixed-use development this garage belonged to. She stepped down from the ledge with a new motivation to live: The idea that if she died before them, that would mean they won. She didn’t have a plan per se, but her body continued to move while her consciousness occasionally flicked in and out. She was in her car on top of the garage. Then she was on the road, moving back to the center of the lane after striking a plastic bike lane barrier. Then, she was in a new parking lot.

There was a gun store here. She knew because she had passed this strip mall on her daily commute for years, and one of the stores had a large sign that only read “GUNS” in a military stencil font. Simple but effective, she was able to find it even while in a blackout. With a confident stride she walked right in.

The selection of pistols in glass cases, and rifles and other large guns on the walls was almost overwhelming. She felt a soft catharsis in her chest, as something inside of her soothed and reassured her that she was in the right place. She glanced behind the counter as the store owner smiled and waved. “Hey there! How are you doing today?” He asked in a voice that seemed genuine. Already he had shown her more empathy than the therapist that was paid to tend to her mental health.

“Good. Um… I’d like to buy a pistol. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.” She explained in a somewhat flat, but not overly concerning affect. “

Well I’d be happy to help you!” He responded warmly to her. Though the Ambien was still hitting Angela strongly, its outward effects weren’t immediately obvious to him. “You looking to carry, or do you just want something for around the house?”

“Oh, just for around the house.” She lied. Somehow she thought saying she wanted to carry the gun might rouse suspicion.

“Good idea. Statewide constitutional carry just kicked in so you technically don’t need a concealed carry permit, but I still prefer folks get familiar with shootin’ before they start toting their gun with them. Let me show you what I have.”

He reached behind the counter to retrieve a pistol. He racked the slide to double check that the chamber was empty, before he held it out for her. “This is a Smith & Wesson SD9. I’m gonna hand it to you to see how it feels.” He gripped the gun by the barrel, almost handing the butt over for Angela to grab, though he pulled back at the last moment.

“Rules of having one of these: Keep your finger off the trigger till you’re about to shoot. Don’t point at anything you’re not willing to shoot. Always assume it’s loaded and ready to shoot. Know what’s beyond your target before you shoot. So whatever you do, don’t point it at me, and don’t put your finger on the trigger. Okay?”

Angela nodded and carefully took hold of the gun as it was presented to her, pointing it off towards the ground. She felt the heft and tightened her grip, sighing as she felt another hint of calm within her form. It was the soft tingly catharsis she always felt in her body when she thought about hurting others. She often liked to imagine it was the predator embracing her, reassuring her that her desire to claim power was good and correct.

“Now this is a really good, economical choice for a first gun, especially for home defense. You’ll be hard pressed to find something else this reliable for this cheap. It takes 9 millimeter, has a big 16 round capacity, and this one even comes with a laser.” He pointed to a button directly below the trigger guard. “Go ahead, try it out.”

Angela pressed the laser button with her middle finger, and illuminated a red dot on the floor. She smiled, imagining what sorts of things she could light up with it. She noticed and appreciated how the laser accessory had a sticker on the side warning the user to not point the gun at their own face, lest the beam cause eye damage.

“The trigger on this is kinda a love hate thing for some people. It’s also a bit bulky and doesn’t have a safety switch, so it ain’t my first choice for daily carry. Not my last choice either though. If you ever feel like you want to defend yourself on the go, you can always trade up to something more compact down the line!”

Angela adjusted her grip, gently moving the gun around as she sized it up in her hand. She appeared lost in thought. Maybe another slip away from consciousness, or maybe she was fantasizing about what she could do with it. To a well meaning gun dealer, she just looked a little unsure.

“Tell ya what. I’m hopin’ you’ll like being a gun owner and come back to me, so I’ll throw in two extra magazines and all the bullets you’ll need to fill them for free. How’s that sound?”

That pulled the vixen back. She smiled and nodded back to him. “Sounds lovely.”

“Great! I just have a form for you to fill out.” He took the pistol, putting it away before he handed back a paper titled Firearms Transaction Record. She examined it and began to diligently fill all of the empty boxes in. It asked if she was dependent on any drugs, but she had a prescription for her Ambien didn’t she? It also asked if she had ever been involuntarily committed. She had gone to the hospital voluntarily, right? And besides, it wasn’t even technically inpatient. Perhaps she thought, if that social worker had done her job and had her committed when she stumbled in fresh from a suicide attempt, she would never have had a chance to get a gun.

The owner took the form back as well as her ID, and left her to wander the store while the background check processed. She looked in one case and noticed one cheaper gun than the one she had chosen. She asked about it, and he laughed and explained it was a Hi Point. She returned a sincere chuckle. Even she recognized the name and knew it was liable to be a piece of crap.

She grew nervous when he remarked that the check was taking longer than usual, wondering if her psychiatric excursion had somehow been reported after all. A few more minutes passed before he spoke.

“Hey uh, we might have a problem.” He said as he rose up from his computer with her forms. Her ears folded back and she felt panic set in. Did she get flagged? Did the hospital report her? Was she about to get thrown in jail? She felt a heaviness in her chest as she debated running out the door.

“So uhhhh. Not trying to be rude here, but…” He sighed, as Angela gulped.

“Question six.” He set the form down on the glass case and pointed to it. “It’s gotta match what’s on your ID.”

Angela looked at the form where she had marked “female” instead of “male”.

“Oh… Sorry about that.” He had already produced another blank ATF form for her to fill again. “I just got a new license, I forgot they made me change it back.”

“All good! I just don’t wanna piss off the feds. I ain’t judging you, I promise.”

Angela began to fill out the form again, as the store owner continued. “I got some gay folk that come here a lot. I know things are really, uhh… partisan lately, but the Second Amendment’s for everyone!” He spoke trying to ease any discomfort the fox had. “Honestly I wish more liberals would try out guns, maybe they’d like them enough that the people they vote for get the sticks out of their asses.”

Angela stifled an angry grunt as she thought about the nurse that chastised her for marking the wrong gender on her intake form. At least this guy tried to be nice about it.

He took the new form and entered it into the computer. This time after less than a minute, it came back clean. She left with a box containing the firearm, its attached laser sight, three magazines, and a couple of boxes of ammunition.

After some time, she was sitting in her house with the gun. She didn’t remember much the ride home, but by then the Ambien was beginning to wear off, and leave her nauseous and with a headache. Without a second thought she took a few more of the pills – each of which was the maximum dose that anybody was supposed to take in a day - while trying to figure out how use her new gun. After some trial and error, she learned how to slot the bullets into the magazines. It was a tedious process to fill all three, one bullet at a time, and her fingers quickly began to hurt. The new Ambien soon took effect, and she was lost in a haze, unable to remember anything at all about the rest of her preparation.

Angela was standing face to face with the hospital. Her fingers were sore from loading the magazines, as was the rest of her body for some reason. She didn’t remember, but she had just totaled her car against a concrete wall not far from where she was standing. Again, she hallucinated with the same difficult to describe errors in perception. She could only see the building before her, not quite in tunnel vision, more that it was suspended in a void. She hadn’t planned anything up to this point, at least not in a way that would be comprehensible to anybody, even to herself once sober. She allowed the predator to guide her, while the drugs destroyed even the slightest inhibition she had against violence.

She walked through the front door. Again the security guard paid her little mind as she set off the metal detector, not even noticing she had arrived twice in in one day outside of the normal arrival time. She boarded the elevator with a hand in her denim jacket pocket, clutching her firearm.

She got off on the third floor that housed the PHP program where she had spent the last two weeks. There was a set of large hospital double doors just in front of her that were locked. She pressed her face against the plastic window on one, and pressed the haphazardly installed doorbell to alert the nurse’s station.

A nurse quickly came to the door, opening it from her side and stepping into the opening. “Angela? I thought I heard about a discharge-“

*BANG!*

Before she had even seen the weapon, Angela fired it through her gut. The nurse fell to her knees, while Angela stared with her eyes wide, momentarily frozen. It was not the sight of a bleeding and screaming girl, nor the knowledge that she had just shot somebody that shocked her. Rather she hadn’t understood just how loud her gun would be, especially indoors. Her ears rang, temporarily drowning out the screams in the halls in front of her. But she soon slid back into her cold haze. She raised the gun and pointed it at the whimpering nurse’s face.

*BANG!* With one more shot, she blew the back of her skull out against the floor, painting the linoleum bright red.

Angela grabbed hold of the nurse’s keycard, and stepped through the door that was propped open by her body. The main activity room appeared empty, as the PHP patients had left on a lunch break. The nurse’s station also appeared empty at a glance, after those inside ducked below the glass. She stepped inside and saw another nurse, cowering in the corner and whimpering as she desperately tried to dial for help on her phone.

“You don’t get to ask for help.” She muttered as she raised the pistol to her head.

*BANG! BANG!* Her skull didn’t explode spectacularly like the last one, but she was still dead before she hit the ground. She turned to leave, stepping back into the PHP hallway. On the opposite end of the hallway there was a psychiatrist’s office. During one of the events she took part in he had explained quite a bit to her and her fellow patients about how different psychiatric drugs worked. He was also in charge of reviewing existing prescriptions and writing new ones, though he didn’t think Angela’s Ambien was a problem. Not that she thought it was a problem either.

She stepped into the office to come face to face with the psychiatrist as he stood cowering the corner, yelping as he threw his laptop at her. The hunk of plastic didn’t even cause her to flinch as it bounced off of her torso before clattering to the ground. She raised her pistol with her middle finger held on the laser button, to illuminate the red dot against his head.

*BANG! BANG!* Even with the laser her aim was unsteady enough for only one bullet to hit his head. She assumed it was enough as he dropped to the ground, blood running down his body and pooling on the ground.

Angela wandered back into the hallway, as somebody’s wailing echoed down the corridor. She was initially drawn to it, but stopped as she walked by the nurse station, and glimpsed a cowering med tech curled up under a table. She recognized that woman. When she first presented herself to the hospital, she had been told by her to strip, “for her safety”. She was still livid that she had to show her body to someone against her will yet again, this time as a reward for asking for help. Even her own rapist didn’t have the audacity to pretend he was helping her by stripping her. The med tech whimpered and tried to back herself further up into the wall, as Angela tapped the key card against the reader and opened the door.

“For YOUR safety…” Angela mocked in a strained, nasally voice as she raised the pistol, index finger on the trigger, middle finger on the button to illuminate the red laser against the technician’s head. 

“I need you to remove your clothes.” The crying girl didn’t immediately respond, only staring into Angela’s eyes with tears streaming down her face.

“Now!” Angela snarled, taking a step closer. The girl tried and failed to contain her crying as she first slipped off her blue scrubs. She paused for a moment, seeing the vixen still holding the gun at her head, and resumed disrobing. She took her bra off, and slid her panties down, leaving her body completely bare.

Angela smiled as she looked over the nude girl’s body. She was an absolutely beautiful thing to look at. She felt an intense catharsis overcome her own body. The power she had exerted over a helpless woman filled her with an immense calm and bliss that overcame even the massive rush of adrenaline from her previous kills.

“Good girl…” She remarked. She pointed the gun down slowly, with the laser sight still on. The med tech watched as the red dot stopped on her belly. *BANG!* The fox pulled the trigger once, shooting her in the stomach. She screeched and doubled over as blood began to pour out of her wound, while Angela walked back out of the station, smiling serenely.

“Good girls get a chance to survive~” She said in a sing song voice, to nobody in particular. She wandered down the hallway, with a skip in her step as she glanced to her sides for any signs of life in the various rooms. Most of the workers that had been on the floor had managed to hide in the darkened rooms, praying the vixen didn’t peer too closely into their windows. But Angela happened to glance into one, and felt an instant rush of anger and excitement as she recognized the girl inside. She locked eyes with the social worker that had kicked her out hours earlier. Catharsis was replaced by vitriolic rage once more, as she fumbled with the bloody keycard to open the door.

The woman inside whimpered on the ground as Angela stormed up to her, gun pointed at her head. The fox was itching to pull the trigger, but she felt like she needed something more. It took whatever morsel of self control she could muster to not fill Christine’s head with holes, as the predator suggested a more fitting fate. She kneeled down next to the social worker, momentarily lowering her gun as she snarled one word at a time.


“Ask. For. Help.”

The girl looked confused through her terror, silently trembling as the enraged vixen stared her down.

*BANG!* Angela abruptly bashed the side of her head with the pistol, accidentally firing a shot into the wall.

“ASK ME FOR HELP YOU FUCKING CUNT!”

She screamed loud enough that Christine could hear even over the deafening ringing in her ears. She sobbed on the floor, clutching the bleeding wound on her head as she began trying to get any words she could out.


“P-please… stop…” She moaned between sobs, tears mixing with blood as they both ran down her face. “Help…” 


Angela reached to yank her bottom scrubs and panties off. She jammed the hot barrel of the gun against her vulva, eliciting a pained yelp as the metal penetrated into her vagina.


“Beg.” She said through her teeth. “Beg like you fucking mean it.”


“H-help!” She screamed. “Help me! Please, help me!” She forced herself to look Angela in the eyes, figuring out what she wanted. “I’m sorry! Help me, please, I want help! Please, I’m sorry, please help…” Angela smiled, and sighed as the anger was replaced again with catharsis.

“Just reach out, and ask for help...” She said softly, looking off in the distance for a moment. She turned back to face her with a serene smile.


“If only it was that easy, huh?”

*BANG!* She fired one shot into the girl’s pussy, making her let out a piercing scream.

* BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! click!* She emptied the rest of the magazine up the same hole, twisting it around to different angles as she did so. Christine tried to scream again, but at least one bullet made it into each lung, leaving her unable to do more than weakly gasp. They began to fill with blood, as did her abdominal cavity. Some of the red liquid made it out the exit wounds that were created, but much of it began to pour out from between her legs. Angela pulled her gun back out with a sickening squelch, a torrent of blood following the metal. She stood and smiled down as the girl began to hyperventilate and lose focus on the world around her. If the poor thing’s lungs didn’t completely fill with blood to choke her, then she was sure to soon lose too much of it from the destruction of her lower torso.

Angela wondered where that security guard was. Unbeknownst to her, he had fled the hospital the moment he heard gunfire, without even attempting to intervene. The cops weren’t here yet, and she was still itching to have more fun. She pressed a button on the side of her pistol to let the empty magazine fall to the ground, and reached into her jacket pocket to find one of the two full ones. She had consumed plenty of prey, but the predator was still feeling gluttonous.