The Nighttime is the Right Time

by Bill Crider

  It was enough to make a man drool, especially a man like Carl.

  He walked over to her table. Somehow she had one all to herself, though nearly everyone else in the place was having to share.

  "Dance?" he said.

  She gave him a speculative look with large dark eyes under long lashes that Carl were sure must be real.

  "Sure," she said.

  She had a husky voice that carried just below the level of the music and made the hairs stand up at the base of Carl's spine. She flowed up and out of the chair to take Carl's hand. With those heels, she was slightly taller than he was, but he didn't mind.

  The DJ was spinning some 12-inch dance version of something by Janet Jackson, and Carl showed all his moves. They were pretty good ones, even he had to admit. Maybe not as hot as that fag shit's in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, but still damn good.

  But they weren't as good as the woman's. She shook, slithered, bounced, and generally got with it in a way that Carl had rarely seen. In the middle of the record she seemed almost to go into a trance, her eyes half closed, her mouth slightly open, her tongue caught between small white teeth.

  Definitely asking for it, Carl thought. For fucking sure. Just like the rest of them.

  He almost had to laugh aloud when he read about them in the newspapers. They always sounded like they were just coming home from Girl Scout meeting when the "ski mask rapist" got them. Or like they had been over at their mom's house baking cookies for invalids in the nursing home.

  It was all bullshit, as Carl well knew. They were all exactly like the woman in white, practically begging for someone who was man enough to give it to them.

  And Carl was man enough for all of them, the eleven reported in the newspapers and the other nine who hadn't said a word about their experience. Probably, Carl thought, because they'd enjoyed the hell out of it. So had the eleven who'd squealed, of course. They were just too chickenshit to admit it.

  "What's your name?" he said, as he walked her back to the table as the Janet Jackson record segued into the latest from Prince. There was a fine sheen of sweat on her brow and arms that reflected the flashing lights.

  "Donna," she said. "What's yours."

  "Roger," he said. He never gave his real name. He knew what the cops were like. If she reported it, they'd ask her for the names of the men she'd danced with.

  "Roger what?" she said.

  "Roger Loomis. Thanks for the dance." He never danced with them more than once.

  "Thank you . . . Roger," she said, sitting down at her table with feline grace.

  He went back to his own table, which he was sharing with two spaced-out and horny young men who had confided that they were attending a local university on tennis scholarships. He thought their vacant eyes boded ill for the future of intercollegiate tennis, not that he gave a shit. They were the perfect table companions, their minds so much on their own dicks that they wouldn't remember him beyond the club's closing time. If they remembered even that long.

  She left around one-thirty. Carl had danced with any number of other women, some of whom were begging for it almost as much as Donna, but he had already made his choice. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't fickle.

  Carl waited until she was out the door. Then he followed.

  She was easy to spot in the parking lot, dressed in white like that. Hell, it was like she was advertising.

  She slipped into a white Toyota Celica, and Carl jumped into his anonymous navy blue Ford Escort. He could have afforded a more expensive car, but this one was best for his purposes. Who ever noticed an Escort?

  Following her was a snap. She wasn't trying to hide from him. She didn't even know he was back there.

  Their cars swooped down FM 1960 under the long line of lights that reflected off their hoods and tops.

  Carl's car windows were tinted with plastic so as to be nearly black. He liked the feeling of driving along with the traffic, knowing that no one could see him, much less suspect what he was up to.

  The other cars, he was sure, contained sleepy shift workers going home to cold suppers and warm beds, or maybe philandering businessmen who were going to creep into their suburban palaces ("Priced from the $90s to the $150s!) while praying that the wife and one point five kiddies didn't wake up screaming at them when they slipped in the door.

  The drivers of the other cars gliding along in the cool blue light would think that Carl was just like them, if they thought of him at all.

  But they would be very wrong.

  ~ * ~

  Carl had known he was special since the first one.

  She had been asking for it, too, and so on impulse he had followed her home. He'd just gotten back from a winter vacation to Colorado, and the ski mask was in the car. He pulled it on at the last minute before he climbed over her condo fence and tried the sliding glass door, which of course had been unlocked. So many of them were careless like that, if you could call it careless.

  Begging for it, that's what Carl called it.

  He remembered how it had felt, stepping into the darkness behind the curtain that covered the glass door, hearing the water running in the bathroom, knowing that she was right there, probably taking a shower, the water running down her taut, soapy skin and out the drain.

  He didn't have a weapon; he never needed one. Just his hands, in gloves, of course. The gloves were in the car, too, but wearing them wasn't an impulse. He'd known that he needed to wear the gloves.

  He waited by the wall and grabbed her when she came out of the bathroom, clamping his left arm around her throat, his right hand over her mouth. He could smell the powder on her skin.

  He threw her on the bed, knelt on her back, and tore off his belt, tying her hands with it. Only then did he take his hand off her mouth.

  "One word," he said. "One word, and I'll kill you. Understand?"

  She nodded, her head against the bedspread.

  His pants were around his thighs. He slipped down his underpants.

  "You were asking for this," he said.

  "No!" she said, shaking violently. "No!"

  "Yes, goddammit!" he said, slamming his fist into her temple. "Say yes!"

  For a minute she lay still, not saying anything at all. Then she said, "No."

  She shouldn't have said that. If she's only said yes, then he wouldn't have had to hit her again, and it would have been more fun for both of them.

  As it was, he did have to hit her, and she lay still and didn't say anything at all, even when he was finished.

  But she loved it, he knew that, because she didn't even report it to the police.

  He'd done three before one of them turned him in.

  ~ * ~

  Donna got onto the Loop from 1960 and then got off at Westheimer. Turned left a few blocks later and stopped in front of a huddle of expensive townhouses. They had to be expensive, in that area of town.

  Carl drove on by, made a quick U-turn at the next corner, and parked in time to see Donna standing contemplatively by her car. Carl wondered what she was thinking about. Under the street light she looked almost ghostly in the white skirt, top, and shoes. The black, black hair was stirred by the late-night breeze.

  Just as Carl cut his lights, Donna pushed away from her car and started toward one of the townhouses that was squeezed right between two others. She got a key out of her purse and opened the door. She went inside and the door closed behind her.

  Carl waited for five minutes before he got out of the Escort. The ski mask was in the left back pocket of his jeans. The gloves were in the right.

  He walked past Donna's door to a long driveway. Sure enough, the driveway led to covered parking for the residents. It also led the back entrances of the townhouses.

  The area was lit up by a blue mercury vapor lamp on the light pole, but there was no one back there. There were just the empty cars, the light, and the shadows.

  Carl stepped into a shadow and pulled on the ski mask and the gloves.

  Then he went to t
he back door of the townhouse Donna had entered. He couldn't see a light in any of the windows, but that didn't mean anything. She was probably in the bathroom by now. That was the first place women generally went, and that was why he had waited. She wouldn't be likely to hear him come in.

  It didn't bother Carl a bit that Donna had neighbors who shared her walls. Not one of the women he'd serviced had ever screamed, not after he'd warned them.

  Asking for it, goddammit.

  He smiled, his mouth stretching under the fabric of the mask.

  He tried Donna's back door, but the knob didn't move.

  Locked.

  He wasn't worried. There was no deadbolt that he could see, just the cheap kind of lock that was part of the doorknob. The kind you always saw some guy slipping with a credit card in movies and on TV. The funny thing was that it really worked like that. He'd practiced on the one at his own apartment until he could slip it in ten seconds.

  Donna's took him eight.

  He palmed the knob and turned it slowly, pleased that it didn't make a sound. The hinges, too, were silent as the door swung inward to a dark kitchen.

  Carl could make out a table and chairs. To his left was a cabinet with a sink in it, and beyond that a stove and oven. He took a step into the room and began to close the door.

  Then his head exploded.

  ~ * ~

  He came to in a bedroom.

  He knew it was a bedroom because he was lying spread-eagled on a bed, his head turned to the left. His head blazed with pain, especially just behind and below his right ear, the ear that was next to the bed.

  He tried to move, but he couldn't, not much, and he gradually became aware that his hands and feet were tied to the bed by some kind of silky fabric.

  As his eyes began to focus, he saw that Donna was sitting across from him in a gold metal chair, her back to a make-up table surmounted by a lighted mirror. All the lights around the mirror were on, and he could see the make-up strewn over the table. There were blush brushes, mascara brushes, lipstick, powder, different shades of make-up base, and other things Carl couldn't identify. There was also an ashtray.

  Donna was sitting calmly, her right leg crossed over her left, smoking a cigarette.

  "Hello, Roger," she said. "So nice of you to drop in on me."

  It took Carl a second or two to figure out that she was using the name he'd give her at the club; he didn't see any reason to tell her that the name was wrong.

  And then he realized that he was no longer wearing his ski mask or his gloves. He wasn't wearing anything at all.

  For the first time, he felt a tinge of fear.

  He ignored it. Maybe the bitch was kinky, but what the hell. Carl didn't mind a kink now and then.

  "Hi, Donna," he said. "Anything for a good time, huh?"

  Donna smiled. She uncrossed her legs and crushed out the cigarette. He nails were long and red.

  "Sure," she said. "Anything for a good time." She got slowly out of the chair and walked over to the bed.

  She stood where Carl could see her, hands on hips, legs spread.

  "Like what you see?"

  "You bet," Carl said, wishing his damn head didn't hurt so much. "You didn't have to hit me, Donna."

  "Yes I did."

  "You were waiting for me, though. How'd you know I'd come?"

  "I hoped you would," she said. "You or someone. It's happened before."

  "It has?"

  "You'd be surprised." She kicked off the high heels. They thumped against the side of the bed, then dropped to the floor. "Want to see a little more?"

  "A lot more," Carl said, thinking that this might not be so bad after all. Hell, she was not only asking for it, she was going to help him. Maybe she would even untie him. "I want to see all you've got."

  "Oh, you will," Donna said. "I think you can count on that. Where shall I start?"

  "How about untying me?" Being tied was a real problem. Carl wasn't sure that he could even get an erection if he were tied. He had to be the one in control. That was the best part of it, being in control, making them know that he could kill them if he wanted, that they had to obey him implicitly, do whatever he demanded.

  Donna laughed huskily. "I can't untie you yet, Roger. I meant, what do you want me to take off first."

  Carl looked at her bulging breasts. "Start at the top," he said.

  "A wonderful idea," Donna said. "I'm sure you're going to be surprised, Roger."

  Carl wished his head didn't hurt so much. "I don't think so," he said.

  "I do," Donna said, pulling off the black, black hair and dropping it to the floor.

  "Shit," Carl said. He liked long hair.

  "You were surprised, weren't you," Donna said.

  He was, he had to admit it, and he was even more surprised at the timber of Donna's voice. It was much lower, no longer husky.

  He was even more surprised when Donna took of the white top and revealed a smooth, flat, muscular chest.

  And when the skirt dropped to the floor, Carl saw--

  "Jesus!" he screamed. "Oh Jesus, no!"

  "I'm afraid so, Roger," Donna said, peeling off the jock strap and looking down at his/her rampant erection. "I'm afraid so."

  Carl was crying now, sobs racking his body, the whole bed shaking.

  "Don't be such a baby," Donna said. "You're going to love it."

  "No!" Carl wailed. "No!"

  Donna walked over to the bed, the erection jiggling, clamped a hand over Carl's mouth and kidney punched him.

  Twice. Hard.

  "Not another sound, Roger. You might disturb my neighbors. You understand?"

  Carl understood, but he couldn't say so. He was in too much pain.

  It didn't matter anyhow. Donna reached down to the floor and came up with the ski mask, then shoved it in Carl's mouth.

  "That's much better," Donna said. "I believe I told you my name was Donna. As you may have guessed, it's really Don."

  He walked over to the make-up table, opened a drawer, and took something out. Carl watched with fear-crazed eyes.

  Don came back to where Carl lay. There was a small bedside table, and Don lay the items he was carrying on it.

  A package of condoms. A tube of K-Y jelly.

  "You see, Carl? Nothing to worry about. I believe in safe sex."

  Carl thrashed on the bed, jerking at the ties that held him bound until they bit into his skin, but he could do nothing more.

  Don opened the package, took out a condom, slowly rolled it on. "Do be a good boy, Roger. You know you're going to like this." He picked up the tube of K-Y jelly. "You're going to like this a lot."

  ~ * ~

  It was a couple of hours later when Wallace, Don's roommate, came in. Don was naked, sitting in the gold chair, smoking a long, thin cigarette.

  Wallace looked at the unconscious man on the bed. There was blood smeared across his buttocks, blood on the bed covers. There was even still a little blood on Don.

  "Jesus, Don," Wallace said, shaking his head. "This is the worst one yet."

  Don didn't say anything. He blew a thin stream of smoke through his red lips.

  "He'll yell for the cops," Wallace said. "He's bound to."

  "No he won't," Don said. "No one's done that yet. He's just like them. Maybe worse. He'll be much too ashamed."

  "Maybe," Wallace said. "But I'm not taking any more chances with you, Don. I told you what would happen if you did this again. I'm leaving."

  He went into the other bedroom. Don didn't try to stop him. Later he came back, carrying two heavy leather bags. "I just don't understand, Don. I just don't understand why you do these things."

  Don extended the cigarette he was smoking over the ashtray and tapped it with a long red nail. He sighed. He was tired of the argument already.

  "The bitch was asking for it," he said.

  Blest Be the Ties

  This story isn’t quite as dark as the previous tale, but it’s no walk in the park. It’s a quirky little num
ber that I’ve always had a sneaking affection for. After reading it, you may never think about ties in the same way again.

  I haven't slept for quite a long time now, almost forty-eight hours. There are several reasons why.

  For one thing, I am making a catalog of Harold's ties. Harold was my husband, and for twenty-five years he received a tie from me on Father's Day. And he also received ties from our son and daughter. I bought the ties when the children were young, but they always helped me to pick them out. Later, they bought the ties themselves.

  I do not believe that we were unusual in giving ties for Father's Day. I read somewhere just the other day that every year there are 12,000 miles of ties given as Father's Day gifts. Or perhaps it was 120,000 miles. I am not sure, not being very good at recalling figures, but it was one of those numbers. It definitely had something to do with twelve; at any rate, it represented a lot of ties.

  Harold used to say that the giving of ties represented a lack of imagination. "And the kids are no better than you are. They don't have an original bone in their bodies."

  That was perhaps true, but the ties represented to me (and to the children, I am sure) much more than just a gift. They were symbolic; they were the ties that bound us together in love, for all of use loved one another very much. Does such a thought show a lack of imagination? I do not think so, but I never mentioned that to Harold.

  "Maybe they aren't original in their giving," I would always answer, "but they're fine children all the same."

  He had to agree with that, and he did save all the ties. They hang on special racks that he built in the walk-in closet in our bedroom.

  I am cataloging those on the rack that dates back to the middle 1970s now. The tie I am looking at is really quite nice. I gave it to Harold myself. It is three and three-quarters of an inch wide at its widest point and has a dark brown background, with large white and blue flowers printed on it. It is a Wemlon tie, by Wembley. Here is what the label says:

  crush it...knot it...even wash it...

  for brown, green or black suit

  100% polyester

  Some might think that the murders are the reason I have not slept. You have probably read about the murders. Four young women have been killed within the last two months, all of them within a few miles of where I sit, but I am not worried that I will become another victim.