By E. R. Grant

Text copyright © 2013 E. R. Grant

All Rights Reserved

The killer watched his prey walking down the sidewalk from the shadows. She was the perfect target. Her face looked young, but he guessed she was middle-aged. She had an air of defeat about her, like the world had won and she had given up long ago. Her looks were plain—not to the point that you would see her and think, My God, is she ugly!—but unattractive enough to have caused men to overlook her in search of something better her whole life. She was moderately overweight and had a body that just couldn’t pull off that much poundage successfully and still remain feminine in appearance. Her wardrobe reflected this fact as she was dressed in a plain black T-shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes. Her drab dishwater-blonde hair was pulled back in a no-frills ponytail that hung limply down her neck.

He had spotted her inside the corner convenience store. She was no doubt in search of a late night snack, perusing the junk food aisles slowly. He hadn’t been feeling the urge to hunt tonight—it was just ten days since his last kill—and he had only gone out for some cigarettes. But seeing her there, so perfectly vulnerable, had aroused him, aroused that hunger inside of him which would not let him rest until he had satisfied it. Cigarettes forgotten, he had quickly exited the store and hidden in the alley behind it to wait for her.

Now she was walking down the sidewalk, plastic bag in hand, eyes cast downward so as not to meet the gaze of anyone she might pass; a textbook example of low self-esteem. The group of raucous teenagers loitering in the front of the store seemed not to notice her pass by. She was, for all intents and purposes, invisible to most of the world . . . but not to him.

He fell into step a quarter of a block behind her. He didn’t know where she lived, but he assumed she lived alone. There was a small chance there could be a dog involved—which he would deal with if it came to that—but most likely there would be any number of cats which, based on previous experience, tended to hide in inaccessible places when strangers entered their domicile; that was the one thing he liked about them.

As the convenience store fell behind them one block, then two, he sensed they were getting close and slowed his pace. Sure enough, he saw his prey turn left off the sidewalk and enter a driveway adjacent to a house. There were few streetlights here and the front yard of the old Craftsman style bungalow was cast in deep shadow. He thought he could make out the rectangular outline of a darkened sign hanging above the front porch door, but didn’t bother with a second look; even if she ran some kind of business out of her home, it was almost 11:30 and, given the darkness of the house, it was obviously past business hours.

As he approached the driveway, he paused behind a hedgerow of lilac bushes and peered cautiously around the corner. There was no sign of his prey. The driveway ended in a small detached garage, and next to that a sidewalk wrapped around to the right toward the back of the house. A dim yellow light illuminated the walk and the killer figured his prey must have gone in a backdoor.

As he planned his entrance, the killer’s right hand absentmindedly fondled the folded straight razor in his raincoat pocket; he carried it with him always. She would be number twenty-one—a good number, a lucky number. He had a feeling, a gut instinct, that her death was going to be even more satisfying than the others. If this night went well, as he assumed it would, she might satiate his hunger for months.

There were a couple of ground-level basement windows in the foundation of the house bordering the driveway. Even in the dim light the killer could see they were made of glass block and would not open. The main floor windows were only seven feet off the ground, but the lack of any structure below them to climb up on made them infeasible as well. As much as he disliked the thought of it, his best option looked like it was going to be a door. The front entrance had two doors, one to the enclosed porch and one to the house, and there was a good chance both would be locked. While he didn’t like the thought of exposing himself in the light flooding the back entrance, he knew that since his prey had just passed through that door, there was a good chance she had not yet locked it.

The killer made his way slowly up the left edge of the driveway, hugging the row of bushes, trying to melt into the shadows. His attention was fixed on the windows of the house, eyes looking for any light or movement from inside, ears tuned to detect the faintest sound.

He imagined her inside, probably reclining in an easy chair parked in front of the television, plump hands stuffing her pudgy face with empty calories in a subconscious attempt to fill the void left by a disappointing life. She wouldn’t hear a sound as he deftly crept up behind her (they never did) and he would wrap his strong fingers around her throat and squeeze, just until her struggling waned. It was imperative she still be alive at this point. He just needed to subdue her long enough to position her, but then, yes, let her revive as he conquered her. Let her experience the horror of knowing fully what was happening to her. The more fear he saw on her face, the more she struggled weakly and pathetically underneath him, the more exciting it would be. As he finished, he would throttle her again, this time for good; it was much easier for them to be dead for what followed.

He reached the garage and ducked into the gap between the garage wall and the bushes. From there he could get a better look at the backdoor. He guessed it opened into a kitchen and thought by now his prey would have turned on some lights, but the house remained dark.

Better for me, he thought.

He quickly crossed the driveway to the corner of the house and crouched down as he approached the old-fashioned screen door. Through it, he could see the interior door had been left open. My luck just keeps getting better and better. He slowly pulled the screen door open, hoping the old metal spring wouldn’t creak in the process, and stuck his head into the darkened house.

In the next moment, his skull was filled with a blinding light followed by absolute darkness.

When he next opened his eyes, it was only for a split second—the light was intense. He blinked and blinked until slowly, the source of the light came into focus. Two spotlights hung above him, suspended by what, he couldn’t see. He was lying naked on his back on a table—stainless steel by the cold feel of it. His arms and legs were bound to the table by rope of some sort, and his head was taped down so he couldn’t lift it or move it. His head and crotch throbbed.

Stupid cunt must have cold cocked me then kicked me in the groin, he thought.

His mouth was gagged with what felt like gauze. He rolled his eyes from side to side to try to see his surroundings. The rest of the room was dark, blotted out by the brightness of the lights above.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a female voice said from behind his head.

He struggled to spit the gauze out of his mouth, muttering a slew of obscenities that were lost in the cotton.

“Don’t spout your gibberish at me. I know who you are and you can’t talk your way out of this.”

He silenced himself and struggled to turn his head to see her.

“Don’t bother,” she said, as if in reply to his thoughts. “You like the tape job?”

An unseen finger tapped on his forehead.

“Wasn’t an original idea.” She leaned over and whispered in his right ear, “I watch a lot of Dexter.”

The killer recognized the reference and his heart skipped a beat, but he remained calm. He didn’t believe her. Let her talk her big talk. Sooner or later she’d have to move him off this table and when she tried, she would find his hands closing around her throat, choking those stupid cunty words right out of her.

“I smelled you.”

She came into view now to his left, just at the outer edge of the light. He could only see her big white face, shining like an ugly moon.

“I smelled you in the convenience store.” She stopped and stood still, just slightly out of his direct view. “I can always sniff out creepers, and you stunk to high heaven. I didn’t place you immediately, but I knew there was something waaaay wrong with you.”

She walked around to the foot of the table, still just a face poking out of the darkness like some absurd Cheshire Cat

“When I realized you were following me, I figured it out.” She stepped back into the shadow and was enveloped by the dark, then the corpse-less voice continued, “The Southside Strangler.”

He heard her moving around the table, like a shark circling its prey.

“I don’t think that’s a very good moniker,” she said, almost as if she was accusing him of picking the media-inspired title himself. “After all, you do more than just strangle, don’t you.”

She stepped fully into the light now to his right. She was dressed in some kind of light blue gown and her head was covered in one of those disposable papery bouffant caps. She almost looked like a—

“You cut!” She lurched forward as she spat out the words, leaning in just mere inches from his face.

If only he could loosen his head just a little.

“You cut off pieces of them—little tokens that you file away in whatever sick little cave you call home, like perverted souvenirs.”

She walked around behind him then, out of his view. He heard a scraping sound of something being picked up off a counter and a gentle sloshing of liquid.

“So in the spirit of the occasion,” her voice was almost singsong now, “I decided to do the same.”

She appeared to his left again, holding a squat plastic jar up above the table for him to see. It was filled three-quarters full with a clearish liquid and inside of it floated two round blobs that he couldn’t quite make out. His anger temporarily overpowered by his curiosity, he squinted his eyes, trying to focus on the unknown objects. She saw this and thrust the jar a little closer to his face, the movement of which caused the liquid to splash up against the lid and the objects to bob against the side of the jar. They were oblong in shape and reddish purple. They were about the same size and shape of . . .

Suddenly, the throbbing in his groin made sense. His eyes widened, pupils dilated by fear. He began struggling against his tethers in earnest.

“No different than a big dog neuter, really,” she said calmly, turning and putting the jar down on the counter behind her.

As she turned, he caught a glimpse of the front of her gown, streaked with crimson as if she had wiped her hands off on it afterward. He struggled harder.

She turned back toward the table and saw his efforts. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! You need to settle down!”

She picked up a syringe from a metal instrument stand at the foot of the table and stabbed the needle fully into his thigh. In moments, his body fell limp—his faculties stayed alert, but his muscles turned to useless jelly.

“Now,” she addressed him like a teacher addressing a pupil, “I will finish what I was saying.”

She commenced a casual clockwise stroll around the table, hands pressed together with one finger tapping her chin pensively.

“Like I said, no different than a big dog neuter, really. When I caught you sneaking into my home, presumably to rape and strangle me, then cut off a piece of my . . . ” she leaned over and whispered in his ear “ . . . my you know what,” then reinitiated her circling, “my first thought was purely self-defense. I knew I didn’t have enough time to get to my drug lockbox, so a cast iron skillet had to suffice. Boy, you dropped like a bag of bricks!”

She laughed, as if retelling a humorous tale to coworkers around the water cooler after a weekend of drunken shenanigans.

“I thought I might have killed you right then and there and thought, ‘Well, what’s the fun in that?’ But you were still breathing so I dragged you into my surgery so I could drug you—keep you out until the cops came—and once I knew you were out to stay, I thought, ‘What the heck?’”

Abruptly, she whirled toward him and planted both hands squarely down on the table—her face serious, her voice low. “I want you to know, I did intend on calling the cops . . . at first.”

Confession complete, she straightened and resumed her methodical circular stroll. “But then I got to thinking, even without your balls, you’re still a killer and there’s no way to surgically remove that, so I figured I might as well do the world a big favor and just kill you.”

His arms and legs still useless bags of meat, the killer could only manage to shake his head vehemently from side to side, eyes bulging, his wordless shouts muffled by the wad of cotton gauze.

“Don’t believe me? Figure I know I could never get away with something like that? Dude! I make part of my living from killing things!”

She shouted this last phrase like a revelation from God, arms outstretched, hands flapping, face upturned.

She snapped her head downward looking squarely at his face, eyes slightly narrowed. “You’re like what, 180 pounds? Cut you in two and that’s like two big dogs. I happen to have a very good relationship with the pet crematorium out on Highway 5. I do bring them lots of business!”

Her head bobbed up and down like a ragdoll agreeing with itself.

She continued cheerfully, “The story will go something like this: Two black Labrador Retrievers—let’s even say they’re brothers—are out joy-running and pick up the trail of a rabbit. The rabbit tears out onto the highway and the brothers follow, not even seeing the cars coming at them, and . . . Splat!”

She clapped her hands together for emphasis.

“Blood and guts everywhere! Had to collect the remains with a shovel. I tell them that story when I drop you off and those poor schmucks won’t even bother to open up the cadaver bags before they throw you in the furnace!”

The killer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His energy waning from the sedatives, he clung to a last shred of hope that this was still all some big bluff.

She disappeared behind him again and he heard the squeaking of wheels that badly needed grease. A second later, she appeared to his left, pushing a stainless steel IV pole on castors. Hanging on one of the pole’s hooks was a small plastic bag filled with clear fluid. Working deliberately in his line of sight, she took a large syringe filled with a bright pink substance and injected it into the fluid bag through the little rubber port on the bottom. The viscous pink liquid swirled as it diffused throughout the bag. The killer’s eyes traced the clear plastic tubing running out from the bottom of the bag, but lost sight of it as it descended below his field of view.

Again, she seemed to read his thoughts. “Oh, yup. I attached it while you were out.”

She held up the line so he could see. As she did so, he felt a slight tug on the back of his left hand where the line connected.

“Never placed an IV catheter in a human before tonight.” Then she chuckled. “Guess I never neutered a human before tonight either. What a night of firsts!”

The killer watched in horror as she unclamped the tubing, allowing gravity to carry the pink liquid toward him. As his vision began to gray, her last words rang in his ears.

“Sweet dreams . . . Killer!”