The noise in his head intensified, so loud he could feel it. Pulsing and expanding, it pushed painfully against his skull. Frank slowed as he rubbed furiously at his temples. Amid the panic, rage—hot and white and quivering—was building low in his belly. He couldn’t control it; he couldn’t control anything anymore!
The sudden sharp, biting sound of heels clicking the pavement brought his spiraling thoughts slamming to a halt. Everything froze and then slowly started back up, sluggish at first, as if he were stuck inside a slow-motion action scene. The footsteps grew louder, faster, and then all at once everything suddenly sped back up, came into clear, crisp focus.
His breathing shallow and his heart racing, he started to jog. Anticipation was building again. That delicious warmth was filling him. His hands twitched. He turned the corner—
“Shit!” A slight woman teetered precariously on her heels before him. Frank reached out and grabbed her arm, keeping her upright. The smell of her hit him like a brick to the face. Stale beer and unwashed skin and something else—an underlying rot.
She was a working girl who looked to be in her late twenties, wearing a tiny little yellow number that left very little to the imagination. Not that there was very much of her to see.
She was too thin, wasting away. Black hair hung thin and limp around an angular face. Bloodshot eyes were ringed in smudged eye makeup. Red lipstick had smeared pink across one jutting cheekbone. There were dirt stains amid small scrapes up and down her pale legs, as if she’d spent the entire night on her knees in back alleyways.
She had been pretty once, maybe even beautiful, but the years hadn’t been kind to her. He turned her arm, eyeing the track marks along the crook. She hadn’t been kind to herself either.
“How much?” he asked.
She attempted seduction as she smiled limply. “Depends on what you want,” she slurred. “You want my hand, that’ll be ten. You want my mouth, that’s twenty. You want my pussy, that’s gonna run you a solid fifty.”
Excitement surged and Frank’s fingers flexed, digging into her arm. She didn’t appear to notice.
“I’ll give you a cool hundred to do whatever I want,” he said.
She blinked. “You an ass fucker? Or you wantin’ to piss on me?” She shook her head and sighed noisily. “Man, I want the money up front.” Dirty fingers, topped with cracked and broken fingernails, beckoned him to pay. A thin gold chain glinted from around her wrist, a small charm in the shape of a heart hanging from it. He took a half second to eye the jewelry. It looked real, and he wondered why she hadn’t pawned it. Did it hold some sort of emotional value, or had she stolen it?
Releasing her, Frank dug his wallet from his back pocket and drew two bills from inside. She made a grab for the cash, and he quickly flicked it just out of her reach and jerked his chin toward the small walkway between two nearby buildings. “In there.”
Following behind her, Frank observed the drugged sway of her gait, the way the straps of her dress kept falling down her arms, and wondered how many men had used her tonight. Not that he particularly cared, but he believed himself to be something of a people person. That is, when he could stomach the messy, unpredictable way so many people chose to live their lives, Frank enjoyed observing them. Often times it was his speculation that made what was going to come next all the more enjoyable for him.
For instance, Frank guessed that this whore had been working these same streets for the last decade or so, the last few years of which she’d started shooting junk. He surmised that her prices were cheap for two reasons. One, because she worked alone—there was no pimp holding a gun to her head, wanting his cut. And two, cheaper prices were more appealing to your average schmuck who wanted to get off and get home. Cheaper prices meant more customers, and more customers meant she’d be able to keep herself good and stocked with her daily dose of poison.
Partway down the alley the whore paused and swayed, turning to face him, half eclipsed in darkness, half lit by the moon. Frank approached her and pushed her into total darkness. His thoughts slid to the thick blade strapped to his belt, and a shudder of excitement rippled through him.
She’d had a family once, he supposed as he looked down at her. But whoever and wherever they were, they’d long since forgotten about her. There’d be no one to care, no one to grieve her. Hell, chances were she’d end up unclaimed, left to rot away in a nameless city grave.
Or maybe there was someone left. Maybe a grandmother or a sister. Maybe she’d taken off in the middle of the night, maybe they hadn’t seen or heard from her in years, and once they got word of her death, they’d—
Frank’s thoughts flickered, then dimmed, and then flickered again as an idea began forming in the deepest, darkest regions of his mind. At first he shoved the thoughts away, instantly dismissing them, and then…
He veered back and studied them, wondering…
“Pay up,” the whore said, her hand outstretched. Frank set the bills on her palm, watching as she tucked them swiftly down the front of her dress.
“How you want me—”
He grabbed her neck, cutting off her words and most of her air. While her eyes bulged with surprise and she clawed at his hand, he carried her the remaining several feet toward the alley wall, her shoes dragging noisily along the cement.
As he pushed her back against the wall, her legs flailed and she tore at his hand, gauging thin slices into his skin with her jagged nails. Frank hardly felt it. He was too focused, too ready, too excited for what was to come to care about half-assed scratches made by a dying whore. With his free hand, he gripped the handle of his blade and slid it from its sheath.
Staring down at her, his insides were on fire, his skin twitching, his gut burning with hot anticipation. But it was even more than that. What he was feeling, it was more than just some cheap thrill.
Slowly he dragged the tip of his knife up her side, savoring the precise moment that she realized she was going to die. Frank often wondered what went through their minds at that moment. Regrets, maybe? Did they think of someone they’d be leaving behind? Or were they simply consumed with fear?
One, two, he counted, and when he reached three, he plunged the blade into her side.
With each thrust of the blade, Frank’s breathing quickened. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, watching with rapt delight as the flicker in the woman’s protruding eyes began to dull.
There was something so personal, so intimate, about watching another person die, even more so when you were the one to steal the life from them. Much like birth, death was every bit as beautiful, if not more so. And to be the reason… it was almost as if… almost as if you weren’t just witnessing a miracle, but causing one.
His head clear, his thoughts in perfect order, he released the whore, and her body folded quickly to the ground, her insides spilling out of her. Sheathing his blade, Frank bent down over the body and studied his kill, smiling faintly. Carefully lifting her hand so as not to disturb the rest of her, he yanked the gold chain from her wrist and slipped it into his pocket.
