Posted by jamie on March 24, 2001 at 21:12:12:
THE SECOND GIRL
By jamie
People in my business, that of syndicate security, seem to think it is the overlooking of the little things which get you dead. Mostly it is our tendency to overlook the obvious threat that does it.
This was certainly the case for Gail Corlione even if she was not of my trade.
Not that the poor nineteen year old was to blame, she was merely the victim of her father’s sin of not changing the locks to his Manhattan apartment where his daughter spent her last night alive and where I used to guard her when I worked for her old man, a rival gangster to my present employer.
Other minders guarded her now, the ones I found still at the same old posts where they always used to be and where they would be found bathing in their own blood in the morning by the Don when he got home from his weekly game of cards.
It was my new Boss who ordered me to kill the girl in a fit of pique just after he ordered the death of the girl’s best friend, Angela, of yet another rival family.
On the way over to their mansion, I had given thought to the most obvious question, how would I kill her. I had killed before, of course, that was just part of my trade. But it had always been men and at that men I had always thought of as very bad even if others think that epitaph should one day be mine.
You simply shoot men – bang! and that is the end of it. But I had never killed a woman much less a girl and this was not just any girl.
I had known Gail, the only member of her family to have an Anglo Saxon name, since she was a child, since I used to play with her. Since we became very dear friends as I cared for her safety when I worked for her father.
I could not shoot her, not send a hot piece of metal tearing through her lovely slim body or to obliterate her pretty fair head.
A knife, never. Fair flesh as her does not deserve to be rent and sliced into raw horror.
How then to do it?
Now as I sat lightly on the edge of her bed I again contemplated that question, how do you take the life of the sweet young girl, for that is what she remained to me, the one laying there sleeping, unaware of my presence, unaware that she would soon be dead for all eternity.
Gone.
I looked at her laying there so close, breathing. Breathing I had to stop. I looked at her long slim arm bared and laying on the white satin sheet, her flesh whiter still than it. I watched her breathing, mouth slightly open, her head thrown slightly back, her delicate pale throat disturbed by the faint pulse of life beating beneath, the long slender neck inviting and beautiful.
How to kill her?
The girl woke with a start, instant fear in bright blue eyes, then recognition and finally puzzlement as she felt my hand close over her lips as her words, ‘What is wrong, Rolly, XXXXXXXXXwhy.....?’ were cut off.
The girl’s lips slid under the pressure of my hand, a delicious little sensation as my touch sensed the feel of her sharp white teeth digging into the pad above the index finger.
I realised at once that the girl had no idea that I had even left her father’s employ to work for his most bitter enemy, much less that I was there in her room to kill her.
‘I am going to take my hand away now, Gail, okay?’ I said wondering why I did not just kill her as ordered and leave.’
I felt the girl nod under the hand at her lips, hoping she did not notice the other had come to rest on her collar bones, the thumb at the base of her throat ready to instantly go to her neck.
Gail spoke first again.
‘Its about Angela, isn’t it. You are here because Daddy thinks they might come for me too. Angela is dead, isn’t she,’ the girl said rushing one thought into another.
So the word about the abduction of Angela by the syndicate’s new recruit, Darlene X, had reached this family so soon.
‘Honey,’ I began, ‘I do not know whether Angela has been killed yet or not, but I am sorry to say she will not be going home.’
‘But why, why Angela. She has never hurt anyone!’
The girl still did realise why I was there with her despite my hint of knowledge as to Angela’s fate, did not realise that there was a very sinister connection between the abduction of her closest friend and my presence with her in the middle of the night sitting on her bed, one hand now shifting just a little closer to her neck, thumb poised ready to do what it must do if she tried to cry out.
I decided then to let her work it out for herself as that way she might accept her fate a little better, be a little calmer when the time came.
And make killing her a little easier for me in the process.
‘Angela has to die as revenge for things her father did to Mr. Coccetti, the destruction of his race horse operation and all his priceless mares and stallions’ I said hardly cryptically.
There was a long pause then and slowly the colour drained from the girl’s beautiful young face.
‘But,’ she said, ‘Daddy was in that too, wasn’t he.’
It was a statement, not a question, but I answered “yes” to it anyway.
‘And daddy has asked you to come back to look after me, please tell me that is it – why you are here?’
‘No, honey,’ I said alert to her reaction, thumb easing yet closer to her throat, ‘I am so sorry, it is not. I’m afraid I work for Mr. Coccetti now.’
Another long pause and just as I was about to take her neck in my hands, she seemed to breath out and her thin body seemed to relax as if it overwhelmed her the instant realisation that it was all hopeless now, that to fight was pointless.
‘You are going to kill me too, aren’t you Rolly.’
Another statement of fact, but again I treated it as a question.
‘It must be, Gail. I am truly sorry, but yes, I am going to kill you,’ this as I placed both hands about her neck, keeping the movements very slow and deliberate so as to try to maintain the state of calm acceptance she seemed to have willed for herself, but suspecting that blind terror and panic were but a false or rapid move away.
The girl did not panic, however, but with equal deliberation of movement, raised both of her hands to mine and took the wrists in them, not roughly as she would have needed to tear them away, but delicately as if she were trying to gently persuade them to tarry for a moment.
‘Please, please don’t do this to me, Rolly,’ she whispered, ‘oh dear God I don’t want to die.’
All I could say then was the useless word, “Sorry” again as I very slowly increased the pressure with my thumbs.
I felt the hands at my wrists tighten as the girl moved her head from side to side, the feeling of the fine sinus in her neck giving a delicious tickling sensation to the palms.
‘No!’ she whispered through the slight constriction of her throat. ‘Rolly if you have to do this, please not here. I will make a noise and my little sister will wake up and come down.’
I felt the tiny vibrations of her soft feminine voice under my thumbs, the feeling adding to the pleasure her neck’s movement was imparting to my hands.
I understood at once what Gail was saying, that she fully knew I was going to strangle her and how bad such a death was going to be for her. Maria, her nine year old sister, did not have to die too, but I would have to kill her if she came downstairs in response to the noise of her older sister struggling against the awful agony of manual strangulation.
I eased the pressure at her throat in order to let her breath comfortably, but pointedly kept up a threatening touch on her flesh.
‘Then I will have to take you away from here to do it, is that what you are suggesting, Gail?’
The girl nodded slightly, coughing.
‘And you will cooperate, won’t try to run or attract attention in the car?’
‘No,’ she lied. I would have to ensure her co-operation by duress, of that I was sure.
‘Very well, Gail we shall go downstairs now and leave here in my car. You will see a very dead Carlo in the garage; let that remind you of what I will do to Maria if you even try to be cute. I will come back here and she will have to suffer for you, do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ she replied as if what I said was perfectly reasonable in the circumstances. prior conditioning by the family to be part of its evil empire when she grew up, I supposed.
Poor thing. She would never see a bright life of crime now nor its glittering personal wealth.
I knew she believed me, that I would kill her sister and that was ironic for a butcher I was not and killing girls for personal revenge was not in my bag of tricks. I was paid to do a job and matters personal or extraneous had no part in it.
Or so I thought until this day.
And then a surprise.
The manner of the female mind will always be a mystery to me, but here was a girl going with me to a place to be killed and yet she asked could she get her dressing gown from her wardrobe to put over her pretty gossamer thin nightie as if comfort or appearance could matter at such a terrible time.
When I saw it, I said ‘No’ as the gown was clearly what it was, a dressing gown, but her pale blue nightie with its thin spaghetti straps would look like an exotic and sensual evening gown through the side window of the car and the only thing that would attract attention was the very divinely lovely girl in it.
I hoped no overly zealous copper would not wonder at the age of her companion even though I am the good side of forty.
Downstairs Gail did not give the bloody corpse of her erstwhile protector a sideways glance as she stepped around it to get into the nondescript, but very worked over old Volvo of mine – who expects a professional killer to ride such a geriatric’s buggy – and in half an hour we had left the city limits for the place where I had selected in my mind to take her.
And there kill her.
Actually the place where I was going to kill her was not so important. What was important was to arrive at a place where I could secretly dispose of her dead body and it is far easier to let a live girl walk to her grave than carry her dead body there so she would have to remain alive for the time being.
It was while driving her to that place that the wonder of the girl started to dawn on me, the beauty of her, the very alive and sexual nature of this girl whom I had known since she was but ten, this girl I had played with when guarding her and had been a friend to.
God how she had changed in the three years since she was sixteen, when I last saw her.
How her skin glowed in its smooth, white perfection in the city lights as we travelled. Her long slim legs bare beneath the laced hem of her pretty night dress, her shoulders shining silkily in the light of the moon as we travelled out into the country, the shadows cast by it over her collar bones, the hollow at the base of her throat, the contours along the whole sweeping length of her long white slender neck.
Oh, that beautiful neck, that smooth white gentle throat, that exquisite part of her awesome loveliness which previously I had loathed to use to kill her and which I now began to grow ever more impatient to again feel, to hold in my hands, under my thumbs, to bruise it and to love it.
I was losing my professional detachment, yet cared only that I did not show it to her while welcoming the feeling unto myself, the abandonment of the professional and the welcoming of the animal.
Gail tried to weaken my resolve to go through with it for a while, after we were driving through the open country by talking of those early days, asking of me how I could do such a thing to her, but soon fell to silence when I told her, truthfully, that if I did not kill her then another and yet another, if necessary, would come for her and that my own life would not be worth half a squat either.
It was well after daylight when we pulled up at our destination, or at least as far as the car could take us – I hoped I had enough fuel to get back to the servo we passed an hour ago.
It never struck me as strange, but quite natural when I found myself holding her hand as together we took her last long walk together. Gail had no idea that she would have to walk a distance to her death and I never thought of it, but we should have taken at least a pair of slippers for her to wear. Fortunately the ground was covered in soft pine needles for the greater part and the girl suffered just one small cut on her left foot which did not bleed hardly at all.
Then, as we came out of the woods to the clearing, the poor girl saw why it was that I had brought her here to die.
The site was that of a long abandoned sand mine the recovery technique used those years ago being deep shafts. I used to play there as a kid and knew the area very well indeed. I also knew that it was almost unknown to anyone else these days and even if someone did come this way, the girl’s long dead body would never be found.
‘Oh God!’ she sobbed, for the first time showing a breakdown in control, understandable so dreadful would have been to vista before her with the old mounds of overburden and disused mining litter about.
‘Now, Gail,’ I said taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face me seeking to appear concerned for her but wanting to look at her lovely face as much as possible before I lost it forever, ‘you have been wonderful and brave so far. Now I want you to be brave for me a little longer.
‘This is going to be bad for you, there is no point lying about that. I am going to strangle you in a little while, after I position you, and it will hurt a lot. I really do want’ I said looking into her eyes, ‘to do this as least painfully and quickly for you as I can.’
But did I really, I thought to myself. Is this urge in me, the one demanding that I make it last, that I feel and sense her pain and terror, that I keep her alive as long as my pleasure demands, going to prevail over my so often professed brotherly love for her.
‘What do you mean position me? she asked horrified at what that could mean.
‘Gail,’ I replied, ‘you are going to struggle when the pain starts, you will not be able to control that. The longer you can remain still for me the better, but as your strangulation advances, the pain and will to live will be too much.
‘Now it is very important if I am going to help you through this as easily as possible that I can keep you under control without having to use your poor neck to do it. So I want to tie your hands behind your back and sit you up on that old bucket winch to do it.’
The girl tried to pull away so horrible was the thought to her.
‘Yes, I know that will make you feel helpless and that the thought is frightening, but the very fact of your helplessness, your being balanced on a free rolling drum, will prevent you from being able to struggle other than very ineffectively and that will help me control you with minimum physical stress to yourself.’
I let the terrible truth of what I said sink in, for what I said to her was the truth, and although she said nothing, I knew she would not fight against what I wanted of her.
I had noticed that the neckline of her nightie had a thin tuck string surrounding it and I asked her to take it off and give it to me to tie her hands.
She hesitated, so I explained that I did not want to have to untie her again after it was over and so had to use something off her own clothing to bind her hands.
When she had handed me the thong, she, to my great surprise, actually turned her back to me and placed her hands in position ready for tying. But we were not ready for that yet.
‘I am sorry, honey,’ I began, ‘but there is one final thing I must ask of you before I tie you. I hope you will understand the need for this, but I want you to undress for me now.’
‘Undress!’, she gasped turning back to face me. ‘What are you going to do to me. You couldn’t do that to me,’ clearly meaning rape her.
‘I will not do anything to violate you, Gail, you know that,’ I replied truthfully. ‘I do not want to kill you either, but must,’ I added then thought that such was not really true for I told myself again that this was going to be a very rare and beautiful experience for me and again I felt a bit ashamed for it.
I do not know when it was that I first really wanted to kill her. Perhaps it was when I was glancing at her in the moonlight as we drove, the effect of the pale light on her white skin. On her neck.
‘Why do I have to die naked then,’ she demanded, still in horror at the thought of something which would not matter to her inside five short minutes anyway.
‘Gail, do you really need to know why?’
She did not answer the question posed, but instead repeated her query.
‘Isn’t it enough that I have to die. Why do you want me naked to kill me if it isn’t to force sex on me first?’
‘It is not that you have to be naked as I kill you, Gail, it is that I want you naked when I put you down there,’ I said indicating the shaft nearest us. ‘I want the police to chase a few false trails for a while, at least until they get tired of the case. I want them to find your nightie a long way from here and also perhaps have them think you were indeed abducted and killed for sexual gratification. The more the confusion the better my chances.
‘Now wouldn’t you rather take your clothes off for me yourself while you are still alive than have me undress your dead body afterwards?’
There was also the matter of the thin silk string with which I was going to tie her hands behind her back and I knew in her struggles that the binding would cut deeply into her soft wrists and I had absolutely nothing with which to cut them away. But I saw no reason to mention that to her as well.
Gail hesitated but for a moment then, facing me full front on slowly and with what was a heart rending look of sadness on her face, slipped the thin straps from her shoulders and let the garment fall at her in a flimsy pool at her feet.
‘The panties too please Gail. I need them to establish that they were taken from you while you were still alive. You should take a pee before I position you on the winch drum, but some waste may still get on them if you know what I mean.’
Again she made no attempt at modesty, not much point when you are about to be killed by the person watching you I suppose.
She dropped the garment onto the other, a tiny pile of pretty pale blue, all that remained of her material world.
‘Please can I go now?’, she asked, obviously referring to her not surprising need of nature.
‘I want to tie your hands first, please Gail,’ I said. ‘I know that may make doing it a girl’s way a little awkward, but as I am sure you will want to go behind a dirt mound to do it I want to make running away impossible and bare feet, naked and with your hands tied behind you should do that.’
‘You really never intended to hurt, Maria, did you?’ she asked surprising me with the change of tack.
‘No, I could never do that,’ I replied.
‘What if you were ordered to kill her instead of me?’
‘Mr Coccetti would not have done that, I know him that well, at least. A girl of nineteen yes. One just nine, never. And if he had, I would have refused.’
‘What are you feeling about killing me. What will it be like for you. Will you enjoy killing me, Rolly,’ she asked to my annoyance, Yet, at the same time, the thought of the subject sent that strange thrill through me again.
Of course I had already decided that there would be a perverse pleasure in killing this beautiful creature, a thrill at the thought of taking such life and youth and delicate beauty in your hands and using those hands and her exquisite slender neck, thumbs at that fragile gentle throat to kill her.
I had never wanted to kill any of my targets for they were just that. A shot, a fall then nothing.
But this was so very different. It was going to be the very meaning of intimacy, the ultimate in possession of a beautiful living girl. The ultimate expression of love.
I was not going to have her in banal sex; this had to be far more sexual than that. This was her very life she would have to give to me, that I was about to take, a relationship with her that no other man had or could ever have with her.
The thought was beautiful.
‘No Gail,’ I lied, ‘I will not enjoy killing you. But I must so please turn around for me now and we will get your hands tied.’
She looked at me for a while, straight into my eyes until I had to break the contact and as she turned her back to me I realised that she had silently told me she did not believe me.
She knew with certainty that I was going to get pleasure out of her suffering, out of her death, or if not her death, then the act of killing her.
She never spoke another word after that nor made another sound save for the little noises I guess a girl has to make as she suffers the dreadful death of manual strangulation.
The noises I, in my cruelty, drew from her.
‘Cross your wrists for me please,’ I said to her not wanting to enter into further exchange on the subject.
A couple of minutes later she re - emerged from behind an earthen heap, her final internal cleansing done, and came to me to be killed.
Next to the acts soon to come, when I was in contact with her flesh, actually killing her, the sight of that exquisite creature coming to me, hands behind her back, helpless, head held not high, but level, eyes on me, the one who was going to kill her, was the most sexually stirring experience of my life.
Her lithe form, so slim, so white, swaying in a slightly awkward walk because of her bound wrists denying her the balance of her arms, her smooth skin shining in the morning light which filtered through her fine light brown hair, framing that long pale slender neck, all portrayed an image of pure erotic power which will stay with me as long as this evil trade of mine permits me to live.
Coming to me, only to me.
So I could kill her.
I took her by an arm and steered her to a winch drum which had remained all those years in place over a shaft, the rope long gone and rotted from it, gone to where her beautiful dead body soon would have to fall.
To earth.
I lifted her up onto the cylinder thinking how very light she was, how delicate her neck was going to be and how careful I would need to be with it lest I hurt her more than I needed to do to kill her.
And in the process killed her too quickly.
The drum rolled back on its old bearings squeaking in protest at being disturbed and the girl gasped in fright thinking she was going to fall backwards. The incident was fortuitous for the sensation had at least the temporary effect of lessening her wish to struggle lest she feel that sensation of falling again.
Until it got too bad, her pain.
I let my hands run from her waist then ever so gently over her breasts on their way to her neck, thinking that I should feel ashamed for this of gratuitous use of her but failing to do so.
It was so beautiful
As my hands arrived there, I turned them over to let my finger caress the pink tips into firmness before going to her shoulders, along the smooth round path to her finely sharp collar bones and finally up that silken column firgers curling at last to encircle her neck.
Yes, it was so beautiful.
I told her, lied to her, that I did not want to do this, did not want her to kill her, that I wished there was a way to let her go, to let her live.
And I told her, truthfully, not for her benefit, but rather to make what I was about to do to her more sexually gratifying, that she was beautiful and brave and to try to be still for me as long as she could and then I gradually, ever so gradually pressed both thumbs evenly into her gentle flesh just above the centre of her throat, choosing that soft spot just over the place where I knew her fragile, floating hyoid bone rested.
It was there, I knew, I could strangle her with the least possible pressure.
And effort. And therefore distraction from the pleasure of the act.
And take oh so long to savour her life beneath my touch, flesh against flesh.
And to kill her.
It was strange the way it happened, the fact that, initially, I did not look at her face the very thing I was imagining would be the most exciting. I knew a girl would have to show the very first signs of her distress in her eyes at the outset of her strangulation, but instead of holding her so I could look into them and watch the first changes to the colour to the lips of her small mouth, I drew her to me by her neck so that her soft cheek was touching mine, those pretty lips beyond my view, but along side my ear.
Where she could whisper to me of her going.
I wanted for some reason to use her sounds to tell me of her progress, or rather, my progress in applying just the right amount of pressure to her throat to prevent her from getting enough air to keep her alive. You see I did not want her to die too quickly on me, wanted her life to last long for my pleasure.
That I would hurt her terribly in so doing, I did not then care. I guess the thought that she would soon be dead for all eternity, would feel nothing for ever, led me to believe that her suffering for an extra minute or two did not matter.
So she had to suffer a while. For me.
I could hear and see in my mind’s eyes, through my right ear, her lips against it, touching it, the slow decrease in the amount of air my closing of her throat was permitting her, the initial sound of the air still passing, but through a narrowed passage.
Then a little more pressure with the thumbs, the feel of the delicate hyoid slipping against the joints to allow their entry further into her windpipe, the sound of her air speeding up in her effort to get enough of the life giving mixture past the ever narrowing and bruising passage.
I felt the girl try to pull away then as a tiny little kitten like sound came from her lips, a sound of unmistakable and dreadful pain.
And truly dreadful fear.
More pressure then, listen to the sounds I told myself, regulate the pressure until she must surely die for you, but don’t let her go too soon, don’t waste her beautiful young life. Enjoy her gift.
Don’t let her die too easily.
I pulled her head closer so that my down cast eyes could see down along the length of her back, faint freckles out of focus against her white shoulders, the inward curve of her spine swaying with her heaving, shining in the bright and beautiful morning light, the sheen of moisture glistening on the flawless silken surface, the small hands opening and closing, then the finger tips rapidly trembling as a bad wave of agony swamped her, her slim wrists writhing, tying to get free with the thin cord from her pretty nightdress cutting ever deeper into her soft young flesh.
This was pain. This was pleasure.
When I was happy with her, with the way she was dying for me although she was still very much alive, I eased her head away from my shoulder where it had rested to look not at, but into her face, into her eyes where her suffering could be seen.
Where her life and vitality and essence resided.
The face of a beautiful girl as she slowly strangles just inches from you is something one never forgets and it is little wonder that men kill so many girls this way, this so feminine a way for them to die.
The colour, the changes which wash over her in waves tell what she endures for you, how she suffers, how she moves toward her death, her beautiful inevitable death.
The hues visit her lips first then the sides of her nose, little spots form at her cheeks at the same time as in her eyes. Then a bluish tint appears at the soft lobes of her ears, her face soon a kaleidoscope of delicate pinks and palest blues and all the while her blue edged lips move as if they are seeking the air you are denying her.
Or is she silently pleading with you to stop or is it to get it done, to tighten your hands about her poor bruising neck and have done with it, her suffering?
Then while she still lives, is still conscious and still suffering for you, tremors take her, tremors she can feel and which terrify her ever more for she cannot control them and does not understand them. She does not know of pre coma convulsions which come to all girls as they strangle and the mystery of these contractions which wrack her are made more terrifying because of her confusion.
And as her convulsions slowed and as she began to fall away, not in death yet, but soon into sleep, I brought her face to mine again and told her while she could still understand that she had been so very brave and so very beautiful for me and I kissed her cheek tenderly, a cheek terribly hot now from the effects of her awful suffering and from the chemistry of her slow strangulation, the skin moist from the heat and from the tears wetting her silken cheeks.
I left her head there resting on my shoulder as she died, feeling her relax for a while before the onset of her true death throes, her long slim legs on either side of mine extending out to tremble for a while then relax in a convulsive swing only to stretch forth again simultaneously with the extension of her long thin arms behind her back, the fluttering of her fingers clearly transmitted through her slowly dying body to me.
And the feel of her neck in my hands as she was dying. Oh how could I ever forget that feel.
That feel again of the thin delicate sinews against my palms as her slender neck strained to escape my hands as her head went from side to side once more vainly begging NO! her flesh hot in my own.
And her pulse against the base of my thumbs telling me exactly the progress she was making towards her death, the frantic terror and pain driven pounding, then clear hesitation, a fluttering as her young heart skipped mid stride, the messages from her brain confused through lack of life giving air, the tiniest morsel of which I could still feel passing beneath my thumbs even as I could feel the resistance against them offered by the very depths of her poor bruised throat.
Oh, how she must have suffered.
Then the mental command to her body to keep living, don’t let yourself die for you are so young and the heart tried again to steady its rhythm, steadiness only possible if weakly done, the pace slowed. Slowly, beautifully her life drifted and returned, its sad struggle so clearly told to me by her dying young heart until the pulse in and out again and again until only a tiny fluttering was possible.
And then nothing apart from the little nerve driven tremors which sent the occasional contraction to limb and body, flutters in the flesh as even her death throes faded.
I held her for I do not know how long after I was sure all life had left her, long after her tremors had ceased, held her upright by her neck, thumbs still deep in her throat until I came to myself with the realisation I was rocking her dead body back and forth as I used to when she was a child and when I was caring for her.
When I was keeping her safe.
In the end I let her limp body fall from the drum and into my arms and carried her to where I would have to let her go from me, to let her fall three hundred feet to the bottom of the shaft, carried her there with her slim arms and legs swinging with the movement and her poor neck, so long and slender, so bruised, dangling down, her head swaying beneath my arm.
I wish to this day I had thought of another way to dispose of her, for the sound of her going has been with me ever since, the sound of her falling, striking the sides of the shaft as she went and then the terrible sound of her hitting the bottom, her limbs audibly breaking against the hard sandy floor.
It is only when can I listen again to the sounds she made for me as she was dying in my hand’s caress, under the loving touch of my thumbs deep as they bruised her beautiful young throat that I can blot out those noises of her plunge, for we humans always seem to be able to let things which have given us our greatest pleasure blanket those of most regret.