Bryan Smith - The Killing Kind

Lulu made a clucking sound and shook her head. “It’s because you picked the wrong kind of victim. Find her someone she’d like to kill and she’ll do it. She’ll do it and she’ll love it. You’ll see. And then you’ll have a new partner, a better one.”

Zeb frowned. “Wasn’t nothin’ wrong with Clyde. He was my friend.”

“He was a nasty, disgusting piece of shit.”

“So? Most folks would say the same about me.”

Lulu laughed. “And they’d be right. You fuck corpses and eat human flesh. You are the very definition of disgusting, Zeb. But there’s a difference. Clyde wasn’t special. You are. And so is that girl.”

“That’s another thing you keep saying that I don’t get. Special how?”

Lulu smiled again. “That’s not for me to say yet. Some things you need to figure out on your own. It’ll all become clear in time.”

“I really want to fuck her.”

Lulu’s smile vanished. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

She approached him and jabbed a finger against his chest, the long nail pricking his skin. “Shut up about this, Zebulon. The girl is special. That’s all you need to know. You will not force yourself on her.”

“What if I just can’t help myself?”

Lulu reached up and clamped her hand around his throat. She forced him to his knees with astonishing ease and bent down close to him. Her hand was like a band of iron around his throat, and he struggled for breath as she spoke. “If you violate her, I will punish you. And then I’ll leave you. You will never see me or hear my voice again. I’ll be gone forever and you will never be the same.”

She let go of his throat.

Zeb gagged and struggled to draw in breath. He got to his feet and managed to croak out an apology: “I’m…sorry.”

Lulu’s expression remained dark. “Not as sorry as you will be if you disobey me.”

Then she was gone, the space where she’d been occupied only by air now. He thought about what she’d said and tried to imagine life without Lulu. The prospect terrified him.

So that was that. The girl was off-limits. Permanently.

Christ. He hoped like hell Lulu was telling the truth about her.

Hoped she was worth all this struggle and pain.

The crazy man was talking to himself again. Well, talking to Lulu. Which amounted to the same thing, as Lulu clearly originated from somewhere inside his fucked-up brain. She had almost gotten used to the strange one-sided conversations, but this time there was a new wrinkle. She was hearing both sides of the exchange. One part of it was in his usual gruff speaking voice, which normally was the only part she would hear, with Lulu’s replies presumably only being audible inside his head. But now she was hearing the other side of the conversation too, a higher-pitched, almost squeaky voice. It was Zeb talking, but he was trying to make Lulu’s contributions sound like they were actually being uttered by a woman. Upon hearing this, Julie had to suppress a giggle fit. It was so incredibly absurd. But then he said something that removed any trace of humor from the situation.

I really want to fuck her.

By which he meant rape. Fucking was something you did with a willing partner. And while she might well be open to engaging in a lot of twisted activities, she knew for a fact she would never give herself to the creepy old necrophiliac willingly. The way he looked at her most of the time never failed to chill her. Those dead eyes made her feel like she had a million invisible bugs crawling all over her body. Especially when he’d undress her and stare at her for a while, as he’d done prior to going into the bathroom. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what he’d been doing in there prior to Lulu’s arrival.

The talk with Lulu got even stranger after a few minutes. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on in there, but she got the sense Lulu was administering some kind of physical punishment. Zeb made gurgling sounds and uttered a few strangled words, then spoke clearly as Lulu in that ridiculous faux-female voice. The latter sounded sort of like Mickey Mouse.

Julie couldn’t help it-that impression did make her giggle.

The bathroom door banged open and Zeb staggered out into the room. He came over to the side of the bed and stared down at her. He braced a knee on the edge of the bed and leaned over her to undo her bonds. He licked his lips and stared at her breasts. “Can’t decide whether I’d rather eat those or suckle on ’em.”

Julie made herself stay very still. The physical proximity repulsed her, but she was afraid flinching away would agitate him. “Lulu says you can’t do either.”

He scowled and finished untying her. “It ain’t nice to eavesdrop, bitch.”

Julie scooped her clothes-denim shorts and a halter-up from the floor and began to get dressed. “Yeah. Real sorry about that, Zeb. But, you know, the fucking bathroom’s only ten feet away. Don’t want me to hear your talks with Lulu? Take it outside.”

She finished dressing and grabbed the television remote from the nightstand. The remote was on a cord, which was anchored to the nightstand. Which she thought was pretty fucking funny. Who the hell steals a remote?

Zeb frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Gossip Girl is on tonight. Let’s see if this dump gets the CW.” She thumbed the power button, the TV blinked on, and she began to scan through the limited array of channels. She squealed. “Yay! There it is. Wanna watch?”

Zeb turned and stared blankly at the TV for several moments. Then he looked over his shoulder at her. “You like this shit?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “I guess I’m too old for it. I don’t under-”

Julie put a finger to her lips and shushed him. “Shut up! I’m trying to listen. Save it for the commercials.”

She flopped onto her stomach, kicked her legs up, and propped her chin in her hands. Zeb sat on the floor. They watched the entire show. Zeb surprised her by keeping his comments and complaints to a minimum. She even had a bit of fun fielding his intermittent questions about the show and its characters. He really didn’t get it at all, but he was struggling to grasp her interest. It was sort of what watching the show with her dad might have been like. That thought took her to a dark place briefly during one commercial break, but she shoved the bad thoughts away and lost herself in the show again when the break ended.

A touch of melancholy crept in with the end of the show. For that one hour things had seemed almost normal. But now it was over and she was again forced to deal with her new reality, which remained pretty fucking grim. She was being kept prisoner by a man who might snap and kill her at any moment. She couldn’t stop thinking of what might happen. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him on top of her nude and very still body, face contorting in twisted agony as he penetrated her dead pussy. She was thinking of it again and this time it was worse, her morbid mind taking her down paths that repulsed her even as they stirred her curiosity. There was the question of lubrication, just for instance. Dead girls don’t get wet for their postlife partners. Obviously. And the term partner was grossly inappropriate in this context, as it was another word implying consent, and dead people, duh, weren’t capable of giving that. So…what did he use? His own spit? Some kind of lotion? Or…ugh…the victim’s fresh blood?

Might as well come out and ask him. She doubted she could offend the kind of guy who did that sort of thing, so fuck it. “What do you use for lube when you bang a dead body?”

Zeb was still sitting on the floor. He turned toward her and propped a forearm on a corner of the bed. “Why you want to know?”