Chapter One Draft of "Terminally Pretty"

The girl stood on a street corner, smoking a cigarette with angst. She was a little nervous that her parents, or possibly her judgmental uncle, would see her. An average day, in other words. That all ended when a stranger in a nondescript sedan pulled up. I wonder if he thinks I'm a hooker, she thought.

Then he aimed a scary looking pistol at her.

“Get in,” he said casually, without a hint of aggression. It was rather friendly, really. A lift from a friend. The gun said otherwise.

His eyes were mesmerizing.

Unsure of any other option, Pet moved to get in. As she did so, he put the gun away. She sat down and looked at him, then closed the door. Without really thinking about it, she locked it. Finally, he looked over at her, but left the transmission in ‘park’. She looked back quizzically. 

“Seatbelt?” he said, more a statement than a question.

Pet fastened it, fumbling only slightly.

Satisfied she was secure, he began to drive. After he was on the road for a bit, incredibly, he laid his hand on the seat beside her, as if to hold her hand. He said nothing, but looked forward as he drove. He didn’t look so much pensive, more like shy. Pet found the situation somehow adorable.

Always one to take life’s little pleasures where she could, she decided she had little to lose. And plenty to gain, she supposed. Following his cue, she lightly held his hand, maintaining the same forward stare. He relaxed a bit, after the initial shockwave had passed from his hand to his heart.

They drove in silence, lightly squeezing each other’s hands and smiling faintly. It was nice. Pet enjoyed it, and she had been on creepier dates with boys. Hell, she’d had creepier encounters with family members.

He let go, once, to turn on the radio. It wasn’t anything she cared to hear, so after a polite ten seconds, she then let go of his hand instead, and changed the station to a local college station, alternative rock.

“Hey!” her abductor blurted out. He sounded genuinely hurt. How dare she overrule his music selection?

She clasped his hand again, a bit more energetically than before. He made a mental note to punish her for her impertinence. But later. For now, he wanted to enjoy the drive.

Pet felt the urge, once, to ask where they were going, but she resisted.

“I want you to know,” he said finally, “that you do this of your own freewill.”

“Freewill?” she exclaimed. “You pointed a gun at me!”

“Did I?” he asked, and he looked genuinely confused. “Even if I did, freewill.”

“What?” An angry non-question.

“It was your choice to get in or not.”

Pet knew better than to argue with a maniac, even if he was kind of cute. Boys her own age never did it for her. They were socially awkward, inept, cliquish, insincere, and a laundry list of other negative character traits. But when a forty or fifty year old man wants to get to know you…

Sufficed to say, she could have the pants charmed off of her by the right gentleman. A gentleman who knows what he wants. And what she needs. Pet couldn’t believe she was having these thoughts in her situation. And yet there it was, she was scared and excited.

He drove them to a generic neighborhood, notable for its featurelessness. He stopped in front of a large two-story brick home and opened the garage. When he had pulled fully inside, he closed it again, neat as you please. He opened the door to get out and she released her seat belt, preparing to do the same. He motioned for her to stay out, and proceeded to exit, closing the door behind him.

“Fool,” she thought. He left the pistol between the seats. She could feel his eyes burning away at her. For some reason, not a lack of self-preservation, she didn’t grab the gun. She had a feeling about this guy. Maybe she was crazy, too, she thought.

He rounded the corner and opened the door for her. He didn’t pull her out or even touch her, just extended his hand to her, and she accepted it and let him help her out.

Freewill, she mused.

But he didn’t release her hand either. His grip was firm but gentle. She liked that.

The door from the garage to the house opened into an alcove that she suspected led to the kitchen. Interesting, she thought. I hope he doesn’t just eat me. Instead, he led her out of the side door and up to the front entrance.

Again, Pet scoffed. Now people may have seen her here. And a lack of clean room measures meant she was already covered in his DNA should she escape. Or chose to escape, she thought vaguely.

The foyer was clean, yet as indistinct as the suburb it resided in.

He left the light on, and reached into the next room to turn on the next set of lights. Like he was scared of the dark or something. But the light brought astonishment to her eyes. The living room was bare, save for shelves lining the walls.

On them sat every BDSM and bondage device you could imagine. She’d visited a few adult toy stores, and she knew leather anything was pricey. Pet was staring at a small fortune, by her meager standards. On the floors were a few larger objects. Devices, really. She recognized the Sybian, a sort of vibrating saddle for women, but this one had been modified to sport an eight inch dildo of enormous girth.

The other was even more outlandish. It was sort of a single-wheeled bicycle. You sat in a chair and pedaled. The pedal indirectly drove a piston. The piston moved an arm. And the arm sported another large dildo. She noted the chrome and the little details, like the channels on the wheel that let you adjust the depth of penetration. She decided it cost as much as the rest of the room put together.

He led her past the kitchen, which didn’t seem nearly as frightening as she’d imagined it. Not really ‘Better Homes and Gardens’, but neither ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ He turned on the hall light. The first door on the left was a bathroom. He didn’t turn that light on, but he paused with her in front of the door so she could see it was there. For what reason, she wasn’t sure. Whether threat or promise, she took it in stride. When you decided you were as good as dead, you could be rather happy-go-lucky about things.

She kept gravitating to that one thought, that she was going to die. But at the same time, she had the strangest feeling that everything was going to be all right. Which really didn’t jibe with her, as she didn’t feel being dead would be all right. Not at all.

There were four more doors, two on each side of the hall. He led her to the first, on the right. It was a fully furnished girl’s room, replete with queen-sized canopy bed. Pet squealed in delight and ran in. Within seconds, she was jumping on the bed, her head stretching the fabric of the canopy.

He only stood and watched from a little more than arm’s length away. Eventually she tired of this and sat down on the bed, laughing and breathing deeply. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. She was beautiful. And when smiling, doubly so. When she was breathing normally again he extended his hand to her.

“Come on,” he said.

“But…”

He only held her hand and pulled her along. The next room was a genuine dungeon, in that it resembled the basement of a castle.

It had rock-hewn walls, with ancient looking shackles attached to great chains. There was an x-shaped, wooden table with red leather padding. There was also an iron maiden, and a fireplace. In a holder to the side stood several pokers and brands.

“Brutal,” she said. “Medieval.”

He accepted her faint praise with graciousness. And it was here that he embraced her. He pulled her close, still holding one hand, and held her face as he kissed her hard for what seemed like minutes. It was a lot more intense than she was used to. Then he stopped and stared into her eyes with the same intensity with which he kissed her.

Finally, she dropped her eyes to the floor, subverting her will to his own, and he led her by the wrist to the third room. This time, there was no light switch. All the same, the room was designed to inspire awe.

It was an entire Satanic chapel. At the rear center of the room there was an elevated platform that held an altar, a massive slab of smoothly cut stone It was easily large enough to display, for instance, the naked body of an adult female. Above it hung a red, leather inverted cross in the same style as the ‘X’ in the dungeon. The platform itself was lined with racks of tall candles.

On the floor in the center of the room was a perfect pentagram, a shorter candle burning at each of the five points. To the left of the room was a symbol she recognized from the cover of the Necronomicon. On the right was an Egyptian ankh in embossed gold metal. As elaborate as the tableau was, Pet was only mildly impressed.

“Not bad,” she said. You got a few things wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your first mistake is talking to me and humanizing me. True serial killers are unable to perform any real bonding. I’m something of an expert,” she said somewhat smugly. “That,” she gestured, “appears on the cover of the Necronomicon, a known work of fiction.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The tip-off is the mention of Abdul Azrahad, the mad Arab. H.P. Lovecraft. I’m unaware of that particular symbol appearing elsewhere. Too hard to research. So, okay. As ooky symbols go, it’s cool. Because it’s like you’re invoking Cthulu and the elder gods. The great old ones. Which is fucking crazy, like Discordians hailing Eris.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Eris, a particularly mischievous Greek goddess. She believed in creative destruction. She made a golden apple engraved with the word ‘kaliste’, “to the prettiest one”. She then tossed it into a room where the other goddesses were attending a party, provoking them into a fight between themselves. My point is, it's foolish to hail Eris, just as it would be to herald the return of Cthulu. Because sometimes they listen...”

He absorbed her lecture in silence.

“The cross is tacky, but it works in a sexual context, this not being an actual Satanic chapel, but a funhouse parody of one. The Baphomet is cool, but it’s a very overused cliché. Especially when you consider that the Church of Satan is about as scary as Ayn Rand on Halloween. And this ankh! This just destroys everything. Why?”

“It’s…uh, pagan?”

“It’s a symbol of male/female union. If you had intended to make that implication, that would have been a better answer.”

“And now I know.”

Pet rummaged through her purse and pulled out a cassette. “Can you play this?” she asked him.

He looked deep into her eyes and then shook his head. But when she handed him the tape, he accepted it, with the reserve one would greet a dead mouse fetched by a favorite cat. His free right hand went to his pocket, where he produced a garage door opener-sized beeper and read the number on its cracked LCD.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

Pet made note of the fact that there was a phone somewhere in the house.

She brought the ball-gag and other items he left with her to the altar and sat down on it. She could definitely see a need for a pillow, perhaps a long, round one of red satin. The stone slab’s surface was polished to mirror-like degree, and was icy cold to the touch.

Again, she went into her over-sized purse, this time producing a peculiar brass pipe and lighter. She’d taken a good three hits when he walked back into the room with a cassette boom-box.

“What are you doing?” he asked with some annoyance.

“Relaxing,” she said “Want some?”

“It’s illegal!”

“Kidnapping, rape and murder, now that’s illegal,” she said with a rather bored air about her as she took a huge final pull from her Protopipe, and put it back into her epic purse.

“You assume facts not in evidence.”

“Such as?”

“Such as kidnapping. I think we had our talk about freewill already.”

“And the rape and murder?”

“Rape and murder?”

He put the red ball-gag in her mouth and secured the buckle. He then directed her to lie down on her back on the slab. She became wracked with a series of involuntary shivers. He was momentarily distracted by his beeper again, but his attention soon returned to Pet when he heard her speak.

“Is this thing supposed to keep me from talking?” she asked him.

“Put on that tape. It’s perfect for this room. It’s really atmospheric, like a Halloween sound effects record. The singer, King Diamond, sings like a girl and says he love Satan, but I know these are love songs about a girl. Plus they are really jazzy and cool, as a band. It’s beautiful, if metal can be beautiful.”

He looked at her but said nothing.

“Why not?” she asked him.

“Those bands are bad.”

“Oh, please. The guy is a caveman. He’s an atheist, at best. And you’re one to talk about evil.”

“Am I evil?” he asked

“I guess not,” she admitted. “Tighten the buckle until it pulls my lips and cheeks in a little, so I can’t talk.”

She raised her head and he did so, and then he started her tape. Organ music and laughter filled the room, culminating in loud, fast metal that was indeed jazzy, but coupled with high-pitched wailing and blood-curdling growls. He was by various turns frightened and disgusted.

And turned on.

Pet looked at him with rheumy eyes, already half in a trance. He began to run his hands slowly up her legs from her ankles and she dropped her head back down. He touched her nearly everywhere, to the point of being able to smell her excitement. She was wet to an embarrassing degree.

With one hand he held her face and neck while the other touched everywhere except her breasts and between her legs. Pet began to moan through her ball-gag.

And then she felt his beeper vibrate.

He released her, a trifle hastily, she noted, and then climbed down from the altar and left without so much as a single word. She found that she was not having fun anymore. Being tied up and alone was not enjoyable at all. And now that her excitement had been somewhat quenched by the intrusion and subtle disrespect, correctly perceived or not, Pet discovered she had to pee.

She tried to wait for his return, but soon realized she wouldn’t really be able to communicate with him anyway. So she cupped her hands and pulled them through the loosely buckled leather cuffs.

Pet was humming and smiling, pleased with herself for having so cleverly escaped. When he had tightened the restraints she had managed to put her wrists in an awkward position that afforded her some wiggle room.

She walked unclothed to the door and looked both ways in the hallway like a child tentatively crossing the street. Pet was haunted by the belief that she had done something wrong in her relatively juvenile life, but she was unsure what it could be. Seeing and hearing no one, she fairly tip-toed her way down the hall to the bathroom, where she naturally turned on the light and shut the door.

Shortly thereafter, the man returned to find Pet missing, having in essence left him at the altar. He panicked and ran from the room, grabbing a knife as he exited.

When he saw the light on under the bathroom door, he felt foolish. And then angry about feeling foolish. He stood to the left of the door and when Pet began to walk down the hall, grabbed her from behind.

She saw the knife before she felt it, the same one that had unnerved her when she saw it the first time in the grotto. By then it was too late to scream, his hand now covering her mouth so tightly it hurt. He simply returned her to the altar and tied her up again, never saying a word.

The hand with the knife hovered between her spread thighs.

Well, this is it, Pet thought, I’m going to die.

He rotated his elbow, raring back to drive the blade home, and said in a whisper, “I am your punishment.”

Even in the last seconds of her life, she was incredibly turned on. As the knife blade flew toward her crotch, she found herself thinking, “And I am yours.”

As the last possible instant, he spun the knife around in a deft maneuver that was clearly a practiced one. Instead of puncturing her with the blade, the over-sized handle slammed home, leaving Pet writhing in orgasm with the blade protruding.

For a few moments it quivered and vibrated like a tuning fork as she squirmed and rolled from side to side within the confines of her bonds. When she finally looked up, he was gone. Pet hoped he would be back, and soon. He had tied her much tighter the second time and she wasn’t sure she could escape again.

After a while, she began to suspect she had been abandoned. She focused her efforts on a series of contractions intended to push the knife handle out. It was over-sized and wooden, which made it slow going despite her outstanding muscular control. Two minutes later, it dropped to the altar with a clatter just as he re-entered the room.

Wordlessly, he removed her gag and began to untie her. She sat up, rubbing her wrists as he released her ankles. Neither mentioned the knife. Pet swung her legs around and sat at the edge of the altar, naked and unashamed.

“That was fun,” she cooed. “For a little while, I thought you were gonna kill me.”

The face that was looking at her turned away. His hand went to his pocket, and she knew his pager was going off again.

“I have to go,” he said. “My wife…”

“Your wife?” she shrieked, leaping down and advancing on him, causing him to retreat from the finger jabbing at his chest. “I knew you were no serial killer! You don’t fit the profile.”

Pet didn’t wonder why she felt disappointed.

“Asshole,” she hissed.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now what?” she mocked. “You’re asking me what to do?”

He looked into her violet eyes pleadingly.

“You leave. I stay. And in return, you give me…everything I want.” She looked at him, awaiting his response to her challenge.

“Or?” he asked.

“Or you kill me. Or you go to prison for life. Or I kill you. There are lots of ways to go with this, I think. It’s all the same to me,” she sniffed.

Checkmated, his eyes searched the floor.

“Can I go?” he asked without looking up.

“One more thing,” she said, causing him to look up at her.

“What?”

“Kiss me…”

Chapter Two:

http://jasonzchristie.blogspot.com/2012/09/chapter-two-of-terminally-pretty.html