The lock on the cubicle door clicked, somewhat ominously to Candy’s mind, and a pretty petite brunette stepped forth. She smiled kindly at Candy as she began washing her hands.
"Say sister? Do you believe in suicide?" Candy asked in a casual tone.
The petite brunette laughed. "That song you were singing? It was nice."
"Serious choice though suicide. You ever consider it?" replied Candy, again casually.
The brunette gave a puzzled smile. "I’ve got to get back…" she said, and made her way towards the door.
Candy blocked the exit. "I have a gift. I can tell you’ve been thinking about it."
This was true. The brunette had been thinking about it, and Candy could read it, see her emotions like a beacon in her mind, and again the words to the song ran through her stream of consciousness.
(Suicide is painless, she wants it to be painless, she is scared of going through, take after, take and survive, take and survive.)
"I can help you. Read your palms. I could help you make things better."
Tears welled up in the brunette’s eyes. "Okay. Jesus, is this for real. I’ve been so down, you know. It’s fucked. All fucked. Can you really help?”
"Give me your palms," a command from Candy.
The brunette complied.
"Now close your eyes. I’m going to see, clairvoyantly and find out how you I can help you. How you can help you." Candy said softly.
"Just one palm will suffice. Your right. Give me your right palm," Candy’s tone was seductive and the woman willingly obeyed.
"Now close your eyes. Just relax," Candy’s voice was soothing.
The woman closed her eyes, and a moment later Candy withdrew the knife from under her shirt, from its place in her belt. The blade hovered over the brunette’s wrist and then Candy brought it down in sweeping movement, severing several veins.
"Think I got an artery," laughed Candy, though she was barely audible over the woman’s screams.
With the hilt of the blade Candy pounded on the brunette's left temple, dislocating an eye. The screaming trebled in volume and Candy smashed the woman's head against the ceramic floor, a crashing finale to the crescendo which had preceded it.
The brunette’s wailing stopped and all was silent. The blood was slick against the gleaming black tiled floor, the only sound in the room a synchronised rasping of breath from both victim and cause. Candy looked down at her victim with a caustic happiness. She felt good.
With careful avoidance, Candy knelt down amidst the mixing sea of redness which now flooded the tiled floor and drew sharp steel across her victims throat. Blood fountained from the wound.
The dead woman was carrying a purse and Candy rifled it, finding amongst other things, some money ($30 give or take) and a credit card, made out in the name of Constance Bright.
From now on she was Constance Bright. At least for the time being. She folded the stolen bills around her new identity.
She had won another part of her soul. But she would win some more before returning to the covenant. She opened the bathroom door, and it occurred to her that no-one had entered since her arrival to the ladies room. She pondered briefly what the outcome would have been had someone, perhaps the drunk and obviously coked up bunch of ladies in the corner had come in.
Could she have taken them all?
Somehow she just knew that she would have and for a moment wished that they had in fact entered and witnessed the scene of carnage before them. Candy counted nine of them in total and that would have been ten grams of soul she could have clocked up there and then.
However, she also realised that she was developing a certain arrogance, and she knew the flip side to that was overconfidence, which would be a major factor in her getting caught should she leave it to develop out of control. She had been told in a psychology lecture that paranoia was also the flip side of egotism. At the time she had seen the logic in it, had even thought she had understood it, although standing outside the ladies bathroom where her third murder victim lay,( was it her third!) she realised that she had never really understood it until now. And it worked both ways. To believe you were the centre of some crazy fucked up conspiracy to steal your soul and that brutal horrific demons, nay, Gods and Goddesses, could be conceived as being egocentrically paranoid when applied to the average person. When it was actually happening, Candy now understood that paranoia was a justifiable state of mind and that arrogance was a counterpart to deal with that.
She decided to leave the body where it was.
The K had spread her vision into a hyper-real movie of sorts. It was like being plugged in at the mains, all her energy coming from a direct source. What the fuck could she do with the body anyway? Eat it? She thought not. There wasn't time for a start, and secondly... secondly, it's a fucking body. It's not even cooked.
The thought made her snort with laughter. Shit. She was high and standing in a bathroom with a dead body. Had been for... fuck; for a while, at least. She had zoned out, gone into a moment. She regathered her thoughts. Probably best she left and didn’t order a drink on the way out. She walked quickly to the door and opened it. Was it the drug... or had nothing really changed since she had gone to the bathroom? It was like walking into a time warp. Everyone was still sitting where they had been, doing as they had.
All except the woman with the unreadable mind. She had disappeared.
However, the packet of cigarettes still sat atop the table.
Candy picked them up and put the dented soft tops in her back pocket. She noticed a woman getting up and walking towards the ladies room. Candy pushed between a bulky man in a cheap suit and a lady in a blue dress and quickly left the bar. The street outside was mercifully empty. Candy exhaled warm breath, which hit the cold night like phantom smoke from an invisible cigarette.
A scream sounded from inside the bar, disturbing the otherwise quietude of the street.
Candy broke into a run
The hotel was massive, and somewhat foreboding to Candy.
Where would she fit in such an establishment? She felt like a piece from a child's large jigsaw puzzle trying to squeeze her way unnoticed into a fifteen plus, 2000 piecer. Still - she had the card, and in this town, money talked - especially the plastic kind. She made her way up the stone steps and pushed through the revolving doors.
She smiled as the doorman tipped his hat respectfully. If only you knew, thought Candy.
She sensed the hallmark of security, felt normally only by those of the ruling classes which pervaded the atmosphere of the hotel foyer. Summoning courage from somewhere in her vodka mentality she approached the reception area, where stood a young attractive clerk.
“Hi. I need a room," said Candy, as coolly as she could.
"For how long will you be staying, miss?" asked the clerk.
“I'm not sure. Can I just check in and see how it goes from there?" replied Candy.
It occurred to her that she could just run. Get away, somewhere foreign, where she could disappear, never be found. She had always wanted to travel. The irony was not lost on her.
"And how will Madame be paying?” the clerk asked
Madame, thought Candy. It was miss just a moment ago.
"Cold hard plastic, man. That okay? And send a steak up to the room. With scotch, and a bucket of ice," said Candy, with deliberate enmity.
She now felt hostility towards not only this man, but the hotel he represented, as if he was nothing more than a set of vocal cords for the staircases and stonewalls that surrounded them. It never ceased to amaze Candy the way people not only took their identity from their job, but from the very place that gave them that identity. And the way they would somehow evolve the characteristics of that place into their own, as if that particular place, in this case the hotel, had given birth... no that was not right... had given life to them.
And how they would defend that life with all the instincts of survival Mother Nature had placed in their various glandular hormones and psychol
ogies and whatever the fuck else made up the human condition.
“But it really sucks the life outta ya. In the end, it's taking you for all you have. You're just too dumb to see it,” mused Candy in a half whisper to herself. Then, “Jack can. We're gonna have to stop hanging around with that skeletal fucker. We're starting to sound like the miserable fuck.” And it was true. She did sound a bit too much like Jack. At least for her liking.
She realised the clerk was staring at her.
“Any joy with that room yet, buddy-boy?” she asked in overly dignified tones.
The clerk maintained the professional expression on his face, yet Candy caught his thought - Two bit hooker, wants a room for the night. Probably send her uncle up in a minute.
He handed Candy the key to the room, an electronic device that she was not familiar with. "The room number is 305. Is there anything else we can do to make your time here more pleasurable? I notice you have no luggage to check."
He thinks you’re a call girl with more money than sense, Candy thought. "I could make my stay more pleasurable for you, kid. But believe me, you couldn’t afford it."
With that remark she turned and rode the elevator up to her room…
...(L.A Document 1265)
Candy’s need to kill, I think stemmed not only from the lack of understanding she would neglect to find in the authorities that would relentlessly question her, but also from the enjoyment that she gained from it. Candy was dangerous. Anyone with half an iota of sense could see that. Yet she held a kindness that was the envy to all the other patients in the institution. Where once she would see it as a crime, a horrific fairytale, read only in the newspapers and seen on the news, killing became a way of life and much more than that, some kind of art, a creative outlet for her ever changing mindset. Her only downfall was the insanity that ensued. With an irrational mind she was destined to be caught. Maybe she wanted to be caught. Sometimes she would say that the institution was a trip into normality for her. When asked why, she would reply, "Because it's so fucked up." That was Candy. You had to love that psychopath. She bred it to another's addiction. Love that is…
…If the elevator had been roomy and the corridors wide, her room was definitely both. Candy stepped inside and collapsed on the bed. The door was slightly ajar, and wanting not to be disturbed she swung herself off the bed and slammed the heavy wooded oak, then locked it behind her, and again took her place on the bed. The T.V remote control sat on the bedside cabinet and she plucked it up and turned on the T.V.
Cartoons blared, a badly drawn animation that held no interest for her. She clicked the remote and found the local news. A woman on the T.V was reporting with dramatic ease. Candy could feel the falsity of her personality. It practically radiated from the screen. She turned up the volume and listened. It was the same reporter she had seen fuck knew how long ago. Was it really just a few days ago that she had been in the lounge watching television and now she was prime time news.
"It is this time at the new nightclub BLAST that we see another spree of the violence which has been plaguing this city. The bodies of two women have been found, along with that of a male. One of the females and the male have been identified as Sarah McCaulsland and Richard Nettles, both friends and apparent attendees of the aforementioned nightclub. Police have said that so far they are still trying to trace the identity of the other victim...”
The camera swung in a ninety degree arc and Candy watched the reporter make her way once again to the harried looking detective.
"Detective Malone, is there anything you can tell us here. Is this the work of our infamous serial killer?"
"At this time we cannot say for sure. We have however identified another blood type left at the scene. We also have reports of another woman who was last seen with the victims."
Malone turned towards the camera. "If you are out there, we urge you to come forward as we need as clear a picture as possible of what took place that night and must also warm you that evasion of a crime scene investigation is a crime itself and won't look good for you."
"Do you think this woman may be in any danger, Detective?"
Malone sighed. He had wanted people to think that the woman was out there watching safe at home. She may well be safe at home, although he doubted it. You just didn't vanish on a murder scene, get a good night’s sleep, then order take out the next day to check up on the local news. No, she was involved in some way, whoever she was, but in what way exactly, he could not say.
“We are following all lines of inquiry, and admit that is a possibility-" A uniformed officer approached the detective and whispered in his ear. The detective took on a weary frown which seemed to fit his features like a glove to a hand. "We have just had news of another body. Again folks, keep indoors if possible, and if you go out then don't do it alone." The detective stalked off hurriedly to a shrieking of questions from the other surrounding journalists.
The one belonging to this channel merely turned again to the camera. "Maybe good advice? Maybe not? Another four down. How many more to go? That is the question this reporter is asking tonight."
Candy switched off the television. The screen died with a flicker. A rap at the door made Candy jump, bringing her out of her daze. It was the cops for sure. They would arrest her; and then what? She would get the chair for sure. And her soul would rest with the Rubiconeteka for all eternity.
"Room service," the voice of a woman came through the oak doorway loud and clear.
Relief surged through Candy. Of course the steak. And more importantly the scotch.
She swung open the door and a young pretty maid stood facing her with a serving trolley.
"Put it on my tab," said Candy, proffering a five dollar bill at the girl, which she accepted with a grateful smile before departing, leaving Candy to wheel in the serving trolley.
Candy lifted the metal dome that covered her food and was delighted to see that the steak had been done medium rare.
With ravenous hunger she diced and chewed the meaty bites with contentment. Finishing the steak she moved onto the bourbon, not bothering with a glass, instead swigging it straight from the bottle whilst doing line after line of Ketamine.
She managed to smoke a rock before she passed out.
CHAPTER FIVE
DREAMS THAT CANNOT BE REAL – WHILST REAL IS DISBELIEVED
They remembered that checking in had been easy. Then it was like sleep had overtaken and now they could only remember the girl on the bed, how her hair colour matched her own, only the styles of noticeable difference. They had no real memory then of who they were, just that the person in front of them, lying on the blood soaked bed sheets, was dead. For an instant they realized that it had happened again, but in their bourbon haze they managed to drown out that part of their identity and become again just they, them, whoever they were without actual recognition. They checked themselves for splashes of blood or other forms of evidence to their crime, and then made their way to the door.
The banging on the heavy oak panelling roused Candy from a restless slumber of nightmares. She had taken a lot of Ketamine before she passed out and she had dreamed that she had been killing a woman. She had been killing a woman. And there had been some confusion as to who she thought she had been killing. And from far away she could hear her friend’s voice calling her, her friend Sarah and she had awoken startled by the ferocity of the dream. Yet her voice was still being called. Reality kicked in. And by the sound of it the door was going to be next.
"Candy! We know you’re in there. There is no escape. If you are armed then please put down your weapon and step outside. We just need to talk. Get your side of the story." Candy guessed the voice was that of the police negotiator. She had seen them in the movies. Stupid cunts, Candy thought to herself. They could have done me whilst asleep. She had resigned herself to the idea of being discovered before she had fallen asleep, when the crack had hit home and the Ketamine running in her blood had taken over and all had become a dream. It oc
curred to her she still had some left.
"Give me a minute. I’m not armed and want this to run as peacefully and smoothly as you do. Can you give me a minute? I want to get dressed. Can‘t have you boys drooling all over me," she said, feeling detached from the forced coolness of her voice.
"You have five minutes to get decent. Then we’re coming in!"
Forceful, thought Candy. Probably thinks he’s Hoover. What she didn't know was more men from the cities S.W.A.T team had been gathering on the rooftops across the way. Two small red dots darted about the room, a miniature light display with lethal intention, which emanated from the two AE long range sniper rifles and their handlers, situated on the roof top across the street. The room was magnified by binoculars which peered upon Candy's every move. Currently she was pouring a glass of bourbon from the remainder of the bottle and was taking thoughtful swigs as she adjusted her hair in the mirror.
One of the S.W.A.T guys turned to the other. "What the hell is she doing?" he asked his colleague and partner, “I thought there was gonna be titties on show?”
Candy racked the remainder of her Ketamine into three lines, then loaded the pipe with the last of the crack. She smoked heavily, snorting the yellow dust in-between inhalations and was soon comfortable enough to pick up the blood stained blade that sat upon the left pillow.
"I’m coming out!" she shouted, somewhat amicably, the drugs making an apathetic monster of her mind. "Or maybe you should just come get me. Shoot to kill. Do me a favour," she said, barely suppressing her laugh.
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