Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

She headed down to the local “business district” where she and her kind earned their keep. No welfare for Carol Miller—she was no charity case—she had something to sell, and there were plenty willing to pay.

Tonight, Bill Suff picked her up.

To Carol, Bill seemed just the kind of guy you could weasel more and more loot out of as the evening progressed. He was embarrassed but he was excited. She could tell that this was a fantasy for him, and you just can’t put a price on fantasy—once committed, price would be no object. Carol would quote Bill twenty for a straight lay, then tease him with a little head and tell him that’d cost him a little extra or else she’d stop. Maybe then a prostate massage or a few different lovin’ positions— Carol was plenty flexible and plenty strong, her body was soft and curvy all over, and she’d charge for each angle of attack. She’d let him have

any part of her he wanted, even parts he would never have asked for on his own. She could make enough off this guy, she could call it a night.

So she gladly climbed into Bill’s rig and agreed it was a terrific idea he had about heading up into the hills where they could be alone. “I’m kind of choosy,” Carol told Bill, “and when I meet a man I like, I like to give him my undivided attention. Turn up that music, okay?”

She reached over to unzip Bill’s fly, and he reached to turn up the volume on the radio. It was an easy listenin station—not rock, barely pop. “Careful how you drive now, sugar—keep your concentration on the road,” she said, and then put her head in his lap. After a lick or two, she looked up at him for a moment: “Tonight’s your lucky night, big guy. Big guy, big tipper, right?”

He looked down at her as she went back at him with relish.

And then he smiled.

“Wrong,” he said.

And so now Bill and Carol were in Tranquility Garden and the only reason it was tranquil was because she was tied up with sisal rope, her black cotton undershirt stuffed in her mouth.

Carol was naked, lying on her back on a plastic tarpaulin, and she didn’t notice the cold. All around her, Bill had his toolboxes, his paint, his killing kit. Light came from one of those blue-glowing liquid light tubes, the kind you bend and crack so the chemicals mix and light up for a while—eerie but gentle.

Bill had really really really wanted to cut up and paint up Carol, but he just knew it would come back to haunt him, forensically speaking, so now he thought he’d etch and paint an image of her lying there like that—he had a leather belt he meant to use as a canvas—but, once again, he was finding that the artistic and the practical didn’t go together: it was gonna take way too long and he was gonna feel way too pressured to etch and paint while tucked into that dark hillside on this cold desert night. You just shouldn’t force art, that’s the whole point.

So, while Carol lay there, Bill closed up his toolboxes, put away his paints, stowed it all back in his rig. He didn’t let himself rush, instead he savored each moment. Behind the driver’s seat he saw his tape recorder still taping—now he shut it off. This wouldn’t be a tape much worth listening to. This woman had been different from all the rest: she hadn’t screamed, hadn’t fought, hadn’t tried to talk her way out. As soon as he’d had her by the throat, she’d gone limp on him, gone unconscious. He knew he’d been getting better at just blacking someone out with his first assault rather than squeezing all the life out of her, but this one—it was like his touch hypnotized her or something.

Even now, now that Carol’d come to, with her eyes wide open and her breathing raspy loud, she just lay there impassively. The other girls, they’d resist to a point and then resign themselves to their fates, but it was active resignation—he could see their lips move as they prayed, tears on their cheeks, and he hated them for that, hated them for praying to a false God who would grant them no salvation. Bill was their God and they should have recognized it—he alone could and would deliver them from evil. Through death, he would save them from himself. That’s what aroused him. He was God and man to them. He would kill them and then he would fuck them.

Then again, what he’d always fantasized, what he really wanted, was the sacrificial virgin, the woman whose whole life had been lived for the moment Bill would deflower her, and whose whole existence would be justified by death immediately following. A flower buds, grows, gains secret and wondrous beauty, and then, from the moment it opens it is dying. That’s a fact. From the moment the flower opens, it is a burden to the plant, pulling moisture and nutrients away from the needy buds. Once opened, the flower’s only true purpose is to crumble, to give off its pollen, its seed, and the sooner it swoons and snaps from its stem, petals falling from its heart, the sooner its legacy is secured and its life given meaning only in retrospect.

And this woman, this hooker, Carol Miller, she was the first who seemed to know that. She seemed not so much to be accepting her destiny as welcoming it. Yes, she knew about the flowers, she knew about sacrifice, and she was honored that she, of all people, had been chosen.

Bill was certain of it.

He reached under a floor mat and pulled out a dagger, grasped it tight. It was really just a kitchen knife, and it would go back to being a kitchen knife by light of day—in fact it would go back into Bill and Cheryl’s kitchen—but right now it was a mythical dagger transformed for extraordinary purpose. It had the blood of the ancients on its blade, the hand sweat of the holiest of holy men on its grip, the symbol of all knowledge and all power erupting into Bill’s palm, there to be felt but never seen.

Carol Miller watched her killer approach. He’d opened his jumpsuit, and his penis was engorged, leading him toward her. She was beyond hope, beyond fear. Somehow, everything that was happening was everything that she’d always expected. This was why she’d long sought the numbness of the drug, but now she was numb even without it.

Bill Suff knelt down between Carol’s legs. “I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth so long as you promise not to scream,” he said, “otherwise I’ll have to hurt you.”

Carol knew she was dead, but she didn’t want any more pain—she nodded agreement with her eyes, and Bill removed the shirt from her mouth. She was too dry to swallow, but she gave a dry cough. Bill looked down, reached down and positioned himself to enter her, the head of his penis against her folds.

“Never before and never again,” he intoned the heavens, and, in one thrust, forced himself inside her as his hand came up holding the dagger, plunging it down square into her chest where it hit bone and bounced angrily away.

She would have screamed in agony but he didn’t give her the chance—before she could inhale to scream, his one hand grabbed her throat and closed like a vise while the other drove the knife down four more times through her ribs, her sternum, until he felt the comforting tension, stretch, and pop as the blade pierced Carol Miller’s heart and killed her, leaving her eyes wide open. Now the killer bent forward, careful not to let his chest rub against the rivulets of blood which were pouring in all directions from Carol’s chest, and he licked her lips, kissed her. Then he sat back, pulled the knife out of her chest, pulled himself out of her, stood up, looked down at her, and decided to wrap her undershirt over her face.