at a time. I didn’t have much luck as my eyes continued to roam while I mentally ticked off the facts.
The victim was an African-American male, roughly in his mid to late forties as near as I could tell. They hadn’t yet told me his age, so this was merely a guess on my part. Considering the deeply contorted mix of pain and fear frozen on his face, I could have been way off.
It was impossible to ignore that he was all but completely nude, the only exception to that fact being what was probably a small fortune in leather gear. Of course, none of it really covered much since it primarily took the form of harnesses and restraints. It also couldn’t escape notice that all of these items had been well put to their intended uses.
The victim was bound securely to the bed, spread eagle and on his back. From my present angle, I could see what appeared to be a taut nylon rope looping through a metal D-ring on one of the ankle cuffs. I would later find out that this is exactly what it was and that it had been criss-crossed beneath and through the bed frame before being threaded into similar rings on the other ankle cuff and both wrist restraints. It had been pulled tight enough to place visible stress on the man’s muscles, almost to the point of overextension.
Whoever had done this was obviously well versed in extreme bondage techniques. Just as important, in my mind at least, was that the victim had either been unconscious or had allowed this to be done to him voluntarily. Given the nature of the restraints, I think we were all betting on the latter.
I forced my wandering gaze to return to his twisted face and tried desperately to ward myself against reliving his pain. I could feel it pressing against me, and I wanted no part of it.
Standing out amid his pained features was the apple. As Ben had emphasized earlier, it couldn’t be missed, primarily because it was protruding from the corpse’s mouth. Even at first glance, it was obvious that the fruit had been jammed well into his oral cavity, so far in fact that I doubted it could be removed in one piece without first dislocating his jaw.
I absently reached up and massaged that same joint on my own face. It was still throbbing with a dull ache from the earlier episode, and I suspected that I now knew why.
Below that, the man’s neck and chest were bathed in his own blood; some of it was still damp enough to glisten in the incandescent light of the overhead fixture. A spatter of arterial spray left a telltale pattern across the headboard and wall. The source of the rusting crimson was the puckered wound that sliced deeply into his throat, literally from ear to ear.
For some reason there was a pillow shoved beneath the back of his head. I doubted that it was intended for his comfort, but I couldn’t be sure for what purpose it had been tucked there. I had a feeling, however, that something deeper and far more selfish was behind its placement.
Had I not known better, I would have sworn I was standing on the set of a horror movie and that the dead body in front of me was an incredible endeavor in special effects makeup. I might have been able to convince myself of it if it weren’t for the intensity of the fear that still lingered within these walls and was desperately trying to reach its gelid tendrils through my defenses.
The sharp noise of a blaring horn out on Lindbergh Boulevard briefly snapped me from my trance, and I noticed that a stunned hush had fallen over us all. Be it the feeling of fear or simply the visual horror, we were each being deeply affected by the scene. I continued to stare, not knowing what else to do. I struggled to understand the full magnitude of what had happened here, and as each moment passed, yet another disturbing layer of the crime revealed itself to me.
The flash unit strobed again, and this time the photographer lowered the camera and shuddered as he nodded toward the corpse. “You know, I hurt just thinking about it, much less taking pictures of it.”
I followed his nod toward what was most likely the object of my friend’s frustrated embarrassment. It was something I knew I had noticed initially, but somehow my subconscious had kicked in, forcing me to avoid seeing again until now.
Among the restraints gracing the dead man’s body was a device that appeared to be constructed of metal rings held together by some type of adjustable straps. Had I seen it lying on a table instead of where it was currently attached, I probably wouldn’t have had any idea what it was. However, since it ensconced his penis, the purpose of the apparatus was painfully clear. In fact, the severe constriction of its design and the almost tourniquet-like firmness with which it was applied was in all likelihood why the organ had not fallen completely flaccid even after the victim had taken his final breath.
However, as disconcerting a sight as it was, a far more horrifying vision lay just below, near the base of the torture implement. In fact, it was so downright obscene that I had to blink once again just to make sure it wasn’t my imagination.
It wasn’t.
A ragged flap of bloody flesh hung loosely between his legs. Dried blood was smeared across his inner thighs, and a large crimson stain on the dingy linens was rusting into darker shades.
He had been castrated.
My mind flashed on something I had happened to notice upon first entering the room. While I had wondered about it briefly at the time, the imagery of the scene was so intense that I had mentally set it aside. Now, a sickening thought forced me to bring my gaze to bear on it once again.
There it was, just as I remembered, sitting on the side table near the headboard. A blood smeared drinking glass. And, even at this distance, it was quite obvious that this was where the victim’s testicles now resided.
It also didn’t escape my notice that the glass had been positioned well within his field of vision. The deliberate placement along with the amount of blood staining the sheets between his legs told me that he had most likely been alive when the castration had been performed. I suspected he had been conscious as well because it appeared to me that they were being displayed to him in order to increase his personal horror.
I closed my eyes and winced with sympathetic pain. “Damn” was all I could manage to say, and even that came out as a low mumble.
Apparently, it only took one of us to break the silence. I heard Constance gasp behind me as she finally allowed herself to breathe.
A split second later she whispered, “Oh my God…”
Agent Drew followed immediately with his own “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
“Yeah,” Ben added. “Un-fucking-believable, ain’t it?”
What the three of them couldn’t know, however, was that there was something more than just the physical spectacle driving my own quiet exclamation. If what my eyes were seeing weren’t enough, I was also faced with the bane of being aware-the inescapable burden of feeling the emotions that were still running rampant throughout the room. And, what I was feeling now was frightening, in and of itself.
The charge in the atmosphere was the same as it had been in the room where Wentworth was murdered. In actuality, it was even stronger here than it had been there.
Sex.
Arousal.
Animal passion.
The carnal intensity that had recently filled the room was still so thick in the air that it was almost as cloying as the sweet watermelon aroma sharing its space. In fact, so fervid was the aura that it sought to overpower everything else to the point that it even managed to ignite more than just a tickle deep within my own body.
Moreover, the feeling was distinctly feminine.
But, this rapturous energy wasn’t all. Through it, beneath it, and around it ran a thread of abject fear. And that emotion, I knew without a doubt, had come directly from the victim.
What I also knew, simply by standing in this room and fending off this ethereal squall, was that the killer had fed on that fear. It was what enabled her, drove her, and ultimately gratified her.
Knowing that the tickle I was now feeling had been born of and fueled by the victim’s torture made my stomach continue to churn. But, even that wasn’t enough to stop it.
I let out a small sigh as I felt these conflicting forces begin to take root within me, and the deep tickle started to grow. A rush of indescribable pleasure ran through my body, and every nerve ending I possessed suddenly flared into a delightful itch. In that instant I understood why Felicity had given herself over to these energies so easily.
“What’s up, Row?” Ben’s voice filtered into my ears. “You goin’ la-la again?”
Ben’s voice pierced the rush that had begun in my ears, and I was nudged back across the line. My conscious
