Samantha met Lyle when she walked into his estate agency looking for a place when she first arrived in America. He showed her the apartment after hours, so as to get the drop on another agent who, like Lyle, was trying to build up brownie points and be jettisoned out of rental hell into sales.
‘Won’t you get into trouble for this?’
‘Not unless you tell on me,’ he grinned, ‘anyway, I’ve always believed in going the extra mile for a client. Take a look around. Try to imagine yourself eating here, sitting down in front of that big living room window at the end of the day and having that view all to yourself.’
‘Actually, I was picturing myself in here,’ Samantha called.
She was standing by the window when Lyle walked into the bedroom. Everything but her shirt was on the floor, and it was unbuttoned, allowing the moonlight to illuminate her in all the right places. Lyle pointed to her hands.
‘Why are those still on?’
‘Psoriasis. I’m a little sensitive to it.’
Lyle shrugged. ‘You really don’t need to do this. I know the guy who owns the place - you’re in.’
Samantha laid down on the floor.
‘So consider this a thank you.’
Lyle shut the bedroom door behind him and went to her. The sex was clumsy and rushed the first time but the second time, Samantha took control, shoving him against the wall with such force that there was a loud smack. Lyle laughed.
‘Wow! You’re a tough one, aren’t you?’
‘I can be.’
‘Never met a woman I couldn’t handle.’
‘You have now.’
Lyle was so pleasantly surprised when Samantha jumped him that he didn’t notice what she was holding behind his back. Samantha made sure she came - damned if she was going to let herself be robbed of that - then waited for Lyle’s breathing to speed up again. When he closed his eyes in anticipation of what he thought would happen next, Samantha jammed the blade in his back and twisted it, and was amused to see that, before he passed out from shock, his jaw dropped like the guy who sang bass for Sha Na Na, that god-awful television band her mother used to love.
She dragged him out to the kitchen just as he was coming to and used a portable island to wheel him over to the stove before stopping for a beer.
‘You’re pretty solid, Lyle;’ Samantha panted, ‘lucky you can’t think with your muscles, or I’d be fucked.’
She took a big swig and carefully put the bottle down, so as not to inadvertently let any liquid drop onto the counter. She turned on the right burner and waited for Lyle to realise that screaming was going to be impossible. It didn’t take long.
Samantha pointed at Lyle’s mouth, ‘I’ve never done that before; not on a person, anyway. Not bad for a first try, eh?’
She ran her finger along the zigzag stitching, then slapped him.
‘Just because your lips are sewn together, doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ she chided, ‘the choice words that are waiting to come streaming out of that mouth!’
Samantha grabbed Lyle by the hair and held his ear to the stove.
‘The more you shake, the longer it’ll take…’
Lyle stopped shaking his head, releasing his pain with short, sharp breaths through flared nostrils. Samantha held him there for a few more seconds before letting him go and kissing him on the cheek.
‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
She picked up the beer, took a couple more swigs, returned it to the bench.
‘It’s not my thing really, burning. Truth be told, I’m more of a cutter. I haven’t burned anyone in years, and that was with a cigarette lighter. Piss ant squirmed twice as much as you did. Course, he was eleven years old at the time…so was I.’
‘I was a bit of a prodigy, now that I think about it, but this was never a serious pursuit for me; I mean, I have made a career out of it, but it isn’t as though I was answering a higher calling - god forbid there should ever be a day when this becomes a job! What were you like as a kid? Was Pam as big a pain in the arse then as she is now?’
Lyle’s eyes bugged. Samantha grinned.
‘I know what you’re thinking, or at least were until about ten seconds ago: of all the real estate agencies in all the world, why’d this mad bitch have to walk into mine? Well, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll tell you: I’m a cop…and I’m not American.’
She picked up the beer bottle again and began peeling off the label, digging at the corner of the sticker with her fingernail.
‘I could’ve done pretty well for myself back in the U.K. but you know how it is - you drive your librarian mad, thirsty for knowledge on all the greats, only to discover that the majority of them hail from another part of the world - so I kept nagging my governor to put me in the transfer program and as soon as a spot opened up, I was off!’
She ripped off the label.
‘The kicker is, I didn’t even go into the agency looking for you, or for anyone in particular; Pam told me what you did for a living, but I thought the chances of running into you were pretty much naught in a city this size. I guess you never know your luck.’
She went into the bathroom, opened the cupboard under the sink and squealed with excitement.
‘Jackpot! I honestly wasn’t sure there’d be anything in here but someone seems to be smiling on me today.’
She came out of the bathroom holding a bottle of bleach.
‘You know, you should be nicer to your sister. She didn’t ask to be born a girl. The way you and your mother ganged up on her, it’s a wonder she’s able to function at all.’
Samantha unscrewed the cap and poured some of the bleach into it.
‘Pam isn’t a whinger, but you’d be amazed how revelatory people get after a few beers. Eyes like piss holes in the snow? I love Get Carter as much as the next Brit but, let’s face it, you’re no Michael Caine.’
Samantha carefully picked up the lid and held it above Lyle’s face.
‘You’re also not a scholar, or you’d know that the original quote was a literary one, and that it was a comment on character, not appearance and, even if it was, Pam is not ugly. '
She forced open his left eye and poured, talking over his restricted screams.
‘Sight is a gift, Lyle, and you misused it so…I’m confiscating it.’
Samantha slammed the empty lid down onto the counter.
‘Don’t mean to go all schoolmarm on you but it’s the only way you boys seem to learn. Oh and don’t worry - I’m not going to blind your other eye. I need you to see out of that one.’
She pushed Lyle into the main bedroom and parked him in front of the mirrored robe. ‘Thought I’d finish you off in here, seeing as how you liked it so much the first time.’
She grabbed Lyle’s tie from the corner of the room and pushed him onto his side.
‘I know how much you like to look at yourself - you were doing it so much on the way here, I thought you were going to drive us into a ditch - but tell me Lyle, have you ever REALLY looked at yourself?’
Lyle winked his good eye. Samantha nodded.
‘Thought not; guys like you rarely do, so guess what? I’m going to give you a make-under! It should only take…an hour, an hour and a half, depending on coagulation.’
Samantha bent down and picked up her blade.
‘I should explain something; I’m saving your face ‘til last. I know I’ve done half of the job already, but it’s difficult for me to stop once I really get roaring and like I said I want you to see my handiwork so I’m going to go straight to the body, starting with your most commonly used muscle.’
The veins in Lyle’s neck pulsed. Samantha laughed.
‘Not THERE, silly! What is it with you guys and your things? There isn’t a single muscle in the penis, that’s why it can’t actually carry weight. God, this explains why so many of you think with the damn thing!’
She used Lyle’s tie to create a tourniquet around his left bicep, pulling it as tightly as it would go, then she held down his head with one hand and whispered in his ear.
‘This is going to hurt a fuck-load.’
She slowly inserted the point of the blade into the muscle. Lyle’s nostrils flared.
‘You were probably expecting me to just cut straight into the artery but this isn’t like…’
She pushed the blade in deeper.
‘…slashing a tyre. What sort of killer would I be if I let all the air out of you at once? A dull one, that’s what. I mean, take your classic nair-do-well types, whose daddy didn’t love them or whose mummy bashed them with a shoe horn or who was just generally unappreciated and unloved by everyone they ever met; they go up to some couple fucking in a car and start blasting away, and are satisfied with themselves for maybe a day or two before the old emptiness starts consuming them again and why? Because they’re too fucking eager. Watching some bastard’s brains come flying out the side of his head is a sight to behold, don’t get me wrong; but it isn’t going to provide nearly as much sustenance as taking one’s time.’
She pulled the blade upward, away from the artery, and around, cutting a circular chunk of flesh and flicking it onto the floor.
‘Not that I do this out of any sort of need; I simply like to draw out the fun for as long as I can.’
She pushed the blade into his breast and carved a letter L.
‘My fellow dicks’ll drive themselves mad trying to decipher the significance of this. They’ll haul in every Larry, Leonard, and Lucy within state lines who has any sort of a record. That’s the sort of stuff my squirly dreams are made of.’
Lyle passed out several times over the next hour, and was awoken each time with a face (or a lap) full of cold water from one of three thermos’s in Samantha’s handbag.
‘Thank god the fashion police haven’t put out a moratorium on tote bags yet. Ta-da! Now you’ll HAVE to try to cultivate your inner beauty.’
Lyle whimpered like a lost child. Samantha looked at his reflection thoughtfully.
‘Back in England, I used to fantasize about the sorts of blokes I might encounter over here. Do you know which one it was that got me all sweaty? The solid guy; the one guy I’d admire and respect too much to want to rid myself of. I’ve been hoping and praying he’d come along since the days when I had to hold my knife with both hands and, guess what, Lyle?’
She ran her hand down what was left of his face.
‘I’m still waiting.’
Lyle made a sound like a dying dog as Samantha pushed him onto his back, leaving his head to lol over to the side. She raised the blade and plunged it in. Gravity forced blood to rush to Lyle’s head and with an overwhelming sense of pleasure, he realized he was going to pass out again.
Samantha shook her head in amazement the next morning while one of the forensics people pointed out each of the places from which sanguine fluid had leaked and traveled down to Lyle’s face and neck.
‘They started here, with the brachial artery. Arteries can take anywhere from five to sixty minutes to bleed out, depending on the depth or shallowness of the cut. As you can see, this one was completely severed, meaning it would’ve tried to constrict itself to stem the flow.’
Samantha swallowed hard and covered her mouth.
‘Were all of the arteries severed?’
‘Yup, and each cut was horizontal. Whoever our guy is, he likes to watch them suffer.’
Our Guy.
He.
Samantha wondered how long it would take for a fat CSI to bleed out from his sweaty armpits alone.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
