by Mary Monroe
I was glad she removed her hand, because I was about to snap. “Um, no,” I mouthed, looking around. It was after midnight and still somewhat chilly because of the storm, so I didn’t expect to see any people out and about on foot in this area. I knew they wouldn’t come out to investigate if they heard a ruckus, especially a woman screaming in distress.
I had never lived in a low-rent neighborhood like this one, but I knew the way things worked in these concrete jungles. The residents heard violent commotions and even gunfire on a regular basis and all they did was duck for cover. Most of the time, they didn’t even call the cops because they didn’t trust them, and they usually had some dirt on their own hands too.
“If you’ll get that jack for me, I’ll fix my tire and we can be on our way. I don’t live too far. You can leave your car here and ride with me, or you can follow me.”
“I’ll ride with you. I can’t spend the whole night, though. I have to get up early in the morning for work,” she told me, sounding disappointed. She was already stumbling toward the trunk of her Ford.
“I have to work tomorrow too,” I said. This tramp didn’t even know my name and she had already agreed to go home with me and let me fuck her!
She opened her trunk and removed a jack and pranced back over to me. “Here,” she said, thrusting the tool into my hand. “I think it’s going to start raining again and I just got over a cold. I’ll wait for you in my car.”
I gently placed my hand around her tiny wrist. “Could you hold the flashlight while I change my tire?” I asked very nicely, still holding on to her. “I promise I’ll be done before the rain starts.”
“Oh, all right,” she said with a roll of her eyeballs. “Baby, you have a mighty firm grip,” she purred as she caressed my hand, which was still wrapped around her wrist. “I hope the rest of you is mighty firm too. . . .”
This horny heifer was so anxious to get busy with me, I thought she was going to drag me behind a bush or pull me into the backseat of her car.
“That’s for you to find out,” I growled, poking her between her breasts. “As soon as I change my tire, we’ll be on our way. Let me get the flashlight out of my glove compartment.”
She held on to my arm as we walked to the Jeep Cherokee I had purchased a couple of weeks ago.
“Hey! You just bought this ride!” she gasped, pointing to my temporary license plate. She stopped walking and placed her hands on her hips. “Didn’t a jack come with it?”
“Yes. My neighbor borrowed it yesterday and hasn’t returned it yet.”
“That’s why I don’t lend things anymore. I’m sure you didn’t think you’d need your jack tonight, but things like this happen when you least expect it.”
“That is so true! It’ll be a long time before I lend out anything else!”
“Which tire is it?” she asked. That was the last thing she said. She didn’t know what hit her when I brought that jack down on her head.
While she lay passed out on the front seat of my Jeep, I searched through her purse until I found her wallet. She had just renewed her driver’s license. Her name was Brenda Betts. She was twenty-six, an organ donor, and she wore contacts. I fished a work badge out of her purse. She was a physical therapist. I couldn’t believe that a woman who took care of sick people would hang out in a sleazy bar like Jerry’s and try to pick up men. Especially a woman who already had a man!
When Brenda regained consciousness on the floor in my garage, she couldn’t scream, or do much of anything else. I had covered her mouth, tied her hands behind her back, and secured her feet with duct tape, which I had purchased at Home Depot the same day I’d bought the freezer.
“Do you love your man?” I asked as I stood over her with my hands on my hips, shining a flashlight in her face.
With tears rolling out of her eyes, she nodded.
“Have you ever cheated on him?”
She hesitated and then slowly shook her head.
“When you were growing up, didn’t your mama tell you not to trust strangers?”
She slowly nodded again.
“You love your man, but you were going to fuck a complete stranger tonight? You don’t even know my name!”
It took her a few moments to respond; and when she did, she shook her head even harder.
“You like dudes, don’t you?” I asked.
She nodded vigorously this time and made moaning noises.
“Well, I’m glad you do, because the next dude you’re going to see is Jesus. Oops! I meant to say Satan.” I couldn’t believe how fast she died after my hands went around her throat.
Chapter 50
Calvin
DURING THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I SAW SEVERAL MORE WOMEN WHO reminded me of Glinda. I wanted to grab each one by the throat and squeeze it until the light in her eyes went out so that I could relive the experience of killing Glinda.
There was a time when the first thing I looked at on a woman was her face. Then I checked out her butt and breasts. I still looked at those things, but now I paid more attention to her neck than all the rest of her body parts put together. But not on a frumpy woman with a neck as thick and rough-looking as a linebacker. I preferred slim, swanlike, dainty necks; those excited me because they were so fragile and the easiest way to do what I had to do....
I was getting bored and restless. I couldn’t wait to initiate my next project.
My obsession had begun to control my life and there was nothing I could do to stop it. There were some days and nights when my hands shook so uncontrollably, my head ached, my chest tightened, and my stomach flip-flopped so hard it was difficult for me to function. When I experienced one of those episodes while I was on the road, I pulled over and waited until the feeling passed.
One night I was close enough to a truck stop, so I pulled in and parked. Within ten minutes, three different prostitutes tapped on my window and offered their services. In less than an hour, five more approached me. One happy hooker even told me that she would suck my dick for five dollars because she liked my looks. I turned them all down. The only thing that saved one of those eight lot lizards from dying that night was the fact that I had already wasted too much valuable time and had to get back on the road as soon as possible.
A week later, while I was having dinner in a restaurant about a mile from my house, I noticed a woman sitting alone across the room. I wanted to take her home and keep her. My plan was to follow her when she left and do whatever I had to do to get her into my Jeep. Fortunately for her, two other women and three dudes joined her.
A few days after that, I was cruising around and spotted another potential project as she entered a building on Hudson Street. I made a U-turn and parked in a lot at the corner. Thirty minutes later, the same woman strolled back out with a baby in her arms. That was the only reason she didn’t die that night. I would never do anything that would endanger a child.
The next day, I encountered a woman at a street fair who was so drunk she could barely walk straight. She was loud and dressed like a slut, just like Glinda. Just as I was about to move on her, two big husky older females approached.
The larger one gave me a surprised look and said loud enough for everybody within a mile to hear, “I know you! You’re Calvin—uh, I don’t remember your last name. You drive one of them big-ass trucks. I met you at Marianne Cundiff’s housewarming party in Oakland a couple of months ago!”
I grinned sheepishly, made a few necessary comments, and promptly slunk back out of sight. I visited three different bars that night and had no luck. I was getting desperate. I had a hungry monster roosting inside me that had to be fed real soon.
I regretted not keeping Glinda alive long enough to torture her and make her truly sorry for the way she had hurt me. Whenever I recalled the look of fear in her eyes when she realized what was happening to her, I smiled.
The first hitchhiker I picked up at a truck stop in Eugene, Oregon, was a girl in her late teens.
Kimberly wore jeans, with ripp
ed knees, and a white T-shirt, with a huge picture on the front of Bob Marley smoking a thick joint. She was white and didn’t remotely resemble Glinda, but she looked like another female who was just as disgusting to me: Paris Hilton. She had big dingy teeth and long blond hair with black roots. Every time she giggled and belched, which was almost every time she opened her mouth, I wanted to slap her.
After chatting with her for just a few minutes, I realized what a no-good whore she was too. She bragged about all the men she had “got over on” and how she had just left her husband after cleaning out the two thousand bucks he had saved in his bank account. And she had slept with his best friend. I was surprised that nobody had disposed of this beast already. I was appalled, but I managed to control my actions. I even laughed along with her as we cruised down Interstate 5. I stopped laughing when she offered to “pay” me for the ride with sex.
“You really look like a girl who can show a man a real sweet time,” I said with a chuckle, knowing a corny statement like that would make her feel even more comfortable.
“Oh, I can show a man the best time he ever had. The guy I was with last night, he wanted me to look him up when he gets back from Sacramento. When I make love to men, they never forget me.” She let out a loud giggle and it sounded even more annoying this time.
“I’m sure you’ll make me feel the same way,” I told her, massaging her knee with my trembling hand.
“By the way, I’ll probably never see you again, but I would like to know your name. I’m Kimberly. What do I call you?”
“I’m . . . Thomas,” I said.
“Thomas, let’s go somewhere and get busy.”
Without saying another word, I eased my big rig down a long, dark road, which I had visited many times before when I needed to take a bathroom break. Kimberly removed her clothes and was clawing at mine before I even parked.
We moved to the sleeping section of my cab and I clicked on my interior light and gave her a closer look. I almost threw up. Her pale flesh looked like the underbelly of a fish and she almost had more black hair on her legs than I had on my head.
“Hurry up. I ain’t got all night.” She glanced at my dick, which was as hard as a brick, and rolled her eyes.
That eye roll confused me because I thought she was anxious to have sex with me.
“I like it rough,” she cooed.
Oh, I was rough all right. I rammed my rod into Kimberly in such a frenzied way, you would have thought that she was paying me to do so. I finished as quickly as I could, and she quickly let me know what a disappointment I had been.
“What a fucking joke this was!” she griped, shaking her head and looking at my dick at the same time.
Kimberly was already doomed, but then she said something that hastened her demise; something no man ever wanted to hear—especially a black man: “For a brother, you sure ain’t hung the way I expected. I could have had a better time poking myself with a Tootsie Roll.” She glared at me like she wanted to bite my head off.
Chapter 51
Calvin
KIMBERLY SNEERED AT ME AS I SAT FACING HER WITH EVERY FLUID in my body boiling with rage. “Ex . . . cuse me?” I said as the monster in my belly growled.
“I always heard that you people had real big dicks. Now I know that’s nothing but a myth that black dudes probably started! I’ve seen more meat in a hot dog bun than what you’ve got between your legs!” she said nastily. Then she laughed.
Her complaining about my performance was bad enough. But she had to go and complain about the size of my penis too! That bitch! That heifer! I couldn’t wait to put out her lights. If she didn’t have it coming, I didn’t know who did. My head felt like it had been trampled on by a huge, angry bull; that was how painful my sudden headache felt. I snapped like a twig. And so did her neck.
When I was sure she was dead, I rifled through her backpack. Her shabby, cheap wallet contained almost two grand, probably what was left of the money she had stolen from her husband. According to her driver’s license, her full name was Kimberly Diane Hollenbeck. I stuffed the money into my wallet and put her wallet, with the rest of its contents intact, into the duffel bag I carried on each trip.
I suddenly panicked. I had no idea what to do with the body! I couldn’t take her to my house, especially since it would be another day before I returned to San Jose.
There was only one thing I could do. I removed Kimberly’s naked body from my truck and dumped her onto the ground and dropped her clothes on top of her. Then I covered her with branches and dead leaves.
I had used a condom, so I was not worried about them finding my DNA in her pothole of a pussy or me contracting HIV. I double wrapped the condom with a large leaf and put it in my jacket pocket. I would flush it down the next toilet I stopped to use.
Two months after the episode with Kimberly, I encountered several more women who suffered the same fate. I almost let one go. She was an obese Native American woman named Morning Star. She was in her late twenties and had a mug that could curdle milk: tight beady black eyes, a faint mustache, a hawk nose, and a jawline like Jay Leno’s. Her long, oily black hair, slicked back and held in place with numerous bobby pins, reminded me of a beaver’s tail. I was surprised to hear that she had just gotten married three months ago.
When I warned her about how dangerous it was to hitchhike, she laughed and said, “Nobody would have to rape me, no how. I love to fuck. And truckers are so lonely, they don’t care what I look like.”
I was horrified. Aren’t there any women who got married and stayed faithful to their husbands? I wondered. I asked this booger bear point-blank if she had fooled around on her husband yet. Not only did she admit to doing so, she had done it with her sister’s black husband because she hated her sister and she had always wanted to “make it” with a black dude.
Morning Star made it with another black dude that night and her double-wide ass ended up in a ditch in some woods a few miles from Fresno.
There was the girl near Sacramento and the one in Bakersfield, and others. I had collected a lot of trophies: a gold bracelet from a Jewish runaway, a buckskin jacket from another Paris Hilton clone, and a pair of red high heels from a woman I’d picked up at a truck stop in Barstow. I stored my trophies in a cardboard box, which I kept in my bedroom closet for a while. One night when I thought I heard noises coming from the box, I got spooked. I made a trip to a hardware store and I purchased a large metal footlocker. I put the box of trophies into my “treasure chest” and padlocked it before I hauled it up to my attic.
I hadn’t opened the freezer since I’d stored the third woman, a stripper with a bad attitude. I’d coldcocked her during a private lap dance in my Jeep a couple of months ago. But I went up to my attic at least once a week to admire my treasures.
I couldn’t even remember what all of the females had looked like that I’d picked up on the road, or exactly where I’d left each one. I followed the news religiously. Every now and then, there was a report about a hunter or a hiker stumbling across the skeletal remains of a female in a wooded area along the interstate highway. Since some of the women had probably given me fake names, I had no idea if any of them were the ones that I had chastised or not.
If somebody could “connect” the three missing black women from the Bay Area, the way that busybody reporter had done, it was just a matter of time before somebody realized several female hitchhikers had disappeared in the last six years along the same interstate routes that I drove on the same dates.
I was still mad as hell about what Glinda had done to me, but I had calmed down a little, so I decided to slow down—temporarily. Even as clever and lucky as I was, I didn’t want to take too many chances. Some of the smartest criminals made the dumbest mistakes and I didn’t want my name to be added to that list. I even hoped that I would eventually find another way to channel my anger, but I knew it would be a while before I got to that point. The belly of the beast inside me was only half full.
Chapter 52<
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Calvin
LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER I’D BEGUN SEARCHING THE WEB FOR new projects, I stumbled upon the profile of a woman who brought that beast inside me out of hibernation. She was, of all things, a grocery store clerk—a long step down from the lawyers and other high-level female club members I had already acquainted myself with.
Her name was Lola Poole, but it should have been Glinda Price. Lola was a dead ringer for Glinda. Had I not known better, I’d have sworn that they were twins. I felt a level of euphoria that I’d never felt before. The urge to complete another project had returned with a vengeance. I had to resume what I had been destined to do. Good God! I felt like I had been reborn! Through Lola, Glinda had returned from the dead so I could kill her all over again. And this time it was going to be even more therapeutic.
Lola immediately responded to the first e-mail I sent to her club in-box. She was interested, but she claimed to have a very “full schedule for a while” and didn’t know when we could hook up. Bitch! She didn’t fool me. I knew she was itching to lie down with me. But like so many other women, she wanted to play mind games. And I was going to give her a hell of a run for her money. I was going to beat the bitch at her own game because I had a real plan, she didn’t. I didn’t want to rush things, so I claimed I had a very full schedule too. I planned to develop the relationship slowly. I wanted to savor every moment. And when the time came, that cow would suffer more than Glinda and all the others had put together!
I was glad Lola was in no hurry to meet me. I admired her for being honest enough to let me know that she wanted to dilly-dally with a few other men first. I had my own theory: This man-eater knew I was a good man, but she wanted to nibble on a few others before she decided to settle down with a dude like me. I figured she was already stringing a few other dudes along, and after she’d sampled each one, including me, she’d pick and choose the one she wanted to string along even longer. Oh, I had her number, all right. She obviously had no solid career aspirations; otherwise, she would not have been working as a grocery store clerk for almost fifteen years. Her ultimate goal was to land a husband.
