Before I ever pulled into my driveway, I’d decided against killing them. It wasn’t a good idea. If one hooker out of a group went missing, it was no big deal. But when the same guy picked up two from a group and neither of them returned, well then the rest of the group would put two and two together. Even a dumb whore could come up with four and point the cops in my direction. I couldn’t have that.
I turned my thoughts from murder to having a threesome. How bad could it be? There would be twice as many titties and twice as many asses. The best part was I would get it all for half the price. Sounded like a win to me.
The women walked up the sidewalk behind me, waiting patiently for me to unlock the door and let them in. I stood aside and watched as they walked past me. Then I entered.
“Follow me,” I said and started up the stairs.
Behind me, the whores laughed. I stopped ascending the steps and turned to face them, wondering what the hell was so funny.
The two of them were having a hearty chuckle. One was doubled over at the waist with her hands on her knees. The other was holding her belly with her head thrown back.
“What? What the hell are you laughing at?”
The one holding her belly said, “You live with your mother.”
I felt my cheeks flush red with anger and embarrassment.
“She needs me to help her out. What’s wrong with that?”
“I can’t believe you live with your mom. What are you—like forty?”
My jaw clenched. There was no trace of embarrassment now. It was pure anger. “I’m twenty-four.”
“Man, you are not aging well,” said the hooker with the crow’s feet around her eyes.
“Still,” said the other one through laughter. “What kind of grown man lives at home?”
I wanted to scream at them and tell them that while I may still live with my mother, at least I had a home and I wasn’t a whore who sold myself to strangers for a few bucks. But instead of defending myself to them with words that they wouldn’t listen to anyway, I chose to return to my original plan of killing them. I’d deal with the consequences later if I had to. If anyone had ever deserved to die, it was these two. And Cathy Ann of course.
Fed up with both of the chuckle sisters, I said, “Come on. Let’s do this.” I turned and started up the stairs again.
Two steps. That’s all I managed to take before something hit the back of my head. Hard.
My legs buckled and I went down, unable to stop myself or break my fall. I saw the stairs coming up at me and felt myself falling, but before the impact came the darkness.
I woke some time later with a furiously pounding head. At first, I didn’t recall why I was lying on the stairs, couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there or why my head hurt. Then it came back to me along with a fresh surge of anger.
My legs wobbled when I stood, causing me to grip the banister tightly in case they gave out. I looked around for the bitches that had done this to me. I didn’t see or hear them anywhere in the house, but I was damn sure going to look for them.
The knot on the back of my head throbbed angrily with each beat of my heart as I began my search of the house, staggering and fumbling along, moving past the broken lamp that lay on the floor. If my mother ever asked why her favorite lamp was broken, I’d lie and say I knocked it off the end table. Then I’d tell her I threw it away, when in reality I will have shoved it up the ass of the whore who hit me with it.
The only person in the house was me. It was obvious they’d robbed me, though they’d done a pretty shitty job of it. Sure, my wallet had been rummaged, the fifty bucks taken out and everything else left alone. And yes, they’d taken some of my mother’s polished silver from the china hutch in the dining room, but had they taken the time to search the house—really search it—they would’ve found many more valuables. I had hundreds of dollars in cash in my bedroom, squirreled away for a rainy day. My mother had plenty of jewelry that was worth a lot of money, some of it passed down for generations. Many more treasures could’ve been found if only they’d had the sense to look. But they didn’t.
Stupid whores.
I couldn’t help but wonder why they’d gone to so much trouble to rob me. They didn’t make off with much, and it certainly wasn’t enough to justify the work it took to get it. Plus they now had to try to get all way back across town to where I’d picked them up. It seemed ridiculous to me. So much trouble for so little reward. But you couldn’t try to make sense of drug-addled whores. They were crazy. They operated on a completely different wavelength than everyone else.
Unfortunately for them, so did I.
Once I was sure they weren’t in the house, I left, locking the door behind me. They couldn’t have made it far on foot, especially in this weather. The snow hadn’t reached blizzard proportions yet but more than half a foot lay on the ground already and there was no sign that it was going to let up anytime soon.
The snow was undoubtedly working against the women. Not only was it hard to walk through half a foot of the powdery white stuff while wearing high heels, but they left a perfect trail for me to follow.
Walking in their tracks, snow caking on the tips of my work boots, I headed down the street, turned right at the corner, and kept going.
I had to give them credit for one thing. They had made it a lot further than I figured they would have. That meant I must’ve been unconscious a lot longer than I thought.
It was another four blocks before I saw them. They walked side by side, chattering and laughing about the red-haired fool they’d just robbed. One of the women lit a joint and took a drag off it, the aroma trailing behind her as she walked and smoked, then passed it to the other woman.
As they walked along, getting higher and gigglier with each step, I closed the distance between us, sneaking up behind them silently. They were unaware of my presence, their footsteps masking mine. It was also in my favor that the two inconsiderate hookers were loud, in both their conversation and their laughter. They didn’t care if they woke the whole neighborhood. They were selfish bitches.
Suddenly I wished I had grabbed a weapon of some sort from the house before I left. A hammer. A piece of rope. Hell, even the broken lamp would’ve worked. The heavy pewter base had been enough to knock me out, so it would’ve surely caved their skulls in. Especially considering the force I was planning to put behind it. But I hadn’t brought a weapon and it was too late to turn back now. All I had were my hands, which was plenty when killing one whore. Killing two would prove to be much more difficult.
Before making a move I thought carefully about what I was going to do and tried to figure out the best way to go about it. When I decided on a method, I acted.
I rushed forward and shoved the bitch on the right, putting my hands flat on her back and pushing with all my strength. She squealed and flew forward, plopping face-down in the snow several feet away. The other whore gasped and turned to face me.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
I punched her in the face, my fist connecting solidly with her nose. She stumbled as she retreated away from me but she somehow managed to stay upright.
With lips covered in the blood that gushed from her nose, she cursed me as I stepped closer and punched her again, bringing it from home this time. My fist hit her jaw hard, snapping her head around from the force of the blow and leaving her body with no choice but to follow. There was no staying on her feet this time. She hit the snow like a sack of potatoes.
This bought me enough time to deal with the other whore, who was just getting to her feet.
“You wanna fuck with me, asshole?” she shouted. “Come on.”
I stepped toward her, but hesitated when I saw the knife. It was so odd to see it out here, out in the open with the streetlight glinting off the blade. A whore holding a knife, intent on cutting me—or more likely stabbing me—wasn’t something I saw every day. Never had I expected a hooker to be carrying a weapon. Yet this one was which meant there were prob
ably more who were as well. I made a mental note of that, figuring it would do me well in the future to remember such a thing.
My first thought after the shock of seeing the knife wore off was that it belonged to my mother. Then I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t a piece of my mother’s flatware that had been stolen by the hooker. It was a switchblade, a knife meant for business.
Perhaps I should’ve been more frightened than I was, but it was hard to be scared of a small, thin woman who was in no way dressed for the winter weather, brandishing a knife as if it was something she did every day. It was a comical sight and I nearly laughed. Nearly. I probably would’ve released a chuckle at the very least, but before any sound escaped me she lunged forward and plunged the knife into my side.
Once the blade penetrated my skin, the situation stopped being amusing. Stunned, I jumped back and grabbed my left side. Instead of feeling the pain—which was sharp and fiery—I focused more on the fact that she had the audacity to stab me, and then I became enraged.
“You fucking bitch. You stabbed me.”
“No shit. And I’ll do it again, you red headed son of a bitch.”
“Why the hell did you stab me?” It was pretty obvious why she’d done it, but I just couldn’t believe it. No one had ever stabbed me before. No one had ever even tried.
“Why do you think?”
I took a step toward her.
“Go away, asshole,” she shouted. “If you come any closer, I’ll cut your pecker off and feed it to the dogs.”
It was her voice, loud and shrill, that snapped me out of my state of shock. Afraid that her shouts would bring residents out of their homes, or at the very least cause them to press their nosy faces to the windows to see what was going on outside, I knew I had to act and fast.
Her stance indicated that she was about to lunge forward again. I waited for her to make her move and when she did, I side-stepped her. Before she realized that she’d failed to stab me again, I had my hands on her back, shoving with all my strength. She went down fast and hard, falling face-down into the snow and launching into a string of cuss words that would make a seasoned sailor blush.
Instead of pushing herself up and getting to her feet, she started to roll onto her side. That’s when I dropped down and fell on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
In her right hand, she clutched the switchblade, waving it at her side as best she could in a ridiculous effort to reach around behind her and cut me. She wasn’t strong enough to pull off such a move, not even on her best day. Not only was she lying prone with me atop her, but the snow made it even more difficult for her to move. Even with the knife, she was defenseless.
I put one hand on her flailing arm just in case she managed to contort it enough to reach me. Then I put the other hand on the back of her head and pushed hard, shoving her face down in the snow. It wasn’t easy. She had a lot of fight in her for a scrawny whore, bucking and writhing beneath me like a bull trying to shed its rider. But I managed to hold her there until the screaming and the struggling stopped and her body lay still beneath me. The image of her inhaling the cold, wet snow, suffocating on it as it filled her throat and lungs, excited me. I didn’t know why, but the thought of her being unable to breathe because of me was thrilling.
Out of breath, I stood. For a moment, I looked down at her and enjoyed the feeling of the rush that came from taking her life. Pure adrenaline coursed through my veins, banging my heartbeat against my eardrums like a steady gong.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the feeling for very long. Something struck my back. It didn’t necessarily hurt, but it didn’t feel great either. I threw up my arms to shield my face as I turned to see what was happening. The other whore had come to and was now swinging her purse wildly at me, hitting my arms and hands.
I grabbed for the purse and missed. As she swung again, I used both hands to grab the strap and yank it from her hands before tossing it on the ground behind me.
Her eyes grew wide as she realized that she was defenseless. Her purse had been her only weapon and it was now gone. Her friend lay dead on the ground. It was just her and me. She sized me up for a couple of seconds, weighing her options before making her decision, the only real choice she had to make.
With blood smeared across her face and still oozing from her broken nose, she turned and ran. It wasn’t the quick getaway she thought it would be. Not with her wearing high heels in the snow. But she tried.
With a smile on my face I waited, giving her a head start to boost her confidence before I took her down like a hunted deer. Just like I did her friend.
The first glance over her shoulder let her see me several feet away, giving chase but having little luck. When she looked over her shoulder the second and final time, I was there. Right there, reaching out for her and pulling her back against me. I wrapped my arm around her neck and squeezed.
She kicked and bucked in my arms, trying to hurt me and break my grip on her, but it was no use. I had her and she wasn’t going anywhere except to hell, where all the dirty whores belonged.
When the fight left her body and took with it her final thoughts, I released my grip on her, letting her drop to the ground.
I pulled the switchblade from her lifeless hand and dragged both flat sides of the blade across the back of her shirt, ridding it of the blood. My blood. Then I retracted the blade and stuck the knife in my pocket. It was mine now.
It was after midnight. The snow had picked up, producing big, fat flakes that fell heavily to the ground and piled up higher with each passing minute. I stood between two dead whores on a sidewalk just a few blocks from my house. There was little to no chance that there were witnesses to what had happened, but I looked around just in case.
There. At the end of the street near the corner, a man stood frozen in place. I almost overlooked him because he was still as a statue and cloaked in shadows. In his hand he held a leash. At the other end of that leash, a small dog was trying to take a shit in the snow without getting its ass cold.
The man stared at me. I didn’t know how much he’d seen, but I knew it was too much.
Seeing the man standing there like that made my heart race. If he hadn’t seen anything he would be walking his dog like usual. Walking. Not standing still. He was trying to avoid being seen, which meant that he’d seen me and what I had done.
A fresh and different burst of adrenaline pumped through my body. It was lightning-fast and before I knew it, I was racing down the street toward the nosy dog-walker.
He didn’t move until I was halfway to him. Then he turned, dropped the leash, and took off running.
He turned at the corner.
So did I.
He ran off the sidewalk and into the street.
So did I.
He ran back onto the sidewalk.
So did I.
He left the sidewalk once more, running across someone’s lawn.
I followed closely behind, slowly gaining on him in spite of his efforts to shake me.
Shouting for help, he started up the sidewalk to a house. The windows were dark and no car was parked in the driveway. If I was lucky, really lucky, no one would be home to hear his shouts.
In the near distance, I heard the man’s dog yapping as it looked for its owner. I hoped it was confused and unable to track our steps, at least until I was finished with this guy and long gone. The last thing I needed was a barking dog waking up the neighbors.
The man headed up the steps to the house, tripping on the second riser. His misstep was in my favor.
I sprang forward, falling on him before he was able to get up. I wrapped my arm around his throat and squeezed, leaning back and pulling him with me as we rolled down the steps and onto the lawn. At first the maneuver worked. But then he leaned his head forward and quickly slammed it back against my face, momentarily rendering me weak. He seized the opportunity to break free of my grasp and begin to crawl away.
Knowing that if he got away he would
call the cops and lead them straight to me, I broke out of my shock and moved, throwing my body forward just in time to grab his leg. He tripped and fell face-first onto the snowy ground.
Before he had a chance to do more than roll onto his back, I jumped on top of him. Again and again I punched his face, hitting his nose, his jaw, and his head. To my cold hands, it was like hitting concrete. I was afraid that after another blow or maybe two, I’d break my knuckles against his bones. So I stopped swinging and began searching for a weapon.
I glanced around and found a row of bricks, mostly hidden under the snow, lining a flower bed along the front of the porch. With one hand around the man’s throat, I leaned out and plucked a brick from its place among the others, happy to feel the weight of the cold clay in my hands.
The man’s eyes widened as he watched me raise the brick high above my head. He watched me deliver the first three whacks to his skull. After that, he saw nothing.
Once I was satisfied that he would never be able to tell anyone what he saw I stood and walked away, holding my throbbing side as I went.
After dragging the body of each of the hookers behind a row of hedges, I ran all the way back to my house.
It wasn’t easy to run in the snow, especially since I was already tired from chasing the dog walker. The first block was uneventful. While running the second block, I tripped a few times but managed to stay on my feet. Running the third block, I couldn’t tell where the sidewalk ended and the street began. I got disoriented and accidentally stepped off the curb, twisting my ankle. I went down hard, landing on my left side. The side with the stab wound.
The fall knocked the wind out of me. I laid there catching my breath and gritting my teeth against the pain in my side and ankle. I told myself there would be time to nurse my wounds later. Right now I had to move. There was work to be done and bodies to dispose of. Ignoring the pain, I got to my feet and continued on my way to my house.
Held, Pushed, and 22918 (3 Complete Novels) Page 44
