Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  Towards the end, he came to a gun in his collection that made my whole night with Robby worthwhile. It wasn’t anything special, just a normal-looking .45, but his claim that it was both unregistered and free from any serial marks made it perfect. I looked it over for a second or two, placed it back, and excused myself to use the bathroom.

  A few minutes later, I returned. Robby lay passed out and snoring on his corner of the couch, while Janine finished up the last of the second eight-ball. She looked up at the sound of my footsteps and flashed a broad, toothy smile.

  “He out for the night?” I cocked my head towards Robby.

  “Uh-huh.” She smiled and stood. “I’m surprised it took him this long. He usually passes out at the bar.”

  She walked over and ran her fingers down my chest and stomach, stopping to pull on my waistband.

  “C’mon.” She motioned towards the back rooms of the trailer with a dip of her head. “I got something I wanna show you.”

  I allowed her to lead me by my pants to a bedroom at the end of the hall. Once inside, she shut the door and dimmed the lights. Her eyes gleamed in drug-fueled lust, and I reached for her, only to have her push me backwards towards the bed.

  “Lay down,” she said, giving me one final push. I let myself fall. “And get comfy.”

  I propped myself up on some pillows. She turned on a small, plastic, purple boom box. Garth Brooks’s homogenized country stylings filled the room, and Janine began to dance.

  Moving to the rhythm, swaying her hips in time to the music, and turning every so often, Janine flaunted the tried and true movements of the redneck bar stripper. She turned her back to me and bent over, unlatching her boots as she shook her ass to the music.

  Standing up, she faced me and raised one leg and then the other, kicking off her boots. She stepped up onto the bed and stood over my feet, still dancing.

  Her hands moved over her body, starting at her neck and sliding down to pause on her breasts before finding their way to the buttons of her skirt. Paying individual attention to each one, she undid them, and her skirt slid off her hips and fell around her ankles. With practiced seduction, she shimmied free of it and spun, showing off her black thong.

  Step by slow, suggestive step, she came forward to dance, her feet beside my hips. I smiled, and she lowered herself down onto my thighs, moving with the music while she undid my pants

  Arching her back until she reached my boots, she pulled them off—her hips never missing the beat. She sat back up and slid down my legs, pulling my pants and boxers with her.

  She slid forward to straddle me again. Her deep and seductive gaze met mine.

  What would it feel like to strangle her? How would she move? Would she writhe or shake? I thought about it for a few seconds more, fingering it over in my mind’s eye, contemplating how, exactly, I would do the actual deed.

  Crossing her arms below her breasts in perfect porn-star form, Janine grabbed hold of her top and pulled it over her head, throwing it to the side of the bed. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so her breasts stood beautiful and naked. Her tiny doll fingers ran over their fullness, tracing circles around her areolas and nipples.

  I couldn’t hold back from her any longer and caressed her body.

  Throwing back her head, Janine moaned and intensified her movements on top of me. She stopped riding me, danced to a stand, and hooked a thumb on either side of her panties waistband. She wiggled out of her thong.

  With slow movements, she straddled me again and let out a small, sharp cry as I entered her. I moaned in relief of desire achieved.

  I sat up a little and kissed her breasts. A series of staccato yelps, each one sharper and more passionate than the last, escaped her throat, and she thrust down on me again and again.

  Lying back, I grabbed hold of her hips, adding my strength to theirs. Before my eyes, a vision of her desiccated, blood-ridden corpse danced and writhed. She arched her back in ecstasy, screaming her climax, and collapsed, exhausted and spent, on my still-shirted chest.

  “Oh, God,” Janine panted. “I love sex on coke.”

  I laughed at that, pushed her to the side, and got up with the pretense of going to the bathroom. Janine smiled and pulled a long red vibrator from the nightstand drawer.

  “Hurry back,” she almost purred.

  I walked down the hall to the living room where Robby slept, still snoring away in drunken bliss, unaware that just rooms away I’d been fucking his girlfriend. The thought of it brought a smile to my face.

  I picked one of his shotguns up off the table and checked to make sure it was loaded. It was (they all were). I also grabbed a small .38 snub.

  I moved back to the edge of the hallway and faced Robby. Leveling the shotgun at his drunken, redneck ass, I aimed at his chest and squeezed off a slug.

  His body reared up under the impact, and his eyes jerked wide open in fear and pain, a sudden instant of realization seizing him. His death-inspired lucidity only lasted a second—barely time enough for his body to fall back onto the couch, but that second was glorious. His head lolled to the side, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

  I walked back to where he lay, dead, and set the shotgun down. Drawing the .38, I flipped the safety off and faced the hallway, waiting for the pandemonium to come.

  Sounds of commotion came from the bedroom, and I knew Janine was on her way. She kept calling Robby’s name, quietly at first but growing more insistent and panicky the closer she got. She rounded the corner into the living room and froze, still naked.

  “Oh…my…God!” She sobbed, staring first at her dead lover and the gaping hole in his chest and then looking at me, naked from the waist down and pointing a pistol at her. “Why?”

  “Because…I just love murder on coke,” I mocked. “Don’t you?”

  She didn’t get to answer—I doubt she had anything much to say anyway. I fired three shots into her firm, young body. She did scream, though.

  I maneuvered the corpses to face each other and placed the .38 in Robby’s hand and the shotgun in Janine’s. I made each of them fire off a wild shot before I left them, dead and arranged, for their next visitor to find.

  After getting my clothes from the bedroom and dressing (and turning off that damned Garth Brooks bullshit) I searched the trailer. In the bedroom, I found close to three hundred and fifty dollars—and about a teener of coke that Janine had forgotten to mention.

  Nothing else in the trailer had any value to me except the gun collection, and really, only one piece from it interested me. I picked up the phantom .45 and some ammunition, slid the bullets in my pocket and the gun into the waistband of my pants, and left.

  * * * * *

  The funny thing about the evening is that I’d only wanted to get a gun out of my visit to the bar. Sure, I’d planned to kill its owner, but the sex and extra murder had both been icing on the cake. Somewhere out there, an anti-social old man, who long ago forgot—and was maybe forgotten by—the world, slept drunkenly, never knowing how close to death he came or how lucky he was that he didn’t care if Clinton was out to get him.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, a Wednesday, I was supposed to have the day off from work so I had no feasible excuse to get away from my wife and the house for the three or four hours it would take to pull off a murder like the one I’d committed the previous night.

  I woke up around 9:45, to catch the Batman/Superman hour on the WB. I’m a huge comic book fan and an avid cartoon watcher and, for my money, the Batman and Superman cartoons were by far the best super-hero cartoons on television. They managed to get the characterizations perfect for every member of the show’s cast, and their storytelling and graphics styles fit their respective stars to perfection.

  My wife, Rachel, came in and sat down next to me on the couch as I rolled up a healthy-sized joint. I finished twisting it up, lit it, took a good hit, and passed it to her. The show started, and we passed the joint back and forth until only a smolder
ing stump of a roach remained, its carcass consigned to the ashtray to wait in anticipation of a glorious reincarnation in the form of a roach joint.

  The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully. We spent the morning watching cartoons and smoking pot. Once the afternoon rolled around, I turned the TV off and settled down to read Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. My wife ran out for a little while to pick up a new bra and some milk. I made the most of the opportunity and spent an hour or two reading in peace, the mesmerizing refrains of Pink Floyd albums keeping me company.

  Rachel arrived home around two, and we started fooling around, ending up in bed for a while. We made love, and I enjoyed her more than I had in years. My murders played over and over in my head, their scarlet pleasures accentuating every movement of my wife, every act of our desire. If I’d known murder could be so good for the sex life I’d have started killing people years earlier.

  The only truly eventful happening of the day came later. Some friends of ours stopped by, and we matched up blunts and played the PlayStation. My one friend, Mac, who I’d grown up next door to, brought over Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, so we played it for an hour or two.

  I fished out the coke that I’d gotten from Robby and Janine and cut it up on a CD case. Another of my friends, Chris, set to rolling up a new blunt. In appreciation, I passed him the first of the lines. I popped Tekken III into the system.

  My friends, my wife, and I had each developed, over time, a personal affinity for the Tekken characters. Everybody used someone different, and we all became masters of our chosen vassals. In addition to our main guys, though, we each maintained a stable of several sub-characters for use in special circumstances where our regulars didn’t work out. Once we got into our individual grooves and really started gaming, the battles would be fierce and the tournament could last for hours.

  I used Hwoa Rang, the undisputed master of the kick, and the first fight of the day pitted me against Joe and his Nazi kickboxer, Bryan Fury. Chris finished rolling the blunt and said something that shattered my concentration.

  “Hey,” he said, passing the blunt to my wife, “did you guys see that shit on TV about those people they found?”

  “You mean them mother-fuckers over off Woodlawn?” asked Mac.

  Rachel took her second hit off the blunt and passed it to me.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, in that bassy, breathless voice that potheads get if they try to hold in their hit and talk at the same time.

  “They found two people murdered in their own house,” Mac said.

  “Not just murdered,” Chris chimed in. “The guy had his neck broken, and the bitch was stabbed in the throat.”

  His face lit up, and he grew animated—which, if you knew Chris, whose idea of being excited is to crack a smile, would tell you how cool he thought the whole thing seemed.

  “Some fucker slaughtered them mother-fuckers!”

  Joe put the finishing touches on an eight-move combo that ended my character’s chances. “Fuck ‘em,” he said, “mother-fuckers probably deserved it.”

  I passed the blunt and the controller to Chris and sat heavily against the back of the couch.

  “Fuck, yeah,” Mac said. “Fuckin’ rich assholes. About time somebody knocked a few of ‘em off.”

  “It’s probably more than just that, man,” Joe said. “They were probably into some serious shit to get put down like that.”

  “Man,” Mac argued, “look, it could have been some dude like us who just got fed up. Who knows? He could have just decided to start killin’.”

  “Yeah,” I cut in, “old fuck probably just pissed somebody off.”

  “Hey,” Joe snapped, “how many times you gonna hit that joint?”

  “This is only my second time.” Chris took a long pull on the cigar joint. “You ready for that ass whoopin’?”

  Everyone settled back into the game, much to my relief. Chris and Joe fought on screen, but my wife stared at me. I did my best to pretend that I didn’t notice and went on watching the game.

  Later on, after everyone had left, Rachel and I made our way to bed. For a while we lay together in silence, my right arm around her shoulders and her head on my chest.

  “Where’d you hear about those people from?” she asked quietly.

  “Just when Chris brought it up,” I lied. “Why?”

  “How’d you know it was an old guy then?” Her voice sounded soft and childlike in the darkness.

  “‘Cause Mac said so,” I lied again. “Didn’t you hear him?”

  “No, he didn’t,” she corrected, her voice sharp.

  She pulled herself up, rested on her elbow, and turned towards me, her face hidden in shadow.

  “He said they were rich.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, trying to sound confused. “I could’ve sworn he said they were old too.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I couldn’t see her features, but I sensed her stare.

  I reached my arms around her and pulled her on top of me. Her breasts pressed against my chest, and I kissed her neck, giving small, sharp bites every so often.

  “Oh, well,” I said, running my left hand down the length of her body, “I must have imagined it. I was pretty high.”

  All other questions forgotten, all words set aside, I rolled her onto her back and placed myself between her legs.

  * * * * *

  I caught the news the next afternoon right before I went to work. The newscaster recounted each and every gory detail the media had been given, his voice tight and anxious, the pleasure of a man who knows his ratings are rising plastered across his face.

  The cops had pieced together most of the particulars of what had happened but they had no leads so far, which, for me, was a very good thing. It’s all well and fine to feel justified in killing, but I still had no wish to spend the next fifty years of my life in prison explaining the particulars of my motivation to some black crack-head named Pokey.

  I took pride, though, in noticing that the story had gotten a special background graphic created for it.

  My wife was still asleep when it came time for me to leave. I went into our bedroom and lightly shook her by the shoulder.

  “Hey, honey,” I cooed. “Honey….”

  She rolled over, blinking the afternoon light out of her eyes, and forced a tired little smile.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice hoarse and sleepy. “What time is it?”

  “A little after noon. I’m about to head out, but I wanted to get a kiss before I left.”

  She rose towards me, and I pulled her close. We exchanged a few half-hearted pecks and one deep kiss. I stood up, caressed her cheek, and told her I’d be home later. Contented, she sighed, mumbled something close to “I love you”, and rolled back over to go to sleep.

  After I left, I drove for about an hour and a half until I reached the large city to the north of my town. I cruised around its streets for a few hours, looking at the local color, and ended up in the ghetto area.

  I drove to a nearby convenience store and got my new .45 out of the trunk—I’d hidden it underneath the spare tire. I climbed back behind the wheel, hid the gun from view under the front seat’s central armrest, and headed out to hunt.

  I cruised up to a street corner populated by several young black guys. They watched in fashionably detached anticipation as I pulled up and my window slid down. One of them stepped out of the group towards my car, stopping about two feet away from my window.

  “You servin’?” I asked.

  “What you lookin’ fo’?” the dealer asked, moving his hands back and forth in front of his oversized parka.

  “Weight,” I said, “more than you’ve got.”

  He straightened himself up to his full height. A series of over-exaggerated facial expressions, each one conveying just how stupid he thought I was, flashed across his face.

  “Bitch, you crazy?” he whined, raising his voice at least an octave higher. He turned to the ot
hers, motioning wildly, and said, “This mutha fucka wants weight. Yo, mutha fucka must think I’m stupid.”

  I sat silent for a minute while he went on at length to the others. Over and over again he repeated his words, saying nothing else at all, but changing his inflection each time he said it, emphasizing each word in turn and properly showing up to his ‘boyz’. Finally, he finished his one-man show and turned back to me.

  “Take yo’ cop ass the fuck on.” He growled and widened his eyes.

  “Oh,” I acted let down, “I ain’t no cop, but I do have a fraternity full of guys who’re counting on me. If I don’t bring stuff back they won’t let me join.”

  The whole crowd erupted in laughter. They danced around, bent over double, and leaned on each other in mock weakness. One fell to the ground, lay on his back, and kicked his feet in the air while he howled. Just the reaction I wanted. Still, I pretended to be embarrassed; let them think they’d put the white boy in his place.

  “I…I’ve got money,” I stuttered, holding up close to seven hundred dollars. “I can get more from the ATM.”

  The greed in their souls spilled into their eyes. They stopped laughing.

  “C’mon, man,” I whined. “I ain’t no cop.”

  The dealer turned to his crew and made a few laugh-like noises, different ones than earlier. They sounded forced, like each individual “chyaah” took effort.

  “Yo, I’m about to go hook this white boy up,” he sneered. A predatory smile played across his face, and the others immediately launched into a fresh round of exaggerated stage laughter. “I be back in a minute,” he told them.