The Killing Kind

CHAPTER NINE

March 17

A car loaded with teenage boys drove by Julie Cosgrove as she walked down the narrow residential road. One boy leaned out a rear window and made a rude comment. Julie’s thumbs moved rapidly over the buttons of her cell phone as she entered a response to a text from Alicia, her best friend. She heard laughter from the boys in the car, but barely perceived it. They weren’t worth her attention. She didn’t bother flipping them off either, as that would only reward their obnoxious behavior. Balding tires screeched on asphalt and the car zipped away.

Julie rolled her eyes.

Boys.

They were so stupid. Oh, she liked them on a physical level, but she couldn’t stand how immature most boys her age were. These losers, for instance, with this half-assed driveby come-on. Too chickenshit to get any closer or deal with her on a face-to-face level. She smirked, knowing how they would blush and mumble if forced to spend more than two consecutive seconds in her presence.

She hit a button to send the text and snapped her phone shut. Seeing she was only a block away from the house owned by John and Karen Lee, she picked up her pace. It was a little after three in the afternoon. Karen usually didn’t get home from her bank job until around four. But John was a CPA and often worked from home. She saw his car in the driveway, a black BMW. She felt a little flutter in her stomach at the sight of it. She knew John had a thing for her. He was always trying to look at her when he thought she wasn’t watching. It was cute how innocent he tried to act when she caught him in the act.

She’d been thinking of him a lot just recently. A man his age would know how to treat a woman right. He wouldn’t always be making crude cracks or laughing like an idiot at his own jokes, like most of the boys she knew. And John was pretty fucking hot for an old guy. Julie sometimes wondered what it might be like to kiss him. The thought made her feel naughty. It was “inappropriate,” as her mother would say. But the hell with her. Julie smiled. Truth was, she had all kinds of naughty ideas about all kinds of things running through her head all the time. Things that would absolutely horrify her mother. It was a good thing the woman barely knew how to turn on or operate a computer. Her laptop was full of things that would cause a snooping parent to freak the fuck out.

She couldn’t wait to see his eyes get big when he got a look at her sexy body in very short denim cutoffs and tiny halter top. He would struggle not to look at her tits and fail. The only guys who could avoid checking out her tits for long were the gay ones. And sometimes even they stared. She would ask for last week’s babysitting money and he would invite her inside, maybe offer her a cool drink while he counted the cash from his wallet. And he would joke with her, flirt with her in that goofy old-guy way, like he had at little Nancy’s birthday party the week before. Only this time Julie thought she might respond with some suggestive comments of her own, and, well…

She smiled.

We’ll just see how things go from there.

But the smile dropped from her face as she spied the blue Mini Cooper parked on the other side of the BMW. Karen’s car. So the bitch was home early from her stupid job. Julie had a quick fantasy of punching the older woman in the face.

Her phone vibrated and she flipped it open to see a new text from Alicia. U cant be serious, he’s like a thousand yrs older than u.

Julie sent a quick text back. I know. Shut up.

She turned the phone off and flipped it shut again.

She crossed the Lees’ immaculately tended lawn and climbed the front porch steps to ring the doorbell. A little chime sounded inside and she heard a male voice say something indistinct. That had to be John. She hoped he would come to the door instead of Karen. She badly wanted to see that lustful look in his eyes. That would be enough to sustain her until her next shot at having some time alone with him. While she waited, she pondered again the question of how far she might let John go when that finally happened. She wanted to kiss him. God, yes. But would he be satisfied with that? He might think she was just a tease.

But maybe-

The doorknob started to turn and she quickly summoned her brightest smile, hoping to really dazzle him. Her first hint something was wrong was the stink that assailed her nostrils as the door began to open. When it was fully open, her face paled at the grinning nightmare standing before her.

A man with wild, filthy hair sticking out in all directions stood naked before her. His eyes looked wild, too, like the eyes of a feral animal. He was so scrawny, like a flesh and blood stick figure, but there were hard muscles under the stretched-taut skin. A substance that might have been dried blood was matted in his chest hair. And as Julie watched, his limp penis started to rise.

Instinct drove her back a step, but he seized her by a wrist and yanked her inside the house. He slammed the door shut and dragged her screaming into the living room.

He snarled at her. “Shut up, bitch!”

He backhanded her and she went stumbling backward. Her feet got tangled and she fell. The glass top of a coffee table shattered beneath her as she landed on it. Shards of glass cut her and drew blood. She screamed as her assailant seized her slender throat with one strong hand and lifted her up again. She felt his penis leap against her and tried to scream again, but the hand clamped to her throat limited her to a barely audible gurgle. The man laughed and licked her face with a tongue that felt dry as sandpaper. The feel of it on her flesh made her insides curdle.

He sucked on her lower lip and breathed into her mouth. His stink made her eyes water. Bile rose into her throat and she wondered if she would choke on it-the man’s iron grip allowed only a very thin air passage. He pressed himself against her and said, “Gonna fuck ya now, sweet thing.”

The tip of his engorged penis poked through a rip in her torn halter. The feel of it sliding over her flesh repulsed her. But even through her terror, Julie saw how she might have a slim shot at extracting herself from this nightmare. He was so intent on sampling various parts of her anatomy-his free hand ripping the halter to pieces to paw at her breasts-that he had neglected to fully restrain her. Or maybe it wasn’t neglect. Maybe he didn’t consider her a threat. Or thought she’d be too terrified to fight back.

Think again, you freak.

Her right hand came up and long fingernails jabbed into an eyeball. He howled in agony and let go of her. Julie staggered backward and struggled to catch her breath as she watched the man flail about with a hand pressed over the wounded orb. Blood streamed between his fingers. He stopped thrashing long enough to look at her with his one good eye and screamed at her, “you’re gonna die for that, bitch!”

He started to come at her again, but screeched as a piece of broken glass pierced the bottom of his foot. Julie took a quick look around while the crazy man hopped about and mewled like a baby. The living room was outfitted in the standard way. Large entertainment center. A long sofa and a couple of recliners. And a large liquor cabinet with an impressive array of bartending tools arranged in a rack above it.

Yes!

Julie grabbed a corkscrew, flexed the handles to extend the screw to its full length, and charged her attacker. The man was sitting on the edge of a recliner as he worked to pull glass shards from his bleeding foot. He looked up and saw her coming, but not in time to retreat or ward off the attack. The fear evident in his remaining eye as it widened was gratifying. The corkscrew slammed into his temple and his body began to convulse. Julie yanked the screw out and plunged it into his other eye. Now the eyes sort of matched again-pierced and bleeding. The thought made her giggle inappropriately even as a new wave of sickness rose up inside her. She pulled the corkscrew out of his eye. She stared at his throat, watched the slowing pulse ticking beneath the flesh.

There, she thought. That’s where the carotid is.

The corkscrew slammed into the man’s throat and there was another leap of blood. Julie was covered in it now. Her own and that of the man who’d tried to rape her. She giggled again. We’re all the same on the inside.

Julie stabbed him with the corkscrew several more times. She kept doing it even after she knew he was dead. There was a strange sort of fascination to watching the instrument puncture flesh. It was sort of the way she felt when pulling the petals off a flower, ruining it a little bit at a time. And the really weird thing was how little any of this bothered her now that he was no longer a threat. It was actually sort of fun, the way she’d always imagined it might be. But she did finally tire of stabbing the corpse and climbed off it.

She stood panting in the center of the living room, wondering what she should do next. Call 911. Obviously. But something made her hesitate. The man she’d killed was clearly an uninvited guest here. The thought made her laugh. Like, no shit, right? Like John and Karen would have this freak over for dinner or whatever. No, he was an intruder. He’d probably killed the whole family. And their bodies were somewhere else in the house. It was this thought that kept her hand from going to the cell phone in her pocket.

She wanted to see.

Yeah, it kind of sucked that John was probably dead. She could never kiss him now. Or fuck him. She could admit it now. That would have been the ultimate goal. But now she was just as hot to see his corpse. She had a vast collection of crime-scene and autopsy photos stored on her laptop. And here fate had dumped her into a situation where she had an opportunity to make a prolonged inspection of the real thing. It was a chance she simply couldn’t pass up. And hell, the cops would never know she’d lingered over the scene a while.

She crept out of the living room and into a long hallway she knew led to the bedrooms. There was probably no real reason for stealth at this point, but she couldn’t be certain everyone in the house was actually dead yet, so she moved forward with caution. About halfway down the hallway, she began to hear a sound she identified at once as the squeak of bedsprings, that rhythmic motion associated with intercourse. The sound was coming from the master bedroom at the end of the hall. She moved a little closer and was able to hear a series of muted grunts. The bedroom door was partly open. She could see a corner of the bed. She pressed her back against the wall to her right and edged carefully down the remaining length of hallway. After reaching the bedroom, she peered around the doorjamb and reeled at the horrific scene.

John’s head was on the floor. His headless body sat slumped in a chair against the far wall. His legs were spread and she could see a gaping, bloody hole where his genitals had been. Nancy was on the floor. She had been gutted. Her abdomen was a bloody, ragged mess. A length of intestine was coiled about her slender neck. There were several large, dark splotches on the beige carpet that could only be blood.

Karen was on the bed, legs spread wide as the big man on top of her continued to grind away and make those grunting noises. Karen’s legs were long and sleek. Julie noted with some surprise a pretty butterfly tattoo on her right foot. But the muscles in those shapely legs looked strangely slack for someone having sex. Then awareness of what was actually happening on the bed seeped in and Julie reached into her pocket to pull out her cell phone. She flipped it open and stared at a black screen.

Fuck.

She’d forgotten about turning it off after responding to the text from Alicia. If she turned it on now, that stupid chiming tone it made would alert the powerfully built necrophiliac to her presence. And then he’d kill her, of course. She had no illusions of handling this man as easily as she’d handled the other one. He’d just take the corkscrew from her and jam it up her ass. Or some other orifice. Her stomach knotted at the thought. The smart thing here would be to scoot back down the hallway and get the hell out of the house. But she desperately wanted a picture of the atrocity occurring on the bed. It would be the crown jewel of her morbid photo collection. She could maybe hurry down to the kitchen, turn the phone on there, and hurry back. But no, judging by the increasingly frenzied nature of the man’s grunts, it would all be over by then.

She thought, This is the single stupidest thing I have ever done or ever will do, the end, no doubt about it at fucking all.

She pressed the phone’s power button. Then she clasped both hands tightly around the phone and pressed it to her chest. The hope was to muffle the electronic chimes enough that the man wouldn’t hear them. But of course, the sound came through clear as a bell.

The man paused in midthrust and looked over his shoulder at Julie, who stood framed and vulnerable in the open doorway. His hair was long and white, and fine, like the hair of a hermit in a fairy tale. Only this hermit was built like a lumberjack on steroids. His nostrils flared and his lips curled in a snarl. His pitiless eyes conveyed a promise of pain and savagery. He climbed off the corpse and Julie saw Karen’s head lolling on the pillow, mouth slack, eyes still and staring at nothing.

The man grinned.

Then he charged her.

Julie screamed and bolted back down the hallway. She flew through the living room and made it as far as the foyer before the big man caught up to her. He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her to a stop, eliciting another scream. Then he slammed her to the floor and fell atop her. He pressed a powerful forearm against her throat and pawed at the remains of her shredded halter with his free hand. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t get her hands free to jab at his eyes. She felt his erection swell against her and knew there’d be no stopping the rape this time. She cursed her stupidity. She’d been dumb not to get out when she had the chance. Obviously. And she cursed her morbid nature. The two things seemed inextricably tied at the moment.

The man abruptly stopped groping her. The pressure on her throat eased and Julie coughed and spluttered. The man’s face was turned away from her. Shock etched itself across his features, deepening the age lines and making his face resemble a Halloween ghoul mask.

He looked down at her again. “You killed my friend.”

Julie coughed again and cleared her throat. “I didn’t have a choice. Look, you don’t have to force me to do anything. I’ll do whatever you want. I’m sorry about your friend.”

The man’s teeth were clenched tight. His whole body shook with rage. He closed a hand around her throat and began to squeeze. “You fucking whore. Fucking little slut. You killed my only friend!”

A detached part of Julie’s mind marveled over the absurdity of a man as depraved as this stone psycho feeling grief for the loss of anyone. But the emotion did appear genuine. His eyes watered. A thin stream of moisture began to move down one cheek. The pressure on her throat increased and Julie’s vision began to blur. Realizing she was likely in her last moments of life, she thought maybe she ought to ask God for forgiveness. She had allowed a number of evil and wicked thoughts and ideas to live and breathe inside her brain. Surely God would frown on that. But before she could begin to consciously form her plea, the pressure on her throat eased up again. She blinked moisture from her eyes and stared up at the curious sight of a man listening to something only he could hear.

His head was tilted to one side and his brow was furrowed. He stared up at the ceiling. He shook his head and said, “No. It’s not right.”

Julie frowned.

What the fuck?

The man shook his head again. “No. She killed Clyde.” His mouth twisted in a scowl. “I know. I always listen to you, Lulu. But this cunt has to die.”

Lulu?

Julie almost laughed. This deranged, sick fuck was hearing voices. Voices telling him not to kill her.

Hooray for mental illness!

The man’s shoulders sagged. “All right. Yes. Okay.”

Julie summoned a smile. “It really is okay. You’ll see. I’ll-”

She didn’t get to finish the thought.

The man cocked a fist and slammed it into the side of her head, turning out the lights for a while.