by Bryan Smith
Maybe he had some kind of weird hangup about female private parts.
If true, it was something that could work in her favor.
Then again, maybe the removal of these final pieces of clothing was merely a treat he was saving for later. Maybe he wanted to do it while she was awake…
Aw, shit.
She frowned.
Why did I have to think of that?
It was difficult to be completely certain, but as best she could tell, she had not yet been sexually assaulted. So maybe that was another thing he was saving for when she was awake. Her terror level spiked way upward. This current line of thinking made far too much sense. He was a sick fuck. Of course he’d want her awake while he had his perverted fun. He’d get off on the terror in her eyes.
Kayla’s breaths were coming in shorter gasps and her heart felt like it was beating too fast. All she could think about now was all the dementedly creative things she’d ever heard of serial killers doing to their victims. Especially all the bits about torture. A lot of them liked to draw out the agony over a longish course of time. Hours or days. Sometimes longer. Kayla didn’t like pain. Not one little bit.
Damn, she thought, I really don’t want to be tortured.
The bedroom door creaked open and Red Nose came prancing into the room. Her eyes went wide at the sight of him. He was wearing a ruffled pink skirt and had on the largest bra Kayla had ever seen. As big as it was, the straining fabric could hardly contain his jiggling man boobs. Atop his head was a blond wig with pigtails. His cheeks were heavily rouged and his eyelids were smudged with dark shadow. He came in half-singing, half-humming some unidentifiable nonsense song…
“Do do duh do do duh, duh duh do do duh, duh do do duh…”
…as he swayed his hips and, holding up the ruffles of the skirt, danced with awkward abandon back and forth at the foot of the bed.
Kayla couldn’t help it.
She laughed.
Laughed hysterically.
She cackled. Like a madwoman.
And why not?
It was a mad situation.
Red Nose abruptly stopped prancing and glared at her. “What’s funny?”
Kayla’s only answer was more laughter. The force of it shook her body, causing her limbs to pull painfully at her bonds. But even the pain couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out of her.
Red Nose climbed onto the bed and positioned himself on his knees between her legs.
That got her attention.
Kayla abruptly ceased laughing. Despite her renewed terror, however, she couldn’t hold back the question: “The fuck’s wrong with you, Red Nose?”
His face twisted and some of the thickly caked-on rouge cracked. “What? What did you call me?”
“Um…Red Nose.”
“Why did you call me that?”
“What else was I gonna call you? You never told me your name at the bar, and, well, you’ve got a big red nose, dude.”
Red Nose was seething. His face kept twisting and twisting, as if there were little snakes writhing beneath the skin. Kayla hoped he was having a seizure. But, like with her earlier wish that he’d have a heart attack, it was unlikely. The facial contortions were the result of barely restrained fury. He was audibly grinding his teeth. She could hear molars cracking from the pressure. He moved closer to her, the pink ruffles of his skirt sliding up over her thighs and tickling her bare flesh.
He leaned down, bracing his fists just inside her armpits. “You think I’m funny? Something to laugh at? Something to…” He ground his teeth even harder and had to squeeze out the next word: “…ridicule?”
Well, tubby, you do kinda look like you’ve been primping for your audition for Silence of the Fat Fucking Lambs, so, yeah, absolutely.
This was what she thought.
What she said was, “Of course not.”
His nose twitched. “You lie.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“But you were just laughing at me.” He leaned closer still and his spittle wet her cheeks as he tightly enunciated each word. “You. Wouldn’t. Fucking. Stop!”
Kayla swallowed hard and strove to keep her voice steady as she said, “I’m sorry. Really. From the bottom of my heart.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I really mean it, though.” Kayla made herself smile. “Hey, listen…I thought we were getting along so well at the bar. Why did you have to go and do a thing like this?”
“You were acting like a slut.”
Once again, Kayla couldn’t help her reaction.
She rolled her eyes.
“Are you shitting me? Do you mean you think I deserve this shit for being sexually aggressive? What the fuck year is this all of a sudden? Fucking 1952 or some shit? Fuck you, man.”
He started trembling all over as she spewed this venom at him. His mouth hung open, dangling drool from one corner. His eyes were glazing. It was like he was going into some weird kind of trance. Kayla watched in disgust as the line of drool grew longer and thinner, until it finally snapped and moisture plopped on her chest.
She grimaced.
Oh…ick.
His eyes came back into focus. “You’ve got a dirty little mouth.” He was speaking in a monotone now, with little apparent emotion. “You need to be taught a lesson.”
“Tell me the truth, Red Nose. The drag. Is it because your mommy touched you inappropriately as a child, or is it, like, your gimmick?”
His features were still mostly slack, but his brow furrowed some. “Gimmick?”
“You know, your thing. Your way of telling your victims they’re in the hands of a full-on loony and they should just go on and give up all hope right fucking now. Like, your signature. You know?”
“That’s…part of it.”
“Well, what’s the rest of it?”
He dropped his eyes and spoke in a low voice: “I think I look pretty.”
“Well, that’s just sad. Because you’ve got the fashion sense of a baboon and your makeup looks like it was applied by an epileptic whore.”
Red Nose met her gaze again. She saw real fury in his eyes again. Fury tinged with genuine hatred. She suddenly wished someone at some point in her life had done a better job of teaching her the value of tact. “I’m gonna kill you.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is all about. I was wondering.”
Also, the inadvisability of sarcasm in delicate situations. That might have been another good lesson to learn at an earlier age.
Too late now, though.
Red Nose raised one of his big fists high above her head. “I’m gonna smash all your perfect white teeth out. Knock ‘em right down your whore’s throat.”
Uh-oh.
Shit was getting serious now. She realized too late she should have been trying all along to talk sense into him rather than surrendering to her smartass instincts. She cringed as the huge fist began what would surely be the first of many devastating downward arcs.
It was a tremendous surprise when Red Nose’s eyes bugged out and his onrushing fist suddenly went limp. His lungs emitted a pained wheeze and his head wobbled weakly atop his shoulders.
Kayla squinted at him.
What the hell?
Maybe Red Nose was having that wished-for cardiac event after all. Which would at least mean all that conjecture about him being God’s instrument was way off base. Admittedly, that’d be something of a relief given what had been about to happen, but it still left her stuck tied to this goddamn bed.
It was then that she detected movement behind Red Nose.
A quick flicker of shadow.
Then Red Nose wheezed again as his body lurched. His hands clawed feebly toward his back. A drop of red appeared at one corner of his mouth. And then he was toppling sideways, propelled off her by some unknown assailant.
A handsome, dapper-looking man attired in 19th century garb flashed her a smile. Clutched in his right hand was a dagger dripping with blood.
&n
bsp; Kayla didn’t know whether to scream or shit.
She gulped and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“My given name is Alfred.” The man tipped his top hat at her and smiled again. “But you may call me Jack.”
13.
The man who called himself Jack cocked his head at a roguish angle and eyed her up and down, a malign lustfulness evident in the leering twist of his mouth as his gaze lingered first on her breasts and then on the swell of her hips. The scrutiny made Kayla’s skin crawl. At no point with Red Nose had she felt anywhere near this creeped out. Not once had he examined her in quite this way, as if she were nothing more than a particularly succulent cut of meat.
Jack’s darkly hungry eyes made her want to run somewhere far away and hide in a very dark corner for the rest of her life. No quick quips came to mind. No withering verbal jabs occurred. For the first time in memory, her acid tongue was still, which astonished her nearly as much as anything else that had happened since meeting the devil. Baiting this guy with words would be as dangerous as poking a venomous snake with a sharp stick.
But now he smiled. “My dear, you look terrified.”
Kayla tried to think of something to say. Of course she was terrified. She could confirm that, maybe, but her tongue still felt dead in her mouth.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me, I assure you.”
Kayla swallowed thickly and at last found her voice. “That’s what you say. I’d like to believe you, but you’re the creepy guy with a bloody knife, and I’m still the nearly naked helpless girl tied to a bed in a morbidly obese serial killer’s house. Who the hell are you, really?”
“I already told you. I am called Jack.”
“Or Alfred, right?”
“I prefer Jack.”
“Whatever. The point is, I can’t think of a single reason I shouldn’t be scared shitless right now. Why are you here? Are you and Red Nose some kind of psychopathic tag team?”
Confusion clouded Jack’s features. “Who is Red Nose?”
“The fatty in drag you just ganked with that humongous blade.”
Deeper confusion. Brow furrowing. “Ganked?”
“You know, killed.”
“I see. However, Red Nose is not yet actually deceased.”
As if to confirm this, a faint wheeze issued from somewhere to Kayla’s right. She turned her head in that direction and saw Red Nose crawling slowly toward the open bedroom door. His broad and flabby hairy back was covered in blood, which was still seeping from a ragged hole between his shoulder blades. Her stomach churned as she watched the red stuff flow from the wound. She knew she shouldn’t feel sorry for Red Nose. The man was a psychopath. And yet she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of pity as she watched his hands claw feebly at the worn brown carpet.
And regardless of the man’s status as an irredeemable scumbag, he was still a human being. She was watching a man die and she didn’t care for it. Her deal with the devil hadn’t yet robbed her of her essential humanity. But in time that probably would happen…if she let it. She fervently hoped she could prevent the seeming eventuality. She didn’t want to become an unfeeling monster.
Jack removed his top hat and set it on the bed. He removed his long black cloak and draped it over the back of a metal folding chair in a corner of the room by one of the overloaded bookcases.
Kayla frowned. “What are you doing?”
Jack knelt at the foot of the bed and peered under the bed frame. A moment later, Kayla felt the nylon rope tugging at her ankle. “Freeing you, of course.”
“But…why?”
He glanced up at her, smiling again. “Would you prefer to remain tied to this foul excuse for a bed?”
“Well, no.”
He chuckled softly and resumed the work of undoing that knots that bound her. “I thought not. A shame, though.”
“A shame?”
“You’re a beautiful young woman. You look quite fetching bound and helpless.” Another chuckle, the sound decidedly creepier in light of what he was saying. “I daresay you’d look even better with your abdominal cavity excavated and your internal organs removed and arrayed around your lifeless body.”
“Um…”
“Alas, I am not allowed to improve your looks in this manner.” The rope came free of the metal post beneath the bed. Jack sat up and began unwinding the rest of it from her ankle. “Quite the contrary, in fact. My assignment is to shadow you and lend assistance whenever you may need it.” He shot a quick glance at Red Nose, whose progress toward the door had slowed considerably. “I never suspected that would include rescuing you from the clutches of another culler of the human herd.”
Kayla frowned again.
Wheels turned, clicked firmly into place.
“You work for the devil.”
He moved to the other side of the bed now and set to work removing the length of rope binding her other ankle. “Indeed. I’m disappointed, though. Lucifer tells me you’re intelligent, but this could be a rare case where the dark lord’s estimation of a mortal is tragically inaccurate. Case in point, you still haven’t deduced my true identity, despite the many clues I’ve--”
“Oh, I’ve figured that shit out. You’re Jack the fucking Ripper.”
He glanced up from his task. “Correct! Perhaps I’ve done you a disservice. You’re not quite the raving idiot I supposed.”
“Thanks.”
Jack tossed aside another length of rope and stood up. He eyed her body again, giving her another of those creepy, cringe-inducing appraisals. He licked his lips and smiled. “Defiling you would almost be worth falling out of Lucifer’s favor.”
Helpless tremors rippled through Kayla at these words.
“Almost, but not quite. I do not wish to spend eternity locked within one of hell’s punishment chambers. The torturers there possess an unrivaled ability to elicit the most exquisite pain imaginable. And it goes on, quite literally, forever. So, again, you have nothing to fear from me. There is, however, no harm in imagining what it would be like.” He closed his eyes, his body twitching slightly as he appeared to go into a reverie. “I can just see how your smooth, lovely flesh would part gracefully beneath the pressure of my blade, the red, red beautiful blood pouring out in rivers and--”
“Stop!”
Jack’s eyes fluttered open. “Does the imagery disturb you?”
“Knock off the psycho bullshit right now or I’ll tell the devil you tried to gut me with that knife and I had to fight you off.”
His dreamy smile faltered. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wanna bet, you fucking freak? I’ve put up with a lot of crazy fucking shit today and I have about had it, okay? So let me tell you something about myself, Jackie. I’m a pretty good fucking actress when I want to be. I can make just about anybody believe anything I want them to believe when I really put my mind to it.”
Or at least I could before the goddamn shunning spell, she thought.
But she kept that part to herself.
“And I’m willing to bet that if I gave it my absolute best effort--and believe me, I would--I could make that demonic motherfucker believe you attacked me. So, unless you want to spend eternity experiencing ‘the most exquisite pain imaginable’ firsthand, I advise you to knock off the creepy shit and finish untying me from this goddamn bed.”
Jack’s face turned pale. “I--”
“That means right fucking now, Jack!”
He swallowed an additional reply with a visible effort and began the process of untying the knots binding her wrists. Kayla noted with some satisfaction that his fingers trembled slightly as he did this.
She wanted to laugh.
My God, I’ve intimidated Jack the goddamn Ripper!
It was funny, kind of, in a weird, messed-up way, but she managed not to laugh. She had Jack where she wanted him now, but it was a delicate balance of power. She couldn’t risk pushing him too far, because he was one of the most infamous and sadistic killers in history. And being this c
lose to him, with his ripe-smelling breath right in her face, was near the top of the list of the most unsettling things she’d ever experienced, perhaps ranking even higher than her encounters with the devil earlier in the day.
“You’re alive.”
The last of the rope came away from her wrists and she was free. Jack stood up and moved away from the bed. “What of it?”
Kayla sat up and kept a wary eye on the resurrected maniac as she rubbed her sore wrists. “It’s just not possible. You’d be like a thousand years old. Slight exaggeration. You should have kicked it…died…a long time ago.”
Jack removed his cloak from the back of the folding chair and slipped it back on. “I did, of course. I’m a human being, as are you, and we are not immortal.”
“But I could smell your breath. Ew, by the way. I don’t know what it was like in the old timey days, but these days we have things like breath mints and mouthwash to deal with that shit. Back to the point. If you died, how can you be alive now?”
Jack retrieved his top hat from the bed and wedged it back into place on his head. “By Lucifer’s grace, of course. My lord is able to render his subjects corporeal for brief assignments in your realm. I am temporarily as flesh and blood as you are, dear lady, and just as vulnerable as any other living human being.”
“You mean I could kill you?”
“Well…yes. It would be rather pointless, though. My lord would simply resurrect me again.”
“Damn. There goes that plan.”
Jack smirked. “I truly mean you no harm, miss. How many times must I tell you this before you believe me?”
“You can’t count that high, Jack.” Kayla swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Her brow furrowed as she scanned the floor. “Where are my clothes?”
“I believe they are in a room your Mr. Red Nose has reserved especially for storage of items pilfered from his victims, of which there seem to have been very many over quite a long period.”
Kayla’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How could you know that?”
Jack’s smile was small, inscrutable. “I had an opportunity to engage in a bit of investigating while Red Nose was otherwise occupied. The poor devil never knew I’d followed him into his home. I am quite skilled in the art of stealth.”