Our brief for Creative Writing homework this week was to get outside our comfort zone and write a narrative piece getting under the skin of another character. Have I succeeded?
Back home now, he straightway went upstairs and unlocked the back bedroom door. Flicking on the lights he sat down at his work bench in the otherwise completely dark room. His bed had long ago been moved out, down to what had been the dining room. He’d boarded up the windows when he’d started, not wanting any other eyes in here. No one else ever came into this room. Not yet. For now they were his and only his. His rewards.
It had started the night in the park, all those years ago, as he was dragging the red head into the undergrowth. She’d been surprisingly easy. Too easy in retrospect. Always walking the same route home after her late shift finished. Her black skirt tight across her backside, her black top taut against her chest, nipples hard, her unfettered boobs bouncing, almost jumping out, demanding attention. No doubt the punters in the pub salivated over the bar at them as she pulled their pints, or wanked themselves off under coats conveniently draped across their knees as they squatted on the bar stools. He’d salivated too you might say, he joked as he recalled his first. She always had pride of place. His first. Susan Jones. Such a tease, always joking with the clientele, always smiling at them as if they were Sean Connery, as if you were the only man left in the world, as if she had eyes for only you. What sorry drunken fools they were, these middle aged, greying men who sat alone and pushed back the beers night after night. Most of them wouldn’t be able to get it up if she was laid out in front of them for the taking, he thought. But not him, he’d had no such problem even there in the middle of the park in the quiet of the wee small hours of the night, he’d had her, back and front. She’d been easy to subdue, her tiny frame overwhelmed by his. His knife first at and then in her throat. He’d known to be careful, not to leave his DNA, to wear gloves, to cover his hair in his balaclava and to use a condom, much as he hated them. But it was the only way. He had to stop her taunting everyone, parading around like this, and this was the only way to stop their gawping. Her terror excited him, propelled him on as he thrust in again and again, climaxing with her last gasp as she lay bleeding out. As he rearranged himself before the walk home, he’d stood examining his work, the naked body laid out now in a perfect X, his knife marks carved out the cross on her chest. But something was not right, not as he had foreseen it. Her eyes were still open. Beautiful brown eyes. That wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be seeing her entry into Hell, she should be in panic, filled with terror of the unseen as she felt the external flames in the Darkness scorch her, she should not be able to see what would happen to her at the hands of the Devil and all his kind. So he’d cut them out.
Tonight he’d sent another miscreant soul to her Deliverance. By now he had got his work down to a fine art. He laid them out their own homes now, in their own beds. He’d found this added their shock, their horror, their fear and often to their initial submissiveness. He found he could spend more time with them this way, both before and after. He found that his thrill and organism was different before and after. Their before warmth giving way to a tissue tightening he found doubly stimulating. He increasingly enjoyed his work, and he felt that his knife work had improved, gaining a certain flair resulting in a more artistic final presentation. He did however maintain his discipline, neatly laying them out correctly for the Devil’s pleasure, and each time was permitted his reward.
He worked quickly and efficiently to mount tonight’s reward. Mixing the plaster of Paris, then ensuring their perfect alignment, measuring their exact spacing with his ruler he set them in place. Once dried and hard, he draw back the curtain hanging across the far wall and mounted them along with their name and date on the next available space. Each night he stood eyeing up his rewards collection reading each in turn, starting with the brown of Susan Jones, 14th November 2013 and tonight climaxing with the blue of Marcy Dawson, 26 February 2015. Only after completing this final part of this ritual did he strip off, drop his clothes in the washer, and shower before making supper and taking it up to his mother in the front bedroom.
© Sheila Ash 30th January 2015