Chapter 2: How Maria died

The blood ran down the blade of the knife very slowly. Maria lay there on the bed, her throat slit and her eyes dull and glassy. Let's see- she'd been dead now for approximately ten minutes. Her body heat was already starting to dissipate. I must admit that even in death, she looked beautiful. Proud, vain, as if a thing in the world couldn't harm her. But that wasn't neccessarily true, now was it? She was still dead, and becoming cold meat.

I looked around her apartment. It was still very neatly arranged, only a few things had been knocked over when we played our game. I set to work, rubber gloves on, putting everything back in place. The mess on the bed, I would hardly bother with. The police and the FBI would need some type of evidence to placate themselves, even if they couldn't lift any evidence from it. I would go home and turn on the TV and wait- wait for the discovery of her body. I finished straightening everything up and then walked over to the kitchen counter where I had set the camcorder. It had caught everything, our whole little playtime game. I picked it up and leaned against the counter before I switched it on. As the little LCD screen flashed on, I smiled. I would get to relive these moments again and again. They were mine and there was nothing to stop me from doing so...

Maria was sitting there, and when I removed her restraints and gag, she must've thought that I'd had a change of heart. She looked up at me and started trying to thank me for not killing her. I shook my head at her and pointed the knife at her forehead, just barely touching the tip of it to her. She gasped and grew very silent.

"You listen to me- very carefully," I told her. "Tonight is the night that you will play with me. You will do that and you will be released, or you will do that and die. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Maria shook her head, submissively. She didn't even try to speak or look at me, she sat there- staring at the bed. I slowly stood up from the bed and placed the knife by my side.

"These are the rules, so if you don't want the full penalty, you'd better pay attention sweetie. There's only one rule.You know what it is?" I asked her gleefully.

She looked up at me and shook her head. I smiled. This would indeed be exciting, I could see that now.

"The rule is: DON'T FUCK UP. You do that, you die. You don't, you live. Can you live with that?"

Maria gave a very feeble nod, and I picked up the knife. Resting the blade against her throat, I smiled down on her and observed how lightly she was shaking. Under the circumstances, who wouldn't? After it became clear that she wouldn't move without my approval, I removed the blade and grabbed her by the wrist.

"Get the fuck up. Run." I said, yanking her up off the bed very sharply. It surprised the hell out of her, but she didn't need to be told twice. I released her and she looked at me really quickly. I shoved her away with a gloved hand.

"You heard me. Get the fuck outta here. But if you leave the apartment- I WILL KILL YOU." I turned my back and covered my eyes. How naive of me. Maria was not your normal victim. I'd forgotten how extraordinary she was. The main reason why I'd picked her for such an endeavor in the first place. Right when I turned around, something smashed into the back of my head, and took me to the floor. The last thing I remember was the knife sliding across the floor, then darkness.

I opened my eyes minutes later, and to my surprise- found myself bound in a heavy nylon rope with my hands behind my back. I struggled to sit up and once I did, saw Maria sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of me. She was holding my knife which gleamed brightly amidst the darkness. I gave her a smile as I realized how she had suckered me. She stood up and walked over to me. She wasn't naked anymore either; she'd put on one of her robes. In the darkness of the room, I still could make out the anger on her face and in her voice.

"You bastard. You were really going to kill me, weren't you?" She didn't even wait for an answer, instead- she just hauled off and slapped the hell out of me. I smiled again as I realized that killing her would indeed be a pleasure that I'd not known for some time. I watched her as she walked out of the room and into the kitchen. She rummaged through a drawer somewhere, then I saw a beam of light hit the ceiling. She'd found a flashlight. She came back and shone the light directly in my face.I squinted up at her a little. I was just about to speak to her when I heard her gasp.

"Oh my god...YOU." She said.

"Yeah, " I said. "Me. The same guy that helped ya with your tire this morning. That's right."

Maria clapped a hand to her mouth noiselessly. "What are you? A pervert? Some sort of obsessive guy? What the fuck do you want from me? Sex? Money? WHAT?!"

I shook my head and looked around the room. "No. I don't need ANY of that. I want to do exactly what I told you. KILL YOU. That's it."

"Why?"

"Because it's my nature. It's what I do. I kill."

"You staked me out- is that it? That's what you did, isn't it?"

"Yeah. That's what I did. I've been watching you for weeks now."

"And you rigged everything in my apartment?"

"No. Not really. But there are some things that you might not want to touch around this place."

Maria couldn't believe what she was hearing. I could see it clearly on her face. She knew that I was telling the truth and I think that she realized exactly what was going on. But that didn't make it any easier. She was still going to die, and if she'd checked my coat sleeves, she would've stood a much better chance of escaping.

I shook my arm very slightly, so that she wouldn't pay much attention to it. There was a carefully hidden switchblade that was concealed in a small pocket; if I moved the sleeve a certain way- it would practically fall right into my palm.

As I slowly opened the blade from its carrying handle, I tried as hard as I could not to make any type of noise of distraction that would make her watch me more closely.

Truth be told, Maria was concentrating so hard on the situation that she turned around and took her eyes off of me. Big mistake. NEVER take your eyes off a killer. I slowly cut the rope and stood up quietly. As I walked up to Maria, she never even heard me behind her at all. I stood behind her and stayed there- waiting for that one intense moment that she would turn around.

She did it, a minute later.

"God, why it is always the--" she said, turning to face me. It took a split second for her to realize that I was already in her face and smiling intently. She knew that she had no chance.

I had the blade concealed carefully in my hand, Maria had no idea it was there. She was backing away from me as I approached her. We were already dancing the inevitable struggle of two souls trapped in a dreadlock. She didn't know it yet, but she'd lost.

I reached out and carressed her cheek very slowly. Maria closed her eyes and was shaking as I admired her beauty. She'd violated the terms, so she had to die.

With one hand, I slowly pressed her back against her bed. Her eyes were still closed, and I slowly held up the blade to her throat. I held it there, not moving an inch. Maria's eyes opened and she looked at me. I could see in her eyes that she was pleading for her life- even before she actually started talking.

Her pleas had fallen on very deaf ears indeed though. Ears made of stone, that heard nothing. Her distress was what I sought. She was still majestically perfect. I leaned forward and softly kissed her lips. Maria was looking at me- even as I slit her throat.

The blood erupted from the wound in her violated neck and she fell back on the bed in choking, gasping sobs. She was trying to cry, but couldn't. She was trying to scream, but couldn't do that either. She was holding her throat with both hands- knowing that she was dying slowly. I stood there and watched every minute of my precious dove fighting for her life. She was losing the struggle though, her movements started becoming slow and erratic. Finally, she lay on the bed twitching as her heart lay beating inside her chest for the last time.

From the time that I cut her throat to the time that she died, her eyes had been locked firmly onto mine. I was content to know that I was the last thing that she saw, the guiding hand that helped her go to a more deserving place. Her body had stopped moving by now, the robe had blood all over the front of it. She was lying in a pool of blood that the bed had started to absorb. I didn't care about that though. I slowly reached over and gently opened the front of the robe. Her breasts had become semi erect, the nipples as hard as a prostitute on the street in latex. I slowly carressed them both, and then I leaned forward to kiss the spot where I knew her heart was.

"I did this to you because I care." I whispered to the body.

I closed the robe and stood up, looking at the blade at my hand. My mind was playing the events of this evening over and over already, but it wouldn't be long before I found a new target to make me forget all about this one. That was what I looked forward to.