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  "Ah shit!" I yelled out.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" Alex retorted, pushing up off of the dash and grabbing the sides of her seats for stability.

  "I think a tire just blew. Feels like one of the rear ones."

  I pulled the car off to the side and stopped, giving off a fake sigh of relief and looking over to Alex who was still gripping her seat. "Geez, that was pretty intense, huh?"

  She wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat. "So do you got a damn spare or what?"

  I smiled. "Of course. I’ll have us going again in ten minutes. Time me."

  I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned off the engine, shutting of the headlights as well and sure as shit not turning on the hazards. Alex didn’t seem to notice any of this as odd. She just rubbed at her temples with fingers whose nails were painted black and said as I got out of the car, "What are the fucking odds."

  An appropriate question. And one that the police would surely think over in the days to come.

  I closed the door and walked around to the trunk, opening it and pulling up the flap on the floor that covered the spare, the jack, and a tire iron. I passed on the tire and the jack and wrapped my fingers around the tire iron, its steel cool on my palm. My adrenaline started to pump through me in anticipation and I don’t know if it was that or the chilled air of the night that gave me goose bumps on my arm. My last murder had been random, if not partially accidental. This one was going to be purpose filled, plotted, and perfect.

  I closed the trunk and looked through the rear windshield. Alex had her cell phone out and was holding it up, moving it from side to side apparently in search of a signal. I watched as she repocketed it and then lay her head back against the seat rest in defeat.

  I looked up the road and then behind me, seeing no signs of traffic. With three quick strides I was at her door and I jerked it open, catching her off guard. She bolted upright, eyes wide and was just about to yell out when, with my free hand, I grabbed a fistful of her cropped hair and yanked hard in my direction. She did cry out this time and tumbled off of the seat and out into the dusty shoulder of the road, clawing at my hand with her black fingernails. With my fingers still entwined in her hair, I pulled harder, leaving her no choice but to scoot herself along the rocky pavement, further away from the car and towards the woods.

  With the initial surprise of the attack wearing off, she started to focus and fight back more convincingly. She managed to get up onto one knee and blurted, "LET ME GO YOU FU--"

  That was as far as I let her get. I swung down with the tire iron hard, but not as hard as I could have, just enough to shut her up. All it took was one blow, just above the left temple. She crumpled at my feet, black clothes streaked with the grays and browns of dust and gravel. There was no blood, just an immediate and ugly bruise that wasted no time making itself known.

  I took my suit jacket off and tossed it into the car, closing the passenger door. Then I grabbed the tire iron in one hand, one of Alex’s arms in the other, and started to drag her into the woods. It was time for her to meet the real Jackson, and find out just how much fun he could be.

  I dragged her limp body maybe fifty yards through the surprisingly dense trees before I finally decided it would just be simpler to carry her instead of trying to navigate her on the ground between the trees and fallen limbs and stumps. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and it seemed like a patch of clouds had cleared away, allowing for some much needed moonlight to help me carry out my endeavor. I tossed her over one shoulder, her body lighter than I would have thought, and the rest of the trip was much quicker.

  After what I felt would be a safe distance--definitely far enough away from the road so an overly curious passerby who may stop to investigate my stopped car (a cop for example) wouldn’t have a chance of seeing us, even if they decided to venture a ways into the trees themselves, and hopefully far enough away that any screams wouldn’t be heard, instead being absorbed into the blackness of the night--I set Alex down gently on the grass and fallen leaves. I unbuttoned my cuffs and rolled up my sleeves, and then I let Jackson get to work.

  Alex woke with a gargled cough from her stint of unconsciousness only a few moments after I had finished with my initial preparations, and I could have applauded her for her timing. Things were working out so beautifully.

  I don’t know which of two realizations hit her first, both undoubtedly coming hot on the heels of each other, but as she lifted her head groggily and tried to move I saw from the sudden look of shock and fear on her face that both facts had indeed arrived to her brain: She was laying of the ground with her wrists tied behind her back and ankles tied together, and she was naked.

  I’d like to have known which fact bothered her more. The human psyche is a complex web of oddities.

  It had taken me no time at all to remove her shirt and bra, exposing her tiny breasts and tinier nipples. The pants, however, were a much more complicated task. Those boots of hers must have had thirty eyelets running up each side, and it took me forever to unlace them. They proved quite useful though, as the laces were plenty long enough for me to use to tie her.

  Once the boots finally slid off, I peeled off her socks, her toes painted the same black as her fingernails, and then the pants and her panties, which were a nonconforming pink.

  She looked around in the darkness, still not fully aware of what was happening, and then her eyes landed on me standing over her, widening with remembrance and panic. She let out a quick hiss of surprise and tried to jump up, failing due to her bindings and slumping with a hard thud back onto the earth.

  I took a step closer. "Did you have a nice nap?"

  "Don’t you fucking come near me!" She yelled. Then she started wiggling along the ground, trying to get some distance between herself and I, looking like a handicapped snake. The leaves crinkled under her movement and a few stuck to her hair.

  I took another step towards her, making up the little bit of distance she had gained. "Where are you going, Alex? I’m fairly certain you’ve already missed the start of your movie. I don’t know about you, but I consider myself late even if I get there after the previews start. I love the previews, don’t you?"

  "SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELLLLP!" She continued to slither along the ground, the cords in her neck popping into visibility as she screamed with all her might. "PLEASE HELP ME!"

  I let her continue to wiggle and scream for maybe a minute, knowing that nobody was going to hear her, then with one swift motion I was beside her and brought the tire iron down hard across her abdomen. Her body arched up in pain as a hoarse gasp escaped her mouth, eyes bulging in their sockets. As she lay there, struggling to breath--I had knocked the wind out of her--I knelt beside her body and spoke softly near her ear. "For starters, nobody is going to hear you out here. You seem like a pretty sharp girl, I thought somebody like you would know better than that. Second, you’re not going anywhere, so I wish you’d stop trying. It’s embarrassing to watch."

  She had caught her breath, and even though her naked body was shivering in the cold fall air, she managed to keep herself somewhat composed.

  "And lastly," I said, straightening myself and standing over her in full form, "You’re going to do exactly what I say or, trust me, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

  Her teeth had begun to chatter and she only looked at me with tears forming in her eyes. I raised the tire iron above my head. "Do you understand me!" She quickly shouted, "Yes! Yes, I fucking understand you!"

  I eased the iron back down in a slow, deliberate motion, like I was unsure as to whether or not I was convinced and still might strike her. "You be a good girl and stay right there for a moment." I then turned and walked a few feet away, laying the tire iron against a tree, knowing fully good and well that without it I was still far from vulnerable to attack.

  I unbuttoned my shirt and took it off, folding it carefully and laying it gently on the grass by the base of a tree. I heard the first few sounds of Alex’s soft crying. When I took off my pant
s and boxer shorts, her crying turned into loud sobs, as if the sight of my naked body erased all hope inside her that maybe this wasn’t going to happen, that maybe I’d just leave her alone. I was already half aroused in the first place. Despite her pale body and tiny breasts, Alex still had a good figure, and without the shroud of blackness she covered herself with, she might have been sexy. By the time I was standing over her, tire iron in hand and listening to her wails echoing through the trees, I was completely hard and felt like wasting no time.

  "So you like pussy, huh?" I said, placing one foot on each side of her, just below her rip cage in a straddling position. Her face, streaked with tears, wrinkled into genuine confusion. I laughed. "You said you have a girlfriend, plus the homophobe bumper sticker, must mean you like pussy, right?"

  She closed her eyes and said nothing, if she was trying to appear strong and unphased she was failing. I swung the tire iron down against her right ribs and this time she let out a blood-chilling scream that outlasted one full breath and made its way into the other. When the scream stopped, only to be replaced by more sobs, I bent down and put a hand over her throat and squeezed. "Say it," I said. She just continued to cry. "You wear the clothes, you sport the short hair, you’ve got the fucking bumper sticker, now it shouldn’t be that hard to just come out and say it, should it?"

  Silence.

  I raised the iron up. "Say it! Say ‘I like pussy’ or so help me--"

  "I like pussy!" She screamed it out forcefully and you could hear the waver of submission in the words. I smiled.

  "Good. Now get up."

  She made no attempt to move and I started to lose patience with her inability to follow simple directions. I reached down and grabbed each of her nipples and pulled hard, fully intent on lifting her this way if it came down to it. She shrieked at the pain, but at the same time she did her best to push herself up off of the ground, which was all I wanted. I let go of her nipples and grabbed her under her arms, pulling and helping her up. Once I had her up onto her knees I picked the three or four leaves out of her hair and tossed them to the side, watching them spiral to the ground. Alex was visibly shaking harder now, more so out of fear than the cold.

  "You’re probably a little out of practice at this," I said, taking a small step closer, "but I’m sure you’ll do just fine." I grabbed her head and pushed it into my crotch. "Open your mouth."

  With those words, the hard exterior of the young, lesbian, Goth-girl named Alex evaporated, leaving nothing but the soft, chewy middle. She let out a long, drawn-out sob, it sounded like one of the delayed noises you might hear at a pediatricians office after a child had just received a shot. "Oh God, please! Don’t do this to me, please. Anything else, anything! I’ve only got a little bit of money, but it’s yours, all of it! I can…Oh God, don’t--"

  I grabbed at her throat again, squeezing hard and cutting off her voice. "I don’t need money…and God can’t help you right now. So, I’m only going to ask you one more time before I get really angry, open you mouth."

  Her body shook in my hands and I watched as she finally accepted the situation, letting out a few more quick whimpers and a few more tears fall down her cheeks before taking in a deep breath and slowly opening her mouth.

  I was about to put my dick in her mouth when two things happened: A strong gust of wind blew hard through the trees, howling and scattering leaves around us, making me realize just how fucking cold it was, and also a thought popped into my head. I for the first time considered the negative repercussions of forcing somebody to suck my dick, especially somebody like Alex. She may have let her guard down for the time being, but who’s to say that it wouldn’t quickly jump back up while I was in her mouth and she’d get the brilliant idea to bite down hard with her teeth. Tied or not, it would be a crippling blow. That thought scared the shit out of me. I definitely preferred my penis to be in one piece as opposed to split in two. With the wind increasing and the notion of dissected gentiles weighing heavy on my mind, I decided to skip the foreplay.

  "Alex, my dear." She closed her mouth and opened her eyes, craning her neck to look up at me. "There’s been a change of plan. We’re just going to fast forward ahead to the climax. Pun intended." I didn’t give her a chance to speak. I slammed the tire iron against the top of her head and she crumpled to the ground. She remained conscious, but barely, letting out a small moan and as she twisted slowly on the ground. With no trouble at all I flipped her over onto her stomach, her face smashing against the grass and crumbling leaves.

  It was over quickly. Once I was inside her I finished in only two or three minutes, pulling out when I was done and immediately grabbing for the tire iron lying next to me in the grass. I gripped it in two hands and brought it down with all my force against her head. With the one blow all signs of life left her body. I raised the iron again and smashed it down again, this time I felt small, warm droplets of blood squirt onto my hand. Again and again and again I struck her, undoubtedly splitting her scalp to shreds and splintering her skull.

  I used her black t-shirt to wipe the blood from my hands and arms, and then used the clean side to wipe the sweat from my face. After tossing the tire iron beside Alex’s broken body, I got dressed and starting walking back through the woods to my car.

  Two things were certain to me as I drove back to get my Jeep from my storage unit: Jackson had done well that night, and second, it was going to make a hell of a chapter.

  Chapter 32

  Minnie woke me the following morning with the sound of her descending the stairs in her slow, thunderous manner. I opened my eyes at the noise and sat up, momentarily confused. I looked around and saw the kitchen. I had fallen asleep while writing, a small puddle of drool collected just in front of my laptop and an empty coffee mug to the side. I pressed the spacebar on the keyboard, causing the screen to come back to life and saw some of the words I had typed before passing out. I quickly hit the save button and shut the lid of the computer. Minnie rounded the corner and came into the kitchen seconds later. She saw me and jumped.

  "Oh Dan, mercy me," she put a hand over her over-worked heart, "Didn’t know you were down here."

  I stood up from my chair, back cracking slightly as I stretched, and looked to the clock on the microwave. It was a quarter passed six. "Didn’t really plan to be," I said with a chuckle. "Couldn’t really sleep so came down here to work on a few things and must have fallen asleep at some point." I scooped my laptop up and walked past her and headed up the stairs. She yelled after me, "You want breakfast?"

  Minnie… Food always on the mind. "Yes please," I called back from mid-way up the stairs. I made it the rest of the way up the stairs and threw my laptop on the bed and headed to the bathroom. I started to brush my teeth and when I looked into the mirror I froze.

  There on my neck, just above the collarbone and barely visible under the neck of my t-shirt was a smear of blood. Concern washed through me.

  Whose blood? Mine?

  No, of course it’s not yours, you know exactly whose it is.

  Did Minnie see it?

  No, she didn’t.

  How do you know?

  She would have said something, its blood for Christ’s sake. Besides, her mind was too preoccupied with visions of eggs and grits and bacon dancing around.

  I accepted the answer. Of course Minnie would have said something. People don’t often overlook blood. It’s an unsettling sight, and always cause for alarm. I finished brushing my teeth and then stripped down and examined my body, searching for other traces of blood. I had been so anxious to start writing when I had gotten home the night before that I hadn’t bothered to check then, only jumping out of my suit and into the t-shirt and shorts I had just discarded onto the bathroom floor. After failing to find any other blood, I washed the spot off of my neck and redressed, then rejoined Minnie and her frying pan of sizzling bacon in the kitchen.

  I picked up my empty coffee cup from the table where I had left it and walked over to the counter, where Min
nie had brewed a fresh pot. After filling my cup, I leaned against the counter and waited for the inevitable question to pass by Minnie’s lips. I sipped and waited, watching her flip the bacon, causing splatters of grease to pop in the pan. The question came only after the bacon was finished and cooling on a plate, and after I asked the first question. "So, how was your dinner last night?"

  The prospect of conversation pertaining to food caused her face to light up. "Oh, it was delicious," she said, turning to the fridge and returning with a handful of eggs. "I had forgotten how good The Sawmill really is. I guess I just got burned out on it for a while. Ralph goes every Saturday you know?"

  I’d seen the way Ralph ate and drank at The Sawmill and decided that if Minnie ate even half that badly there on a regular basis she’d reduce the years of her life quite a bit.

  "Yeah, I know. Foods pretty good though, I’ll agree."

  "Mmm-hmm." She cracked an egg. "Where’d you go last night? We came back and you were gone."

  There it was. "Yeah, kinda lonely in the place when you guys are gone, decided to go see another movie."

  She nodded. "You should really take Ralph with you one time when you go. He loves the Cinema, but I hate going all the way to Larendale."

  "I’ll do that."

  "What’d you see?

  I took another sip of my coffee. "The new Rob Zombie film."

  Other than the fact that I had fresh blood on my hands it was a typical Monday. Meaning not much was happening. Ralph had nothing for me to help him work on around the house or in the yard, and Minnie had no shopping or appointments to attend to. Satisfied that I wasn’t needed, I retreated to my bedroom to finish writing where I had left off before falling asleep on the kitchen table.

  I read what I had managed to churn out the night before in order to re-establish my tone and the flow of the chapter and was quickly able to finish, the details and events still warm in my mind. An hour and a half, and some thousand words later, I clicked SAVE once again and then headed downstairs, only to find both Ralph and Minnie napping in their respective recliners, a SOAP on the television.