Unlike most men, he didn’t mind big women. His lack of concern for aesthetics meant that one woman was as good as the next in terms of physical attraction. At around five feet tall, her red cocktail dress, perfectly coiffured blonde hair and black hipster glasses made her stand out. She was a beacon. A bonfire. A lone crimson balloon in a bunch of white. A pop culture geek, she was president of a film club, founder of a modern classics book club, and regularly contributed to literary magazines. He had joined the film club looking for a specific personality type, and she was it; funny, astute, romantic and analytical all at once. He was used to homework – seduction was, after all, seventy per cent research – but he found the course work this time around turgid to say the least. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in film – fake drama bored him, comedy left him cold, and real horror was far more interesting than jump scares, ghouls and mute homicidal maniacs wielding what were essentially sharpened fallices – but he sat through every unoriginal, uninspired choice each particular member imposed on the rest of the group. He listened intently in the first three group discussions, absorbing the buzz words and catchphrases of the others, and took mental note of his potential client’s interactions with each speaker, with particular emphasis on the ones she agreed with. He also listened to her reviews, and soon got an idea of the kinds of stories and characters for which she harboured the deepest admiration. When it came time for him to choose, he selected a film that was sure to generate heated discussion, and allow her to come to his defence.
‘Don’t let it bother you,’ she said later that evening as they drank at a tiny, old fashioned tavern that served as the group hangout, ‘every one of those guys claims to love film, but it’s easy to spot the ones who joined up because it would look good on their resume – they’re the ones who wrote “I have a passion for film” on the membership form. Anything that requires them to open their minds makes them limp. I thought it was a brilliant choice. It’s one of my favourites.’
He laughed. ‘Really? You don’t strike me as the voyeur type.’
‘You see it as a voyeur film? Discuss please.’
‘It’s the narrator’s story; we’re seeing it from his perspective, but we’re not him. We can’t live his life, because the way he lives makes us sick, but we have to watch him live it. He has no conscience, and no thought for anyone’s happiness but his own. We would never do the things he does, because we do have consciences, but we watch him because he fascinates us. That way, we get a taste of evil, without having to go balls-out and commit it.’
‘Have you read the novel?’
‘Yes.’
‘The original or the one with the extra chapter on the end?’
‘The one with the extra chapter. I gotta say, I like that ending better than the one they adapted, but I understand why Kubrick didn’t use it. Kubrick knew movies and novels were two different things. He knew no one would want to see Alex burned out, nursing his Milk Plus at the Korova Bar, thinking about settling down.’
She smiled, her eyes sparkling. He took a huge swig of his beer, swallowing down the laugh that threatened to escape. All it took to beguile women like her was a list of their interests and a consultation with Google. Sex with her was remarkably prosaic – it always was with the romantic type. She preferred the missionary position, lapping up the warmth and closeness it afforded fher. She was also partial to kissing. Lots and lots of kissing. The thought of the thousands of germs that flourished in the human mouth, and were undoubtedly being transmitted to him would later lead him to swig from the bottle of Listerine that sat on her bathroom counter, but for the time being he committed himself wholeheartedly to the task, pretending to relish the feeling of her spongy lips on his. She was as passionately vocal in bed as she was at the film club, and he wondered how long it had been since she’d actually had an orgasm. What with her size and the general snobbishness of most men, his guess was a while.
There was only one fitting exit for a woman like her.
After he had satisfied her for the second time, he kissed her on the forehead and got out of her bed.
‘I’m going to fix you a romantic supper.’
She smiled. ‘Great. Let me show you where everything is…’
He shook his head firmly. ‘It’s okay; I know my way around a kitchen. You just stay there and prepare to feel obligated to sex me again.’
She laughed and laid back.
Her refrigerator and pantry were well stocked with the ideal ingredients for a post-coital meal: alcohol, sugar, and carbs. He decided that Pasta Puttanesca would be the most fitting dish. Italian food was always a hit, and the name would have described his view of women perfectly but for one thing – unfortunately, there was no such dish as lying whore’s pasta. Watching the sauce swirl as he stirred it, he drifted into deep thought, and considered whether the method he was about to use was indeed the most appropriate. Slow poisoning was a thrill to watch, but it was hardly romantic. He turned the stove down to a simmer, and went into her bathroom under the pretense of needing to pee. He opened the cupboard under the vanity and found a tub of cocoa body butter. He unscrewed the lid and inhaled. The fragrance was heady – perfect for disguising less intoxicating scents. He flushed the toilet, turned on the tap and let the water run while he cleared out the cupboard. Like most creative types, she wasn’t the cleanest or most well organised person, which meant that the only cleaning product he was able to find was window cleaner, which was pungent and non-lethal (unless it was ingested). He turned off the tap, left the tub on the vanity and went back into the kitchen. He found the cupboard in which she stored her drinking glasses and took two of them down. He turned on her blender and her kettle at the same time, which drowned out the sound of him smashing the glass against the edge of the counter, then carefully swept up the fragments with his hands dropped them in.
Then he heard her calling.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, just a little curious as to what you’re cooking up in there.’
‘Be patient and prepare to be seduced all over again.’
‘Okay.’
He put the lid on the blender and pressed the puree button. The fragments turned to tiny, shimmering crystals. He stared at them a moment, inwardly marveling at his own genius, then returned to the stove and attended to the meal.
‘Wow, that smells like it will definitely be worth the wait,’ she said when he returned to the bedroom half an hour later. On the tray he was carrying was two bowls of pasta, two makeshift chocolate martinis and the tub of cocoa butter.
He put the cocoa butter on the bedside table then got back into bed, where they shared what would be her last meal. When it was over, she lay flat on her back and groaned gratuitously.
‘You and your cooking and your wicked sexual prowess – it’s amazing I haven’t fallen dead asleep yet.’
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
‘It can still be arranged.’
Her eyes glazed slightly and she yawned. ‘Too late; I’m already halfway there. Feels like you slipped me a rufy or something. I feel so rude going to sleep after you went to so much trouble. Tell you what; I will treat you to some truly dazzling wake-up sex in the morning, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he kissed her forehead again, ‘see you in the morning, beautiful girl.’
She did fall into a dead sleep, courtesy of the pharmaceutical seasoning she had joked about before. There was no way she was going to stay still when he did what he was going to do, and he had to guarantee she wouldn’t wake up while he was restraining her. He picked up his briefcase and pulled out five Hermes scarves that he stole from a previous victim, to tie her hands and feet to the posts on her seventies throwback bed. He turned her body around, so that she faced the mirrored wardrobe doors. Once she was secured, he lay down beside her and drifted off to sleep. The morning promised well. Her groaning woke him up at eight thirty, ten minutes before his phone alarm was set to go off. She was on her stomach, where he had left her, ready for the massage to end all massages.
‘What’s going on? Why am I tied up?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t like these kinds of surprises; untie me.’
He took the tub of cocoa butter off the bedside table, got up and walked around to her side of the bed.
‘I’m going to give you a massage. It’ll be like nothing you’ve ever felt before, I promise.’
‘I don’t doubt that after last night, but I’m not into bondage. Please let me go, okay?’
He reached down and stroked her cheek. Her breath caught.
‘Why are you wearing gardening gloves?’
Ignoring her, he unscrewed the lid of the tub and scooped out a wad of cocoa butter. He put it on the middle of her back and started rubbing. The pain took a few seconds to kick in, but when it did she attempted to shake off her bonds and let out a scream. He clambered onto the bed and straddled her, and gagged her with the last Hermes scarf, but it ultimately proved unnecessary. The shock of acute pain soon wore off, expelled all at once like the contents of a sick stomach. For women like her, it was humiliation that kept stabbing long after the nerve receptors stopped responding to real pain, and the only thing left to do by then was to be seen to cling to any shred of dignity that remained. It was an effort wasted on him. He could read her face in the mirror quite clearly, and the enormous concentration it took for her to appear composed contorted it until it was almost grotesque. She stared straight ahead, her eyes focusing on the crack in the plaster on the wall behind her. It was exquisite.
He didn’t need to watch what he was doing – his hands had already charted every curb and plain of her body and knew instinctively where to go. He covered her back in scratches, vertical at first, then changing to horizontal when the welts opened up. He paused briefly to admire his creation, smiling at the thought that she would carry his rubicund tattoo with her to the grave like a brand, an everlasting tribute to the man who held her up to the mirror and made her see herself for the first and last time. He reached down beside the bed and took out a canister of baby wipes. She stirred again when he popped open the lid, her nerve receptors awakened by the prospect of fresh pain. He pulled out twelve wipes, and carefully set them on top of her wounds in a hopscotch pattern. She let out a short, sharp scream, and went into concentration mode again. He replaced each wipe with a new one, applying pressure every time, until the bleeding finally stopped. His work of art, his masterpiece of truth and light, was almost ready for exhibition. Getting her down so that he could dispose of the bed linen was a challenge, but one that was well worth it in the grand scheme of things. He would need to knock her out again, but more drugs were out of the question – he wanted her awake when he framed her, and the chloroform he kept in his briefcase was purely for emergencies.
He had used chloroform on his first client, back when he was big on enthusiasm and short on know-how, and the experience was terrifying enough to deter him for life. He was just a kid then, eighteen, and the girl was the sixteen year old daughter of his next door neighbour. They didn’t go to the same school – her devout parents sent her to a catholic academy in the next suburb – but she stood on the curb in front of his house to wait for the bus every day, and that was where he picked her up. She had never given him the time of day, but when he saw her speed past his bedroom window as her transport pulled away one morning, he knew it was his time. He sauntered down the driveway, as casually as he could manage under the circumstances, dangling his car keys from his index finger so that they jingled tantalizingly.
‘Hey, need a lift?’
‘No thanks,’ she said, barely glancing at him, ‘I’ll walk.’
‘Your school’s forty minutes from here. I can get you there in twenty.’
She turned and looked at the heap that befouled his mother’s front yard. ‘In that thing?’
He laughed. ‘You’d be surprised what she can do when I really open her up. It’s on my way to work; I don’t mind.’
‘What’s your name again?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever given it to you,’ because you never asked for it, you snotty bitch, ‘It’s Ken.’
She nodded slowly, smiling, feigning recollection. ‘Ken, that’s right.’
His real name made no difference, to either of them. He was just another drooling idiot, put on Earth to do her bidding, and it didn’t matter what she called him, since she wouldn’t be discussing him with anyone. It took him fifteen minutes to knock her out. She fought valiantly. She bit him when he first tried to hold the damp cloth over her mouth, sinking her teeth in, drawing blood. He grabbed the top of her long ponytail and shoved her head into the dashboard, but that only made her groggy. In a panic, he poured the entire remaining contents of the three quarter full bottle of chloroform onto the cloth and held it over her mouth again. In seconds, she was as limp as a poisoned flower. He soon realised that that was exactly what she was. In his effort to shut her up, he had killed her, and denied himself the pleasure of seeing her suffer. It was something he would later think of fondly as a beginner’s mistake. It was also the catalyst for a dramatic change. There would be no more abductions, no need for rags dripping with chloroform; to get what he wanted out of women, he would give them what they wanted first.
He unzipped a pocket inside the lining of his briefcase, and a white bottle cap popped up. It peered out at him accusingly. He had done his homework since that first debacle, and knew how to accurately measure what dosage he would need. He carried it with him from job to job, on the off chance that he would need it should a client suddenly get their second wind and try to escape, but he had no real intention of using it.
Until now.
He was a strong man – had worked many years to become so – but he knew that if he untied her now, she would put all of her weight behind her and fight him off. He could easily catch her well before she made it to the door, but the struggle beforehand would be a hard and noisy one, and noise got attention. If he wanted to put her out long enough to be able to move her, but bring her around quickly once he got her where he wanted her, there was only one tool for the job. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly as he pulled the bottle out of the briefcase. He plucked the polyester rag out, holding it between his fingernails as though it were contaminated. He looked at his client, estimated her weight, allowing himself a five pound margin for error, and carefully poured roughly the right amount of chloroform onto the rag. He was assisted in this endeavor by the lines of measurement that ran up the side of the bottle. Chance was an entity that existed to serve him, not hinder him.
He held the rag over her nose and mouth, another tip he picked up from his first client, and didn’t let go until he felt her tension drop away. Shag pile carpet grazed her flesh as he dragged her through to the kitchen, and he couldn’t help but wonder what the police would think when they saw the friction burns on the tops of her feet. Who would ever have suspected that such a nice, friendly, nerdy girl had another side? He eased her down onto the chequerboard linoleum floor, leaving her face down so that the tattoo was on display. He tied her hands and feet together, then used a butcher’s block chopping board to prop up her chin so that she would be looking directly at him when she woke up. He reached into her mouth, gently gripped her tongue between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled it out as far as the corner of her mouth before gluing her lips shut. This wasn’t to keep her quiet, but to ensure that she wore that delicious expression of concentration until the very end. He woke her up by waving smelling salts under her nose, and began work on a fitting conclusion to their time together. The folly of her easy-going, consequence-free existence dawned on her as he pulled the Hermes scarf tighter and tighter around her neck. Her eyes served as a projector, beaming out the story of her journey of self-discovery – and he was the star.
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