031/2012 The Strangler

Word Count:  507

His preferred method was strangulation. His favorite means was a pair of their own silk panties. He liked lacy, black or petal peach, and he really didn’t care for thongs.

He liked to take them first to a fine restaurant. He tended towards Italian or French. The wine was always exquisite, made their eyes soft and liquid, made them lean their bodies into the table revealing decolletage. Or leaning back in their chair, which to him indicated a sense of comfort, of trust.

Brunettes were all he would take out to dinner, later murdering them in their own apartment or house when invited in for coffee, an aperitif, inevitably, sex. He loved big velvet eyes that grew even larger in confusion and fear. Pink pouty lips that opened like a guppy puffing for air. Her hair would be longish, falling like silk from her head as he slowly garroted her lovely throat tighter and tighter until that expression of innocence and acceptance came over her face. Stayed there as he carefully arranged her limbs in a soft sexual pose. He’d linger a while, sometimes smoothing the cool silk of her panties against his cheek. He always took them with him before he turned off the lights, locked the door, and sadly left.

Not that he felt remorse, but rather a deep melancholia for the necessity of what he did and the subsequent loss of perhaps another evening of good food and wine, making love to them one more time. No, he didn’t consider what he did as immoral, or even unusual. He would tell you that he’d learned a long time ago that he was not a rare abnormality of mankind, but that he was one of very few brave enough to act on their impulses. He could say that he’d met hundreds, maybe more, murderous souls in his lifetime. He could look into your eyes and see how well you controlled it, how much you were able to accept of your natural instinct and how much still danced in a frenzy of conflict inside.

She invited him in and opened a bottle of wine. They had good conversation, were amused and inspired by much the same things. He made love to her slowly, appreciating how her skin glowed bluish-white in the moonlight, how her lips circled her moans. When he reached for her panties he’d set under her pillow, it was with a slight hesitation. But he knew that he couldn’t, couldn’t let her go.

She never made even the slightest of sounds. Her legs were still warmly wrapped around him to hold him inside. Her lips were just the slightest bit open, almost curved into a smile. Her eyes leveled at his were fearless. He tightened the thin rope of silk on her neck, stared into the deep recesses of her eyes.

And he knew, just a scant instant before he felt the knife plunge up through his ribs and into his heart; knew, that he’d finally wined, dined, and bedded his own kind.