Fresh Flesh

by Todd Russell

  "If the woman is in my possession by tomorrow morning, I may decide to let Bobby's death go without further punishment. After all, Bobby was my buddy."

  Jessica gulped.

  "However, if the woman is not mine by sunrise tomorrow, then we will come and take her by force. If that is your choice, Richie, you might as well dig yourself a grave tonight because I will reclaim my property by lunchtime tomorrow. And I won't kill you quickly, Richie. No, I'll punish you, keep you on the brink of death until I've squeezed every inch of that crazy bullshit life out of you. I'll break you for sport in front of the boys."

  Richard started to say something but stopped. Jessica was glad he didn't let his anger force him into some macho back and forth.

  "Here's the score: there are ten of us. I know it's been awhile since you've stopped by and visited, but we have numbers on our side. And when I confirm to them the sweet prize you aren't sharing? Oh my, the boys will be unhappy. They will tear this island apart looking for you."

  "Come on, there must be something—"

  "Ten to two, Richie. Think about it. Think about it hard. You still have plenty of time."

  Richard's face was red and sullen.

  "Plenty of time."

  "Never," Richard whispered, turning to look at Jessica.

  "Sunrise tomorrow. Be there with my property."

  Richard just kept shaking his head saying under his breath, "Never."

  "Have a good last day with her, Richie. It looks like it's going to be a scorcher. A beautiful day. B is for Richie's Bitchy. B is for Richie's Bitchy. . ." The voice trailed off.

  The ocean breeze stopped blowing long enough for Jessica to hear the sounds of thrashing away. The wind resumed strong and steady.

  Kyle Roberts' chilling words repeated inside Jessica's brain: B is for Richie's Bitchy.

  CHAPTER 17

  The ocean winds played a chilling song as Richard returned to his rock seat. He sat, putting his sweat-laden face in his hands. The ocean song kept playing; it's melody a series of annoying cacophonous whispers. The ocean could not only scream louder than any other beast on earth, but scream softer as well.

  A scream inside a whisper.

  Jessica worried about Richard; she believed that this described him and the whole island perfectly. A scream inside a whisper.

  Someone needed to break the silence. Since the first day she'd met him, he led the conversations. He'd been the one who seemed to know what to do next. She'd let him lead and she followed. She had never been like this with any other relationship before. Was the island changing her too?

  She couldn't handle the silence anymore. "What are we going to do?"

  For a long time her words had no effect on anything; Richard, the ocean winds, the light shining through the rave entrance. But then Richard looked up, his face lighting up.

  She repeated her question.

  "I'm thinking," he said quietly, avoiding eye contact with her.

  "Care to share any of your thoughts?"

  "Not yet," he answered.

  "Then how about telling me who that was?"

  "You mean what that was? That was no man. . .at least by my standards."

  She was about to agree before he continued.

  "I'll tell you what I know about Kyle Roberts. . ."

  * * *

  As Kyle Roberts travelled back to the east side of the island he couldn't stop grinning. He was disappointed to have lost Bobby but look what he was gaining?

  He saw a butterfly land on a vine in the distance and stopped.

  He felt his mind falling back in time again.

  * * *

  1965.

  After his foster mother Angela had died and Charles had sent him back, Kyle Roberts had to grow up even more. In the next two foster homes Kyle stepped up his self-reliance. It wasn't long before he had multiple odd jobs to go along with a paper route he was growing too old to do.

  He never showed off his mounted insect collections in his room, especially the butterfly one, in any of his other homes. He kept the collections hidden under the bed or in other secret places.

  By his eighteenth birthday he had become independent and moved out on his own, but he didn't even show his collections in his apartment.

  He wasn't mounting insects any more. Charles had been right. That was something he needed to grow out of doing. It had come time to graduate with his collection efforts.

  He moved onto bigger mounting subjects. Kyle could thank Charles for the hunting training. He had to be more careful about how he trapped and mounted the animals in the wild as he found the danger increased dramatically with bigger targets. He'd create mounting boxes out in the middle of the woods and had some close brushes killing wild animals. He almost died in a match with a cougar and a bear (separate collection efforts).

  He earned several scholarships and started junior college while working. Nobody except Kyle knew what he did in his spare time. With the hobby and sports days gone, now he did it because he enjoyed killing.

  He became restless and bored with his weekend wilderness trips killing everything as small as ducks, geese and grouse to as big as black bears. Cougars were a favorite to hunt and kill. They were a special kind of prey. Cunning, fast and predatory. He could kill with a knife, bow and arrow or gun. He preferred using bladed weapons.

  He cut the heads off the animals and stuck them high up in trees encased in boxes made of wood. He became skilled at working with wood, especially in the wild.

  He first met Stacy in a junior college English class. She wore a blue scarf with butterflies on it. Like the other girls she thought he was handsome and even went on a couple dates with him.

  But she broke it off for some other guy who wasn't as, she claimed: "distant." It was true he wasn't the typical doting boyfriend type. He had his time where he enjoyed going out into the woods and collecting. He needed to do this by himself. This wasn't the kind of thing he'd take his dates on. Hey, you want to go grab a movie and kill Smokey The Bear?

  It saddened him to lose Stacy though. She felt like his first true love but the time was short.

  He kept calling her and being rebuked. She ordered him to stop calling or she'd go to the police. Kyle didn't want any trouble so he let her go.

  Kyle didn't blame her for abandoning him for a boring boyfriend. He wouldn't hurt Stacy while she was protected by the blue butterfly scarf.

  * * *

  A virgin until almost his twenty-first birthday, Kyle grew tired of masturbation. He had only made it to third base with Stacy. She was saving herself for marriage. She was one of the few girls in the flower era of the late sixties Kyle knew that felt that way.

  He wanted to try the real thing. He had heard from some guys at work that there were some massage parlors in town that provided more personal service if you gave the masseuse extra money, a wink and a grin.

  His massage parlor experimentation was a failure. He learned to be careful because there were tons of legitimate massage therapists and one just couldn't walk into any massage parlor and ask for sexual favors but the women masseuses didn't do anything sexually for him. He didn't even get hard half the time they rubbed his body.

  When he masturbated he often didn't think of any specific sex, women or men. He thought about them both. He'd always thought he was bi-sexual because he liked body parts from both sexes. He liked big breasts and he liked firm chests of men. He liked women's lips and the asses of men. He enjoyed strong shoulders of men and the eyes of women.

  His first sex was with a transvestite named Donni that he met at a gay-friendly club. Kyle loved the sex and imagined it to be better than anything he could have had with Stacy. Donni and Kyle would begin a relationship that would last until Donni discovered what Kyle enjoyed doing on the weekends.

  She had no idea.

  * * *

  1969.

  Kyle's first collection rule: only strangers.

  This meant he had to follow a strategy and M.O similar to Ted Bundy who
he had surely shared some kills during the same timeframe. Although it is believed that Bundy's main killing spree happened from 1974-1978 there is considerable evidence that it began earlier.

  Roberts and Bundy preferred to prey on young women. Most of Kyle's victims were college students and/or young people who enjoyed the outdoors like him. Bundy was into necrophilia but Kyle never had sex with his victims after they were dead. He bound and raped them in the woods several times before dicing them into pieces.

  His first human victims he met on trail near a campground. They were hiking in the back woods where Kyle liked building mounts. They had found his collection and thought it might be some kind of weird taxidermist. They ridiculed his collections.

  Kyle shot the man between the eyes with an arrow.

  The woman tried to run but Kyle knew the wooded area well. He'd been coming to this same place for several years. He caught up with her by shooting both her legs with two arrows, dead center in both thighs.

  "Don't worry," Kyle said, "I'll stop the bleeding. I'm studying to be a male nurse."

  The woman screamed. She knew Kyle was no nurse when he broke off the arrow tip and left both arrows sticking in her legs and gave her nothing for the pain but strange stares.

  "You shouldn't have made fun of my collection."

  "Why are you doing this? Why me?"

  Kyle pointed to his collection of wild animals. "They are boring me."

  Kyle was disappointed that he couldn't mount the humans like he did the insects and animals. He'd surely be caught mounting them. He had to keep his human killing a secret.

  So he learned to cut his human victims into pieces and burn them in the fire. The sound of the crackling reminded him of Charles burning two of his mounted collections on Thanksgiving.

  "C is for Cunt" were the last words his female victim heard.

  He had no final words for the three men he killed during his pre-death-row spree. He would produce more C words years later on the island.

  * * *

  1975.

  As the murders accumulated, as was common with most serial killers, Kyle got sloppier and the cops began to close in. Even sliced, diced and cremated flesh left clues. And one recent victim, Amanda Worley, had seen Kyle's face and escaped.

  He let one get through the butterfly net.

  After having sex, Donni and he were watching TV at her house when the news flashed his picture as a suspect wanted by the authorities. A warrant had been issued for his arrest.

  "Kyle," she said, pointing in surprise. Kyle's face was on TV.

  "I don't know what this is about. I will go and talk with them," Kyle said. And then he dressed and left. He ran the opposite direction, ran away from turning himself in.

  A manhunt led to the woods where Kyle had first started killing. He climbed a tree and sat high up on the branch clutching his very first collection.

  The butterfly mounting.

  When they finally brought him down, he was crying in a fetal position. He didn't want to go to prison. He felt like the butterfly caught wrongly in the net, its wings fluttering.

  * * *

  1976.

  Kyle did see his foster father Charles one more time.

  He would testify in court to Kyle's "creepy tendencies as a kid." Not that one convict's testimony would matter that much to a jury but the prosecution pulled everybody they could out of Kyle's past to prove how much of a monster threat Kyle was to society.

  Kyle gave Charles the middle finger in court.

  "See," Charles pointed. "That's evil, I'm telling you. Don't let him run free out there so he can ever hurt anybody again. I hunted with that . . . that thing. He likes killing too much."

  Kyle stood up and screamed: "Tell them what you did to me, you rotten bastard!" His attorney tried to restrain him.

  The jury would later say it wasn't the testimony of Charles that convicted him, it was the testimony of Roberts' only surviving victim, Amanda Worley.

  Kyle felt a tinge of regret when they took him away. Not regret that he was sentenced to death but because he would be unable to do any more collecting. The only killing left for Kyle would happen in the electric chair.

  But like thinking he'd never see Charles again, Kyle would be wrong about this too. He'd have a chance to start killing again on an island somewhere in the Pacific.

  * * *

  Richard had told Jessica as much of the history he'd heard about Kyle Kollector Roberts. He was the most notorious of the death row convicts ever sent to the island.

  "Kyle Kollector Roberts. Whatever monster he was in the past, he's gotten worse here. He's done all kinds of strange things on this island. This is the other big reason that I wanted to have no part of what happened over there. I don't think I would have kept my sanity if I had stayed there."

  "I remember hearing the Kollector stories in the news," Jessica said. "Horrible things he did. They were some of the most heinous murders and he had no remorse. I can't believe they didn't find him crazy."

  "Well, that's some of what we're working against here." Richard said. "I didn't realize there were still ten of them over there."

  "What do you know about the others?"

  "They're all bad in one way or another. Some of the others I've met have some respect for the human race left in them, I think. I can't say the same for Roberts. He sees people as objects in his collections. He's not the typical con. It takes a lot to scare death row cons and Roberts does it without much effort."

  "I don't care who or what Roberts wants. Isn't there anywhere on the island we can hide?"

  "There are some hiding spots, yes." He went silent again, thinking. "I didn't know there were ten of them."

  "Roberts was right? You are scared of him. You haven't wanted to fight him since you got here?"

  Richard nodded slowly.

  "But you saved me from Bobby. That wasn't a cowardly act. We can fight him. We can."

  "Ten of them? I don't know."

  "I'll fight if I have no other choice," Jessica said.

  He looked at her directly, the first time, and smiled. "I didn't realize you had this brave streak in you."

  "I'm not. I'm just a better actor than you." And she was.

  "He lied, you know," Richard said, matter-of-factly. He was still staring out the cave entrance.

  "Who?"

  "Roberts. He lied about leaving us alone. One of them is out there now watching us."

  She stood up and walked over to the cave entrance.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because I've been watching myself. I've heard sounds in the bushes that weren't caused by the wind."

  "He doesn't want to let us get a running start away from here?"

  "No, he doesn't want us out of his sight."

  "Only one person out there?"

  "I think so. Every now and then he moves. A jumpy bastard. Stupid spy."

  "What should we do about him?" Jessica asked.

  Richard walked back to the cave entrance and stared out again. "We have about five hours of sunlight left. I'd like to go to the beach, what do you think?"

  "What if our watcher follows?"

  "I think he's just there to spy, not attack."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because," he came back to where he was standing before, "I've lived with Roberts long enough to know that he thinks I'll deliver you tomorrow like he wants."

  Despite their past conflicts, Jessica didn't think Richard would turn her over without a fight.

  * * *

  "Did I tell you about my dream?" Richard said when they had at last reached the sandy beach and seated themselves. The tide rushed in, stalled and rushed back out like a carnival thrill ride.

  "No."

  "This probably isn't the right time to tell you, but I want to anyway. Just in case."

  "Richard, don't talk like that."

  "Just let me finish. Please?" he took a few deep breaths. "Before you came, I did a lot of dreaming. I think bein
g alone all the time did that to me, because I never used to be a dreamer. About the only time I ever dreamed was after seeing a horror movie."

  "I dreamed about these huge birds that swooped down to the island and carried me off to another island. A paradise island where there was no pain or loneliness. It's my good dream."

  She was glad to hear he was able to get a good night's sleep on the island once in awhile. She hadn't slept with any pleasant dreams since being shipwrecked.

  "But there was another dream I had too. A dream of the same huge birds carrying me off. Except they took me to a worse place than here. I'm no dream analyst but I think this is my vision of death; those huge birds with sharp talons carrying me off to some horrible place. Silly, huh?"

  "Everyone has bad dreams. It's not silly. Go on."

  "Believe it or not, those two dreams were the only dreams I had on this island until the night of the storm."

  "The one with the shipwreck that brought me here?"

  "Yes, that one. That night I had a strange dream. It was so strange that I lay awake in the cave wondering if it had some eerie significance to reality. The dream started out the same way as my 'paradise dream'. The birds came, grabbed hold of me, carried me away to the paradise island. But suddenly I found myself on a beach. Like the dream had cut away to a completely different dream. I was on a beach that looked a lot like this beach."

  He paused watching the tide roll in.

  "The ocean wind in my dream, the night of the storm said something to me. Just two words, over and over. Something fresh, it said, something fresh."

  "That's odd," she said, slowly shaking her head.

  "Yes," he replied. "Because the next morning when I awoke I went straight to the beach and found you."

  Something fresh.