Punch and Cookies

Posted by hisdinner on July 04, 2008 at 17:24:09:

Punch and Cookies
Part 1

What’s the problem with dating a cannibal? It boils down to dinner, doesn’t it. And slews of bad puns, of course—sorry about that. But if I am going to leave some sort of testament behind, I refuse to leave out the funny stuff and be all somber and serious. Trust me, that wouldn’t go down well, even with an overnight marinade.

I met Brian at a barbeque. No, they didn’t have cheerleaders telling their boyfriends how to baste them as they turned on their spits. Yeah, he showed me the Dolcett cartoons. But not way back then—oh HELL no, that would have definitely cooled things off. We’d been dating at least six weeks, I bet, before he started slipping little cannibal stuff into my sphere of consciousness. I think he thought of them as hors d’oeurves. He’d show me a drawing he’d made of me, and it would be SO cute, you know, me all naked, posing on a platter with an apple in my mouth, but still wearing my glasses. Ha!

By then, of course, I was so hard in love with him that it hurt. But mostly, it felt incredibly good, the time we got to spend together. He could make me laugh just as hard as he made love, too. Could you ask for a better combination? I didn’t think so. I still don’t. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have met him. We fit together perfectly: We found out that first night, the night that stretched into three days of very little sleep, two sets of pissed off roommates (while we screwed our eyes out in every room in both of our houses) and argued and nibbled and drank and ate each other up. Fucked like minks, did I mention that? Oh god, what a monumental meeting. I told him very seriously, toward the end of the first 24 hours of Us Together that someone really should erect a tasteful bronze statue commemorating Our Historic Meeting. Maybe it could be a larger than life bronze of us doing it doggie style, him with his belt around my waist, rearing back and whacking my ass and yodeling “Hi-Ho, Silver!”

You know, even that first encounter had cannibal overtones, now that I think about it. Lots of people play with food and sex, sure—the strawberries and champagne crowd, the whipped cream set. But he painted warmed honey on me by candlelight, took pictures, used a pastry brush to tease my nipples and my clit til I thought I’d explode a million times, and then he licked it off, nibbling here and there as he laved me clean.

So yes, cannibal stuff WAS there from the start, wasn’t it, but I didn’t see it, or if I did, it didn’t seem strange or wrong or anything but FUN! The scary stuff came only much later, after I had grown to love him so fiercely, I knew I’d die for this man. Funny how fiercely I felt that, too, how I wanted to fight like a tigress or like a mother bear, should anyone ever threaten My Man. Oh, I loved him. I do love my Wolf Man so.

I called him my wolf man because of the wild I sensed in his heart and eyes and soul. Ok, I know you’re starting to roll your eyes around and accuse me of switching to the Lifetime channel when you’d just stepped out for a beer. But it’s the truth I want to record in here, and all that hot, salacious, filthy, dirty, wonderful sex came with an enormous swelling in my heart, too. My chest felt too full, still does, really—I hope you know that feeling! I love this man so much that it’s hard to hold it in me, it hurts too much. Laughter eases it, sometimes.

And we laughed so much together, watching the silly nerdy movies we both loved, the ones with giant walking carrot monsters or gorillas with tv sets for heads. We’d be hooting hysterically and earning looks of absolute derision or bafflement from our friends. Those guys will never erect that bronze statue in the park. Nope, the roommates we had back then? They started avoiding us. They’d claim they just didn’t get our taste in movies, or that we were naked and fucking all the time and they were sick of seeing us bumping uglies, but mostly, I think they sensed the Huge Thing that we had, and they were jealous. They’d obviously never had that too-full feeling in the chest. Maybe they’d come close. Maybe they were afraid of something that powerful. Maybe they were the smart ones, staying safe like that.

Ok, I am officially giving away the remote at this point. No more violins and soft lighting, just sexy saxophones and pots and frying pans. This next part is about the second step in our relationship. What’s traditional for a second course? Dunno, maybe soup. It was soup that started our next course, for sure.

I’d come home late from a class, but it was Thursday and we’d already planned to take Friday off. Whee!—and the Monday following was a holiday, so—double whee. I was wound up from the annoying professor I had, but it was the longing like unfed heroin addiction to see him, touch him, be with him that had me agitated and thrumming before I’d even unlocked the door. My fingers shook a bit, I think. Did I have some premonition? Maybe more like a happy suspicion that he’d have a sexy sweet surprise waiting for me. He was incredibly inventive as a lover, always coming up with new little twisty turny games for us to play. All of which degenerated into wild monkey sex on the floor and halfway up to the ceiling, usually, but who’s complaining?

“Not I, “ said the little piglet, dressed in nothing but a little set of fuzzy pink ears, a curly tail and some incongruous but drop dead sexy five-inch pumps.

He’d started undressing me just inside the door, keeping a foot in the jamb so that any passing neighbor might get a glimpse of my tit and ass display. I squealed, of course, and that was his cue to bring forth my little costume and bid me put it on.

“Right here?” said the blushing little co-ed.

“Right here, right now.” Said the Big Bad Wolf. (See how he got his name? Yup. He earned it.)

Now, I’d read in my brother’s Penthouse about games like this, but it was usually bunny girls and maybe doctor and nurse stuff. This felt different from early on. He kept surprising me. He had me down on all fours, crawling away from him as he used a quirt to redden my little ass as I squirmed and squealed down the hall to the bedroom on all fours, my ass working hard to keep that tail in place, my boobies swaying with each step as I wriggled forward. I was fully expecting the wild monkey sex (well, cross-species, tonight, I guessed) at this point, but no. He had a platter waiting for me, and all sorts of veggies and fruit and things on a low table that he had me mount. And then, he adorned me.

It felt good, it really did, all this attention, though his insistence on calling me a pig—toying with my nose, pushing it up into a squished snout—that sort of disconcerted me. Because underneath his playfulness I sensed that he had a larger fire banked, and that it was beginning to blaze with this new offering. And that offering was me.

Sure enough, about five minutes more of his insistent hands and probing…caressing every crevice and mound of me, lubing me with olive oil, dusting me with herbs and roughly massaging it all into my skin…well, nobody can withstand that sort of delicious abuse and not grab her tormentor and beg him to take her right there, right now—can they? We made the hardest love we’d ever had that night, but I could see a travelogue behind his eyes as he pounded into me—but no, it didn’t bother me, because somehow I knew that we were both starring in whatever movie was in his head. I just wanted to watch it, too. I wanted to know his innermost fantasies and give them all to him. Right here, right now.

We hadn’t quite moved in together yet, but I spent a lot of time at his place, and he spent a lot at mine. That’s why I was a lot surprised one day, about a week after the piglet party, when I arrived at his place and he basically barred the door to me. He had the damned safety chain on and spoke through the crack. I was more stunned than angry, I think. I certainly had no reason to be terrified. (Time enough later for that. But was I ever terrified? I’ll put that on the back burner for now, too.) Here’s what happened the day he barred me from his hearth and home:

“Un-fucking-believable, pet, but I’ve come down with the chickenpox, and you just can’t risk it.”

“But I have a superhuman immune system,” I wheedled. “You need me to play Nancy nurse, come on.” I flashed him my luscious tits and even lifted up my teensy little schoolgirl skirt. His resolve was iron. He shook his head.

“You’re going to pay for that last bit, little piggy.” He knew the effect those words would have on me. After almost cumming on the spot from flashbacks of the past weekend, I pouted even bigger, but in the end, I left him with his roommate Tom, apparently down with the pox, too. They could attend to each other, I guessed. I went home, shuffling through the leaves and grumbling.

I felt loosed of my moorings so instead of going right home, I went to the coffee shop where my friend Natalie worked. She was on a break. I told her what was up and she practically slapped me.

“He’s got a GIRL in there, you dumb shit!” Natalie could really be sympathetic. It’s why we were friends.

“No, he does not. I rock his world, and the sun rises and sets on me and this perfect ass,” I said, and gave my butt a saucy little shake and –god, I think I actually slapped it. I did NOT do that touch-and-pretend-it’s sizzling move. That would have been too much, even for me. Natalie’s eyes rolled.

“Not saying he doesn’t love yer ass, babypie. He’s just a man, and they like a smorgasbord sometimes.” Natalie mimed a guy going down a buffet line, scooping up a piece of ass here, a tit there, and that’s actually what I pictured. (Wow, my Wolf Man claims it’s in all of us, this cannibal thing, but that most of us deny our urges when they start to surface. Maybe he’s right.)

I left, went home, ate too many cookies and decided to bike them off, ride a few miles. I just happened to cruise past Brian’s. It was dark enough and their curtains were crappy enough so that if you stopped at just the right spot, you could see glimpses of most of the rooms on the first floor. Lights were on in the kitchen and a glow came from the living room, where I pictured Brian and Tom, the roomie, huddled under blankets watching TV and eating chicken soup and shivering. The poor things. That’s what I wanted to see, I wished them shivers and itchy blotches. Really, I suspected the worst, and I was trying to x-ray the place for girls. Damned if stupid old Natalie hadn’t poisoned my mind, after all.

So there I was, chiding myself for spying on My Man, part of Incredible Us, when I caught a glimpse of someone’s naked tits through the window, just as I was edging past the kitchen curtain and heading further up the alleyway to peer into the rest of the house. I thought I was seeing things, letting Natalie poison my perceptions. I got off my bike and crept up to the window. I had to hoist myself up and do a chin up on the window sill. Once I pulled myself up, I knew I had only a few seconds before my arms gave out. It was enough. My stomach gave out before my arms, actually, and next thing I knew, I was barfing up my cookies in Brian’s back yard, and to make it worse, I heard the door open and I heard him say, “Oh, no, honey. Oh shit.”

See, that’s when I found out that he was a real cannibal, not just one of those guys who likes to fantasize it out. I guess you saw that coming, but of course, I didn’t. What I saw, just before my trembling arms and brain and stomach gave out all at once, was the torso of a girl. Maybe her head was just dangling below the level of the window, I don’t know . But her arms were missing, and so were her legs. Just –gone. Chopped clean off. The body was so still, I knew it was dead. But I really don’t think that’s what made me lose my lunch. What made me lose my cookies and my whole sense of The World As We Know It was seeing my beloved, Brian standing right over her, holding a meat cleaver. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

He held back my hair and tried to wipe my mouth off with a kitchen towel. I was kneeling in the grass, twisting away from him. I was a little less than cooperative at first. Brian managed to steer me around the house and into his car. He jammed the car into gear and we took off toward the big park at the edge of town. It wasn’t far.

“Probably smart not to leave your girlfriend wandering around the neighborhood talking about dismembered bodies and stuff, huh.” I was mumbling or hysterical, take your pick. Brian insists on the latter, but I like to think I had poise in the situation. Sure, I did.

He let me babble on while he got us to the park and drove to an empty sector, killing the motor but leaving on the radio. He had oldies tuned in, Soothing Tunes for Psychos, I think it was. I found it hard to look at him, so he pulled me to him, turned me around and held my back against his chest and spoke earnestly for hours into my ear.

You’re probably wondering what a cannibal says to make things ok with Girl A after she has just interrupted him while he’s parting out Girl B in his homey little kitchen where just two days ago, SHE WAS PLAYING THE MAIN COURSE! On the SAME FUCKING TABLE with a GODDAMN APPLE in her MOUTH!

Oops. I’ll stop shouting now—but cut me a little slack, it was a bit of an adjustment. Sorry, but he didn’t have any magic words to explain that hunger that dwelt inside him. He just baldly acknowledged what I’d seen and what he’d been doing: preparing to cook a girl he’d butchered. He didn’t stop there or tell me recipes or something, but he used my stunned silence to tell me how much he loved me and that he’d rather kill himself than ever cause me the pain that he saw in my eyes, the confusion. He told me it was killing him to feel me like a stone in his arms. That he’d rather be dead than lose me.

“But you couldn’t,” I said. “I love you to death.”

It was true. That moment in the car, when he said he’d rather be dead, my fierce tigress leapt up in his defense for the first time and I imagined saving him if the police came, shooting them all while he got away, doing terrible things to keep him safe…to keep him. I had to have This Man. I cried a lot that night mostly because I knew that nothing he ever did could tear me away from him. I maybe cried for the old world we had, before he opened this last door to me. I missed not knowing, I think. But once he’d revealed his absolute hunger and his absolute inability to control it, that was enough. Being cannibal was like being gay. It wasn’t something that you chose. Good enough for me.

I cried a lot that night, yes, but most of all because I was so afraid he’d kill himself. I turned to face him and saw the utter conviction shining wetly from his eyes. I remember—the funniest thing, isn’t it? My greatest fear that night turned out to be this: That I wouldn’t find a way to convince him, to make him sure down to his bones that whoever, whatever he was, was ok with me. That he had to stay alive with me, cannibal or not. I needed him.

Uh-oh, you say the violins are revving up again? Go, get another beer, it’s going to be just fine. Really. Oh, and the very next thing I did? I sewed them up a decent set of curtains.

I said earlier that the second course in our relationship was soup. What I meant was this: When we got back to his house, he started making girl soup while I slogged down most of a pint of brandy, watching him. The girl, or what was left of her, had disappeared, except for some chunks of lean meat that could have been anything. Tom skulked around the edges that night, wide-eyed and ashen. I guess he expected me to run screaming or fall over dead or something, instead of just getting drunk and passing out at the kitchen table while my Wolf Man cooked girl stew. The last thing I remember that night was Brian tucking me into his big bed and me asking, “I’m not going to catch it, am I?”

He laughed. “I don’t think you can catch cannibalism, honey. “

“I meant chickenpox, you bass- asstard. Guess you don’t have it.”

He kissed my nose, and numb as I was from brandy, that little kiss warmed my heart and it grew back to that swollen size that hurt so good.

“Nope. No chickenpox here.”

“Well, THAT’s a relief.”

Then he looked deep into my eyes, and I looked into his, and we both started to laugh so hard, he honked like a loon, and I wet my pants.

We were going to be okay.

Part 2

Since I’ve organized this story into courses, the most common one after soup is pasta, but we were both trying to watch our carbs, so let’s just say that the next phase in our relationship was the meat course. No surprise for you, reader, but life was surprising for me, and for him, too. It was kaleidoscopic, that life of ours, the next couple of years. I always poo-pooed good omens and portents and junk like that, but things really fell into place, and life was good, good, good.

For starters, he graduated and got a great job doing his computer stuff long distance—he got to work from home and send the stuff off to a company that needed his expertise so badly, they were more than willing to provide state-of-the-art equipment for his home office and let him set his own hours, as long as he gave them the results they needed. Easy-peasy, to hear him tell it. All I know is that he never seemed to need more than four hours a day while I was at school to earn the kind of money we’d hardly dreamed of. It was wild. We had enough to get our own place and even buy a newish old car for me. And a freezer. Do I need to explain that part? I didn’t think so.

We found a great place at the edge of town far enough away from the neighbors, surrounded by lots of trees. The Midwest is lush and green and provides for the cannibal who provides for himself, indeed. He brought home the girls, and the woods provided the fuel and the privacy he needed—the privacy we needed.

I still had to finish school and I still worked part time in the bookstore, but my burning ambition to be a famous poet had diminished along with my output. He said that I put all my poetry into pleasing him. I thunked him on the shoulder when he said that, but it was mostly true. I was enthralled, and even though I kept up with my classes, I was just going through the motions, biding my time until I could be home again and complete the two halves of our whole. We were the Invincible, Unbelievable Us. And still no statue in the town commons—it was a dreadful oversight we joked about in bed.

He had to go into the city a couple times a month, sometimes more for conferences with the boss and the board and their clients. He was setting up all sorts of things far and wide. He told me that sooner or later, he’d probably have to spend a lot of time traveling to see the clients and hold their hands a bit, but that I was more than welcome to join him. Nothing revs up sex better than a strange hotel room, does it? Well, except for a strange hotel room when you’ve just procured a lovely girl and you’re making love right on top of her cooling body. Damn, that’s hot stuff. Shock you yet?

Yes, folks, I went from losing cookies like a virgin Girl Scout to Queen of the Damned in under five seconds. Well, under five months, anyway, I estimate. From that first night, getting drunk while he made soup, I’d progressed enough to keep my meals down (non girl-meat ones at first) to actually helping him out with this and that— like chopping veggies, mostly, and warily eyeing his preparations from as far away as possible.

I don’t know when I started edging closer, wanting to touch, wanting to hold a limb for him while he cleaved it free of a supple body. When did I start taking the initiative in cleaning the girls? Maybe from the very first. I wanted to give them a gentle bath, soothe them. I know that I was really soothing myself, assuaging my conscience by demonstrating such care for them. I loved to soap their bodies and use my hands and soft sponges to scrub them clean and sweet. At first it was all I could do, and then I’d go and hide while he did the rest, and only slip back in when I heard the oven door close, or the freezer slam.

How did I change from that hesitant, soft, sweet girl into the ravenous sexbeast who needed to fuck her wolf man on top of a dead girl? Call it addiction, or whatever you like. It’s like any powerful drug: the more you get, the more you need. And the better it gets, the more you want it.

When he first threw me down on top of a 20-something blond, I think he’d seen the question in my eyes—Did he find her more attractive than me? He answered it by using her to cushion me as we fucked. She was nothing more than a mattress for me, that’s what his actions implied. I lay on top of her, facing him above me, feeling her nipples jut into my back, feeling her soft belly absorb my body’s motion as it bucked. He showed me what they were to him, and reminded me of who I was.

Even so, I wondered if he ever had them sexually before he killed them. He never brought home unattractive girls. He knew I needed to know it all. And ever since he had found me outside his kitchen window that night, he’d withheld nothing from me. That was what I’ve always believed. But back to the sex with meatgirls question…

Yes. He told me that he did fuck the girls sometimes, mostly before we’d met. We had many conversations about sex and food –girlmeat, that is, while we prepared them. Now I helped him do it all…roasting, chopping, braising, learning how to get incredible flavor variations. He was an artist in the kitchen and a wolf in bed. I loved him bad. I wanted just as much of him as I could get.

He offered to take me along the next time he took a girl. Let’s call this dessert.

It was after he’d made a very successful presentation to his bosses, the board, and a bunch of the clients. We were in a gorgeous suite in the best hotel in town, gorging on beluga from room service, naked and drunk on champagne and our amazing lives, drunk on the whole she-bang. I’d just said something like that.

He laughed and said, “Shebang. She-bang. She bang me very good, Meestair, thank you verrry much.”

“Who bangs you very good, Meestair?” I asked, with maybe just a trace of jealousy there. Not much.

He looked outside and pointed to a group of women gathered down by a fountain in the courtyard.

“All-a da pretty ladies, they all-a love me. It’s my-ya gigantic a-sausage !” He spoke in a really bad Italian accent and groped himself for emphasis.

I stood close to the glass, and he pressed me against it, showing the world my nakedness. No squeals from me now—I loved it. I spotted a redhead down below and gestured.

“What about her? Could we—do her? I mean, or somebody like that, right now, this trip?”

He got somber-faced and asked me flat out. “Hon, you’ve only seen the end result. You sure you want in on the killing part, too?”

“To watch it, I think so, yes. I want to—“ I turned to him and started grinding my body against his, parting my thighs and caressing myself against him. I ached to have him inside me.

“I want to feel you kill her, Brian. I want to see that part, too, because isn’t that part of the hunger for you, too? It isn’t just eating a girl is it? It’s …getting her. Taking her. Killing her…?”

He was hard as iron and I knew I’d been right even before he spoke. He pinned me to the opposite wall and was holding me up, his fingers digging into the bottoms of my thighs as he thrust inside me. We toppled to the floor and couldn’t speak for several minutes. Howling, scratching, bruising, beautiful sex replaced spoken communication, and it more than answered my question.

It was what I’d hoped to hear, I think. My endless fantasies about that last hidden part of him were about to be fleshed out, and I wanted to jump in joyously and be a part of them. It was a secret I’d never put into words, nor had he. But there it was, and we’d just blessed it with our holy communion, hadn’t we? We were going on a kill together. The communion of the two of us was about to consecrated in blood.

She was slender, about five and a half feet tall. It was her silken auburn hair that caught our attention first. Her. She moved through the mall languidly, as if she had all the time in the world, and no one to answer to. Good enough for me. Brian held back, shushing me, turning me away from her and pulling me down onto a bench outside a dress shop.

“Stop staring at her, honey. She’ll sense your eyes on her.”

“But what if she gets away? We have to keep up with her.”

I squirmed around, scanning the crowd. There she was, about five stores ahead of where we sat. She was wandering into a bath shop.

Brian tweaked my nose. “We know where her car is, don’t we. The only reason we followed her inside was to build up your appetite and let you enjoy the chase, Hon. We won’t lose her. I promise. We’ll take her from the parking lot.”

I felt like such a dumb shit, gawd.

“Do you usually pick somebody out ahead of time and follow them around for awhile or do you just impulse buy?”

My eyes flitted to the scores of girls that thronged the mall. Such easy pickings, all of them.

Brian’s demeanor changed. His focus became narrow as he gazed at his hands, but I could tell that he was watching how many—dozens?—of movie clips of his past collections.

“At first, I plotted for years. Then for months. Then I realized that it might be better to become more—random ? Yeah. Less likely to be suspected of anything.”

That made me shiver and draw back a bit. Funny how I’d forgotten that part, the chance of being found out, caught. Our lives were charmed, after all—why would disaster ever occur to me?

Brian nudged me with his elbow and nodded toward the bath shop. There she was, carrying a gingham bag full of soaps and lotions, coming toward us. Brian rose and pulled me to my feet. My knees felt a little wobbly, all of a sudden.

“Sure about this?” he searched my face, sensing my quavering.

She was close enough to let me see the curve of her creamy breasts, peeking out of her summer dress. I imagined touching that skin, using her very own scented soaps to sweeten her.

“I am. Yes.”

We turned and headed quickly to the parking lot. We’d parked our minivan close by the driver’s side of her little Volvo. Brian opened the sliding back door of our van and adjusted the thick tarp that we’d picked up at the hardware store. It covered the floor, and we’d already removed the back seats. Plenty of room for her. Brian hopped up into the front passenger’s seat and threw a fake cast onto his leg. It reminded me of good old Buffalo Bill.

“Nothing wrong in learning from the Masters,” he said. “Know what to do?”

I nodded as I pulled a folding wheelchair out of the van and set it close to his door.

“She’s coming!” he hissed. My heart was hammering like crazy.

I waited til I heard her beep her car door open, then I said, loud enough for her to hear,”I can’t make it stop moving long enough to help you out of there, Mike. I guess the brake is broken.”

The wheelchair blocked her entry and she stopped, annoyance giving way to a look of embarrassed concern on her lovely face.

“You guys need some help?” She absently set down her bag and purse on top of her car hood.

“That would be great. My boyfriend broke his leg just yesterday and we aren’t very good at this cripple stuff yet.” Brian faked a look of pained embarrassment, and the auburn lovely laughed politely.

“If you could just hold the chair in place, I can help him out of the van, ok. Watch it doesn’t roll back over your feet, it could break your toes. She had lovely feet peeking from a sexy pair of flip-flops.

Sure enough, the mention of her feet did the trick. She’d already gripped the handles of the chair and now she bent her neck to peer at her feet. Brian shot down and forward, pushing her head further down until she lost balance. I held her in place for the five seconds it took him to inject her with something that made her slump, unconscious almost instantly. I watched his body and felt a huge surge of desire building in me. I felt her warm, soft curves and shuddered. God, this was so good.

He pulled and pushed her dead weight into the open van and worked quickly to roll her into the tarp. He used duct tape to bind both ends, and now she looked like a giant Tootsie roll. I was out of breath and sputtering laughter, and my heart was racing even harder now.

“Is she--?” I couldn’t tell if she was breathing when he’d rolled her into the tarp, and now its bulk disguised her body and masked any small movements, which was a damned good thing, I realized.

“Nope. That was just something to keep her out of it until we can get her home.”

“But don’t you usually kill them before you take them home? I mean—“

I realized that in all our time together, I’d never seen Brian actually bringing home the bacon. The girls were always just there when I returned from school or work or shopping. The idea that he killed them inside our house was unsettling to me. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I’d thought of them as a done deal by the time they reached the house, you know—they’re already dead, so we may as well cook them. Something like that, anyway.

“It’s dangerous to kill people out in the open, honey. You can’t control who might just happen by and take exception to our little hobby, here.”

He’d finished securing the rolled up girl using those stretchy bungee cords to bind her to the cargo holds in the floor. I folded the wheelchair and Brian lifted it over her and shoved it to the back, securing it with a bungee cord, too. He slammed the van while I grabbed her bag of goodies, and then we hit the road.

The drive home was uneventful, and when we got home, unloading was a cinch inside our attached garage. I freaked when I saw the tootsie-bundle writhing like a fat snake on top of our big kitchen prep table. I heard her moaning, too. Guess I’d imagined that she would stay loose and limp like a little doll.

Brian unwrapped her and I helped to lessen the jolt of each bump as she rolled out of the tarp. Finally she lay there, backside up, her hair a tangled mess and her face turned to one side. She’d lost both sandals inside the tarp, and the exposed soles of her feet crinkled as she flexed her toes and tested limbs. She didn’t seem to realize her predicament just yet. I was afraid to speak.

Brian put one hand onto the small of her back, still covered with the thin sundress. The other, he used to tilt up my chin and catch my attention.

“Want to fuck her before?”

I gulped and shook my head.

“After, then.”

It was a question. He stroked my throat and let his hand trail down to cup my breast.

“Would you like that?”

I nodded, blushing like crazy.

“Let’s take her the rest of the way, then, honey, before things get too complicated.”

I understood what he meant. I realized that I’d been unable to speak aloud, terrified of waking her up and having to deal with her realization. I realized that I didn’t want to see terror in her face. That made me realize something else. None of his girls ever had that look on their faces. No agony, no screaming gaping mouths, no torture marks. He went to the cupbpard under the spice rack and brought out a pneumatic drill and an air tank. They made heavy thuds as he set them down.

“Oh, my.”

Now I got it. I’d seen “No Country…” and I recognized what had made the strange holes I’d found hidden beneath the hair of all his victims. I’d always thought he had used a gun. I said as much.

He’d been petting her head, gently parting the hair just beyond her temples. The drill rested on the table next to her side, its air hose snaking down to meet the tank that sat on the floor. Her eyes weren’t open, and I was glad of that.

“Guns—eh. Tom liked guns, but I never did.”

I was thinking, “There’s something gentler about this.” He reached out for me and took my hands, guiding them to the grip of the drill. He stood behind me now, arms around me, helping me support the weight of the drill. Its metal tip rested against the part in the redhead’s hair. We stood stock still and as she breathed, I could feel her respirations or her pulse move up my arms. Such a delicate thing. Then she made a tiny chirruping sound.

He whispered, “It has to be now, honey.”

His body pressed against mine, solid, warm, secure. His fingers covered mine. I took a breath, and felt a surge of electricity fire along every nerve in my body. I pulled the trigger with his help and killed--

--and ended her. She didn’t even blink or twitch, and I was so grateful for that. The surge of electricity had me trembling, though, enough to drop the drill. It crashed to the floor and he kicked it out of the way. I shook my head, amazed. So warm, but so still.

“There are things we need to do now, honey, to keep things clean.” I shook myself and helped him empty her of the things she wouldn’t need anymore. Then I used her vanilla and lemon soaps to scrub her clean and pretty again.

He carried her to our bed that way, all softly scented, and laid her facing upward. Then he picked me up and carried me, too, and lay me down on top of her. He nuzzled my neck as he stripped off my panties and readied me for sex. He whispered things, asking me to feel each tiny sensation she offered as he made love to me. That first time was so gentle, so surprisingly sweet. I’d expected to be transformed into a warrior or some sort of slavering beast in the instant that I took her life, but no. It was a quiet thing, taking her life that day.

“Do you always do it this way?”

We were back in bed after hours spent preparing the many parts of her to cook. Some of her was wrapped and stored inside the freezer. Her lower body roasted in our huge oven, stuffed with herbs and his special combination of vegetables. We attended to her regularly, basting her to an incredible brown-red sheen.

“I always do my best,” he murmured into my hair. “What do you mean?”

“Take them out so quietly. They never know. You even wait until they’re dead to fuck them.”

“I have you. No need. But yes, I don’t enjoy their tears and pleading. I crave that moment of absolute release…uhn! Yes!”

He meant the moment when the metal spike punched through their skulls. He got off on taking their lives, but I’d seen him do it. They didn’t suffer. They never knew.

“But I never want to see them suffering. Never again.” He grimaced. He looked queasy, sick.

What was he remembering? I didn’t like it. No. I hated the sound of this.

Conclusion

What was he remembering? I looked at the man I loved and saw a wave of hatred twist his features. I had to know.

“You said “Never again. You didn’t want to see girls suffer anymore. But when did you? Why?”

That look of pure revulsion on his face—it meant he had experienced something gruesome, didn’t it. His face was closed, drawn. I braced myself, not sure I wanted to hear his answer. But we always told the truth, and I could see Brian steeling himself, about to tell me something awful.

“It was Tom. Not only did he like to keep them awake after he captured them, he liked to prolong their suffering. That was his thing, really. He wasn’t into the meat, honey. He could take it or leave it. He got off on hurting and killing his girls slowly, making sure they knew exactly what was happening to them. For as long as possible.”

Past tense, always, when we spoke of Tom. I asked him, even though I thought I already knew the answer. “What happened? To Tom, I mean.” That monster, I was thinking. I turned on my side in bed to face Brian. He seemed okay, agitated, but pulling himself back together.

“I knew I had to take him out, honey. Right before we moved, when I told you he’d transferred to State?”

I nodded, remembering vaguely. I’d never really liked Tom. He leered at me when he thought Brian wasn’t looking, and never looked me in the eyes, though he was constantly ogling my body. When he suddenly wasn’t there anymore, I didn’t really think about it too much. I was glad he was gone.

“He was always jealous of you, you know.” Brian caressed my cheeks with his thumbs, holding my face in his hands.

“Jealous? Huh?” I wasn’t expecting this at all.

“We used to hunt together. Since forever, honey. He resented your intrusion, hated how I’d become ‘such a weenie’ to quote him.”

“Since forever?” I was confused. Why would Brian hang out with a man whose personal killing style he despised? Mutual blackmail or something? It was the only thing I could imagine. Brian’s next revelation rocked me.

“Tom was my step-brother, honey. He gave me that pneumatic drill for Christmas, the first Christmas you and I spent together, baby.” Brian’s voice got thick. He was fighting back emotion. His brother! Good god, no wonder he was so torn up.

I hugged him close and said, “Oh, honey, I am so sorry, so sorry. You had to kill your own brother, Brian? God.”

I didn’t understand why, completely. It seemed almost ludicrous that Brian could condemn his own brother for doing the same thing he did—murder girls—even if Brian’s way was gentle, and Tom’s was a horror ride. Still, I hugged him tighter. I loved him fiercely, didn’t I. I was about to learn another reason why.

He pulled away from me, a twisted smile on his face.
“You don’t get it, my little piglet. I’m not mourning that asshole. I’m remembering the card he gave me with that present."

I shook my head as if to say, okay, straighten me out.

“It was with the drill. It said, ‘Merry Christmas, Bri. Enjoy! Got your first target all picked out for ya!'” Brian ran a hand over his face as if to erase what he was seeing in that Christmas card.

“He’d taken a picture of you and made a bull’s-eye on your forehead.”

My gut heaved and spasmed as if I’d been punched. I felt sick, then, especially when I saw the anguish on Brian’s face. “Oh Brian, it’s okay. It’s okay,” I whispered.

I was reeling, marveling at this man who had killed his own brother to protect me. He shook his head and pulled far enough away from me to see my eyes.

“It’s not ok, honey. I missed.”

I sat up in bed, the scent of the roasting meat suddenly making me queasy. “You missed? You mean he’s not—“

Brian scanned the ceiling as if he were scrutinizing a roadmap or a crystal ball or something.

“No. I didn’t kill him, but honey, I tried. I wanted to. I didn’t know how to handle that drill back then, and so I tried to use one of his guns. Turns out I am a lousy shot. He didn’t fire back at me, he just took off. He left everything he had behind, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

I absorbed all of this slowly, as I huddled on the bed, hugging myself to stop my shivering. So, Tom could still be out there somewhere. WAS out there somewhere, and he probably hadn’t experienced a change of heart about me. And now, and for the last couple of years now, he’d probably wanted to kill Brian, too.

“How can you live knowing this? How could you keep this from me? Brian? I thought we didn’t have any fucking secrets. Turns out you had a doozie, huh? “

I tried to keep my voice light, but I ended up in tears, as angry as I was terrified. I checked the windows. Curtains down. Were they locked? I had to check. I flew off the bed and tore around the house. Brian followed me, but he didn’t try to talk. Just as well. I was five levels past hysterical on the crazy scale. Finally, after I’d double-checked every window and door in the place and punched and re-punched our alarm system countless times, I collapsed on the floor of the kitchen with my back against the cupboards, out of sight, should someone be watching for shadows dancing, from out there in the dark.

Brian had made coffee while I was doing my crazy dance. Now he brought me a cup. He tilted his head, holding up a brandy bottle. I nodded, and he laced my cup with a good slug or two. I took in a few tentative sips, laboring to get my breathing under control. He helped me up and we sat close together on the couch in silence for awhile.

I was afraid to break the silence. I wanted him to tell me that somehow, even though a murdering madman was out there with a hard-on to kill us both, that somehow Brian had fixed it, and it was all ok, and we could just go on the way we’d been going. Because, isnt’ that what we’d been doing? I started trembling again. He drew me close and shushed me.

“It’s been over two years now, honey, look at it that way. Chances are that he’s not even in the same state as us. We moved, remember? He doesn’t know where we live. The firm has strict instructions not to give out that information, ESPECIALLY to him. We don’t advertise our address or phone number. You know that I know how to leave no tracks on the internet. We’re okay, honey.”

“You mean, You HOPE we’re okay. You can’t know that for sure, can you? Can we? No. We can’t. So now, what am I supposed to do?”

I couldn’t help it. Picturing Tom out there with his leering, awful eyes made me so cold inside, so afraid. I resented Brian for keeping this secret and I realized that my resentment formed a huge part of the hollow, icy feeling inside me, too. I looked at the love of my life and shook my head. It just flummoxed me.

“How could you keep it from me?”

Brian flushed. I don’t think I’d ever seen him blush before. He took my hands and made me turn to face him.

“Pure greediness and need, honey. I wanted our perfect life, our unbelievable charmed life to never end. That’s all. I figured I could shoulder the worry for both of us. Sounds pretty lame and macho out loud, doesn’t it. Yeah. Christ, I am sorry, little piglet. I love you.”

What could I do? I sure couldn’t change our situation by whining any more about it. It took awhile, but by superhuman effort, I kept my mouth shut on that topic, and let the next hours pass. And then it was days, and then it was a week, and I found myself able to get through a whole hour or two at a time before I’d flash on Tom’s awful eyes, and feel that chill again. But he didn’t show up at the door, or in the market, or anywhere at all and as the weeks passed, it got easier to stuff down those feelings of dread, and let them go.

That’s why it hit me so damn hard when I got the Christmas card that day. It was a little too early to be sending them out, but I had a cousin back in Connecticut who took enormous pride in having her holiday shopping done by Labor Day. So I was picturing Marilyn as I opened the thing, and not expecting a visit from the boogeyman at all.

“Brian! Brian! Get in here, oh god.” I threw down the card and ran to the bathroom, and lost my lunch. He came running from upstairs somewhere.

“What? Where are you, hon? What’s wrong?”

I emerged from the bathroom, wiping my mouth on a towel. I pointed to the card on the entryway floor. Brian picked it up and shook his head.

“I don’t get it. What?” The inside of the card was blank except for a winking smilie face sticker someone had stuck on below “Seasons Greetings.” He hadn’t seen the Xerox copy of the sales slip that had floated down to rest a few inches from the card. I picked it up, holding it by the corner as if it could burn me.

“This. It’s hers. It’s a copy of the sales slip from that goddamned bath store. It HAS to be.”

Brian studied the slip, first shaking his head, and then looking up at me. “We didn’t burn all that? Damn, honey, it’s got her name on it.”

My face flushed. I’d kept the soaps and lotions, after. I liked them. I hadn’t noticed the slip inside the bag.
“But it’s upstairs in the back bathroom! It has to be!” I knew it was magical thinking even as I tore upstairs to find the bag. The bag which had to be long gone by now, but no, somehow if I rushed into the bath I knew I could lay my hands right on that bag and we’d laugh and laugh about what a silly coincidence it was—

But that didn’t make any sense at all, did it. All the wishful thinking in the world wasn’t going to make that BathWorks bag reappear along with the sales slip. No one but Tom would have a reason to have found us, found it, copied it and mailed it to us. I reached the bathroom and yanked open the vanity cupboard. It was gone, of course.

“But how did he get in here? How could he know? And oh, god, baby, what are we going to do now?” I ran to Brian, my other half, and found that he was trembling, too. His shoulders slumped, and something I’d never witnessed overtook my man: defeat.

“He must have found us quite a while back, and watched and waited for his chance to get in here and snoop around. Maybe he got real lucky and followed us to the mall that day and saw it all. But I don’t’ think so. I think he snooped around in here, just knowing that if he looked long and hard enough, he’d find something…something irrefutable.”

Brian’s voice had lost its strength. He sat down at the kitchen table, and I joined him. I held his hand.

“But honey, the computer stuff, the alarms, how did he find us, and get through all that?” My childish side was still in charge of me. Somehow I thought that I could argue away Tom’s existence if I kept posing these hard questions. It’s understandable, yes? No one wants to face the end. But that’s what this was, wasn’t it.

Brian turned me around and pulled me into his lap and petted me like a small child. He sighed. “Tom and I were in the same field, remember? If anybody could track us, he could. He may have done something really basic, like pretend to be me and call around to the various IT firms until some dumbass fell for it and spilled the beans. It wouldn’t take much, you know, just one foot inside the information door and you’re flying, these days.”

Brian got up and poured us both a drink. “He had a sixth sense for finding things, too. God, he was the biggest snoop. Always spying on me, on everybody. He knew where every one of Dad’s bottles of booze was stashed. That was cool.”

Brian’s grin faded as quick as it had come.

So, it didn’t really surprise Brian that Tom had found us out, or that he’d found something that would prove our guilt to the police. He could share his suspicions, and spin quite a story, couldn’t he?

“How much time do you think we have? Minutes? Days? Weeks?” I wanted him to say, “Don’t worry, hon.” I wanted that so much.

Brian shook his head. “Not weeks, honey. Probably days, but we can’t know for sure. I imagine he’s gleefully watching the postal truck drive off right now. It might be today, honey.”

“But why would he warn us? To gloat? To rub our noses in it? Why didn’t he just go to the cops first, then sit across the road and watch the show?”

Even as I said it, I knew the answer. He would only call the cops as a last resort, if he couldn’t get his hands on us—on me. Tom wanted to settle his old score, didn’t he? My skin prickled. He’d be watching alright, waiting for us to make the next move. I squeezed Brian’s hand. His head was hanging, and he was staring at the top of the kitchen table but he wasn’t seeing it. He wasn’t seeing anything. But I did. I thought I could see a way out of this. We were going to be Invincible Us again.

I picked up the crumpled paper and looked at it again. Sure enough, Tom had scrawled his phone number on the back of the Xeroxed sales receipt. He was so fucking sure of himself, wasn’t he?

I crossed to our stereo system and got some Gogol Bordello blasting to every room in the house. Then I hustled back to Brian, still slumped at the table. I shook him by the shoulders until finally, he looked up at me.

“It’s in case he bugged the house. He might still be able to SEE us but he won’t be able to tell the difference between panic and planning. And boy oh boy, Brian, I got me a plan. A doozie.”

I tried to keep the smile off my face, and yeah, I realized that I was a good candidate for Queen of Denial, but what did it matter now? The asshole murderer was coming whether or not we gave up and just sat here shivering . Brian shook his head listlessly and I was about to smack him when he winked at me. “Let’s hear it,” he whispered.

It was really so simple once we got it going because we had a captive audience, ourselves, didn’t we? He had to be close by, and as darkness fell, a quick scan of the field leading up to our house revealed the outline of a car hood just visible above the stubby pines and underbrush. He was on the service road that ran along the power lines. Had to be him. He probably wanted us to see him to freak us out a little more. Okay. He was where we needed him to be.

I killed the music and went rushing through the house, stuffing things into garbage bags and suitcases and tossing them out the door. Brian went out and backed the car up to the porch, leaving ample viewing space, in case we’d misjudged Tom’s hidey-hole. Brian grabbed the bags and tossed them into the trunk of the car, yelling at me to hurry the hell up, we needed to GET OUT OF HERE!

Next came the hardest part. I hoped we’d calculated things out ok. We hadn’t been around Tom for a couple of years, so it was hard to judge when his patience would give way to eagerness. Brian and I were hoping that he still loved to stretch things out. He was probably out there in the bushes, watching our panic attack and jerking off. I hoped to hell and to all the cannibal gods he was.

I came rushing out with a big soft bag of sweaters, and that’s when Brian decked me with his fist. We knew this part had to be as real as possible. Tom was probably too close by now for us to risk faking anything. I went down hard, but the bag of sweaters broke my fall. I slid off the bag and slumped onto the porch. Brian reached inside his pocket and made a business of pulling out the syringe case.

He ducked his head as if scrutinizing the needle and he whispered, “Doing ok?”

“Urrrk.” I was woozy, but conscious. I didn’t have a second to reassure Brian, though—I’d just heard movement on the other side of the car.

“Having a little take-out tonight, Bri-Bri?” Laughter spilled out of Tom's mouth like maggots cascading from a rotten corpse. I let my head loll, cast my eyes down again. No matter what, I kept telling myself, no matter what that monster does in the next few minutes, you are going to act like a floppy doll and take it.

Brian jumped up and swiveled around to face his brother. That’s when he saw the gun. I guess we should have seen that coming, huh. Our first little oversight. Tom flicked his wrist, gesturing with the enormous .44. He shooed Tom away from me and toward the open trunk of the car.

“Why don’t you just stop right there, little brother,” Tom nodded, smiling. “Unless you want to go dutch on this little bitch. Hey, yeah! It’ll be a trip down memory lane, back to the good old days.”

Brian smirked. I could hear it in his voice and it twisted me up, but I was proud of him.

“I got your message, Tom. Seemed like time to cut my losses and –“

“Eat and run?” I heard the mixture of disbelief and craven lust in Tom’s voice. He wasn’t buying our act quite yet. Tom made Brian drag me into the house. He followed us to the kitchen and spent a few minutes rummaging in the drawers, pulling out knives, from the sounds of things. This wasn’t going nearly the way we’d hoped. At least he hadn’t shot Brian and stuffed him into the trunk.

“We gonna do this cunt, little brother?”

We all knew what the "or else" part was, didn't we.

Tom crossed over to where I slumped and yanked me up by the hair. I howled and tried to fend him off, but the drunken punch I threw just grazed his shoulder. He knocked me to the floor again and booted me once in the guts. No faking now, I gagged and curled into a sobbing ball.

I saw Brian’s legs opposite me. They were trembling. I could always read his emotion clearly. I only hoped that Tom was too preoccupied with hurting me to pick up on Brian’s rage. Not yet, not yet, I tried to telegraph. Wait, Wolf Man. Tom still pointed his gun at both of us, swinging it back and forth.

“What d’ya say that we lash her to this table here—I gotta say, you really have this place tricked out for chopping up your girls.” Tom gestured at the whole of the kitchen. He had no idea.

I wailed and twisted as two sets of hands grabbed me. Brian’s face was unreadable as he loomed above my head. Tom’s was not. He thunked down my lower body and forced my legs apart, using a knife to separate me from my pants. Brian had to hold me down. He’d turned away from Tom, grasped my shoulders and he was grunting with the effort. I figured I had to be real about this. His face was full of anguish, but he managed another wink. He rolled his eyes upward and over his shoulder, trying to tell me something.

The string of profanity spewing out of my mouth was impressive, if I do say so myself. Tom smacked my mouth and covered it with duct tape, then returned to his knife work, slicing the pants off me. I had long stripes of beaded blood where he’d let the knife kiss me. Once Tom had me bare, he began roughly fondling my nether parts. Brian hadn’t made a single protest, and now, the atmosphere seemed to have mellowed between the brothers. Tom still had his gun, but he absently tucked it into the back of his pants so he could use both hands to hurt me. It was what I’d been counting on.

“You tape her down there, now, little brother. You’re in my way.”

Tom ripped my blouse open and snicked the knife through the center of my bra. I shivered as my breasts jiggled forth for that rat bastard to ogle. Brian used the duct tape to fix my upper body to the table. His breath touched me, and it was hot and sharp. His face was a stone mask, finally. I hoped he’d be ok. I hoped in all the excitement that the syringe hadn’t broken. His eyes flew to the ceiling again, then back to Tom.

“You got sloppy seconds, Bro. Now stand aside. Me and Wiley here have got some business to do. “ He tossed the knife.

I rolled my eyes. Even semi-terrified, yes. Come on—he’d named his cock Wiley? But no. It was his favorite knife he’d been talking about. It was strapped to his thigh and secured with a little leather strip and snap combination. He was fondling my tits, leaving bruises with his left hand while his right fumbled with the snap. It seemed to be stuck. Tom let go the crushing grip he had on me to use both hands on his scabbard. He twisted to the right, his back to Brian, but plenty close enough to me and my killer legs.

I’ve never mentioned my killer legs before? They’re what hold up my sizzlin’ ass!

The second Tom twisted for his Wiley, Brian reached up above the butcher table and grabbed the drill from its hook in the hanging pot rack. He kneed Tom in the small of his back and he fell forward and right between my legs. I locked myself around that nasty man, gritting my teeth and going Banshee on his ass.

“Eeee-yarrr!”

It gave Brian the time he needed to force Tom’s head flat against my ribs. I am sure he could hear my heart pounding. I could smell his stink.

Brian shoved the drill right against his brother’s skull and squeezed. THUNK!

I couldn’t get rid of that foul thing that slumped on top of me fast enough. I used my feet to shove him to the floor. Brian yanked the drill free of its air hose and used it to bash in his brother’s skull.

You just can’t kill some guys enough sometimes, huh?

It was tempting to set the place on fire and walk away, but we watched CSI. We were no fools. But just in case, we used our tools to chop him up, bones, fingers, teeth…the works. We doused the surroundings with bleach and used the next two months remodelling the room from floor to ceiling. Every trace of that one horrific bump in our lives was gone.

As for Tom? We cooked the rest of him to cinders and dribbled his ratmeat into the river. We swore off fish.

We drove Tom’s car to Mexico and left it about ten feet from a nice chop shop. Seems fitting, right? Brian called the boss and told him that he was finally going to take some of that vacation time he’d built up. We flew home after the world’s most decadent honeymoon –including a three-week gourmet cooking course.

Ever tasted braised belly steak of senorita? No?

Then you haven’t lived.