Word Count: 397
He lays awake in the dark room thinking, thinking about you. Wondering if your eyes will swim with terror before they open black and wide in a dead stare. If your scream will be instantaneous with the knowledge of death as it circles into your view. If you’ll fight, if you’ll manage to scratch and draw blood. If you’ll sink to the floor in an unlovely pile. Your head slightly askew. Your arms helplessly flailed. Your knees buckled beneath you. That’s what he thinks about as he drifts into sleep.
Sometimes he rolls out the movies he has in his head of each one of his victims. The most individual and unique way each one managed her own dying. Some were so scared they molded themselves to his hands. He likes the soft-flicker of light and dark, black and white with a bright splash of red when the knife slits the skin.
He prefers to think about the women who will fill up his future. You’re only the next one in line. He knows that he really wants to see you naked. Knows that if he has planned it out right, he will have time. To strip off your clothes as you lay there unbreathing. To carve “LOVE” in the fringe of your bush. Like the panties he’s seen in the catalogs at his Aunt Janey’s when he was a kid.
When he can’t stand the anticipation any longer, when the need overcomes, he’ll follow you home. He’ll knock on your door and you’ll open it, smile, ask him in. He’ll have that drink, run out for Chinese, watch as you crack open the cookie and read the tiny print of your fortune. You’ll both laugh.
But he’ll still be laughing as your smile changes to horror. It’s that transition he studies between comfort and pain. Maybe he’ll carry you into the bedroom–if you haven’t already invited him into your bed. That would make his task easier, but not as enjoyable. For he likes the thought of unbuttoning your jeans, pulling them down from your hips. The zip of the knife slitting your shirt open. The snap of the bra releasing your breasts.
You won’t see the end of this story and he’s sorry for that. You, the star of the movie that will run in his mind till he needs to do it again.
