Susan Torrensen was a riding in her parents’ car after a long two hours of shopping. Susan thought shopping was dull and boring; she wanted something exciting in her life. She lived in the Bronx with her parents who ran an antique store across the street from their house. She went to school at the elementary school down the street to learn numbers and letters and math. She had lots of friends and was a good student. There were whisperings from her parents about needing more room for a crib in their room, whatever that meant. In a year her life would change and she would go to the middle school.

It changed sooner than she wanted.

One day in the fall when Susan was eight years old, she and her parents were coming home late from the grocery store after closing their antique store early. It was fall, so not many people were out. Susan herself would have been home finishing her homework if she were allowed to stay home by herself. The trip to the grocery had taken so long that it was dark by the time they were coming home, and Susan was falling asleep in the back seat while her mother drove the car and talked to her father.

They were passing the middle school that Susan would attend in a few years. It was a big building; all made of bricks and according to the other kids at school was over one hundred years old. The other kids who had older brothers and sisters that went there said that there wasn't any recess in middle school. Susan thought that was dumb because recess was the best part of school.

Suddenly, as her mom moved the car through an intersection a dark, chrome finished heavy duty diesel pickup truck it hit them on the driver's side killing, Susan’s mom almost instantly. Susan was sitting behind her dad on the passenger's side and survived the initial blow.

The tiny car was very light so the force of the pickup made it roll sideways for thirty feet before coming to a rest upside down in the middle of the street. The front windshield was shattered littering, the ground with shards of tiny stars in the lamp light.

Susan's dad was the first to recover from the impact and crawled out through the missing windshield into the street with the idea of calling nine-one-one to get emergency vehicles there quickly, not knowing his wife was already dead. He didn't own a cell phone; he planned on using one from someone nearby in one of the houses.

Mr. Torrensen never got the chance to even knock on a door.

The man the truck belonged to was someone by the name of Cris Belf, a man known through the pubs and bars of the ghettos as Cutthroat. He often ran with the local mob gangs as a hitman and gun-for-hire. Belf was notorious for his short temper and violent outbursts when intoxicated.

"What the h---!" Susan's father heard someone shout. He was turning around to talk to the man when Belf grabbed him by the collar and brought their faces together. "You scratched my truck! What the h--- is wrong with you?" Belf threw Mr. Torrensen to the ground, scraping up his back on the shards of glass as he landed.

"Sir please, my wife may be dying," Mr. Torrensen pleaded.

"Your wife! I don't give a penny about your wife. You ruined the front of my truck!" Belf yelled making furious gestures towards his truck.

Susan's father looked toward the truck that had struck his car. The headlights were off, which was probably why they didn't see the truck coming. He couldn't see anything wrong with the front of the vehicle from the distance.

"I'm sorry, I-" he began.

"'Sorry?’ 'Sorry'!" he repeated getting angrier. "You are going to pay for what you did. No one crosses with Cutthroat and says 'sorry' to get out of it." Belf’s fists unclenched and his fingers straightened out in a blade shape.

Like an actual blade. Before the very terrified eyes of Mr. Torrensen, Belf’s hands extended and flattened, becoming razor sharp.

Cris Belf was born to second generations Scottish immigrants and grew up in a small town in New Jersey. He had a tough childhood growing up. Not the least of which could be contributed to the strange ability he had. Belf could change the shape and density of his skin.

As a teenager Belf was picked on because of his short stature and red hair. As a result he got into a lot of fights with people bigger and tougher than himself. Belf once challenged the senior wrestling captain to a brawl. The wrestling captain was a good five foot eight and weighed in at a staggering two hundred seven pounds of pure muscle. Little Belf was only five foot two at the time, and a meager one hundred thirty pounds. None of the wrestling captain’s friends, who had come to watch the little Scot get beat into the pavement, could explain how Belf was able to take every one of the kicks and punches without so much as a wince. Or how he was able to land the blow in the wrestling captain’s gut that toppled the giant when baseball bats broke on the captain’s abdominal muscles. To say the least, Belf wasn’t troubled by anyone in high school again.

As he started to look for work as a hitman he took the name Cutthroat when he was hired out. Others in his hitman circle thought it a cliché name that had been done to death. Belf once again earned the respect he sought out by running his finger along a man’s throat and slicing it open in the same move. After that, the move became his signature one as he killed people for money.

Now he was going to perform this signature move on Mr. Torrensen for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stepping forward and grabbing the collar of Mr. Torrensen’s shirt, Cutthroat lifted him until they were eye to eye. Releasing the hold of his left hand, but keeping Mr. Torrensen at eye level with his right, Cutthroat raised his left index finger in a scolding manner.

He spoke very quietly, “This is what happens to people who make me angry.” Then in a swift motion slit the throat of the unfortunate man spilling his life blood everywhere.

Little Susan, who had watched in petrified silence until this point let out a shrill gasp as she saw her father slump to the ground, spilling a pool of blood to cover the shattered glass. She had already tried waking up her mother whose neck was at an odd angle and wasn’t breathing. Now her father was gone as well.

Susan’s small gasp attracted Belf’s attention. Looking in what was left of the car he exclaimed, “What have we here? A little runt of some idiot and his girl?” Completely ignoring the fact that he had just killed the “idiot.”

All Susan could do was quiver in fear and trauma as her brain tried to tell her to do something. She decided that it would be best to make a run for it. Unfortunately Belf was faster than she was.

“Running away from me eh?” He caught her by a sleeve. “You made the same mistake as your old man here: no one leaves me without facing it.”

Susan threw a wide punch at him, though her arms were too short to even hit him, Cutthroat doubled over in pain.

“How the-,” he grunted. She kicked at him and his legs went out from under him.

Free of his grasp, Susan ran to the middle school nearby to find some safety. She climbed over the fence and looked back when she had landed on the soft grass. Cutthroat had regained himself and was rushing towards her. She ran up to the school trying all the doors in an effort to get in and to safety.

Suddenly she was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. Cutthroat stood above her, fury reddening his face. His hands morphed into blades becoming elongated and razor sharp.

"I'm done with you girl, you're more stupid than your daddy there, at least he had the sense to die when I told him to," he said accusingly.

Belf thrust down with his right blade-hand stabbing the ground next to Susan's head. He pulled up and thrust with his left, his blade-hand sinking into the grass above her head. With a cry of frustration Belf came down with both arms locked tight aimed for her sternum.

There was a brilliant flash of white-red light that attracted the flashing lights of police cars to the school. The police had been called in by a resident when the Torrensen's car was initially struck and relayed the whole accident and assault on the Torrensens.

Upon arriving at the scene at the school building, the officers found a little girl lying unconscious in a blackened crater that was surrounded by scorched grass, undamaged with the exception of a bruise on her head. The girl was confirmed to be the girl from the car, seen by the man who made the nine-one-one call.

The pickup truck was catalogued as belonging to one Crisford Belf, a man wanted for muiliple felonies, however, no trace of Belf was found. None had seen him leave the area.

On the wall of the school was a sillohuette of a man with long point on his the ends of his arms instead of hands.

When she woke up in the community hospital three days later, Susan claimed to have no memory of, or before, the instant her car was hit by Belf's truck. The doctor diagnosed it as temporary memory loss due to the force of the accident. A psychologist in the hospital said that she was suffering from post-traumatic amnesia and did some analyzing of her for free on account of her situation.

Susan was later released to an orphanage, but was never adopted. She finished high school as an average student and later volunteered at homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

She never forgot what actually happened that night though, and what she knew terrified her. For weeks after the incident Susan would wake up screaming in a cold sweat, her dreams were filled with that moment. The moment that she unleashed a force never before seen by man outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and watched as this terrible force ripped apart the man who would have ripped her apart.

Little did she know her life was going to get much more complicated...