Viper

La Baia di Napoli Francesca Di Lauro had the kind of eyes you never forgot. Hypnotic, almost translucent. An indefinable shade between blue and green. More hologram than optic.

They were fixed on the man in front of her. Fixed very firmly on him as he watched her naked body. Francesca's faultless skin and tumbling black hair were backlit by the golden flicker of a newly lit fire. The two of them were alone. Outside, in the pine-smelling woodland. No one to disturb them. Perfect privacy.

Only this was no romantic encounter. This was the worst moment of her life. The flames around Francesca's feet crawled up the metal stake she'd been tied to. Wind tugged her hair and suddenly the jaws of an orange dragon were chewing her flesh. Francesca twisted hopelessly, the agonizing heat searing her paraffin-soaked skin.

He stood a few metres away, mesmerized by the slow murder, stroking himself pleasurably. His eyes fixed on the curtain of flames. This would take time. A deliciously long time.

Francesca had been tied with coils of wire around her feet, hands and neck. He'd learned from past mistakes.

Rope burned, then they tried to get away. He didn't want any more messiness. No mistakes this time.

Bricks were stacked waist-high, all around her. A kiln to funnel heat up her body. Rags stuffed in her mouth and then bound around her face to choke off any screams. Though sometimes he liked to hear them. Liked to hear the air leave their lungs for one last time.

Francesca's head slumped limply on her chest. She was a quiet one. Flames ate her hair. The smell of burning flesh, sweet and greasy like a hog roast, carried in the cold night air. He sucked it in. Savoured it. Fed on it.

Amid the crackle of the fire he waited. Listened now for the moment when he heard her skull crack and sizzle. Popping chestnuts! How he just loved to peel away those crisp, burned outer shells.

He'd removed all her jewellery and, while he watched, he played with it in his pocket, turning the trophies in his hand like beads on a rosary.

The blaze illuminated the pit that he stood in. It was almost three metres deep, seven metres wide and fifteen metres long. It had been dug by the landowner as foundations for a house that never got built. Dead dreams. These days it was more commonly used to burn some of the overflowing stinking rubbish that clogged the city's vermin-infested streets.

He stayed until darkness had faded seamlessly into the dawn, then he raised a gleaming stainless-steel spade and began softly singing. He sang in English, complete with a near-comical Dean Martin accent.

When the stars make you drool joost-a like pasta fazool, that's amore;

He scraped Francesca's bones from the blackened wood, grey ash and red embers. Slammed the blade of his spade across the snake of her spine.

When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet, you're in love;

The metal sliced through her pelvis -

When you walk in a dream but you know you're not dreamin', signore,

– through her skull -

'Scusa me, but you see, back in old Napoli, that's amore.

– through her hips and ribs and any other major bones that had survived the inferno.

He searched the scorched ground. Made sure he'd been his usual thorough self.

And then he chopped again.

This time he used a small hand-axe on the troublesome hip, cleaving through the sacrum, coccyx, ischium and pubis.

He was dripping with sweat when he climbed out of the pit, carrying Francesca's young life in two dented steel buckets, her total existence reduced to ash and broken bones; ash that blew away in the wind as he walked to his car.

Would her beauty have stayed with her into her thirties, forties or fifties? Would her children have inherited those hypnotic eyes?

The ponderings amused him as he drove to the sacred spot where he laid them all to rest.

He dug again. The blood-red sunrise painted his skin as he upended Francesca's remains into a shallow grave.

He slapped the old steel buckets with his hand. Cleared the last of the dust – the last of Francesca – that stuck to the sides. A couple of smashed bones were still larger than he liked. He stomped them into the earth.

The first coral-blue hues of morning fought their way into the angry sky as he completed the burial. He bent his head, closed his eyes and slowly prayed: Domine Jesu Christe, Rex Gloriae, libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni et de profundo lacu.

Before leaving, he urinated on the freshly dug grave. Partly because he needed to. Mainly because he liked to. As he zipped up, he wondered whether God would indeed heed his prayer to free the soul of the faithfully departed from infernal punishment and the horrors of the deep pit.

But then again, he asked himself, did he really give a fuck?

He sauntered back to his car, singing in Italian this time: Luna rossa lassu, mare azzurro quaggiu: questo e amore!