by Mandy White
One driver ran out of patience and pulled out to pass several cars at once, ignoring the solid line. It was a dangerous move because it was impossible to see oncoming traffic, but the jacked-up Chevy pickup roared by in the oncoming lane, kicking up a huge rooster tail of water and drenching the cars he passed. For a few frightening seconds I was blinded until my wipers caught up with the deluge on my windshield.
The driver of the pickup jerked the wheel abruptly to avoid a head-on collision with an eighteen-wheeler. He cut in front of me, missing my front bumper by inches.
“You asshole!” I yelled, easing off on the accelerator. I braced myself for another blinding deluge from the big rig. I held my breath and kept the wheel steady until the rig had passed and I could see again.
Phew! That was scary.
I kept my speed down to let the idiot in the truck get far ahead of me. Those were the kind of drivers you didn’t want to follow too closely.
As if confirming my thought, the pickup hydroplaned on the wet road ahead, fishtailing from side to side across both lanes. After sliding halfway around, the truck’s tires caught traction, bringing it to an abrupt stop. Carried by momentum, it flipped into the path of oncoming traffic. I hit my brakes, but couldn’t slow down in time to avoid a silver SUV that had swerved to miss the pickup and was now directly in my path.
The last few seconds before you crash are the most terrifying. You realize just how little control you have over the giant hunk of metal you’re driving. It’s the worst feeling in the world – feeling out of control. Just before impact, I caught a glimpse of the face of the man behind the wheel. His mouth gaped in a giant O like he was shouting at me. Then everything went black.
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The Feeder
Copyright © 2013 Mandy White
...Hollywood Hunk Feeder’s Latest Victim
The headline screamed up at me from the morning edition of the LA Times. I scanned the front page article quickly, then tossed the paper aside in disgust. “Victim” was what they called him. Ironically, they had made no mention of all the young women, some of them barely more than children, that he had victimized. Being one of Hollywood’s hottest leading men apparently gave the scumbag license to use and abuse prostitutes and starstruck female fans as he saw fit.
Dirk Davis had some nasty fetishes that he liked to indulge with any woman unlucky enough to find herself in his company on a one-on-one basis. Some of his sick little sex games resulted in permanent scars for his victims, both of a mental and of a physical nature. Toward the end, Dirk had felt all of their pain. I had made damn sure of that.
A handful of his victims had come forward and tried to press charges against him, telling horrific tales of the sadistic things the Tinseltown bad boy had done to them. The victims who were brave enough to testify were effectively torn apart in court by Dirk’s lawyers. A celebrity with his wealth and status could easily assemble a ‘dream team’ of legal defense that made OJ’s team look like a pack of baboons. After discrediting and reducing to tears one victim after another, Dirk walked away a free man without even having to pay a dime of settlement to any of his accusers. His victims’ lives were ruined after having endured what they did at Dirk’s hands and then getting mentally raped again by his dicksnot lawyers.
Yes, Dirk had deserved what he’d gotten and I had enjoyed giving it to him; every damn second of it.
So now, I was apparently the serial killer known to the Los Angeles media as “The Feeder”. After just a mere handful of murders. Talk about dramatic! But then, this was Hollywood so it wasn't terribly surprising. The Feeder. It was a creepy nickname; one that evoked the chilling mental image of one who feeds upon his or her victims’ remains...
And now here I was, about to return home to Canada where I planned to resume my normal life and put all the killing behind me yet for some reason the need was still with me. I had not yet purged the hunger for revenge from my soul. How many more? How much blood needed to be shed before I once again felt pure?
As I pulled on my fishnet stockings and clipped the garter belt around my slender hips, I daydreamed back to a time not so long ago when I wasn’t a killer; back to a time when I still had a sister. Camille was my twin, even in death and not a day passed that I didn’t miss her, pine for her and seethe with outrage at her murder…
* * *
My voice deepened to a sinister growl.
“Where is that murdering fuck, Diamond Vinnie?”
My cover was blown. I could tell by his reaction he knew I wasn’t Camille. Louie’s face turned a sickly white despite his caramel California tan.
“A-Aurora? What’s wrong with you?”
Hol-ee shit!
The fucktard still thought I was Camille!
Laughing heartily, I planted my feet on the floor in a confident stance, put my hands on my hips and flung the raincoat behind me to give him a good look at my body.
I waited for his reaction. He still didn’t show any sign of realizing I wasn’t Camille.
Time to have some fun with this little puke.
“I’ve never felt better, baby! Aside from the fact that I’m now the undead, of course. I’m a vampire and I’ve come to drain your fucking blood!”
Louie might even have believed me, from the way he reacted. All that Hollywood shit must have gone to his head. He backed slowly away from me, moving toward the bar.
I took a step toward him, reaching behind my back to caress the handle of the knife. It calmed me, knowing the weapon was there even if I had no intention of using it.
I monitored Louie’s actions with a well-trained eye. A good hunter knows to always watch the body language of the prey. A cornered animal, no matter how terrified, will often lash out at its attacker in a gallant last-ditch effort to save its own life.
Louie edged behind the bar. I sensed there was something back there that he wanted. He reached but wasn’t fast enough. He was a soft, wimpy Hollywood leech and I was a skilled hunter; lean, fit and prepared. In one fluid motion I closed the distance between us, drawing my knife from its sheath as I went.
When he lunged toward me I reacted without thinking, opening his face with a single diagonal stroke of steel. He howled and clawed at his face, stumbling backward into the glass shelving behind the bar and bringing a rain of crystal shards down upon his head.
I stepped behind the bar and saw on the counter the pistol he had been trying to reach. I smiled. Well, howdy there, good-lookin! I stuffed the gun in the back of my waistband before advancing on Louie with my newly christened blade. I didn’t need a gun to deal with this asshole but I was sure it would come in handy later.
He cowered against the wall, trying to hold his gushing face together. I admired the impressive work I’d done with just one swipe of the knife. I had taken out one of his eyes and the flesh on the side of his face hung loosely, neatly flayed from his cheekbone. The slash continued across his nose and split the corner of his mouth opposite the missing eye.
“And now,” I said, standing before him, “I’ll ask you again. Where the fuck is Diamond Vinnie?”
“Y-you already know!” His breathed in short, shallow gasps and his hands shook like an epileptic with Parkinson’s.
“Maybe I fucking forgot!” I shouted at him. “Tell me again!”
He sputtered out the name of the place and room number, “Seymour Hotel on Esplanade. Room three-fif-fifty-nine.”
Another hotel? Don’t any of these people have proper homes?
I intended to leave Louie just like that, bleeding, blubbering and in need of a good plastic surgeon but the idiot just had to push his luck.
The cornered prey launched his last-resort attack. He grabbed my ankle, trying to pull me down to the floor. I drove the heel of my boot into his groin and he collapsed back into the corner with a pathetic mewling sound. There’s nothing quite like a stiletto heel to the nutsack when it comes to subduing an attack
er.
My hand swept the blade across his throat before I even realized I was killing him.
He made a gargling noise and flailed about, kicking over several empty liquor bottles and adding to the bed of broken glass on the floor. I dashed out of the path of the crimson spray, grateful that I had chosen to wear black.
From across the room, I sang to him as I watched the life bleed out of him. “Louie Louie… oh, baby! You gotta go.”
I collected all of the items I had touched and disposed of any evidence of my presence in the apartment. I poured the gin and tonic down the sink and slipped the glass in my pocket, picked my lipstick-stained cigarette butt from the ashtray and pocketed the silver Zippo I’d used to light it.
“Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah,” I hummed under my breath as I worked.
I went back to check on Louie, who was pretty much bled out by that point. He slumped in the corner slack-jawed, surrounded by bloody shards of glass. He had stopped trying to hold his face together. His remaining eye fixed me with a creepy unblinking stare. I didn’t know if he was seeing anything at this point or not, but I didn’t like him looking at me.
I remembered reading about how the retina or something stores a negative image of the last thing the eye sees when the body dies. I couldn’t remember if it had said how long the image lasted, but either way, I didn’t want my face on the back of his eyeball. I drove my blade into his uninjured eye socket and twisted.
“Stop fucking staring at me.”
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