All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Two)

by Randall Farmer

  I glanced at Ed. He shivered in the cold, trying to make small talk. He was in every way a normal young man who had found a young woman he was interested in dating.

  Ed here would be in for a surprise.

  I didn’t respond to his small talk. After a few minutes, he started to get uncomfortable. He also figured out the problem with my groceries.

  “Where’s your car?” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  He turned around to face me. “Excuse me. Where is your car, so I can…” I smiled at him as he talked and his voice trailed off. I smiled wider and he flushed, the cold forgotten. I moved in a little closer to him.

  “I don’t have a car,” I told him. “I came on the bus.” My voice was a little bit husky.

  “Well, then,” he said, forcing cheerfulness to cover his awkwardness, “we’ll take these groceries over to the bus stop.” He headed over to the bus stop.

  He looked back at me when I didn’t follow.

  I smiled at him. He shifted, uncomfortable. “I’m free for a little while this afternoon,” I said. I smiled again, a small smile, and moved in close. I put my hand on his zit-speckled cheek, and spoke in a low voice. “If you can be available right now, you can drive me to your place, and we can spend some time together. But only if you’re available right now.”

  “I still, still have two hours left on my shift,” he said.

  “Leave early.”

  “I, uh, I. Yeah, uh, I can leave early. Wait right here. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.” He took off at a run, still carrying my groceries. A few paces into his run he put them down, and sped back into the store.

  Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at his apartment. His place was a cheap, seedy set of rooms on the fifth floor of a fifty-year-old or so six-story apartment building. No elevator. We climbed all four flights of stairs, leaving Ed puffing and me filled with energy. The flimsy door rattled as Ed fumbled with his key. He held the door for me after he opened it and put his keys back in his pocket, embarrassed and mumbling something about “My place doesn’t usually look like this.”

  Right. Sure.

  The apartment was a barely furnished mess, cluttered by trash and unwashed dishes. The only furniture in the living room was a thrift-store-special sofa, two flimsy tables, one of which held the television, and the other, the stereo. The stereo was far more expensive than anything in the room, placed against the far wall with albums scattered all around it. He liked Perry Como and the big bands, and he appeared embarrassed when I saw the albums. Stodgy, for a kid his age. I smiled.

  He treated me with utmost respect. “You um, you can have a seat on the couch,” he said. “Sorry about the mess. Uh, sorry. You can just dump all that stuff on the floor. Um, yeah. Do you want something to drink?” He turned to the kitchen, hoping, I think, the dishes weren’t piled as high as he remembered.

  I didn’t sit. I didn’t answer. I walked into the bathroom and put my diaphragm in, because I would be damned if I forgot it this time.

  I swear, few things in the world are filthier than a bachelor’s bathroom.

  “Hello?” he said. “Did I do something wrong?” He sounded about ready to break into tears.

  I ignored the filth. Not my problem. I found him staring at the front door, his back to me, when I came out of the bathroom. I didn’t say a word, instead coming up behind him to start taking off his clothes.

  He turned around, his eyes wide. “I thought you’d gone. I thought, uh, my clothes, uh. Uh, you really, uh, you want, uh, yeah. Uh…”

  I silenced him with a deep kiss, a lot hotter than he dreamed possible. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. I pushed him into the bedroom, never letting go of the kiss, and his eyes never lost their wide astonishment. I pushed him backwards, onto his rumpled, unmade bed, and all he managed to say was a breathless “Oh, wow.”

  Ed came equipped with a bunch of pre-conceived notions about how he should behave towards a girl. He wasn’t a virgin, but only barely, as clumsy and awkward as you might imagine. He kept trying to go slow and treat me as if I was some crushable fragile flower. He also kept trying to take the lead.

  I didn’t let that go on for more than about thirty seconds. I told him, in explicit detail, what I wanted him to do. I moved his hands where I wanted them and didn’t let him have a say in the matter. Things went much better once we started doing things my way.

  I discovered something interesting as we made love. Most of my previous experiences had been right after a kill, too juiced up to think and too concerned with my own sensations. This time, I was much more aware of my partner. I got a much better understanding of his feelings than I remembered being able to as a normal. I heard his heartbeat, smelled the scent of him, and felt his arousal through my skin. I knew how what I did affected him. I had, now, excellent control over my body, and I did things with a gentle touch that went through him like fire. Arousal is mostly mental, though. I was new and exciting and dangerous. I overwhelmed him.

  I enjoyed it. I also abused him a bit. I teased him without mercy, bringing him up to intense arousal, and keeping him on the edge for long, long periods of time. However, I did my best to make his release worth the wait.

  This was an interesting talent to discover, though not as noteworthy as mind reading or telekinesis would have been. I suspected I might be able to get a lot better at this with practice. Lots of practice sounded good.

  I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon. I needed something like this.

  I had been getting plenty of sex. Every time I killed, I slept with a man. I never got more, though. I spent days after a kill turned on, enduring my arousal and waiting for the sensations to pass. This was a hell of an improvement. This time I felt satisfied. I felt like I had been living on a starvation diet, and was getting a full meal for the first time.

  I would have to get more sex. I saw no reason to be miserable and go without, not with so many available men. If I got enough, my life would be so much more pleasant. With all the miseries in my life, I didn’t need to be creating any more.

  I rolled over on my elbows and studied Ed, his thin naked body lit by the afternoon light coming in from the narrow window. He lay on his back with a stunned expression on his face, overwhelmed. I imagined his limited experience, with one or more nervous traditional girls who shared his same lack of experience. Nervous and inexperience didn’t apply to me.

  He looked over at me, and frowned. I followed his eyes, realized what he was looking at, and swore to myself.

  Keaton had gone after me last night because of my problems with my last kill. She had peeled a considerable amount of skin off my stomach. The skin had healed quite a bit, and didn’t hurt much, but the skinning still looked pretty nasty.

  Ed got all concerned. He reached over a hand and tried to gently touch the spot. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Leave it,” I told him.

  “What happened? This must have been awful.” His voice dripped sympathy and support.

  “I said leave it alone,” I said, my voice cold. “Drop the subject.”

  He dropped the subject.

  Yes, I hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want him delving into my private life. Once upon a time I had wanted some big strong man to come to my rescue…a time long past. No rescue would be coming, and especially not from Ed here. I didn’t want to explain my problems, and I didn’t want him to know anything about Keaton. He wouldn’t live through the experience.

  Keaton would likely be a problem, anyway. She would find out about Ed, and I didn’t know how she would react. I expected she would order me to kill him. If she did, I would. I could see him dead, the hands and mouth that had so recently touched me lying slack in death. The image made a gruesome picture.

  As I considered the picture, trying to deal with the thought, something stirred in the foul place inside of me. Something from the dark and evil depths wanted to surface, something nasty and crue
l.

  I didn’t want to deal with this dark stirring now. I let my mind slip away, and turned my attention to more immediate things, turned on again. I reached over to Ed, and let the warm touch of life overwhelm my thoughts of death.

  I left in mid-evening, after Ed fixed me dinner. I was hungry again, but I didn’t want him to know how much I ate. I was sexually satiated for the first time since I became an Arm

  “Beth, can I call you?”

  I was busy putting my clothes back on from the latest. I would shower at home, I decided. I wouldn’t use his. I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t interested in his conversational abilities.

  “I, uh, I thought maybe we might go out on Saturday. I have to work Saturday, but I get off at 3:00, and I thought maybe we might go out to dinner, and maybe go see a movie? Would that be…” His words trailed off as I turned to him.

  “I’ll call you. Give me your phone number.”

  “Uh…” he stammered, unsure. The girl was supposed to let the man take the lead.

  I finished dressing. I pulled my false hair out from inside my dress, and came up to him. I put my hand up on his pocked cheek and told him “I’ll call you. We have to do things my way.” I ran my hand down his side and around to his back. I brought him close and kissed him.

  “Go write down your phone number,” I told him. He moved to do so, and I smiled as I watched him walk. His legs wobbled. He wrote his name and address on the paper with his phone number, and a number to contact him at work ‘for emergencies’.

  “Can I drive you home? You won’t have to worry about the bus, and I can drop you off where you live.”

  I had wondered when he would think of that.

  “Just drop me back off at the store,” I told him.

  “But, Beth, I can drop you off at your place. No trouble. Really. I’ll be glad to.”

  “We do things my way, remember? Drop me off at the store.”

  “But…”

  “My way.”

  Then I had a thought. Ed might be able to solve a major problem for me.

  “I do know one thing you might do for me,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m short of cash right now. If you could loan me some money…”

  “Um,” he hesitated.

  Damn. He wasn’t quite befuddled enough. I gave him a sideways smile, and said, “If I owe you money, I’ll have to come back to pay you back.” I moved in close to him, and ran my hands over his body.

  “Um,” he said again. “How much do you need?”

  I moved my hand up the middle of his chest. “Fifty dollars.” Fifty dollars would get me to Baltimore with some left over.

  “Uh, I don’t know if I have…”

  “Get it,” I told him.

  Like a miracle, Ed managed to find forty-six dollars and seventy-three cents for me.

  I felt funny taking money from him, using a low class trick like this.

  Oh, well. Low class. I didn’t care. Not really.

  The next day, I went to Baltimore.

  Keaton was still gone. I left the warehouse clean and food in the refrigerator, and rode the bus to Baltimore. I got to the city at mid-morning. Assuming I found a car, I would be able to leave Baltimore in mid-afternoon and still get back to the warehouse by 6:00. If I got lucky, Keaton wouldn’t make it home, but I needed to be ready, in case she did. I might have enough time to rob somebody or something.

  The first order of business was finding a car. I left the busy bus station and started walking along the road in front of it. The wide road was crowded with cars, the hum of engines, the talk of people and the occasional honking horn. I loved it.

  I wore my Beth O’Neal outfit and I didn’t attract any particular attention. I walked along in the brisk January air and enjoyed the city. The city was a wonderful place, mine to rob. I appreciated every broken bottle and grimy street as I made my plans.

  After about fifteen minutes, I turned into a quiet side street. A parking lot backed up on the rear of a Social Security office and Post Office. Several cars were parked at the meters, and no people lurked nearby. I found a meter with two hours of time remaining and went after the car, a Chevrolet, a huge thing with tail fins. A quick slip of the Slim Jim down into the lock popped the door right open. A few minutes later I drove my new car down the streets of Baltimore.

  This was exhilarating and wonderful. I did this crazy stuff all on my own and the world was a wonderful place.

  I spent too long in Baltimore having too much fun. I toured the city. I hunted briefly and non-productively. I found one of the local Focuses. I bought a map of the city. I decided I needed to pay attention to what was going on around me, and so I bought a newspaper and a copy of Time magazine. I found a small section about Dr. Zielinski in the newspaper. I couldn’t believe he was a homosexual, but the article implied so while droning on about the morals charges against him. I wondered what in the hell happened to him.

  I forced myself to leave, and I arrived back in Philadelphia a little before 5:00, driving my oversized Chevy. I spent some time on the way home trying to figure out what I would do with the car. Keaton would have my ass if I brought the vehicle anywhere near the warehouse. I thought of Ed, though, and another way he might be useful. I dropped the car off by his apartment, found him home, and gave him a kiss to make him all hot and bothered. I told him to keep an eye on my car. I would have liked to spend some more time with him, but I needed to be home by 6:00, in case Keaton came home.

  Keaton arrived about 8:00 while I did my evening exercises. I was hanging from a pair of rings, holding the rings in my hands, and with my arms stretched straight out to my sides. I held a twenty-pound dumbbell between my feet, and raised and lowered my legs. The trick was to lift slowly enough that I didn’t start swinging. I was glad I hadn’t given in to my initial impulse to skip using the dumbbell.

  I didn’t stop with my exercises. Keaton would have been angry with me if I did.

  I never did adjust to her mind reading trick. I thought she might take a few minutes to figure out about Ed. Foolish me. The first words out of her mouth were, “So who did you find to fuck?”

  Keaton had crass down to an art form.

  I gave her every detail about Ed and about my trip to Baltimore. Thankfully, she didn’t find anything to punish me for. She also didn’t order me to kill Ed. The only thing she did was take the remainder of the money he lent me. She also warned me that I needed to replace my stolen car with one acquired in a more legal fashion as soon as possible.

  I never did repay Ed his money. But then, I never intended to.

  Ed turned out to be useful for quite some time. I got in the habit of visiting him as often as possible in the couple of days after my kills. I also practiced my bedtime skills with him and managed to learn quite a bit. I still overwhelmed him.

  Such an innocent man. He never had sex like this before, or gotten used the way I used him. He fell head over heels into an irrational juvenile infatuation with me. I could have done anything with him.

  The next day I robbed a liquor store in Baltimore. Slowly, but surely, I became a successful petty thief.

  (13)

  Baltimore: nothing. Washington DC: nothing. Richmond: nothing. Norfolk and Virginia Beach: nothing. I turned in for the night, utterly disgusted with myself.

  Hunting was a disaster. Hunting was always a disaster. The more hunting I did, the more I appreciated how lucky I had been on my first hunt. Keaton’s hunting techniques didn’t work, at least for me. I needed to figure out what worked for me on my own.

  Many months would pass before I realized Keaton wasn’t good at hunting either.

  I lay on the hard motel bed and stared at the ceiling. In the dark.

  The futility of my life wore on me. When I came back from a successful hunt, Keaton responded by being in an evil temper. Her reaction didn’t make sense from a normal human perspective, but when I thought about my reaction to her kills I began to understand. Truthful
ly, I didn’t deal with her successes well, either. When she came in, high from a kill, her exuberance was a knife twisting inside of me. I wanted juice so badly for myself that her success hurt. I burned with jealousy.

  I couldn’t do anything about my reactions. However, if she reacted emotionally in the same way, I was lucky to be alive.

  I decided to stay away from her after I killed and dampen my good cheer. The last thing I wanted was give her jealousy the opportunity to express itself. Since she didn’t want to see me in such a mood, I needed to keep contact to a minimum.

  My prey turned out to be a young woman who lived in a small house at the edge of Raleigh. I found her late at night, while she and her husband were fast asleep in bed. He woke up when I tried to take the woman. I learned something new: trying to fight with someone while my juice monkey sang its sweet song in my ear isn’t easy.

  I punched him too hard and killed him.

  I panicked a little and decided to take the woman elsewhere for my pleasures. They were smokers, so I set it up to look like he had been smoking in bed and burned down the house. At least that is what I planned. I never did find out if my ruse worked.

  I took the woman, now bound and gagged, out to her car. I drove off, looking for a motel, but my juice monkey had other ideas. I didn’t make it two miles before I found a dark alley and drained her juice.

  A bright light shining into my eyes through the windshield disturbed my pleasure.

  “Break it up in there,” I heard. “You kids need to get on home.”

  I pulled my head up groggily, too stoned to react well. The dead body of my kill flopped back against the seat. I whimpered for my lost pleasure.

  “Break it up in there, kids.” The local cop kept shining his light through the windshield. With the bright glare of the flashlight in my eyes, I barely saw his face, but I did catch his frown. He didn’t like the way the body of my kill flopped. Plus, the fact we were both women didn’t fit his teenage lover scenario.