Belladonna
Page 2
her straws as a nervous habit. Bella had taken off her sunglasses and helped herself to more of the rum, though she was sipping at this serving now, rather than gulping it down in a single throw.
Sitting down next to her and glancing over his shoulder as he dropped some ice in their glasses and prepared to mix their drinks, he was stricken by Bella’s visual allure. He had initially thought her name was one of those corny goth-girl references to the old poison substance of belladonna, but perhaps “Bella” was simply a vain reference to her own beauty. And, oh, what a beauty she was!
She was petite and slender, almost dainty. Between her slightly pointed ears, delicate jaw line, and her shoulder-length hair that was so heavily dyed that it looked fake, she looked like she was dressed as some kind of dark faerie for Halloween, minus the wings. Her eyes were a shade of brown so dark that they were positively black in the dim light of the evening. Her skin was a rather ghostly yet not unhealthy pale tone – probably because she was a redhead, judging by the color of her eyebrows. And her lips, though rather thin, were shaped with an almost naturally pursed sort of look that readily invited kissing.
With the ice added to the rum already in the tumblers, there was only enough room in the glasses to add cola just for coloring rather than real flavor. That was fine. Bella sipped at hers and gave a hum of approval; he pulled out the straw she’d put into his and dropped it on the table before taking a long pull of his drink. He wasn’t planning on having much more to drink, himself, but he certainly planned on feeding her more booze. Oddly, Bella snickered as she watched him gulp down half of his drink. He turned to stare at her for a few moments, not only perplexed by her giggling but also fascinated by the sight of her.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I dunno. I’m just pretty buzzed. By the way, you’re cute.”
“Cute? What, like a bunny rabbit?”
“No, not like a bunny,” she said, shaking her head. “More like … a deer.”
“A deer, huh?” he responded. “What, with like horns and all that?”
“Yeah. Lots of horns … like a big ol’ buck,” she agreed. She set aside her drink and leaned close to him, almost daring him. “You wanna buck around?”
He submitted to that invitation, kissing her briefly at first, teasingly. She responded by practically feeding upon his mouth with a passionate return of affection. She was all over him, pawing at his chest, nearly ripping his T-shirt off, and fumbling about for the buttons of his jeans. This was way, way too easy. He didn’t have to coax her or try to seduce her at all. She just wanted him.
Maybe it was the many signs of his wealth, maybe it was his fake story about being a widower, or maybe it was just because she really was seeking to hook up with someone to get back at her lover. Whatever the case, Bella was trying to dominate him. To anyone else, and for him at any other time, this would have been wonderful. On this particular occasion, however, this was not what he wanted.
He tried pushing back, tried exerting control over her. She powered right back, grabbing his wrists and guiding his hands to her breasts as he had tried to push her away by her thin shoulders. For such a small gal, she was a strong one. But very quickly, faster than even he expected, he became impatient – probably a symptom of the alcohol. Enough was enough. The sex wasn’t what he was after. It would have been a nice bonus, but it was looking like she wasn’t going to let him do things the way he wanted. She wasn’t playing his game the right way.
Okay, so he would skip a few steps. He had been planning on getting her in the shower and slitting her throat – nice and clean, blood down the drain, no muss, no fuss – but he had already done that before. As though by simple instinct, his hands pulled away from her breasts and went right for her throat, his fingers closing around her slender neck with vise-like pressure.
No, this would be better. He hadn’t done this before. Variety was the spice of life. And that was, of course, the point to all of this: adding a bit of spice to his own life by creatively taking the lives of others.
Bella was, of course, just as surprised as he was to find him suddenly throttling the life out of her. By some fantastic coincidence, a scene in the movie playing on his widescreen plasma television showed a vampire holding a woman aloft by her neck with one hand, turning her face aside as he prepared to bite her neck. With Bella, of course, he had no intentions of biting her – that would simply leave a mark upon her that could be matched to his dental records. No, he was content just to choke the life out of this dark sprite, to watch her eyes go wide with shock and feel her squirming about beneath him. It was different, to say the least, and far more intimate than merely shooting or stabbing someone to death.
His thumbs dug into her windpipe with enough pressure that she could barely even manage to squeak. He had no worries about little Bella screaming loudly enough for his neighbors to hear … not that it would have been audible outside of his heavily-insulated home, anyway. He had set up his home theatre in such a way as to allow himself the pleasure of being able to crank up the volume as loud as he pleased without disturbing his neighbors. Previously, he had put on a couple of different slasher flicks at full volume and then walked outside to see for himself how far the sound would travel. Even right outside of the closed front door, he could barely discern the sound of a roaring chainsaw or a woman’s ear-splitting shriek of terror.
Alas, Bella was a fighter. She curled the thin fingers of her hands into fists and pummeled his forearms and shoulders while getting her legs underneath herself and attempting to stand upon the sofa. He was not only stronger than her, he was also a bit quicker. He still had control of the situation. He followed her up as she arose, standing taller than her by at least a foot, and he threw her over the back of the sofa, turning the expensive bit of furniture over in doing so. He tried to keep his hands around her throat, and she similarly kept both of her hands upon his wrists as she kept trying to pry them away. As such, she could do nothing to control her fall, and he wound up slamming her down onto the hardwood floor, flat upon her back.
The impact either knocked the wind from her or banged her head enough to daze her. Her eyes closed for a moment and her hands fell free from his wrists. He took that opportunity to straddle her waist, draw back his fists, and pound her squarely with three quick blows – right, left, right. Bella went completely limp after the second blow, so the third was just for good measure.
He sat there for a moment or two with his hands up and ready, trying to decide whether he wanted to pummel her to death or resume strangling her. He sat there for a moment, catching his breath and watching her closely, trying to decide which of the two would suit his desires better. Then, it hit him. She was out. She was his. Sure, she would probably wake again in awhile, but for the time being, she was completely subdued. He hadn’t afforded himself this sort of an opportunity before. He could do whatever he wanted to her now.
Well, on second thought, not anything. No, he wasn’t like that. Again, he wasn’t looking for sex and, again, it would’ve been a major bonus if he’d been able to restrain himself enough to accept it before this happened. But truthfully, he was no rapist. He’d never wanted to force himself upon a woman before because, really, he’d never actually been that desperate. Women had always been more than willing to throw themselves at him in the first place. And he didn’t kill for some kind of sick sexual thrill, either. Instead, he simply wanted to be there for the moment, that all-important transition from life into death. He wanted to bask in the rush that was the glorious knowledge that he was the catalyst of that change, to know that he had that power. Yes, that was the kicker, the hook. That was what made it all worthwhile.
Death was just … weird. Even after the things he’d done before, it was still infinitely fascinating. He’d been hooked on it for ages. Bugs when he was a boy, small animals as a teenager, and finally humans in his early twenties. It was simply amazing that someone or something could go from a living, breathing, thinking
creature and then, later, be an utterly still, inanimate thing, a cadaver. A corpse was simply an empty shell of sorts that resembled the former living being. The whole concept was just fascinatingly wild.
Death seemed even stranger with humans because the change seemed so much more profound. A grasshopper was just a thing from the start, just a little machine driven by a program of simple reflexes and ultra-basic motivations. A rabbit was just a cute, fluffy creature that operated purely upon instinct, not much more than a bigger, fuzzier version of a bug. Animals didn’t dream and love, or at least nothing at all like people. They couldn’t sit there and hold a conversation and share a few drinks, watch a movie, and then share some intimate minutes of a fiery and passionate embrace. And with just the pull of a trigger or the stroke of a blade, the spill of some blood … it could be gone, all gone.
He’d never really had a full opportunity to study the transition in detail with a human being, not really. Bella would be his first exception. He was glad he chose her. He always chose women because they were easier to lure in, easier to overpower if necessary, and … well, he wasn’t gay, so obviously the opportunity for sex with a woman