by Noir, Stella
“How-?” she begins to say, her voice stuttery and heavy with confusion. “How do you know that?”
Chapter 9
Christopher
She looks like one of the rabbits I’ve just encouraged into the tank. Frozen in fear while she realizes the benign space she thought she was about to inhabit already belongs to a dangerous predator. My words hang heavy around us like the thick smoke cloud of a thousand cigarettes. Jessica and Marshall sit to our right, oblivious to the connection Maude and I have just established for ourselves.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you”, I whisper, my eyes sparkling with desire. With difficult to conceal need.
Maude looks like she wants to run, but doesn’t have the strength in her muscles to even get to the door. She shakes her head and puts her hand over her mouth. She must be overwhelmed, the poor girl.
“I know who Bone is.”
Chapter 10
Maude
My hands are still shaking. I’m embarrassed too, now that reality has set in. I’m embarrassed and scared. Scared of the truth and what he’s about to tell me. It’s like looking inside Pandora’s box, knowing what you see there will change you forever, and not necessarily for the better, but being unable to stop anyway. This is the addiction that drives all addicts on, whether it’s alcohol, cigarettes or murder.
He knows who Bone is.
My panties are wet and my pussy is still humming with desire. I’ve never felt more turned on in my life. I genuinely thought I was watching someone get killed, but for some reason I was unable to process that on a moral scale. All that was important to me was how it was making me feel. And the truth, even though it shocks me to the core, is that it made me feel better than anything I’ve ever experienced before. I’m a virgin. I’ve never had sex with anyone in my life, but I have made myself come a thousand times. Nothing has ever felt like that.
We are back in Christopher’s car. Marshall and Jessica have gone home, keen to relax before we need them again. Christopher offered to show me the rest of the house, but I didn’t feel up to it. At first, when he said that Bone knew the first victim but none of the others, I thought he was going to tell me the reason he knew that was because he was the one that had killed her. He was Bone.
I’m still not sure of the truth. He says he knows who Bone is, only because he’s had enough money to conduct the investigation that the police abandoned when they thought they’d found their man.
Christopher is an obsessive like I am. If I had the money and the resources, I’d plough it into working out unsolved crimes too. If I thought my life was in danger, I wouldn’t be here, sat alongside him. If I wasn’t the kind of person to open Pandora’s box…
And besides which, I’m still horny.
Fuck, there is something about him I just cannot resist. What if he is Bone? What if all this is a carefully constructed ruse to gain my trust and exploit it for his own needs? Bone is a methodical killer. He didn’t know any of his victims. None of them except the first.
“You’re quiet”, Christopher says. “It’s a lot to take in I suppose.”
I turn to him. It’s true, I haven’t said anything since the house. My mind goes back to the conversation I had with Jasper earlier tonight. What would you do if you met one? I try and figure him out, this strange billionaire.
“My heart’s still racing. It-. The show-. It was incredible”, I manage to say, the words not forming all that easily in my mouth.
“I could see you liked it”, Christopher says, and it makes me blush.
I look down to my lap and then out of the window.
“I liked it too”, Christopher says. “I’d like to do more of that.”
I want to change the subject. Not because I don’t want more myself, but because the whole thing is making me squirm with embarrassment.
I’m not the kind of girl that does anything other than hold hands on a first date. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I kissed a boy. It’s not only that I brought myself to orgasm, it’s that I did it watching what was happening. It’s like showing someone your innermost fantasies and dreams. It’s like showing someone the dark side of your soul.
I guess I should be pleased he liked it too, but something about Christopher feels more dangerous than anything I should get myself into.
“Who is he?” I ask, biting my lip sensually.
Christopher takes a turn to look out of the window now. There is a heavy silence, quiet but for the smooth hum of the engine.
“He’s going to kill again”, Christopher says, ignoring my question. “This time for real.”
I don’t know what to believe. I hear myself laugh nervously, but when Christopher turns to me again, I can see he is deadly serious.
“Fuck”, I say.
“Do you want to see it?” Christopher asks as though he’s talking about watching a game or a summer blockbuster, his eyes going wide, the lights of the cars on the other side of the road illuminating them up momentarily so he briefly looks like some kind of wild harbinger of doom, a million miles from human.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know if this guy is for real. “How?” I stutter.
“A master at work”, Christopher says with a smile. “The twenty eighth victim.”
He takes my hand and I’m too slow to pull it away. I can feel his skin fizz with excitement, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“The first bone of the wrist”, Christopher says, finding it on me. “He’s starting again, and he wants us to witness it.”
I don’t know what to say. My head is pounding with the word ‘yes’, but I’m not able to spit it out. I don’t know what it means to want it. My heart is beating so fast I’m on the edge of passing out.
“25, Lachlan Avenue”, Christopher says.
“What?” I say.
The car has stopped and I hadn’t even realized it. Across the street I can see my house.
“You’re home”, Christopher says, nodding at the house.
“Yes”, I say finally, neither of us sure which question I’m answering.
“The job is yours if you want it, Maude”, he says. “You are definitely the right girl for me.”
“I want it”, I say without thinking.
“I knew you would.”
I want you too, I want to add, but nerves have stolen the words from within me. I want the danger that you reek of. I want you to show me Bone.
I watch him slide towards me. Any other man would make the action look slimy, not Christopher, who sweeps across the chair as though led there by divine right. He puts his finger under my chin again and I watch him lift my face up towards his. Before I have a chance to do anything else, his lips are on mine and we are kissing each other. When he pulls away, I can do nothing but lick his taste off me and beg him silently for more.
“I want you to know me”, he says. “I want you to know the real me.”
“Ok”, I say.
“I like you, Maude”, he goes on. “You intrigue me.”
Dangerously addictive. I feel like a fish on the end of his rod and I don’t care what he does to me. I want him to consume me. Devour me. Complete me. His fingers fizz across my upper thigh making my pussy cramp and my legs squeeze together. I watch his hand drop from my chin and take bite around my neck, holding me gently in place. His touch is strong enough to scare me, but as soon as he’s gripped me tight, he’s let his fingers relax again.
“I’ll call you when we are ready”, he says. “I’ll call you when Bone is about to kill.”
The words spin around my head as I walk back to my house, Christopher’s car just a speck in the distance.
“When Bone is about to kill.”
I think about nothing else all night. Christopher, Bone, what I’ve seen, what he wants me to see. It’s far too surreal to cope with and far too tempting to avoid. I’m embarrassed at demonstrating a vulnerability, but there was absolutely no way I could have avoided it either. What I f
ound myself doing, it felt stronger than I was able to control. If anything, it felt like it was controlling me.
Chapter 11
Maude
Three days pass, and I hear nothing. It gets to the point where I begin to question whether it happened at all. The orgasm. The confession. The fingers curled tightly around my neck. The danger on the edge of being real.
I research him and find nothing unusual. A paper billionaire with an unextraordinary past. I try to dig dirt but nothing comes up. My obsession with him deepens to the crest of need. My hands are sweaty and I’m on the edge, jerky and unsure. I can’t think about anything else.
He knows Bone. He knows a prolific serial killer. I have too many questions rolling around my head. Does Bone know him too? Why hasn’t he told the police? How does he know he’s going to kill again?
I can only assume that Christopher has been tracking him, and he wants to catch him in the act, just to make sure. I roll the scenario around in my head. Bone, the methodical killer has finally let his guard down. What if Christopher is too obsessed with him to stop him finishing his masterpiece? What if he just wants to watch? If I knew who he was, would I do the same? If I knew about Yalzut or Hunter or Guthrey, or any of the others, absolute masters in their field, would I do the same? Would I stop an artist half way through a major work?
I can do nothing but wait. I see Jasper, but I don’t tell him everything, and he knows I’m lying, or holding back the truth at least. I feel bad about that, but it feels like a secret I’m not allowed to share. It feels like a gift I’ve been given and I don’t want anyone else to see it. It’s mine, and Christopher is mine, and I want it to stay that way.
Jasper is jealous. He tells me to stay away from him without any good reason apart from suggesting he’s dangerous and unpredictable. He’s a stranger after all, he points out. A stranger with an obsession for serial killers.
Jasper is nothing but negativity and gloom and after a while, I have to make some excuses about catching up on research just to get rid of him. He doesn’t believe the performance was so real I thought I’d witnessed a murder, and he doesn’t believe Christopher wants anything else but to get inside my panties. I don’t tell him he practically already has, nor how much I want him to either.
I know that makes me sound like a slut, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is something about Christopher that I just can’t explain, something preternatural that drives me wild in his company. That and the fact that what happened on a purely emotional level was something stronger than anything I’ve experienced with anybody at any other point in my life. It’s like he knew exactly how to push my buttons and get my attention, more so even than I do.
Jasper thinks my imagination is running wild, and I’m exaggerating about what happened just to look cool. Whatever. Jasper doesn’t need to know the truth anyway, and perhaps it’s better if he doesn’t know.
With every spare moment I can concentrate, I read up. I check police records and go through long lists of witness statements, psychological profiling and evidence reports. I don’t even need to download the transcripts from the Garimund trials to know he didn’t do it, but I can’t work out who else it might be. There are potential culprits, but none of them fit the role perfectly. There is no one man, or woman, listed in any of the reports that doesn’t have some kind of alibi for at least one of the murders. If Christopher really does know who it is, it’s not someone the police have even considered checking out.
I visit the houses again, partly to remind myself that what happened definitely did, partly in the hope that I’ll see him again. I keep my phone charged and I try and stay focused enough to forget about him, but it’s much harder than I thought it ever would be.
I can’t help but feel like something big is going to happen soon, and I know when it does, I won’t be able to look away. It’s the same reason kids put salt on slugs or stamp on ants or pull the wings off crane flies, and why people slow down at accidents hoping to get a look at the motorcyclist whose head is hanging on by a thread of sinewy skin.
No-one likes to admit to it, but every human being is the same. We all are. We feed on raw emotion. Love, hate, anger, fear, envy, it swells us up and won’t let us look away. It’s all the same. We don’t even have the words to justify it. We have the look in our eyes and the sensation that beats out around our bodies of craving and desire and deep, primeval lust.
I have dreams of packs of dogs ripping away earth with sharpened claws, finding dead bodies I’ve buried in shallow graves, eyes nothing but darkened holes, and every time I do, I don’t wake up in a cold sweat, I stir with buzzing skin and a warmth that runs deep through my core, making my nipples thick and my pussy moist.
He’s going to kill again, and I want to be part of it. No, wait, I have to be part of it.
If I look closely at myself, I know that this is what I have always wanted. To understand. I want to see the look in his eyes when he does it. The look in hers when the life goes out of them.
I’m not a killer, but I am an observer. An obsessive. A dreamer. Not for the first time today, do I find myself picturing it happening, and my hand sliding under the waistband of my panties, to part my pussy lips with the thickness of my middle finger, so I can press it lightly against my moistened nub and roll it around in circles. The blood that drips in sweeping, glossy arcs down goose-pimpled skin. A pussy red like a tired eye and semen gathering at the edge of a moistened asshole. Christopher in behind me, his grip tight around my hips. My panties lowered but not pulled completely off me while Bone cuts through the skin and flesh around the wrist of his latest victim, to pluck the bone from her shredded perfection, warm and white in the soft yellow light.
I can feel him fucking me. Each thrust as the knife digs into the rubbery sack of flesh around her waist. Her tits wobbling, the nipples bruised and erect. Bitten into withdrawal, sensitive and raw.
Jasper wouldn’t understand. I’ve shown him snuff movies but he doesn’t see the art in them the same way I do. The same way I know Christopher does too.
I lay on my back, my knees up, my panties clinging to one leg and resting against my ankle. My fingers spreading, teasing a fizz out across my skin. Nothing is like it. Not even snuff.
I thought I’d never see anything better, but now I know there is, I want more of it. I want the real thing.
I imagine him doing it to me. I imagine Christopher above me, his weight pressed down against my chest, his cock pressed up against my pussy. I place my middle finger at the entrance to my hole, circle the opening and let the tip dip inside. Fuck it feels good. He could cut me and let the blood drain out of me. I’d be dead in less than a minute. I’d be one of the two hundred and six. I’m a virgin after all. Christopher would remember me even if no-one else did. Fucked to death by Bone.
I let my finger go to work, pumping back and forth inside my hole. I feel knuckles mash up against the swollen softness of my pussy lips. The fingers of my other hand tease my tits erect. They grasp the sinews at my neck and test the resolve of my throat.
I imagine the hand belongs to him.
I push and ride, crushing my strength onto my upturned hand, letting my pussy muscles grasp the bones. I roll onto my side, my left leg kicking out behind me, arched slightly to allow my other hand access. I sweep the edges, each turn drawing me closer to it. I can see death in all its glory and I’m climbing towards it, the flat edge of my two middle fingers trapping my clitoris between them to tease it back and forth like the near broken button of a dangerous explosive. I grab at fistfuls of bunched up bed sheets. I moan softly into the pillow, dissolving as the sound spreads away from me. I’m on the edge of the abyss, looking in.
I push myself as high as I can go and nearly break down when it explodes through me. I have to hold on tight and concentrate hard not to pass out. My pussy is so wet it feels like I’ve come a hundred times already. I flattened myself against the fabric of the duvet and rut against it until I come again, my clit
throbbing itself hard and tight. It takes a long time to come down.
When I pull my hand away from between my legs I notice how much I’m shivering. My nub is sticking up like a puppy’s tongue, and there is cum everywhere, still leaking from my tumescent mound. With each breath I can feel my pussy muscles clenching and relaxing, my asshole contracting as though it wants to take something inside.
If he were here I’d fuck him. I’d let him fuck me hard.
I gather cum up on the end of my finger and tease it into my anus. The sensation is so good I nearly come again, and I have to pull out after a while because I can’t take the sensitivity.
The snuff is still playing on the computer screen, but it pales in comparison to what I have going around my head. I want to see it again, but this time for real.
I just hope Christopher’s not lying.
Chapter 12
Christopher
There is something preternaturally exciting about a lie. It’s the power, I think, the ability to control your audience. To lead them where you want them to go, just with a few carefully chosen words. It makes my skin fizz and my cock throb. It could be something as simple as lying about what I’ve done today, or something more complex, like lying about Bone. We have an interesting relationship, him and I. And it’s about to get even more complex.
I had the rabbit’s paw treated and turned into a keyring. It now hangs from the key to the basement underneath my house. This is not a dusty space where I keep my work tools and old suitcases, it’s a network of rooms where I keep everything to do with Bone locked up. This is a secret, and not a lie, and when the time is right, I’ll show her.
Bone has been part of my life for a long time. It didn’t start with the explosion of the bunny rabbit all those years ago, it started much earlier than that, when he showed me how beautiful the world could really be, only if you looked at it the right way.
