by Knight, Dirk
He decides he is going to call the guy Mason, because he is heavy and strong, with a stone face. His gaze isn’t comforting, and judging by his loud footfalls and how many margaritas have flowed into his emotionless slit of a mouth, he doesn’t seem all too happy with whatever his Vicki said, and Dennis’s perpetual glances to her plump tits.
The brutish Mason closes the gap between them.
“You got a fucking staring problem?” he asks.
“Sorry, no. I just thought I knew you from somewhere,” Dennis counters unconvincingly. “Is your name Mason?”
“Is your name Faggot?”
Jiménez, of course, is egging him on, shouting soundless threats into his ear (into his head), hoping to draw Dennis into another uncomfortable situation, and this time against an opponent who will surely destroy him in an effort to posture in front of the fair maiden he seeks to defend. Tired from the road, and battle-worn already, Dennis takes out his wallet, lays forty more in cash on the counter, and asks the bartender to apply this forty to a round for the agitated couple. He kills his beer and sets the empty mug atop the money, then walks towards the door.
He delivers one more stern and menacing look to the girl in the black dress, seeing her devilish smile, excited and smitten that her oaf has run him off, and she no longer looks like an orchid to Dennis. She looks like a common whore. Her having brought undue attention to him, and shaming him publicly will not bode well for her, but for now, he needs to get outta here.
In spite of the offer of free drinks, Mason continues his rant, running on at the mouth for Dennis to return, calling him a coward, and implying again that he prefers men. Dennis has no designs on him in this moment, and walks to his car, tail between the legs while Jiménez seeks to magnify the shame, taunting him.
Mason and Vicki leave the bar together just twenty short minutes later. They drive away with perceived impunity; Mason having dashed the imminent threat of Dennis’s lustful eyes looking at her, and having forcefed him a dose of degradation. The margaritas and the alpha male aggression have done their task, and the distracted couple rambles away while Dennis stalks just a few car lengths back. She never looks twice into the mirror, never suspects that she is being tailed.
Libby’s Tracking Skills
Elizabeth Langston pulls down an alleyway in the center part of town, filled with dumpsters and grease traps from the colorfully lit businesses along the main drag. There are snow-banks pressed against the sides of the narrow streets where the plows ran that morning. The thin layer of fresh precipitation wouldn’t be enough to warrant running the tractors again. The streetlights are antiquated and quaint. The lights look as if they have been converted from the original gaslights that once lined the avenues. Intricate ornate cast-iron posts, no more than fifteen feet high, with large spheres of pristine white glass, hold the new high-pressure sodium bulbs and disrupt their glare enough to give the streets a softer ambiance.
The tracking beacon on her smartphone has led her this far, but now she will need to keep her eyes open. The “find my phone” feature was dimly accurate in the city, but here in the rural reaches of her Verizon signal it’s doubtful to be spot-on. Rounding the turn leading into the parking arena behind a fairly busy bar, she sees taillights that could belong to Dennis. They’re gone from sight in half an instant, but she lurches forward to keep up, cautious not to be noticed. Another driver pulls out in front of her; distracting her from her pursuit and causing her to resort back again to the technology to track his direction.
Back on the scent, she trails his fleeting taillights into a residential area, douses her headlights, and places the SUV in park as soon as she sees his taillights redden. Her quarry springs from the car, alert and searching. She dives into the passenger seat with as much of her body as the safety belt will allow. She doesn’t want to give away her position just yet. She is curious who he is here to see.
Her jealousy spikes and she can no longer refrain, and peers over the dash slowly and witnesses Dennis closing his trunk gently before stalking cat-like up to the patio of the house two doors down. It appears to Libby they are both hunting something, or someone, from the shadows.
When she finally musters the courage to slither out of her SUV and follow the path beset by Dennis, she is so enraged and fervent at the idea of catching him with another woman that her hands are shaking.
Was this his new game? Does he want to make me jealous as I have made him? she wonders, unsure if she has the constitution to handle the emotions that Dennis seems to thrive on.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill her,” she says eerily slowly as she approaches the shuttered windows of the small cottage-style home.
The blinds are raised, the curtains parted just enough to afford her a slim view into the den. Her eyes fall upon a pair of worn jeans crumpled over a set of rugged snow boots. She can see enough to determine the booted figure is a man, but cannot see his face. She doesn’t have the perspective, or perhaps the wherewithal to understand that the faceless man is far too large to be Dennis. Her jealousy has consumed her to the point she doesn’t realize that the plush pillows and ornately patterned and cheap sofa are supporting a stranger. Suddenly a stereo snaps to life and fills the house and neighboring yards with bass-intensive dance music.
From across the room, a tall, slender, exotic woman enters with a bottle of water and a smile. He hands her a small square pillow from the hidden realm of the sofa, which she accepts gratefully and places on the floor between his soggy boots. Without hesitation, her knees have found the pillow and she leans forward, hastily unzipping the ragged denim layer.
He’s already swollen and throbbing.
Her head, a tangle of chestnut brown hair, catapults forward to catch him in her open jaws.
Libby cannot take it anymore; this game that Dennis likes to play. She cannot feel the shame and rejection he must crave. She and Dennis both have suffered during childhood. Each has been rejected in one fashion or another, but she has developed a different set of coping skills. Hers are to be the center of attention, while he likes to be discarded. She is to be the belle of the ball and to have desire poured down over her in a bath of compliments and ham-handed gropes, while he likes to be told he can’t satisfy a woman, and why. She isn’t faithful because to deny her newcomers, to rob a potential heartthrob of the best oral he’ll ever get a chance to receive, would be a crime against herself. Dennis has come to expect that all women cheat, and that he is unworthy, so he craves it to be apparent, and honest. She needs men’s continual acceptance and pursuit. He needs rejections, and to be chosen last.
This is why she cannot suffer Dennis in his needy, clingy, defeated stages. This is why she tells him about the well-endowed men who covet her. She wants to be seen as an object of mass appeal, and desire—to be revered as a trophy, and treated as such. She wants to get passed to the champion for good works and be up for grabs the next season.
The Stanly Cup of pussy; only, the winner should have a full set of teeth.
They feed each other’s fantasies, but she doesn’t like to be chosen last . . . this isn’t the way it is supposed to work.
She fumbles through her massive keychain in the dark as she darts across the lawn to the front door, set to give his ball bag a heavy dose of liquid fire, hoping to drown the chocolate-haired harlot in peppers in the same clip.
One hand on the spray canister and the other on the banister rail, she swings her momentum around toward the steps, but before she climbs the first, she sees Dennis’s back. He is standing anesthetized in the doorway. Looking past his frame, she sees, in full glory, the kneeling woman and the man—who is clearly not Dennis—accepting his gift. In this instant her fury and wrath of envy metamorphize into a powerful lust. She is beginning to see the game for what it is.
She is awestruck when he lunges toward the couple.
Part VI:
“You are going to kill me and that will protect society from me. But out there are many, many more people who are a
ddicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that.”
- Ted Bundy
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
- 1 Corinthians 6:9
Lasciviousness
When the stumbling couple exits the car and plods through the snow up to a tiny home, Dennis doesn’t dally. He is anxious. He has spent his windshield time debating with Jiménez about the appropriate next steps. He’s already donned his driving gloves. The pearl-handled straight razor in his hand is pulsing. He can feel it wanting and lusting; begging to be un-tethered from its sheath and honed against the raven-haired slut’s flesh. Jiménez tells him no, but he, as usual, is deaf to reason. Jiménez tells him he is not ready for that yet. Tells him the giant bricklayer will rip his arms out of their sockets, and then beat him to death with the bloody ends. Though it’s only been half an hour since being confronted and shying away, he is hazily remembering events differently. Dennis, as is his nature, remembers things in less embarrassing vectors.
Had he followed him out to the parking lot, the man would’ve stomped him to the earth, but he tells Jiménez that the man was putting on a show for the girl, and that if he weren’t a coward he would have followed Dennis outside. He argues that because he wasn’t followed, in a way, he won.
He keeps the razor handy, but dismisses the idea of using it as his primary weapon. Dennis realizes that it will serve best left in the dark confines of his denim pocket.
“Okay, you‘ve got a point, though: he is a risk factor, so I’ll do it your way this time,” he says to Jiménez.
The honed edge of the razor is fitting for something more personal. Something one-on-one, like the girl in his storm cellar, for example. Why his father designed a house in Arizona with a storm cellar was beyond him, but it had certainly proven handy for unscripted ventures.
He pushes the blade back into his pocket. He scans the neighborhood for pedestrians and looky-loos, then presses the trunk release button just before jumping out of the car.
The trunk holds a random assortment of tools and toys. There is a lug wrench, some plastic sheeting, a spare oil filter and a set of extra-long jumper cables. In addition there is a pair of snow chains, a sleeping bag made to withstand subzero temperatures, a chintzy jack that came with the car, and various other miscellaneous crap. He digs through the assorted rubble and bits of garbage to locate the tool he has chosen (Jiménez has chosen) to weaponize tonight.
The hexagonal shaft of the crowbar feels good in his hand, the weight, the friction between the leather of his gloves and the medium-carbon steel gives him excellent purchase on the weighty tool. The steel is icy cold from its extended residence in his trunk.
He takes long brisk strides up to the house. He is cautious and silent as he places one boot heel after another on the slippery wooden stairs.
Safely on the landing, he catches a start when the music erupts loudly. His senses are heightened in anticipation; the alive feeling he’d felt just before pouncing on the elderly man had been nothing compared to this premeditated and anticipated act of vengeance. The knob is loose. He times the bass notes coming from the speakers with his own movements, opens and steps through the door in one swiftly timed burst and is stupefied by the exhibition in front of him.
The tableau ahead is one so covetous, one so inviting, that he becomes immediately aroused and more interested in watching than interacting. In an instant, he removes his hand from the icy brass knob and grabs his overly sensitive and warm member, enjoying the sensation as the cold leather surrounding his fingers envelopes his warmth. He watches as the woman of his desires bobs rhythmically on the lap of the brawny aggressor, his head pitched back to the ceiling and his hands firmly grasping the ugly cloth upholstery that swaddles the arms of the sofa.
Dennis deftly removes his boots by stepping on the heel and walking out of them. He is silent. He slides his socked foot across the aging hardwood toward the copulating duo. He has an iron rod in each hand, gripped tight.
One made for fighting and the other for fun. Oohrah
“That’s my little whore,” Dennis says in a raspy voice. The girl, Vicki, just moans, “Umm hmm,” with a mouth full of cock, but Mason snaps his head forward and opens his muddy brown eyes. Before the fear can register and turn into fuel for retreat, Dennis swings through the ball and crushes the back of her skull with the crowbar. Her body seizes, jaws and all, and she castrates the lumbering bully, who lets out an agonized yelp.
He is looking down in terror, more concerned now with the missing bits of his penis than he is with the armed maniac presently hovering over him.
The next swing connects the bifurcated end of the tool to Mason’s jaw. The claw sinks into the flesh, relieving him of a good chunk of his face. For one pristine instant Dennis can see the mechanics of his countenance, bone revealed snow white before blood takes over, filling the cleft. The tendons and muscles that should be forming an expression of agony now just twitch and pull this way and that. His mandible hangs loosely, un-tethered on one side, and flopping wildly as the ogre moos out a mournful scream.
It reminds Dennis of a moment in time when he was maybe ten or eleven. He’d gone to see the remains of a house fire; a doublewide trailer had been set ablaze and all that remained was a simple, soot-blacked husk. Dennis had wanted a better view into the shell, and had subsequently fisted out a chunk of the tar-covered windowpane to provide him a better assessment. The thin glass painlessly filleted off the flesh surrounding his knuckle and laid his hand open. The white meat was all Dennis could see for a while, before the blood showed up. Each movement of his finger revealed a tendon running along his knuckle, sliding back and forth. Back and forth as the muscle pulled and released. It was just about then that the blood started to flow on and around the bone and tendon, little speckles emerging, little rosebuds blooming, causing Dennis to become nauseated and run to Carla for medical attention. Attention she granted, but not without chastising him first.
Mason is now thrashing about wildly, lunging towards Dennis, who brings down the wrecking bar in a giant overhead sweeping arc, crumpling Mason’s considerable mass into a concise puddle in the living room floor.
Vicki is useless in her own pile, but still convulsing and squirming about, leaking badly from the concave wound that now dominates the right side of her skull. Before she perishes from the initial blow and, he hopes, while she can still feel her body, Dennis pummels the formerly breathtaking woman across her back and ribs. He swings hard enough to snap the bones in her forearms and shins. She holds up one hand in a pleading, defensive position, making, at last, eye contact for a brief second that seems like an eternity.
“So, now you see me, huh bitch?” Dennis shrieks shrilly.
He decides to let her watch the rest.
He peppers the massive torso of Mason next. Leaving both victims pulverized and helpless, moaning and writhing before he finally feels vindicated and puts his “Mason” to rest with a final barrage to the head.
Vicki is fading, he can almost see her spirit leave, like a luminary candle you light at weddings or new age funerals, which fills a paper bag with hot air and the whole assembly takes off into the strata of clouds.
He sinks the hook end into the top of her head with a crunchy splat. He is happy in knowing that at least the whore had died choking on a cock.
Dennis arches his back and looks to the ceiling in an ecstatic moment. He is poised in pleasure, in this half crescent, as if absorbing some unseen energy from the expired bodies, when he hears the faintest of noises behind him.
His blood-spattered face turns to the clamor; his eyes are a vision of terror as the pupils dilate into focus, and he finds Libby darkening the doorway.
Fear Harbor
Where am
I, she wonders. The wind is chilly and the sun is beginning to crest the mountains in the east. As the light cascades down the hillside, it spills into a calm and placid lake, shimmering over to reveal a pier, the end of which Evalyn stands.
Close to the water.
There are a few motorboats in slips, rocking gently in ripples that seem to have been caused by the sunlight striking the water acutely. Though it doesn’t make sense, that is what she sees.
There are fewer still sailboats, anchored and tied off at buoys, mainsail tethered to mast. The owners and passengers either asleep belowdecks, or having rowed to shore in a dinghy to walk off their sea legs and perhaps pick up supplies. But, no, they wouldn’t be shopping this early. None of the stores here are open before dawn; she’s never been here but she knows this.
Where is here, again? she wonders. Fighting the chill, she runs her hands along her exposed arms, hugging herself for warmth, and she hears the rustling of her clothing. What’s this? she thinks, looking down to the pristine white dress with small sequins along the shoulders and bustier. She has a small corsage on her wrist. It is beautiful. As the morning sun continues to fill the bowl of her lakeside paradise with crisp light she sees her uncle Carron standing at the wharf, looking at her with concern and bedevilment, which are counter to the elegant bouquet in his grip.
He drops the arrangement into the water, and suddenly he is running down the pier, which seems to be lengthening as he takes each thudding step. He appears to be shouting something to her, a warning maybe, but he is outrunning his words and she still hears nothing. She looks, finally, over her shoulder, curious why he may be concerned. The man in the suit is standing with her. He has a boutonniere that matches her corsage. He wears the same grin, the same haunting possessed smirk he had in the rest area before he took her. The smile doesn’t just seem to say that he will possess her, it screams it. The devilish curl at the corners of his mouth says that he will not just take her and abuse her, but that he will own her, infiltrate her, and corrupt her.