Like everyone else, I'd heard the stories most of my life. They were the adult equivalent of cautionary fairy tales — If you're not careful the razor girls will get you. Aside from the name, the only thing that all the tales agreed on was that the girls were scary and to be avoided. I'd always shrugged the idea off as urban legend until I saw one on the bus.

I was sitting up the back of the bus that morning, as far as possible from the harried looking young woman in the business suit with the obnoxious child that insisted on singing some bloody song about ducks — over and over. It was getting to the point where, if I heard mention of one more duck, the evil little troll would be hanging from the roof by her hair.

The hand movement of a passenger a couple of seats down from me caught my eye. A blend of impatient finger drumming and clenched fisted frustration, it mirrored my own, aside from the choice of jewellery. The tip of each of the girl's fingers was bisected by a razorblade and every movement of her fingers was slowly shredding the bus seat. There were other passengers that could plainly see the girl carving up public transportation property, but no one other than me seemed to be noticing her.

Someone at the front of the bus signalled the driver. As the bus approached the next stop, the razor girl stood and made her way to the door. As she passed the still caterwauling youngster, the girl waved her hand over the child's head, neatly severing the mini beast's neatly plaited pigtails. I burst into laughter. The razor girl turned back to me and winked, then in a flash of perfect metallic blue hair and platform sneakers, she was gone.

The moment the bus doors closed, the shorn child broke into tears, her mother comforting her and asking what happened to her hair.

The next time I happened to see a razor girl was on the platform just before my train was due. This girl was dressed in flowing black velvet and had scalpel blades in her fingers. She slipped through the crowd of commuters with ease, leaving me to battle my through in her wake. As I finally caught up with her, I saw a teenager attempting to rifle through the handbag of an impatient and distracted woman. Before he could withdraw his hand from the purse, the razor girl had slit his throat and moved on.

Last month I saw a woman in a pin striped power suit with straight razors attached to one hand. Two days ago a sailor suited schoolgirl, looking like a Japanese businessman's wet dream, wiggled her sharply tipped fingers at me in greeting as she giggled behind her other hand.

Today I'm walking through the pre-holiday shopping crowds; people are not getting in my way as much as they usually do, appearing to move out of my way as I reach them.

I catch a glimmer of reflected light on metal from the corner of my eye and turn to see a tall girl in white leather. She glides through the shoppers to my side and gently taking my hand in her lethal grip, leads me away from the masses. In my backpack is a box of number 23 scalpel blades. They'll fit nicely in the slits that have started to form in the tips of the fingers on my left hand.