Fiends

    Charles nodded. He gazed at the wound. He watched the strands of red slide down her gleaming skin. They made the bath water pink between her legs. She had a hairy place down there. He couldn’t see her dingus. He stared, trying to find it even though he knew he shouldn’t be looking at that place. But he couldn’t help himself. He felt sick and tight.

    You didn’t cut if off, did you?

    Cut off what, honey?

    You know, your dingus.

    She laughed softly. Oh, darling, mommys don’t have dinguses. Here. And then she took gentle hold of his hand and guided it down into the pink, hot water. She slid it against her body. Against a cut - no, not just a cut - a huge, open gash with slippery edges. He tried to jerk his hand away, but she tightened her grip and kept it there. Go on, feel it, she said.

    But doesn’t it hurt? he asked.

    Not at all.

    It was almost as long as his hand. Warm and slick inside. And very deep. She squirmed a little as his fingers explored.

    Her voice had a funny sound to it when she said, I’m made this way. All mommys are. She released his hand, but he kept it there. That’s enough, now, honey. You'd better put that Bandaid on my leg before I bleed to death.

    Then Charles had the bandage ready. As he lowered it toward the small bleeding cut on her leg, she said, You aren’t gonna faint or anything, are you? But it wasn’t his mother’s voice. He turned his head. The woman sprawled in the tub was Lynn.

***

    At dawn, groggy and restless, Charles climbed out of bed. He didn’t know whether he had slept at all. Maybe a little. If so, his sleep had been a turmoil of dreams so vivid that they might have been memories or hallucinations.

    He felt better after a long shower. Returning to his bedroom, he sat down and stared at the alarm clock. A quarter till six. That gave him just more than ten hours before returning to work at the library. And seeing Lynn again.

    He saw her naked beneath him, writhing as he slit into her creamy skin.

    ‘No!’ he blurted, and stomped his foot on the floor.

    There were ways to prevent it. Tricks. He’d worked out lots of tricks over the years to feed his urges - to ease the needs, to keep some control.

    Weller Hall seemed huge and empty. Charles knew that it wasn’t empty. But he saw no one as he eased the door shut and made his way to the staircase. Those few students and professors unlucky enough to be burdened with ‘eight-o’clocks’ were already snug in the classrooms, probably yawning and rubbing their eyes and wishing they were still in bed.

    He climbed four creaky stairs, then stopped. He listened. Beyond the sounds of his own rough breathing and heartbeat, he heard a distant voice. Probably Dr Chitwood. Dr Shithead to the students who had to suffer through his mandatory (this being a university of Methodist origin) History of Christianity class. Known as Heist of Christ. Not only mandatory, but boring, and forever scheduled for 8 a.m.

    It was one of only three classes taking place in Weller Hall on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at such an ungodly hour. Chitwoods’s room was right at the top of the stairs.

    Grinning, Charles pulled out his knife. He pried it open and dug into the smooth, worn wood of the banister. He carved a neat, two-inch slot down the rail’s top. He scraped it clean of splinters. Crouching, he ran his thumb over a grimy stair. He rubbed his thumb against the pale cut on the handrail, darkening it with dirt, camouflaging it.

    Using needle-nosed pliers, he snugged an injector blade into the slot.

    He straightened up and admired his work.

    The edge of the blade protruded just a little bit above the surface of the rail. It was hardly visible at all.

    Shivering with excitement, Charles hurried outside. He waited on a bench and watched the entrance to Weller Hall.

    This’ll be great, he thought. It was always great.

    But he’d never done it on campus before. He began to worry about that. He even considered returning to the stairway and pulling out the blade. He could walk into town and set up the trap somewhere else, somewhere safer.

    He didn’t want to do that, though. Too often, the trick ended up wasted on somebody old and ugly. He couldn’t take a chance on that happening. He needed to slit a co-ed, a fresh young woman. One like Lynn.

    The minutes dragged by. When people began wandering into the building, Charles feared that he might miss the event. He waited a while longer, fidgeting. Then he rose from the bench, trotted up the concrete steps, and rushed inside.

    A few students were wandering the corridor, lingering near doorways, entering classrooms. Nobody on the stairs. He strolled to the far side of the hall. He removed a paperback copy of Finnegan’s Wake from his briefcase, opened the book, leaned back against the wall, and pretended to read.

    From here, he had a good view of the stairway.

    The book trembled in his hands.

    He held his breath when a couple of girls walked past him and turned toward the stairway. They looked like freshmen. They acted like freshmen, the way they talked so loudly and laughed and gestured.

    The girl on the razor’s side of the stairs held books to her chest with her left arm. Her right arm swung free. At the first stair, she rested her hand on the banister. It slid up the rail as she began to climb.

    Her shiny blonde hair swayed against her back. She wore a sleeveless sweatshirt. Her arms were slender and dusky. Her white shorts were very tight. Charles could see the outline of her panties. Skimpy things.

    His heart slammed.

    As she stepped from the third stair to the fourth, she jerked her hand off the railing.

    Got her!

    But she didn’t flinch or cry out. She simply chopped her hand through the air. Some kind of damn gesture to accompany whatever inane point she was making to her friend.

    She was almost to the landing before her hand returned to the banister.

    Charles sighed. He felt robbed.

    It’s not over yet, he told himself.

    She’d been so perfect, though. Pretty and blonde and slender like Lynn. A few years younger, but otherwise just right.

    I couldn’t have seen the look on her face, anyway, he consoled himself.

    From above came a thunder of footfalls.

    Charles perked up. Heist of Christ was out, the students stampeding to escape. In seconds, the first of them rounded the landing and rushed down the lower flight. Trembling with excitement, Charles watched those near the banister. A boy in the lead. Luckily, his arm was busy clamping books to his hips. Behind him came a lithe brunette, breasts jiggling the front of her T-shirt. But she carried a book bag by its straps and didn’t bother with the rail.

    Coming down behind her was a fat guy in a sweatsuit. But behind him was a real beauty with flowing golden hair, her shoulders bare, her torso hugged by a bright yellow tube top. Her hand was on the banister!

    Yes!

    ‘Ow! Shit!’

    The fat guy.

    No!

    He jerked his hand off the railing and halted so abruptly that the blonde nearly crashed into him. He lifted his hand to his crimson, stunned face. Blood dripped off, streaking the front of his sweatshirt. ‘Fuckin’A! Looka this! Jeeeeez!’

    Kids started to crowd around him.