Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  I stepped into the room and looked around, pushing the door closed. Two large suitcases lay open on the bed. A voice came from the bathroom, and the significance of the second suitcase struck home.

  “David?” a woman called. “David, who’s at the door?”

  I dropped the tire iron on top of David, pulled the .45, and moved toward the bathroom.

  “David?” she called again, worry creeping into her voice.

  I turned the knob and threw the bathroom door full open. Inside, an Asian woman, probably in her late thirties with chin-length, black hair, sat naked in the bathtub, bubbles and candles surrounding her. Her thin body stiffened, and her pretty face registered shock.

  I leveled my .45 at her, and she stared at me in wide-eyed fear.

  “Don’t scream,” I said. “Don’t speak…don’t even think about it, or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off. Do you understand?”

  Her bottom jaw hung slack and quivered, but she didn’t say anything. She nodded.

  The terror in her eyes had a different flavor to it than I’d seen in anyone so far —one that spoke of recognition. The fright of the recurring victim—the fear of one who not only knows what is to come but has already experienced it. The thought of it excited me.

  “Stand up,” I ordered.

  Complying immediately, she stood. She shivered from fearful anticipation, soapsuds clinging to her amber flesh. Her nipples, each about the size of a pinkie finger’s tip, stood erect in the cool air of the room, their hardness accenting her small breasts.

  My gaze traveled over the length of her body a few times, lingering on all the best areas. I looked into her eyes again. The terror had grown more palpable under my scrutiny.

  “Please,” she choked in a small, scared voice, “don’t kill me.”

  “I told you not to speak,” I snapped. “You wanna die?”

  She bit her lip—hard—and shook her head, clutching her hands together between her breasts.

  “Get in there and sit on the bed.”

  She climbed out of the tub and scurried past me into the other room. The sound of her gasp and crying drifted back to me. She’d seen David’s body. I stepped into the bedroom. She wasn’t leaning over his corpse or standing dumbly beside him like most women would; instead, she sat on the bed just like I’d told her to, her legs crossed. Other than that, she hadn’t made any move to cover herself. In fact, she hadn’t done anything but what I’d told her.

  Finally, someone who can take orders….

  I sat down next to her on the bed. “Was he your husband?” I asked.

  She trembled all over at my nearness and shook her head.

  “You can speak,” I said. “Why were you with him?”

  “We worked together,” she managed, the sound of restrained tears in her voice. “We were running away.”

  “Were you in love?”

  She sat still for a second then shook her head. “No. He loved me…I think, but I just wanted to get away from my husband.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He beats me.” Her words came out easily going over familiar territory. She turned and looked me full in the face. “Please,” she pleaded, her gaze locking onto mine, “please…I don’t want to die. I’ll do anything.”

  I studied her face for a minute. “Anything?”

  She lowered her head and turned away from me to stare, hard, at the floor. Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

  “Anything?” I asked again, menace tingeing my voice.

  “Yes.”

  “All right then,” I said. “Get down on your knees before me.”

  She did, her gaze still on the floor.

  I ran my fingers down the side of her face, almost tenderly, until they rested under her chin. I raised her head until her soft, brown eyes met the steel of my own.

  “What could you give me,” I asked her, bringing the .45 up to her temple, “to compare with this?”

  The gun leapt to action, firing into her temple at point blank, sending her brains and bits of skull and flesh and hair scattering across the room.

  From there, I strode straight to the front office. To my surprise, the old man sat fast asleep behind his counter. I laughed to myself. I’d pictured him being my biggest worry, a suspicious old hero calling the police and saving the day.

  I walked behind the counter, wrapped my arms around his neck, and snatched him to his feet. He awoke, startled, and struggled against my arms. It didn’t do him any good, though. I choked him until his body went limp in my arms. I increased the pressure and held him for another two minutes. Just to make sure….

  I dropped him and checked the guest log. It showed rooms 315, 214, and my room as occupied. Room 112, the other one I’d seen, had checked out sometime around 6:30.

  A clipboard containing a checklist of rooms to be cleaned hung on a hook beside the guest log. All but the occupied rooms were checked “done”. At the bottom, the maid’s signature and her time off shift was marked at 7:21. That explained the fifth car I’d seen.

  I checked the cash register and found two-hundred-and-some dollars. I pocketed the money, grabbed the passkey to room 214, and made my way there.

  Room 214 stood in darkness, possibly a very bad sign. I put my ear to the door and listened. Inside, the muffled moaning and panting of people fucking resounded.

  Well, chances are good that whoever’s in there didn’t hear my scream.

  I almost left them alone…but decided against it. They still might have seen my car, after all, and besides, I’d already come up here, so why not kill them too.

  I slid the passkey into the lock and opened the door. A beam of illumination from the motel’s outside lights shot past me into the room, spotlighting a couple in bed. The girl’s legs rested on the man’s shoulders. The fuckers stopped and turned to stare at me in surprise.

  “What the fuck do you think…,” the man started.

  I popped two rounds into him.

  My first shot hit clean, the round striking the forehead, a little above and between the eyes. The next shot, though, sloppy and poorly fired, barely caught him in the shoulder (not that the second shot mattered all that much. I mean, the first one had killed him just fine). His body reeled from the impact of the hits, and he tumbled backwards off the bed.

  The girl screamed and tried her best to crawl backwards through the wall. I walked over to her and put my gun to her forehead.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Now!”

  My words didn’t seem to register in her mind at all. She went on screaming. If anything, she got louder.

  I slapped her hard and shoved the bloody gun into her mouth.

  “Now, I said ‘shut up’. Nod if you understand that.”

  Whimpering around the gun’s barrel and staring up at me through big, horrified eyes, she nodded, the movement slight. I took the gun out of her mouth.

  Keeping the .45 pointed at her face, I stepped back to look her over. Ok looking—not ugly—chunky but not fat. Her long, blonde hair hung in messy, tangled-up curls down to her shoulders.

  Her tits were pretty nice (her best feature), and a trendy little belly-button ring with a thin silver chain attached to it ran around her waist, accentuating her pudgy tummy.

  She panted, almost to the point of hyperventilation, and pulled herself up into a fetal ball of sorts, rocking back and forth.

  “Shhh,” I comforted her, walking over to stand beside the bed. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Her eyes darted from right to left, and she rocked faster.

  “Shhh.” I pressed the .45 against her cheek. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  One final, deep sob escaped her lips, and I shot her in her face.

  The bullet ripped through her cheek and jaw, shredding skin and shattering bone, but not killing her. Such wounds seldom do.

  She tried to scream through the blood and loose flesh of her face, but the sound ended up being more like someone blowing into a PVC pipe. Frantic, she leapt from t
he bed and danced around the room, mad from pain and fear, a grotesque picture of beauty, trying to find an escape.

  “Shhh.” I leveled the gun at her stomach, sighting in on her belly ring. “It’s going to be ok.”

  Another round slammed into her, tearing through her abdomen and hammering her to the ground with impact and pain.

  She made the PVC howl again.

  I walked over and stood next to her. “Shhh.” I trained the .45 on her forehead. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you ever again.”

  The final round snapped her head back against the floor and ended her life.

  I went back and searched the doctor for money. He only had about forty-five dollars on him, so I riffled through the suitcases, finding close to four thousand. But more importantly, I found the doctor’s bag, chock full of general practice and surgical supplies. I smiled at my fortune, thinking of all the avenues of depravity this new toy presented me with.

  Gathering up the bag and placing my .45 inside it, I pocketed the money, grabbed my tire iron, and left.

  Chapter Five

  On my way home, I stopped at a Wal-Mart to pick up slacks and a white button down shirt. There is nothing like a mega-chain that doesn’t blink twice when someone comes shopping in a sweaty wife-beater under-shirt and disgustingly filthy pants. I changed into my new outfit in the restroom. Afterwards, I bought some pizza to eat and smeared the sauce on my clothes so that I looked like I’d been serving Italian food all evening. Pulling in my driveway around two a.m., lights shone inside my house, so I knew Rachel had waited up for me.

  She sat on the living room couch—just sat there. No TV on, no book to read, nothing. She turned to face me. I could see she’d been crying.

  “Hey,” I said tentatively. “What’s up?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” she shot back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for starters, I called your work today, and they told me you quit three days ago.”

  I sighed, puffing out my cheeks on the exhale.

  Her tears kicked back in. “So, d’you wanna tell me where you’ve been going the last couple of nights, or whose shirt that is you’re wearing, ‘cause it sure as hell isn’t one of the ones I’ve been washing every couple days for the past six months!”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but she cut me short

  “No, don’t bother lying to me,” she said through sobs, “I know who it belongs to. They said it on the news tonight. The killer left a burned up shirt behind. The only thing he took from those people’s house was just the one shirt.” She stood up as she spoke, screaming each of the last four words.

  “Rachel….”

  “What?” she screamed, “what are you gonna tell me? Huh? That you had a good reason for this?”

  “I…I…. Damnit, I just had to kill him, ok? You’ve heard me talking about wanting to do this for years. Well, fuck it, the time came, all right, so I fuckin’ killed him.”

  She shook her head and let out a hollow sounding laugh. “You think I’m mad about the fuckin’ murder?” she sneered.

  “Aren’t you?” I asked, confused.

  “You’ve been lying to me!” she screeched. “The past four nights you’ve told me lie after lie.” She sank back to the couch and covered her face, sobbing again. “You never used to lie to me….”

  I walked over to the couch and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in my own. “I’m sorry. I…I just didn’t know how you’d react.”

  Without another thought, I told her everything I’d been doing over the last few days. Stoical, she sat through it—until I reached the part about fucking Janine. At that point, she pulled back from me, snatched her hands away from mine, and cried harder. I pressed on, though, detailing every act of murder I’d committed. To her credit, she listened, even while crying, without interrupting me once. I finished, and we just sat there, staring at each other in silence.

  Finally, she spoke.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said, measuring each word. “I’ve always known that you’re a sick fuck, but…my God.”

  “What are you gonna do?” I asked.

  “What can I do? I love you. I have always loved you. I chose to spend my life with you til death do us part—our deaths, not someone else’s. I’m not going to throw our marriage away just because you’ve finally found what makes you happy.” She paused and looked at me. “It does make you happy, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can’t explain the way it feels. It’s like nothing else has ever been for me. It’s like…like, for an instant, I’m a god. It’s unbelievable.”

  “Well, then, it’s settled,” she announced. “From now on, I’m going with you.”

  I reeled in surprise at her declaration, rocking back on my heels to stare in wide-eyed disbelief. Of all the things I’d thought to hear her say, of everything I’d expected her to do, I’d never even considered the possibility that she’d want to go along.

  “Are you serious?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah.” She smiled in that way she had (a way that spoke volumes on innocence and sensuality). “Why not? But what are we gonna do for money?”

  I laughed and pulled out the wad of cash I’d amassed over the past four days. “We’ll do just fine.”

  She saw the money, and her smile widened. I pulled her up to me and kissed her. Caught up in our love, we stripped each other’s clothes off and fell to the floor in a flurry of tastes and touches, bites and caresses, and fucked like murderers in cahoots.

  * * * * *

  It’s hard to say what it is about murder that makes it so—for lack of a better word—spiritual. Maybe it’s the power, the raw strength that’s derived from destroying not just something but someone…destroying a living, thinking human being. After all, if the first step to understanding others is to understand oneself, the reverse must also be true.

  See, I know that in my mind—in the realm of my imagination—there lies thousands upon millions of universes, peoples, concepts, worlds, and an infinite amount of realities. It’s only logical to assume that the same capacity for creativity exists within each and every single person on the face of the planet. And, if that’s true, if each person contains infinity within their mind, and I kill them, I’m not just killing a person, I’m obliterating the infinite.

  Think about that—infinity! It’s a near impossible concept to comprehend and yet it’s locked, secure, within the mind of every man, woman, and child in existence. To squash that beneath my heel, to eradicate another man’s infinity…it’s a feeling beyond my ability to explain.

  Of course, that’s all bullshit. There’s really nothing so existential running through my mind during a kill. It’s much more visceral, like a sexual evil that transcends mere adultery and fornication. Consider the idea that it’s the thrill of giving in to suppressed desire that constitutes the bulk of what we as a society find sexually stimulating. It follows that giving in to the basest of desires, enacting death upon another (the Granddaddy of universally repressed desires), is the ultimate in sexual stimulation through the fulfillment of want.

  To me, that is what evil and sex—have they ever not been joined together?— are: doing exactly what you want to do, whenever you want to do it.

  Then again, maybe I just like to kill.

  Or, maybe I’m lashing out against a society that has too many inane rules.

  Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m possessed by a demon or some such evil spirit. Hell, I could even be a fledgling god. After all, “If you kill one, you’re a murderer; if you kill a million, you’re a conqueror; but if you kill everyone, you’re a god.”

  The list of possible reasons for my actions is endless, too expansive to mention, and, to be truthful, it’s mostly composed of bullshit and regurgitated tripe from liberal apologists who spend their days finding reasons to defend the indefensible because the morally upright voting bloc is already taken. I think I know what the real reasons are. Perhaps
you will, too, after you’ve finished reading this.

  Whatever the reason is, the feeling I get from it is unlike any other. It’s addictive. I’m drawn to it again and again. It controls my life—consumes my life. It is my life.

  What’s odd about killing, though, is the need it seems to foster in its perpetrators for a refinement of its application. Make no mistake about it, true murder is art and, like any art form, it starts out primitive, as little more than an outpouring of emotions. But, if it’s performed more and more often, a need to elevate it to a higher level of style and skill arises, a need that demands attention, a need that gnaws away at the soul of the artist until he cedes control to it.

  The doctor’s tools didn’t help the gnawing either. If anything, they prodded me to move on to the next echelon of murder-art and challenged me to expand my concept of diversity. They were the first of many tools I have found along the way to mastering my art.

  * * * * *

  My wife and I left our house the next evening at around 7:30 p.m. to hunt for victims. We had no set plan—we didn’t know whom we were going to kill or, for that matter, where we were going to do it. It being Rachel’s first time, I’d promised to let her pick out our victims.

  Since we didn’t know what our situation or circumstances would be once we set down to the actual murder, we brought along a host of different items for the trip: the doctor’s bag, my .45, and the tire iron. Rachel grabbed the dealer’s old gun, his crack, and some money—just in case.

  We tooled around town in search of just the right victim, a tedious procedure to say the least, especially after the quick paced, focused hunts I’d been doing. I started to regret my decision to let Rachel choose. Luckily, fate intervened on my behalf.

  We drove down the local cruising street, West Tusc., until a Jeep shot up alongside our car and ended our search. Two young guys in its front seats, both blonde and both decked out in the current trend of suburban regalia, shouted obscenities at every one they passed. They were good-sized guys and obviously felt more than capable of handling anyone who might object to the torrent of expletives they unleashed.