Hair of the Bitch - A Twisted Suspense Thriller

by Jeff Menapace

  And yet for some reason, I was willing to swap a temporary high for those inevitable depths of depression, and I hadn’t the slightest fucking clue why. It was the American way I suppose. The get-rich-quick way, as opposed to the long, arduous route.

  Oh well—fuck it. Cheers.

  * * *

  I was about four drinks deep when I felt my mood starting to lift. I began to feel a bit surer of myself and immediately ordered another round to make damn certain the feeling would continue. This would no doubt guarantee a more intense hangover the following day, but my booze-laden senses usually skipped class the day they taught foreshadowing (probably sleeping it off somewhere). I was living for the moment (a foreign practice for me sober), and all worries and responsibilities were going to be buried for the next few hours.

  * * *

  I was probably on my sixth round when I began to think about Angela. My reasoning for drinking tonight (and you always needed reasoning) was to ignore any current hazards in my head, and she happened to be one of them. Sure, not the most extreme of reasons, but nevertheless her cancellation this evening did cause me some disappointment that forgave a little drowning.

  I found myself staring off into space, replaying the highlights of previous sessions over in my head. Her image was clear and strong. Very clear and strong. So clear and strong it was in front of me.

  Literally.

  Angela was standing outside; I could see her through one of the bar windows.

  I shook my head to be sure what I saw was genuine.

  It was her. She was there. But she wasn’t alone.

  The window was small and did not reveal a lot, but from what I could make out, she seemed to be in a heated argument with someone.

  I hurried off my stool and approached the window. I saw a look of fear on Angela’s face as a man approached her in an increasing state of agitation. Was this her husband maybe? Boyfriend? No. She was single—or so she told me. But that could have easily been a lie.

  The situation grew more intense as the silent movie I watched elicited body language that told me a physical encounter was a good probability.

  The alcohol in my blood forced me to act without consideration. I headed outside.

  * * *

  The three of us stood in a triangle pattern, a few feet from one another. Both Angela and the man said nothing, just locked their eyes on me, seemingly unsure what to make of my arrival.

  I decided to speak first. “Hey, Angela. Everything okay?”

  The guy answered for her. “She’s fine, man. Fuck off.”

  His response rattled me. No shouting, no uncontrollable anger. Confident and assured.

  “Whoa—come on, man, relax,” I said.

  He inched closer to me.

  We stood about two feet apart, eyes stuck on one another. I had about two inches on him in height, but I would guess we weighed about the same. A good deal of his weight looked like muscle. He had a goatee and a shaved head. And while this particular look can be intimidating, it is a look often sported as a deterrent by pussies who can’t really fight. Problem was this guy also sported a crooked nose and scars running through both eyebrows. This told me he’d not only lost his violence-virginity some time ago, but there was a good chance he’d since become a slut.

  “Don’t tell me to relax, bitch,” he said.

  Fair enough.

  I was tempted to look over at Angela to gauge her reaction to the whole situation, but was worried if I took my eyes off this guy he would crack me one.

  I decided to address her directly, all the time maintaining eye contact with dickhead. “Angela, is everything okay? Do you know this guy?”

  She finally spoke. “No. I was trying to drop a package off in the overnight slot.” She motioned over towards the FedEx rectangle fixed about ten yards from the bar. “He just started bothering me.”

  Well there ya go. The guy was a complete stranger who was bothering my Angela. This was the kind of knight-in-shining-armor shit you saw in movies.

  Dickhead smirked at me. “So maybe I was. The fuck are you gonna do, faggot?”

  I refused to engage him in a bunch of macho bullshit before the inevitable punch was thrown. It’s a fucking fight; not a debate.

  He inched closer. We were almost nose to nose.

  He who draws first…

  I slammed my forehead into his face. Heard and felt his nose crunch on impact. He staggered back, face pissing blood, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  I didn’t give him a chance. I rushed forward. He sensed me coming and covered up, preventing me from landing any decent shots at his jaw and putting him to sleep. I resorted to using my leg like a giant baseball bat, sweeping his legs out from under him. He hit the pavement hard. I immediately punted his head. BOOM—goodnight.

  If it had been the movie, I would have stopped there. Gone and hugged the girl. But this was no movie; my rage was off its leash. I began stomping his head repeatedly, determined to flatten it like something out of a cartoon.

  It wasn’t until my third or fourth stomp that a scream from a female onlooker pierced my red haze and stopped me cold. For all I knew this woman was screaming the whole time; I couldn’t hear a fucking thing except for my own heart pounding my ears like war drums. Initially, I expected the scream’s owner to be Angela, but it was not. She was gone and replaced with a woman I’d never seen before.

  I whipped my head in all directions, wide-eyed, the spitting image of a disoriented lunatic I imagine. I desperately wanted to know where Angela had gone, but my urge to exit the barbaric scene I’d just caused finally surfaced and overrode all confusion. I ran to my car and was on the road in less than a minute.

  I had no business driving with the combination of alcohol and adrenaline possessing my body, but the thought of stopping the car so soon after fleeing seemed absurd.

  I would instead drive a few miles further, and then tuck my car away into a safe spot so I could gather my thoughts, stop my hands and legs from shaking, and talk my stomach out of showing me the whiskey and beer again.

  4

  A remote shopping center up ahead seemed as good a spot as any to stop. It was after eleven and the center’s lot was relatively deserted, a few empty cars scattered here and there. To play it safe, I pulled to the rear of the lot, alongside one of the corner buildings and far away from those scattered cars. Last thing I wanted was a curious cop shining his flashlight in my window before swapping that flashlight for a Breathalyzer, and oh yeah, do you happen to know anything about the guy who was stomped into a vegetable a mile up the road? Witnesses gave a description of said stomper, and it sure as hell resembles you, right down to that little spatter of blood on your shirt.

  It was not easy to snuff paranoid prospects like this. They came one after the other like previews before a film. My mind and body hummed with adrenaline. I needed to focus on my breathing if I ever hoped to process this mess.

  In for five; hold for five; out for five. And repeat. A few more times. Better now.

  What happened to Angela? She was gone when I’d finished with Dickhead, but surely she had to witness some of the chaos. Did I scare her? Was she grateful? Chances are she was initially grateful, but after witnessing the excessive job I was doing on the guy, she probably freaked and ran off.

  I took another deep breath, held it, let it out slow, and began analyzing things as collectively as possible:

  I couldn’t care less about stomping Dickhead. No regrets there.

  I felt justified to step in and protect Angela as she clearly hinted at wanting help with Dickhead. All good there.

  So that leaves only one possible explanation: Angela’s disappearance was due to my excessive use of force on Dickhead after he was incapacitated. That had to be it.

  Shit.

  * * *

  Two hours had passed, maybe three, who knows. What I do know is that I’d fallen asleep. Shortly after I’d tried to clear my head it began to rain, and the hypnotic sou
nd of rain pelting the roof of my car coupled with the combination of alcohol and spent adrenaline was like a handful of Ambien.

  So there I was, passed out in the driver’s seat, when those hypnotic drops of rain started to grow louder. The change in noise and tempo sunk in, but sleep still had a good hold of me and wasn’t about to let me slip away just yet.

  When the rain grew louder still, so loud I can remember a dream where kids were throwing rocks at my car for some reason, I jerked awake to find the imaginary rocks a very real set of knuckles, rapping on my car window.

  My whereabouts were a mystery for a brief, frightening moment, and then I saw Angela peering into my car, one hand over her eyes like a visor. I instantly rolled down my window.

  “What are you doing?” I said, immediately regretting how curt and accusatory it came out.

  I was unsure as to how long she’d been standing there trying to wake me, or how she had even managed to find me, but there she stood—hair wet, clothes soaked.

  “Are you okay?” she asked with what seemed like sincerity.

  I paused for a second, her concern for my well-being making me re-evaluate preconceived notions. I also realized she was still standing in the rain.

  “I’m fine. Here—get in.” I leaned to my right and opened the passenger door for her.

  She obliged my gesture and was soon sitting next to me. The rain had amplified the scents of her hair—some kind of herbal and fruit shampoo I guessed. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing, and made me want to lick every drop of rain off her body.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened earlier,” I began, deciding to get my bit in first. “I guess I kinda lost it when I saw that guy bothering you like that.”

  She didn’t respond right away. In fact, it didn’t even look as though she’d heard me; she seemed transfixed by the endless patterns of rain on the windshield. I questioned whether or not I should repeat myself, and I was just about to when she leaned over and simultaneously kissed me while grabbing my cock.

  What should have been a wet dream was handled like a nightmare; her behavior knocked me completely off-guard and caused me to regretfully jump. I didn’t need to speak; my befuddled look said it all.

  Undeterred, she leaned in again. “That was so fucking hot the way you handled that guy. You almost killed him.”

  I was beyond dumbfounded. “Hot? That whole debacle turned you on?”

  “Oh God, yes.”

  “Well, where did you go then? I looked around and you were gone.”

  “I went for my car. I was planning on coming back for you, but I saw you had an admirer."

  It took me a second to get the joke. “You mean that girl who was screaming bloody murder?”

  “Yeah. She kinda ruined everything.”

  “She did?”

  “Uh-huh.” She buried her mouth into my neck.“If she wasn't there, I'd have fucked you right then. In the car. Next to what you'd done."

  “Are you serious?”

  “Oh yeah…”

  I had absolutely no clue how to respond to this. I was the one who was used to being in control when it came to sexual situations. It was usually me that proposed off-the-wall scenarios that were met with looks of uncertainty.

  “Does that bother you?” she said, glancing up at me, eyes playing innocent, their true intentions bad, the good kind.

  “No,” I said softly. And here’s the thing: I don’t think it did bother me. It intrigued me, perhaps for the same reasons my true self had intrigued her. It was the kind of thing I was referring to earlier. What lay behind the beauty? Sex was sex to me, bodies interchangeable. I had no desire to fuck this woman with just my cock; I wanted to fuck her with something as yet untapped; her to fuck me with what seemed like a keen capability to excavate that unexploited relic and make it all virginal, my first time being fucked. How the hell could this not qualify as therapy?

  “Good,” she said, lips still to my ear. “Would you like to follow me back to my place?”

  “Yes I would.”

  She pulled away and smirked, confidence everywhere. “I’m going to show you things you won’t believe.”

  The Bar

  The bartender holds up a hand. “Wait—wait, wait, wait. You’re not gonna tell me she’s a vampire are you?”

  Genuinely confused, I say, “What?”

  “Getting aroused by violence? Her lips on your neck? ‘I’m gonna show you things you won’t believe’?”

  I frown. “No, she’s not a vampire. Why the hell would I tell you a story about a vampire?”

  He shrugs. “Sounded like that’s where this was going. My daughter reads all those vampire books. Has the DVDs of the movies playing non-stop.”

  I sip my Beam. “My condolences.”

  He grunts in agreement and finishes his second Beam with ice.

  I pour him another and he doesn’t refuse. I smile.

  “Okay,” he says, “you’re following Angela back to her place…”

  PART TWO

  The Freak

  5

  I don’t remember driving to her house. And I could not, for the life of me, give you even the most rudimentary directions on how to get there; with the potential of what lay ahead, such details had been demoted from steak to vegetables.

  In a matter of moments we were on her porch, and, I shit you not, she kicked open the front door. Her hand gripping mine, she pulled me up a flight of stairs and led me to a bedroom.

  I had not managed, nor had the time or opportunity (or a fucking care) to get a look at the rest of the interior of the house, but the room the two of us now occupied was huge. It’s red and black décor suggested eroticism with a devilish taste of the unknown, a kind of danger that entices our better judgment, woos with control and power and all kinds of good wrong.

  I barely had a chance to take everything in before Angela was guiding me towards the foot of an enormous bed. She kissed me, sucked on my lower lip as she withdrew, and then shoved me backwards onto the bed where I happily flopped.

  She wasted no time in joining me, straddling my waist, undressing the both of us, pausing every now and again to fondle, tantalize, and tease, securing my state of arousal (as if it was going anywhere).

  This was brutal anticipation at its best. My entire body throbbed.

  We were nearly naked—me in boxers; she in a pair of bra and panties I wanted to eat.

  We locked eyes, and then with a flick of her chin she gestured above my head. I followed her gaze, turned and glanced up. A pair of leather wrist wraps dangled across from one another along the headboard. Handcuffs that didn’t look like handcuffs. I hadn’t noticed them when first flopping on the bed; they too had been demoted to vegetables.

  I turned back to Angela, and in a failed effort to control my eagerness, attempted to cut short her performance by reaching up and pulling her to me. My grip was instantly met by hers. She released hold on one of my wrists and wagged a playful finger in my face.

  Bad boy, Mr. Court, that waving finger said.

  I smiled and let my arms go limp. She began fastening my wrists to the leather cuffs overhead. Finished, she slid off my body (tongue tracing my torso as she did, God bless her) and stood before me at the foot of the bed. She was still wearing her bra and panties, and I took in every inch of her.

  I guessed her height at about five-seven, her weight I didn’t care to guess; my eyes gifted me with far more than a scale ever could. Full and curved in all the right spots, taught and firm…in all the right spots.

  Her hair was shoulder-length and dark, almost black, the color accentuating her blue eyes; lips full and red, her blue eyes accentuating them.

  Assuming I wasn’t still asleep in my car, this was real. I was about to have Angela.

  “All good?” she asked, gesturing towards the cuffs that held my wrists overhead.

  I could only nod my confirmation—words had no place here. She smiled her approval, and turned her back to me. Slowly, she bent and removed he
r panties, revealing an ass you wanted to bite, and kiss, and slap, and bite…

  An uncontrollable spasm of anticipation hit me and I inadvertently tugged on the cuffs overhead—and my right wrist nearly popped free. Turns out the cuff was loose and not properly fastened.

  Her back still to me, Angela had not noticed my incident with the loose cuff, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let her notice lest she stop her performance to re-fasten the stupid thing. So I simply held my hand in a fixed position as though the cuff on my right was as tight as the one on my left. As long as I didn’t do anything stupid like that again, I figured I’d be okay.

  Once her panties had been removed, Angela went to work on her bra, glancing over her shoulder at me as she did so. The look she cast me was something no surgeon could ever provide, a confidence I’d never seen in any woman, like she damn well knew she could make you come with just her eyes. The next time someone tells you it’s big tits or a tight ass, scoff; nothing is sexier than the elusive trait of true confidence.

  The bra was off. She turned slowly and faced me, her arms across her chest, a hand covering each breast. It seemed illogical that she would cover her breasts while everything else was exposed (and looking fucking amazing FYI), but logic had no place in Angela’s world. And while men usually accommodated the breasts in order to get further below, I found myself wanting nothing more than to just see her breasts, even if it meant I might never get to touch, taste, or enter her where I’d always presumed it counted.

  The power. The power this woman had. She was turning out to be everything I’d been pining for.

  My state of arousal was now higher than it had ever been. I wanted her on the bed with me. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. This strange room was my whole world and Angela and I were the only two people alive.

  Or so I thought.