 
KILL THE CHERRY

By Ben R. Philibert

Copyright 2012 Ben Philibert

Smashwords Edition

Artwork by Mike Wigand

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"What's her name again?"

"I don't remember—Molly or Holly or something like that."

When Spencer Whitman first heard that his college roommate and friend, William Critchfield, better known as Playboy Willy, had hooked up with a couple of sorority girls from the University of Missouri—a school that was all the way on the other side of the world and were more than desirous to accompany them to a fun and wild night out on the town— he felt charmed but also a bit skeptical. The self-consciousness was not the issue here; it was his relationship with the opposite gender that left something to be desired. In fact, it was going to be his very first. After Willy had informed him of the very special night that he arranged for the both of them, his spirits rose, motivating his confidence like never before. Everything has to have its starting point, the thought. None of them begin perfectly, but that's the nature of the beast. The experience is what will bring me closer to mastering it; my man Playboy Willy always pulls through for me, and he has ever since we we met two years ago as freshmen!

And now here it was. Tonight was the night, and as the night had finally come and they were on the road right now to meet them, he almost considered the idea of unhooking his seat belt and bailing out of the moving vehicle. Willy picked up his vibe almost right away.

"Hey, I know what you're thinking," he said. "Don't you dare pussy out on me now. This will be a special night like you would never believe. And the thing is you wanna do it now, while you're still young. You don't wanna be sixty years old, having dreams about it in your sleep and then wake up to look at your old gray, haggard wrinkly-ass face in the medicine cabinet wishing you had done it in your youth, right?"

"I guess not." Spencer said.

"'Course you don't. Now, I haven't seen your girl yet, but my chick...Kirsten, Kristen? Krissie? I forget..." he scoffed, "...as if it matters anyway, but holy shit that is what I call a piece of tenderized grade-A certified beef. And chicks like that are only friends with other counterpart-pieces-of-ass so I think it's safe to say you got lucky, too, bro!"

Spencer smiled as Willy laughed. As much as he tried to endure that as a positive thing, he continued to shift his butt around in the passenger seat as he stared outside at the dusk-darkened world, watching as the scenery went from buildings to hilltops to trees to farmlands as Willy drove his 2013 Ford Excursion down the highway to the pub where they agreed to meet the girls.

He was pretty certain of himself at first, but as the time came closer, he felt his confidence being nipped away with every minute that passed. The first time had to be the most perfect time and there would only be one first time in his whole life...and he knew that he was going to blow it. It was a guarantee, in fact—it was already established as far as he was concerned. With the sort of relationship he had with luck, he knew that this was going to be a night that he would reminisce upon as a reminder that his self-esteem is for shit; a reminder of what a nobody he was, is, and always will be.

"You're gonna do fine," assured Willy. "I was never nervous my first time—you know why? I kept one thing in mind. If a problem presented itself, I just rolled along with the punch."

"W-what kind of problem would happen?" Spencer said.

"I couldn't tell you. Anything can happen. You just gotta go with the flow, and if a misshap occurs, just deal with it and move on—simple as that. You gotta keep your head; if you do, you'll keep yourself out of trouble."

Spencer shot yet another jaw-dropping look of awe and admiration for his friend. It irritated Willy when the other losers at school did it; couldn't tell if they wanted to suck his cock in the literal or figurative definition, but with Spencer it was an exception, for it made him feel like a king.

"You make anything sound as simple as that, Willy. My problem is I can't be as...cool as you are right now. How do you do it? How do you feel so loose and just play your cards like it was nothing? What's your secret, dude?"

Willy grinned.

"The real trick is, they say the date is all about the lady, well in a way it's sort of true, but essentially, the date is really all about you. You gotta go up there and represent! Show her your crazy inner-self. Show her the guy that you talk to in the mirror all the time when you're all by your lonesome and no one's around. Just break down that wall that tries filtering out any obnoxiousness or any false opinions, bad traits, whatever. Be yourself, that's what they mean when they say be yourself, man. Stick with my strategy and you'll be on a roll, my homie. Trust me on this."

He managed to stretch across a smile with his tucked-in lips, nodding. With such little words, Spencer could understand where he was coming from. He took a deep, long breath and exhaled slowly. It will be alright after all. It'll work. Then something else hit him.

"Are you sure I look okay?" Spencer said.

"Spense, you look like a total fox! Would you just please try to chill out?"

He looked down at his blue-and-purple striped polo T-shirt and brown corduroys. He flipped his passenger-side roof mirror down to check his finely-combed fair hair; at least that should stand out best as far as personality goes for outward appearances.

"Have it be all about me," repeated Spencer, more to himself than to Willy.

"Yeah; let your sense of humor break free. Show her your style, just hang loose, go with the flow, and then...she's all yours. And that's our goal, my brother. I know you got a party animal in there somewhere. All you gotta do is uncage that fucker. It's easy!"

Spencer closed his eyes and took another deep breath. His words and wisdom brought confidence with the snap of a finger. Of course he could do this. And he would!

"Alright," Spencer said, nodding. "I'm with you, man. I'm gonna show her the side of me that no one's ever seen before."

"Fuckin' A, you are. I like this attitude now!"

He was curious about it since he was a child, and yet had not broken the cherry that held firm within his spirit. There it was, lying heavy in his chest where his heart was; but the way his mood was swinging now, the way the evening was going and how sure he was that this night would be a success, he could now see how thin and fragile that cherry was turning into and could already see the cracks bursting and branching throughout the surface like an old, ancient aging vase. When it would be over, it would be gone and he would wake up a god.

"It's gonna be unlike anything you've ever felt before, man," Willy said, grinning as he watched the road unwind through the beam of the headlights. "Think of it as a drug that's free of doing any physical damage; it might affect you mentally, but that's only if you let it. People take drugs to quote-unquote 'make their pain go away'; to focus on something else other than the shit they're forced to deal with on a day-to-day basis. This shit is stronger than the most popular Mary Jane in Tijuana, bests the finest cocaine they distribute in Columbia; makes the best heroine in...the world look like a fucking joke, man. After you do this, you can take all that shit and none of it will have any affect, any affect whatsoever like what this will do for you, and that's a guarantee."

Spencer felt his face weigh down on him from the blush; he struggled to ask the next question.

"You don't think twenty-one is too old for a first time?"

Willy snorted. Spencer wanted a pillow to bury his head underneath.

"Spence, I may have had my first at fourteen, but that don't mean shit. Age is a number, dude. A fucking number. That virginity hoopla is overrated anyhow. You know, I never understood that. Where, who and at what point in our evolving society ever said that you're only a well-respected, rewarding individual only if you've popped your cherry somewhere in your early teens? Regardless that you attend school, have a decent job, you speak well, you have excellent manners, you're smart, fun, funny guy; have goals and ambitions for your future—if you've never split cherry oak, none of that matters, you're just another sad douche? It's stupid. Spence, it's a retarded thing to worry about."

Spencer blinked, saying nothing, letting the words sink in. It brought him ease.

"You're right as always, Playboy Willy."

"You bet I am. Just chill out. Your brand new life, your emerging, your rebirth, your next step in evolution...begins tonight."

Spencer kept his stare on at the side of Willy's face for what felt like hours. He was told that this would be a lot of things, but this was the first description he ever heard about it.

He slowly panned his gaze to the windshield and then back outside. Behind his hazel eyes he could envision how the routine would play out, and how his emotions were going to morph into place as the plan would progress. It was going to be great. They were going to have enjoy a nice conversation during a lovely dinner and take a trip to the carnival; he would charm her with his talk of school and golf and what stocks and bonds he planned to invest in, anything that brought him to his comfort level he would discuss with her and would help him bring him out of his shell. She would do the same, and he would listen, therefore making a connection, which he knew would fasten and click together nice and firm. Now that she would be in his hands, she and he would retire to a nice, comfortable location. Perhaps there would be a drink or two, but definitely not too many, that would just be hostile. He had to remember to keep smiling, he had a good row of teeth and from what he learned, that's one thing girls were picky over, were teeth, so he was covered on that. He would smile, she would smile, they would embrace in a kiss—oh yes, Spencer could already feel that special drug violate his system, running rampantly through his veins as he pictured it...only a tip of the iceberg so far. Then he would remove his shirt, she would take off hers, unhook the bra to reveal her breasts—Spencer's heart began to pump wildly—he would ease her on her back, remember to remain calm, take position...

...and then reach for the shank pocketed in his back pocket and then jab that motherfucker right down through her breastplate without any thought or hesitation, watching her face, her eyes as he did it. He would stab, he would stab deep, he would stab deep and then twist...

The eyes! Oh how it looked in his imagination! The disbelief, the fear, the dread, the submissiveness, the look that told him she knew she had been looking into the eyes of a god!

Spencer let the imaginary feeling take him over and he lay back in his seat, stretching a smile across his lips as he continued to look on outside as if he had just taken a hit of some of the finest shit money could buy.

Holly Jennings walked out of the bathroom stall and over to the sink to wash up, avoiding eye contact with herself in the mirror until after both her hands and her reluctance were clear of any muck.

She was about to go through it tonight. She was about to bid adios to that tumor of hers that she called a cherry. It was going to happen and she knew it. But was it too soon? Some part of her conscience urged her to save it for that special someone. It could be the one she was meeting tonight, but that was a stretch.

She dried her hands with a couple of rough tri-folded paper towels from the dispenser mounted on the wall and then unzipped her purse to fish for her lipstick, screwing the lid open to apply another line carefully across the rims of her mouth to replace what had stuck to the glass she already drank from while she and Kirsten—friends since their first year at UMSL—awaited their "suitors" as Kirsty liked to refer them.

Kirsten said that she'd done it a total of eleven times in her life ever since she was fourteen (supposedly "not in a whoreish idiosyncrasy" as she put it) and that the feeling that blemished and overwhelmed you afterwards would always go through your body after every time as if it were your first. But the first time...there was always a first time, and the first would never compare with any of the others by a longshot. The first had to be important! It had to be perfect.

The thought of it still disturbed her to this day, the thought of the day when she was six and she caught her parents in the bedroom. Something had shadowed over her spirit that exact minute and for the rest of her life...and with it, also brought a tinge of curiosity, with a growth rate developing more and more as time progressed. What would that be like? As the days came and went after that horrific ordeal, she felt a growing famishing yearning within her. Part of her wanted to take her back to her happy place of Cabbage Patch kids and Pound Puppies...and the other remained there—an abyss swirling off into everlasting space that needed consumption, calling out to her like faint, distant whispers to feed the hunger.

Tonight the pleas would be answered. Tonight was the night the hunger would finally be satisfied.

Holly shook it off and took one more good look at her beautifully-perfected make-up and hair which Kirsten helped her with by lending her that kick-ass eyeliner she got recently, gently shifted her full, long brown hair that ran down in curls, adjusted the cups underneath her breasts, which she had not felt in vain about, cups to her were nothing but another fashion statement. Her breasts were her own and she couldn't be happier with them. She dusted off her cute bright blue fluffy v-neck women's sweater that was on discount at Dillard's, turned around to make sure the curves of her butt weren't too protruding behind the tight denim bleached jeans that were also borrowed from Kirsten. Then she turned back around, fully inspected, Chinese-takeout-box modeled purse hooked around her shoulder, standing seductively in front of the mirror and smiled to herself.

What the hell are you worried about, anyway? Why should you be the one nervous? You're gonna do fine, Holly. Just go out there and kick some ass. Tonight is your night, girlfriend! It's all about you tonight!

She gave herself a wink and then exited the ladies' room.

The loud and obnoxious banter from the patrons on the other side of the heavy door immediately rushed through the frame; laughing, calling to the bartender for more rounds, shouting at the mixed martial-arts event being aired live on the wall-mounted high-definition televisions; basically your typical Saturday night fiasco. She weaved her way through the crowd, being careful not to give any of these plastered guys the ass as she squeezed her way past to avoid an unpleasant groping.

She arrived within ten feet of their two-person table to find Kirsten sitting there, smoking her electronic cigarette she would use in places like this as a fashion accessory ("a way to fit in with the crowd,") and chatting with some guy occupying her chair.

Damn it, she thought. There she goes doing her thing again. Holly thought. She admired her for her remarkable features. She was the Dali Lama of every man's fantasy. Long, beautifully natural blonde hair, a pair of the most captivating blue eyes, size 36D breasts that were all hers, and those legs—god she wanted those the most; athletic, volleyball girl thighs earned from marathon, soccer, and other athletic activities that any adrenaline-junky like her would get nourishment from. All that meant nothing, though. She envied her for her courage, her dignity, her spirit, and loved her for it.

As with everything else, however, the cons were there to oppose the pros. With a total package like the one she had, guys were on her like big dumb grizzly bears on fresh honey, and she was never shy to take advantage of the attention once it came around, and it was pretty often.

Kirsten sat there puffing on her imitated cancer stick, grinning and laughing and talking with the young man until she glanced over to her, extending her smile and waving her over.

Holly sighed and tried to fight the pouting back. No, Kirsty, please don't do this. This night was supposed to be special for me, you promised. I don't know what your plans are with this guy and quite frankly I don't care, but I don't want any last-minute changes!

Holly approached the table.

"Hey, Holly," Kirsten said. "This is Bret, he goes to Columbia U and he's majoring in marine biology. He graduates next spring."

She turned to him and forced a polite smile.

"Hi," she said, giving a small wave.

He scanned her from bottom to top, smiling back.

"Nice to meet you," he said.

He had to split. But before she could try to tell him to take a hike in a mannerly fashion, he was already up on his feet.

"Yeah, so the number and address is on the card," he told Kirsten. "Come on out, it'll be fun." Bret looked at Holly with that same smile. "Your friend is welcome to come, too."

Kirsten smiled raising the card in between her two fingers to indicate she wouldn't lose it.

"I'll keep you in mind next time I'm in town," she said.

Holly sat down opposite her friend.

"What was that about?"

"He lives over near Stalehigh Marina, he says he throws parties all the time on his yacht. He invited me—invited us—to come. I took down his information so I can keep him in my to-do list."

Kirsten winked and displayed a mockingly vicious smile.

Holly nodded, smiling through tucked-in lips, and then took a deep breath.

Kirsten unscrewed the mouthpiece to her e-cig that served as a cartridge, fumbling into the small case for a new one.

"Damn, to think I just filled these fucking things last night. This one's already out?" She put in a new cartridge. "Hope this one isn't as feeble."

She inhaled the cherry-scented nicotine-less all into her mouth and blew it through a pair of pursed lips, holding the device between her fingers inches away from her face, setting the image of a thrill-seeking, bad-girl heroine for the eyes she knew were looking upon her now.

"How are you feeling?" Kirsten asked.

"Good." Holly said, sounding nonchalant and relaxed. "I'm good, you know...whatever."

Kirsten pierced through her with her ice-blue eyes; she knew Holly long enough to read her thoughts.

"You're nervous," she said.

"No, I'm not," Holly said, "Well, I mean...I'm more...concerned is more like it."

"Same difference."

Holly sighed and shot her a friendly shut up gaze.

"Hol, babe, you're gonna be amazing. You don't have to do anything, just chill out and let him do all the work; that's the beauty of a date. He's trying his best to impress you just to get in your pants, which is also a plus! The competition lies on the guys' side."

Holly fidgeted in her chair, looking away to the other side of the noise-filled establishment, trying to hide her reaction. As much as she admired and looked up to her, from time to time she felt that maybe her perspective on some things was a little garbled.

"You are gonna love it, girl. Trust me. I've got ten-plus points on my scoreboard and each one was more exhilarating than the last."

Holly leaned in closer and spoke at a volume low enough not to attract any possible eavesdroppers nearby.

"Hey, Kris," she said. "Tell me about it again?"

"What?"

"You know..."

Kris rolled his eyes jokingly as she exhaled. Here it is again, she could hear through her expression. It was like a scene in one of her favorite books, Of Mice and Men; she was Lennie begging his dependent partner George to tell him the story about how he would get to tend his new multicolored rabbits on the new big dream farm they were someday going to live in. Maybe so, maybe she was getting a little Lennie-syndrome, but it was only through this that she could relate with the big loveable retard. It only worked through someone whom you looked up to.

Almost immediately after the final word emerged from Holly's lips, Kirsten brought back that wide and satisfying smile across her lips, dropping her jaw and threw her head back as if the memory of it had brought back that phenomenal feeling of uncanny ecstasy coursing through her body. Holly thought for a second that she might have squirted in her panties already.

"Oh my God, Holly," she said, taking a puff of her e-cig and exhaling the drawn smoke through pursed lips before leaning in to carry on the private conversation. "It's like the final stage in womanhood...it's breaking free out of your ugly, rotted-out, mushy cocoon and emerging out into the world—out into the fresh air, big, colorful, beautiful and you can feel the wings on your back, enormous, powerful spreading above you and over every fucking limpdick on this whole fucking planet."

Kirsten presented a hand, palm-up, for her dear friend to slap. Holly blushed, smiling comfortably and let out a whispered chuckle, responding to the high-five with a slap to the palm. Her friend laughed at the sight of her glowing face.

"You're so cute when your cheeks get all rosy," Kirsten said. "Gosh, sometimes I could just go dyke on you."

Holly widened her eyes at first, shooting a look of protruding bewilderment...which died within half a second as the two young women burst out in a fit of laughter.

Willy swerved his Ford Expedition into the parking lot entrance of the pub.

"Alright, here we are," he said.

Spencer could see that the place was alive with commotion and energy that there were even people standing outside, holding their drinks, jawing and guffawing through words both coherent and incoherent. He saw as one of the barmaids held a tray over her shoulder full of drinks come outside to serve one of the parties.

"There's some big UFC event tonight," Willy said. "Title fight, I forget who's fighting, though, or what weight class."

"And they're showing it here?"

"Yep."

Willy carefully settled his vehicle in the nearest available spot, set it in park, and shut the engine off. His hand held frozen on the ignition as a thought overcame him. He leaned in close to Spencer, motioning him to come forward in a discreet chat. The particular subject of this brief exchange instinctively told him to keep it cautiously under wraps although they were in the privacy of their own interior-soundproof automobile.

"You know," he said, "this is like a rare occurrence that happens, what—every two-hundred years—when the planets align? Tonight is a night for all warriors—from everywhere, every culture, every race, every different story—to achieve their victories. One of those men is going to rip and tear their way through a triumphant victory tonight through bloodshed on this very same night, just like you."

Spencer smirked and nodded.

"Not all of 'em get bloody, though," he said.

Willy just stared at him.

"You're right. Tonight's a special night for a select special few, I guess." Spencer said.

"You got that right, homie," Willy said. "You ready to do this?"

He flipped the shotgun mirror down again to go over his appearance; everything seemed to be in check. Spencer drew one final breath and exhaled slowly. Fear was the real killer, as his elders always advised—did that still apply in this scenario? Tonight, he would be the embodiment of fear. He held a grip onto that attitude and looked into his own eyes in the mirror to tell himself the same thing.

Just don't fuck up. Plain and simple. Okay? Good.

Spencer nodded to himself, flipped the mirror back up and exited out of the vehicle into the loudly-chattering, tobacco-filtered-scented atmosphere that was the typical hoedown that any popular bar and grill had on a weekend airing a live sports event.

Wow, and they weren't even inside the joint yet.

Willy came around the car to stand beside his friend as they looked ahead towards the pub. Spencer could never figure out how he could be so smoothly about it; right now the way he'd been dressed, usual baggy tan cargo shorts, New Balance walking shoes with short socks, long-sleeve dark gray shirt that repped the school they attended, with his professionally-styled short brown hair combed forward, he couldn't see how both their styles differed, yet he knew how to work well with everything—women, life in general, because he popped that cherry of his way back in his early youth just like he should have; now he'd been burdened throughout the best part of his life all because of his cowardice. He was lucky to have made Playboy Willy's acquaintance, despite his boorish, detracting behavior he had towards him when he'd be intoxicated or with his other country club chums.

Deep down, he was aware of the real problem, what distanced himself from the rest of the world. Could it really, seriously all blow to hell and disintegrate tonight?

Spencer squinted his eyes, shook it off and took another deep breath to try and regain that fortitude before he let it drift off, and tightened the screws that attached his head to his shoulders.

"Okay, here we go," Willy said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Remember. Play your cards right, of course; respect her, compliment her shoes, blah blah blah, but metaphorically—deep down in the heart of this evening, the core of it, the heart of it—this night is all about your quest to get a hot chick into your clutches..."

He leaned into his ear to say the rest.

"...and have your way with her, as I will mine."

Willy brought up a fist, knuckles outward for him to bump. Spencer complied with a smile of sheer uncertainty.

Willy looked back at the pub. "I think it was a mistake meeting here. I hope those dumb twats don't get themselves too tanked. It's important they're sober for this."

Spencer took little (very little, a soft prick) offense to him degrading his date and he was unsure why. Perhaps it was similar with farmers and how they took offense if you snuck onto their property for some good fun ol' fashioned cow-tipping—tipping the same cattle they bred and fed for clothing and meat. He erased it and brought his attention back to the present.

"Are you sure about this place?" Spencer said quietly. "You've checked it out?"

Willy scoffed and shook his head, smiling.

"Bro, don't waste a fucking second worrying about that," Willy said. "I looked into it; it's some old abandoned house that's at least about a mile down from the highway and it's on a farmland. Some couple abandoned it for some reason. I don't know the details, but it's been barren for some time now. There won't be a soul anywhere within hearing range...unless you count a few owls and locusts or other nightcrawlers...and we both know they ain't gonna say shit." He let out a chortle.

"As long as you're positive," he said.

Spencer looked off into nothing again, envisioning how beautiful and how mesmerizing and how glorifying it was going to be, but regardless how small or how big it was, that chance—nevermind the percentage—was right there in his head threatening him, bullying him, developing a murky dark cloud over his morale. That voice of Spencer's rang in the hollows of his membrane.

Poison! It's all poison! Stop letting that shit creep back into your head! That's the real killer, don't you remember? Now do what Willy says, which is chill the fuck out and stop thinking that inane horseshit. Just stop it! Now!

The temperature in his blood broiled to a nice comforting simmer and he felt every nerve in his system relax. Finally he was going to relieve himself of this colossal famishing that had been aching from for so many years.

Now he was excited. He was looking forward to so many of the attributes that came with this practice: the feel of the rubber grip as it penetrated her; the blooming process—oh it was going to be breathtaking to see her bloom like a flower, her pedals turning inside out to reveal the gorgeous crimson sea within her that beckoned to be liberated, like a pearl in an oyster...

But if there would be only one element that he would ask for out of this ordeal, it would be the look. You can have Niagara Falls of blood, all the pleas and beggings and screams loud enough to be heard across the globe—but the one aspect that he could never bargain with, no matter what had been dangled in front of his face, was the expression; the most priceless factor in this ordeal.

The look in the face...the look in the eyes.

Willy shared the same desire. He could remember arriving at Calculus I on that Tuesday morning for his first semester, taking the first two-student desk that looked the most appealing to him; he showed up in plenty of time before everybody else because he wasn't one for mingling and errand-running in between classes, and the class one-by-one filed in. Then when he walked in, still laughing and joking loudly from a conversation out in the hall, he saw that whoever this fellow was was unarguably high in the pecking order. As soon as he left his pow-wow outside and finally walked in, he nodded and waved to familiar faces around the room with a smile, and saw the vacant seat next to him. He asked if it was cool if he could sit there in which Spencer answered "Sure." The first day was pretty quiet between the two, and then a few days later, Willy cracked a joke about a topic the professor made. Spencer laughed and said something to improve it. Willy laughed with authentic amusement. His confidence boosted. After that, during the next few weeks, tried thinking up more witty humor in his dialogue throughout their conversations during class, sometimes it was a hit and sometimes it was a miss, but regardless, Willy was beginning to take a liking to him.

After a month, it became official. They went from the innuendo to life in general. What road they were taking after school, what alternate career they were considering, what type of women they had an interest in, what cars, what movies, what interests, etcetera, etcetera. Willy and he would meet at the library mainly to study; they would go out during their break hour to Chili's or TGI-Friday's which was always fun. One day, Biology was cancelled and that was when Willy took him down to a strip club in Sauget, Illinois. He never imagined such a stench of sweat, nicotine and cheap perfume could hang so impossibly heavy; the women were average at best in the department of looks; the atmosphere and loud 80's metal music didn't agree with him and he would go so far as to say that if you walked into this strip club, you walked into them all. They walked out into the bright, blaring sun, frying their dark-adjusted eyes into blindness for a few prolonged seconds before they gained back vision and headed for Willy's back-then 2011 orange Lamborghini. "So what'd you think?" Willy asked. "It was cool." Spencer replied with a clear lack of enthusiasm. Willy laughed and said, "Yeah, I know, man. This place is like a fucking poltergeist. I would have taken you to this other place, but you have to make an appointment first. Oh, my God, man, this place is incredible. Think of this place, but everything is five-star and the bitches there are young, Grade-A, Sports Illustrated swimsuit-model type chicks. I thought it was only possible for an actual hot girl to do this line of work in the fucking Red Light District over in Amsterdam! Dude, it's like—if this place right here were a Knight's Inn, the place I'm talking about right now is the fucking Ritz Carlton! Fuck that! I'm calling right now to reserve us some VIPs!" Willy flipped open his celly to do just that.

The reservations were booked for Friday night. Willy, Spencer and three more of Willy's friends all drove down in his Kia Sorento (he always had two different cars; he recently traded the Sorento for a new-model Expedition) east toward downtown. They arrived to their destination; from the outside Spencer's expectations had drastically lowered—a brick building, slummy neighborhood, shot-out traffic lights, weirdos robot-walking down the street...but Willy and his chronies had no change in attitude or vivacity as they all made their way towards the building. This should be interesting, thought Spencer. Willy knocked on the large metal door where there was a sliding peep door. It rolled open to reveal a pair of old, haggard eyes. "Yes?" he said. "Little strokes fell great oaks." Willy said. "Name?" the stranger said. "Critchfield, party of five." said Willy, Spencer managed to contain his laugh. "One moment please," said the stranger before he slid the peep door shut. Spencer said, "Little oaks...what?" Willy said, "The password." The large metal door opened to reveal a nicely-suited middle-aged fellow behind it. "Welcome to The Fountain of Youth." he said.

They went inside, walked through a dark, cruddy, dull room with a staircase that went down. They followed the stranger down the staircase, where he had unlocked a double set of doors, he opened them up, and Spencer heard the choir of angels sing their heavenly hearts out at a powerful volume once he saw what was on the other side: a plethora of young, beautiful, stunning, healthy, intelligent fully-developed young women, dancing professionally on tables, on laps, drinking and guffawing with the clientele, who looked upper-class and pretty sophisticated themselves. And the place was enormous! The carpet, the furniture, the atmosphere, the sights, the sounds and the taste of the club was precisely what Willy had said before: this place was the Ritz compared to that cesspool Days Inn or whatever example he had used. The five young men sat at a table where they were soon afterwards accompanied by five lovely young escorts. Spencer's was a cute redhead named Fiona. There was chit-chat, drinks, more chit-chat, getting tipsy, then came the dancing. The buzz of the Whiskey Sours swimming through Spencer's vision loosened him to talk with a more open demeanor. He and Fiona sat a booth away from the party, him telling her all about his social-issues with people, his coyness in which Fiona flashed a look of surprise to and that he was handling himself just fine with her. She then took him by the hand, similar to the Sauget shithole, and thought to himself, Wait, I already got a lap dance. Where are we going? The two made their way to a room that amazingly resembled a five-star hotel room. Spencer was now speechless. A king-sized bed, two fine-oak nightstands on either side, a giant HDTV facing it. He was beginning to question if he and his friends had walked through a rip in the fabric of time, walking from a ghetto into a playboy paradise within a few feet.

Spencer saw the bed and did not give it much thought, then Fiona gently eased him to sit down on it, that was when he knew what was coming, and he couldn't restrain his spasming. He tried to make himself as stiff as he could, but it was because of that she knew something was up. "Are you alright?" she said. "Yeah," he said, feeling his cheeks burning red. "I'm sorry, um, it's...sort of my first time." Fiona laughed. "You'd be surprised how many guys in their forties or fifties come in here saying the same thing." Spencer furrowed his brow, in the midst of his violent jerking. Fiona eased him down onto his back, gently climbing on top of him, straddling him, soothingly-shushing him. "It's okay. I'm not gonna bite...too hard..." she said through a succulent, seductive, breathtaking smile. Spencer felt the weight and warmth of her and it fired an erection right underneath her within a few second's work. He started breathing in small gasps, he felt his eyes protrude and bulge...

...and then he felt something inside him awaken. Not the burning flames of lustful desire that were cracking and popping and increasing, but something else...an element far more darker and more dangerous than that of sexual longing. It went beyond the acts of engaging intercourse with a woman; acts that were much wilder, much more extreme. The look of her beautiful, big lush green eyes, the way they worked in coordination with her small but cute, beautiful lips...he wanted to see it. He wanted to see what was behind them. He could feel it like a rabid fever spreading and burning and trying to rise from underneath his flesh...

Fiona stared at him; the friendly, affectionate smile faded away and her eyes now signaling that of concern and fear. "Spence?" she said. Spencer couldn't hear her. He couldn't see or hear or feel anything, except for her and her body, and what was inside her. He got up, pushing the weight off him. He could barely hear her as she yelped falling to the floor on her ass. All he could see was her, her fearful eyes, the spit and drool producing and swirling around his tongue, the rough, distraught smoke that now burned in his lungs next to his beating black heart. He wanted her and wanted her now! He was going to blossom her!

Spencer couldn't even hear her as she screamed and fled from the room.

The only thing he had remembered after that was seeing the closed door. He stared at the closed door for what had to have been an hour-long minute for him to recollect his current situation. What had happened? What was going on? Did he just take something? Did he hurt her? Was Willy and—

The door swung back open and in walks two six-foot-four, hulking tuxedo-sporting individuals, the looks on their faces meaning business. Behind them was Fiona, pointing a finger at him telling an older fellow—probably the head of the establishment—that "he was gonna hurt me; he was gonna rape me!" No questions, no story-swapping, no interrogating, no nothing—Spencer, Willy, and Willy's three friends were removed from the premises and were informed they were not welcome back. Needless to say, Willy and company were highly displeased. After some harsh verbal-abuse and badgering from the the three cohorts and Willy himself, Spencer went back to their dorm room and didn't say a word for the rest of the night. The next day was when Willy tried to talk to him. "What the hell happened in there? Were you seriously gonna do something?" Spencer could only stare down at the carpet, reminiscing the events last night in that bedroom, envisioning the sight of her lovely features those innocent orbs of forest-green pupils, and he felt that same fever creep up inside him again. "Spence? Spence?" Willy snapped his fingers loudly in front of his eyes, breaking his trance. Spencer could only keep looking at nothing, avoiding eye contact with his friend...it was until there had been too long a pause between them until Spencer looked over to Willy. He was looking at him disbelievingly, shockingly, mouth open, eyes round like chicken's eggs. "Did you want to snuff her?" Spencer was almost literally blown away; his breath sucked from his lungs, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped. Willy slowly began to develop a tiny smile. "You can tell me, Spence. Did you want to kill her? Did you want to stab her? Don't hold back on me, man. That look that I just saw—I know that look. I remember it." Spencer's world was flipping upside down; his faculties toying with his brain so badly he was starting to feel faint. "You...what?" he said. Willy said, "I remember having that look myself before I started doing something about it." "What?" Spencer asked. He then thought he had a solution to this that he hadn't heard of. Did they have AA-type meetings for people like this? No. He was ready to take a hand-written note of some self-help books or the card of some recommended psychiatrist. Instead, Willy said, "What do you think?"

Spencer gasped, looking into his piercing gaze. He had never seen the such a wildfire blaze and roar through the windows of his brown eyes. Part terrifying—a terrifying feeling words couldn't begin to describe—and then also a great big cuddly soft blanket of heartwarming relaxation, confidence, that feeling of finding out that after all the shit a man has been through, that there is always that bright, white shining light of hope! Spencer was torn between the two. "You...?...You've...?" Spencer tried to say, feeling the sobs work their way up. Willy didn't answer, but kept his dauntingly deadpan stare on him, smiled, and gave a small nod. Spencer cried.

It was marked as one of the most important days in his life. This was like revealing to the brother Spencer never had that he had a problem in differentiation with normal everyday society—he finally found someone to be open with, and it brought a cascade of emotions swirling and rising in him like a geyser, now erupting with tears. He remembered Willy resting a hand on his shoulder and he kept weeping and weeping until he fell asleep.

The next day, alone in their dorm room, Willy spoke of his past experiences. From his very first girlfriend at the age of fourteen to a prostitute that he'd recently meat-cleaved a month ago. The tone and nonchalance in his narration suggested absolutely no signs of untruthfulness, exaggeration, or jerking-off of any kind. Spencer had never in his life been so devastatingly mind blown. Devastatingly. The man himself—Playboy Willy—a man larger than life, a man of money, looks, women, cars, attitude—a man who had everything; Spencer pictured the two of them as night and day. He found out that after all this time, after all the jokes, conversations, everything...they were both night and night. A "wee-hours of the night type of night", if you will.

He could watch it all play in his head and remember it like it had just been the previous day, when in reality it was five or so months ago. Willy had since then promised him that he would find a nice secluded location that would suit their plans perfectly, arrange a double date with two other hot college chicks (from a different school, of course, they didn't need any heat from their own school) to do the traditional date thing, travel out to the country making them believe they're there to blow of some sexually-raging hormone steam...and then it would be then he'd free himself of the pain. For his whole life this tumor was growing and spreading in him, starving, hurting, poking, scratching...it had to stop and it was going to stop.

Less than a week ago now, Willy met a girl at a party, charmed her and had her on a hook being the seasoned pro he was, called her to see if she and a friend of hers would be interested in double-dating with he and a friend of his on Saturday night, October the thirteenth. She happily accepted. Tonight was the night.

"Damnit," Willy said, slapping his forehead. "I should have brought a stereo for you. You should have a song to go with your first time. Everyone's got one. Mine's 'All Night Long' by Lionel Richie, it was playing at a party nearby. Every time I hear it, like if a car's driving by and it's blaring on the radio, it's like I'm reliving those very same emotions I felt during that time."

"I didn't know you liked Lionel Richie."

Willy snorted. "I don't. I didn't pick it. You can't pick your own song; it's gotta be random."

Spencer inhaled for another deep breath.

"What about afterwards, with you know...the bodies?"

"Have I ever let you down before, Spense?" Willy said. "As I've just said, it's nothing but meadows. The guy owned like five-hundred acres—there's some forest in the back, we'll stick 'em down there, they won't be found in a million years. Relax, I got us covered."

Spencer continued to stare into space, saying nothing. Willy laughed, dropping his head.

"Dude, will you put your bitch card back in the deck already? We're safe, man. I've got everything all figured out. The tarp, the shovels, it's all back there, and I found a nice little spot out in the woods that'll be perfect. You're gonna be awesome, man. Remember, this is your first time; this is your first high. Make it special. Tonight, you are going to kill the cherry. This chick is your cherry, so pop that bitch! And pop her good, brother! And to commemorate this enchanting evening, in the morning, I'll take you down to Schirk's Original Waffle House, my treat."

Spencer nodded, feeling the drool in his mouth circulate as he thought of those heavenly signature waffles that Schirk's was famous for. However he couldn't help but feel a sense of doubt buzzing in his head. Not over the strategy, but over the girl. She needed her trust and her affectionate respect for this to work. And they will have known each other not even twenty-four hours.

Nonetheless, he blocked it out, raised his chin, squared his shoulders and drew in one more deep breath. "Sounds like a plan."

"Oh, yeah," Willy said. "Use the word 'cute' to describe their clothes, accessories or whatever. Always gets a great response."

Spencer nodded in understanding, and then turned his gaze to the road ahead.

"Alright, then," he said. "It's showtime."

They walked through the room in between the doors outside that led to the doors inside the pub, where the machines for the newspapers, candy were stationed, and that was probably the only silent room in the whole building, for when Willy swung open the door inside to the actual establishment, the rush of shouting slurring curses and guffaws entwined in the air tainted with nicotine blew into Spencer's face so bad that it made him wipe his hand across his features.

Willy scanned the premises to track down their fresh meat and then spotted them seated way across the pub, talking and laughing. He smiled at the sight, watching the two of them lost in their own gossiping of fashion line clothing, accessories, boys—no doubt the Kirsten chick was right now telling the other one how hot her date was. The bottom line was they had no clue, no knowledge, no idea what was just around the corner for them. This evening was going to go down ever so exceptionally and deliciously. He looked at Spencer with a finger pointed to them.

"There they are," Willy said with a smile and a wink. "C'mon."

Willy walked and Spencer followed.

He took a glance at both girls and didn't take a lot to figure out who's was going to be who's. The blonde was far too attractive to meet Spencer's luck, but someone who would be a dead-on score for Willy. So it had to have been the blue sweater sitting across from her.

Spencer was actually happy to have this one. She had the gist of the obedient, innocent type, and one look at her even from his distance he could see that the outward appearance had matched her personality; that kind of girl who hugged her books to her chest as she walked down the hallways to her next class at high school. Spencer always had an infatuation for those kind of quiet chicks. This was perfect. Things were starting to get more and more comfortable for him now.

The blonde stood up to greet Willy.

"Hi, guys!" she said gaily, through a tantalizing smile. Spencer could have punched Willy in the arm right at that moment for being so fucking lucky. "You're right on time!"

Willy turned to Spencer.

"Spencer, this is Kirsten..."

Kirsten displayed that sweet, charming trademark of a smile for him with a little wave. He then turned her pointed finger to the second girl.

"...and this is..."

She spoke with a smile of her own as she looked at Spencer. "Holly."

Holly rose to her feet to extend a hand, still smiling. Spencer took it.

"Nice to meet you ladies," he said, smiling in return. "I'm Spencer."

"Hi, Spencer."

"Hi."

They shook hands; Spencer feeling the gentle, petite hand in his and had a thought that lasted a millisecond of how easy it would be to crush every single solitary bone in that hand. For a flash—a comet that fled through his head that came just as fast as it went—he was actually tempted. That hand was just so soft and fragile and the bones in there were so light and narrow, he wanted to crunch them all together with his fist and hear them snap and her shriek.

She had a good body, too, luckily not a body toned-downed enough to where she could give him problems if she decided to fight. She had the goods; she had the potential to dress like her friend, Kirsten, who most-definitely met with his approval down south. Willy, as he knew him to be since the day he met him, was filthy stinking rich in luck.

Ultimately, he was very pleased. Kirsten had that bad girl vibe. This will be far more appetizing with a good girl.

"You look great," Spencer said to Holly, and looked over to her purse sitting on the table. It was crafted as a white Chinese take-out box with a strap. "That's a cute purse."

Holly looked over to the bag he referred to, running her fingers over her ear and looking back over to Spencer with that sweet angelic smile, her features gleaming to life.

"Thank you!" she said, her cheeks rosing. "I got it from this blowout sale at Dillard's..."

The man knows his shit! thought Spencer.

"And you look great, too." Holly said. "The both of you do."

"Did you guys want to sit a while and have a drink or should we go?" Kirsten said.

"No way," Willy said immediately. "How much did you guys have?"

"I just had one Cape Cod and the pussy here had a Diet Coke." Kirsten said taunting Holly playfully. She responded with a sarcastic smirk and a middle finger.

"Because the place we're going to—this is a charity event for teaching unfortunate kids to read," Willy said. "To show up plastered would put a permanent shitstain over our sign of support, dedication, loyalty to the children. You feel me? Think about the children, ladies. Keep it real."

Kirsten smiled. "'Dedication'...The only sign of 'dedication' they wanna see is a dead president—preferably Franklin."

"True that. So...are we all ready?"

"I'm ready." Holly said.

"I'm ready, too." Spencer.

"Well, let's do it, then." Kirsten.

"Sounds good to me," Willy. "The night is still young, and it's a crime to waste good youth, isn't that so, Spense?"

"That is most definitely so, Willy."

Willy bellowed his trademark howl in the midst of all the uproarious chatter that filled the pub. It was a habit of his he usually did when the mood struck him right. Willy put an arm around a laughing Kirsten's shoulder as they headed for the front doors. Spencer, out of instinct, stuck his hands in his pockets as to refrain from placing them improperly on his date without thinking, and looked back to her, waiting for her to come by his side so they could walk out together.

She gave a thin smile and widened her eyes to indicate Oooookaaayy.

Spencer rolled his eyes in agreement, and shared a chuckle with her and they both walked side-by-side out of the noise-polluted bar.

In the car on the way over, things seemed to have sunk to an even deeper comfort level. The group headed out in Willy's Ford—Willy driving, Kirsten shotgun with Spencer and Holly in the rear—and headed back on the highway to drive up north to the carnival that was raising funds for a program that was teaching abused and disabled children to read. The two energetic and enthusiastic leaders up front chatted nonstop the entire drive over the stereo that played one of Willy's Hüsker Dü albums. Both their sidekicks sat, laced hands resting in between their knees and exchanged a few words about highway safety guidelines, laws against not wearing seatbelts (which neither protested against) which evolved into an experience Holly brought up about how she and her family were nearly killed in an automobile accident while driving too fast on an freeway road. Spencer listened with non-imitated fascination, and was inspired to share a story of an experience he endured as a child of how he witnessed a brutal and unforgettable scene as a child of a bicyclist killed by a driver...how he wasn't wearing a helmet and that his head was cracked open like a busted-open melon, a mess of blood and brains and pieces of skull splayed out covering almost the entire intersection; his corpse as inanimate as a crushed fruit that had dropped and began leaking its innards at large quantities. He tried to hide the excitement that aroused behind his eyes as he narrated the tale.

Holly listened and kept her sultry, sweet eye contact in place, nodding at points in the story that acquired her understanding. She didn't seem to look the other way, direct her attention to anything else even for a brief moment the entire time. She was so polite and harmonious and Spencer tried his best to block it out. All he needed was her trust. To think about her politeness and positive qualities would probably cloud his drive and crazed lust. His job was to stick her, gain her trust and respect and then stick her. He laughed in the guise that he'd been humored by her story from high school when he'd really been laughing at the fact that literally right behind the both of them in the trunk, hidden underneath a heap of clothes bound for Goodwill, were two shovels and a gym back full of everything from hacksaws to thirty-gallon trash bags to bottles of hydrogen peroxide. As if her death was currently breathing down her neck.

It wasn't until a half-hour later when they had finally arrived at the festivities; a spectacle that glimmered and exploded with several flashing, chasing lights that looked bedazzling in the evening and was alive with gleeful electronic adrenaline.

The place was burning with joy and happiness from the attendees—men, women and children alike—but you'd think that Willy and Kirsten were more lively and rambunctious than anyone else there. On and off would the two couples separate to do their own thing and then come back to enjoy the time as four. Spencer asked Holly if she would like to go on the Ferris wheel, which she gladly accepted. They sat in the car, overlooking the vast and everlasting dark world below them. Spencer stole a glance at her and had difficulty breaking away until Holly looked over to him, then he gave a wan smile and moved his gaze elsewhere, acting casual. He didn't see it but he felt her eyes ogling him for a long while before bringing her attention back to the outside view.

Then, as their car had reached the very top, the ride had jolted to a gentle halt. The two of them looked at each other for a reaction, exchanged laughs and fixed their gazes at the broadened view.

"So," Spencer said. "This place we're going to tonight..."

Holly looked at him. "Yeah, I don't know much about it. Kirsten said that she and Willy were there just the other day."

They sat in awkward silence for a moment, staring at the ants down below.

"Um..." Holly said, "Are we..."

Spencer felt a sense of amazement and accomplishment implode in his chest. She was about to ask the question—the question—and she was the one asking it instead of him! This kept getting better and better. He hid the skepticism deep down that he was playing his cards all wrong and that he was possibly veering her toward the wrong direction. This was a sign that all the worrying was for absolutely nothing and that tonight's mission was going just as planned and was awaiting a successful victory at its end. Had this conversation taken place via phone, he would have clenched a fist and pulled a downward elbow towards his hip repeatedly in triumphant excitement.

"We don't have to," he said, playing it cool.

"No, I do," she said, nonchalantly and with those precious innocent Bambi eyes. "I'm embarrassed enough I didn't do it in high school. I made a vow to myself I wouldn't go to college a virgin. So..."

Spencer jumped at the opportunity.

"You know, it's so stupid," he said, ease settling in, knowing what to say next without a stutter. "I never understood that; who's to say that we have to engage in sexual intercourse in order to get respect? Like, 'it doesn't matter if you can speak well; if you have a great sense of humor; if you're successful at school, your job, with people. And I'm not self-centered, but I do very well in school, I get along with people fine, I'm socially-proficient—" he paused to look at her, "—or am I?"

Holly grinned and nodded.

"The bottom line here is, it's all a bunch of overrated crap. I have a good education and good friends and don't feel the least bit awkward about myself for not having killed my cherry."

Holly kept her stare on him, looking fascinated.

"'Kill your cherry,'" she said, amused. "I like that."

The machinery hooked to the car hiccuped, jolted, and the wheel commenced its rotation.

After the ride, Willy spent a dollar at the booth games, popping three balloons in a row with three darts and winning Kirsten a giant purple gorilla on his first try. Spencer had almost blown his entire wallet on the bell-and-hammer game to win Holly a Stewie plush doll—the evil baby genius from the cartoon Family Guy. After almost twenty dollars, he finally hit the bell and won her the toy. The attendant handed him the prize and Spencer watched her as he passed it on to her; those beautiful browns glistening with awe and heartwarming, appreciative glee as they switched from little Stewie to him.

Spencer and Holly exchanged more bits of information with each other; he said that he was born and raised in Springfield and was majoring in Political Science; she said that she was born and raised here and was undecided majoring in either Biochemical Engineering or English. The flow of the conversation was pretty much medium, if a certain subject came up, Spencer or Holly would bring up a personal opinion or a past experience on it, joking around as they did so in which they would appropriately laugh whether it actually hit their funny bone or not.

All in all, Willy knew for sure that she had his fish on a hook, reeled in, and surrendering peacefully in the iced cooler, and that it was going to work out well.

Kirsten never got bored for a second and had already known that this thing with Willy was going to work out super well.

Holly thought Spencer wasn't such a bad guy and was funny and fun to talk to and felt that this would work out pretty well.

Spencer had to give it to himself, he was doing all right, and just like Willy with his, he had this chick—owned, possessed, indoctrinated—and their special time tonight was going to work out beautifully, beautifully well.

It felt like the night was still as young as nine, post-midday; Spencer checked the time on his iPhone to find the display reading one in the morning. He could feel the fiery adrenaline rush through his veins, escalating fiercer in temperature the closer they arrived to their destination on the road. Willy drove back on the highway and took a southbound exit, driving for almost forty-five minutes through roads that revealed nothing but fields and fields and more fields dimly illuminated beneath the midnight starlit sky dominated by the sliver of light from the last-quarter moon.

Finally Willy made a turn and took a drive down a dirt road through some trees, over a bridge, up and down a few hills until the highway or any sign of civilization behind them was no longer visible, and after approximately five minutes they had arrived.

Big was the first instinctive word that entered Spencer's mind once he saw the farmhouse. To think anyone would just bail out of a palace that you had to have paid a very hefty sum for was completely unfathomable. From the outside it delicate enough. Very sophisticated and well-kept. Aside from its size it was basically a simple house; something he thought his parents would like. It wasn't a mansion or something the wealthy would go for but still...perfect. It looked rickety, aging, lifeless, but innocent and pure—like something mistreated and abused that just needed some love to get it back on its feet. There was a nice wide front porch that went around the side, a swing hanging next to the front door. Apprehension began to take its toll now. It was too good to be true.

It was a far cry from what Spencer imagined would be the place he'd kill his cherry. He always daydreamed about a dark alleyway with a homeless person or a prostitute, maybe some old barren warehouse near the railroad tracks or an airport where the roaring transportation would drown out his victim's cries and screams...but this place. Beautiful lush scenery—from what he could tell through the dead of night—an exceptional, innocent home that had looked like it was owned by a happy family. Talk about a mindfuck.

"You can't be serious," Holly said. "And you said nobody lives here anymore?"

"Exactly," Spencer chimed in. "A place like this deserted? I don't buy it. No real estate sign? No house sitter?"

"I thought the same thing myself," Willy said. "But I checked it out, I asked around to the few people who were aware of their existence said they weren't in touch with the everyday social world. They packed up and have been gone for over two months now. I'm telling you, we're straight."

Spencer looked over to Holly, just in time to see her giving him a smile. An odd one...one that expressed a strange hunger.

"I didn't think I'd be saying this," she said, "but I'm feeling so fired up. I can't elaborate."

She laughed. Spencer returned a smile affixed with waywardness.

"I know, it's like up until this point I was...kind of skeptical, you know? But now that it's here, now that it's gonna happen, I'm ready—ready to rock and roll, baby."

Holly wrinkled her nose and giggled.

"I wasn't sure how I was going to approach this, either," she said. "This is my first time."

Spencer felt his eyes almost pop out of their sockets. Was what she just said some utterance or white noise from another dimension in his head? Did he hear that correctly? Did he hear that from this woman's lips in the real world? This fine young thing still has her cherry intact?

"Looks like we're gonna learn together, huh?"

Holly shrugged. "I guess we are."

Spencer felt a sudden cry shooting up his throat and it had nearly blurted itself out had he failed to control himself properly. His heart was beating out of his chest, blood coursing feverishly through his whole body that he was feeling himself go numb. How could so many prodigies take place in the space of one night for just one man? The Powers That Be were looking down upon him and granting him, showering him with special privileges and favors—they saw promise in this one! A future! A Second-Coming! A—

Willy almost made the both of them jump simultaneously right when he rapped loudly on the window behind Spencer, and then opened the door.

"Yo, are we jumping the gun in here? Better think twice if you think I'm gonna let you get anything on my fabric interior!" Willy said, with an arm wrapped around Kirsten, joining her in a laugh. He nodded towards the house. "The party's in there, dipshits!"

Spencer and Holly both exchanged good-natured shaking of the head and rolling of the eyes and proceeded out of the vehicle.

The two couples approached the front door of the house and without looking into it first, Willy stuck his hand into his pocket and brought out the key. Kirsten glanced at each one of them before barking a laugh.

"How do you have a key?" Kirsten said.

"I found it underneath the mat," Willy said, holding a stare on her and keeping it paused for two seconds before he threw his head back in laughter. "I went to a locksmith."

"'You went to a locksmith?'" Holly said. "And they just made a copy for you?"

"They just made a copy for me. Trust me, I have my ways."

"Let me guess," Kirsten said. "The person working the counter was this corpulent, zit-faced, buck-toothed freak-of-nature chick?"

"Her teeth were fine."

Kirsten wrinkled her nose.

"Can this one key work on all the doors in the house?" Spencer said.

"Have no idea," Willy said, unlocking the door. "All I know is it's spacious, it's comfy, it's cozy, it's clean and it's hereby confiscated!"

The key reached home with a loud click and Willy pushed the door open. Both Kirsten and Willy howled in victory as they filed in through the door, arms locked around one another, embracing in a prolonged, hunger-filled French kiss.

Spencer watched them in mild amusement as he casually pocketed his hands walking inside, and then mentally kicked himself for forgetting to let Holly in first. He immediately spun around, retreated out the door and making apologies before she was able to take a step for the door frame, stood to the side, and brought his hands out in a welcoming ladies first indication.

"I'm so sorry," Spencer said with a smile. "After you."

Holly smirked as if she found his clumsy first-date skills to be actually cute. He could see she found him to be adorable for trying so hard. Spencer wondered briefly if she thought this was his first actual date.

"Thanks," she said, "but I think I can do without an usher around here."

"Just being conservative; doing my part in this, ya' know?"

Holly snorted and nodded.

The interior of the place was still definitely in healthy shape; wallpaper still intact, the furniture still in good condition, some minor dust had been collected here and there, but no signs of any aging whatsoever. Except maybe the missing pieces that made a home a home. No picture frames nailed to the wall, none standing on any of the tables or bureaus, no personalized items or specific tastes of anything or any kind.

They checked the kitchen where they found an assortment of old, expired boring food items—canned vegetables from bottom rung independent processors—that were scattered in cupboards, on counters and in the refrigerator, where it had carried a bowl of rotted fruit, gallons of month-old milk, and a pile of condiment packets from various fast food restaurants. The open container of Arm and Hammer on the top shelf saved the interior of this machine from a horrible stench.

"Where did you say the little girl's room was again?" Kirsten said, buckling her knees. "I need to make a tinkie."

Willy directed her to the first floor lavatory down the hall. Kirsten looked over to Holly.

"Yo, Hol'-meister, why don't you come and tinkie with me."

Kirsten winked and smooched a kiss in mock flirtation, followed by an innocent chortle. Holly took the hint with a shake of her head and a smirk. Spencer watched her as she walked over to and stood by Kirsten. She was so natural, so naïve, so clueless; so beautiful. Such a waste. Then again, it wasn't a total waste—he knew it now. She was made for this; she was designed just for him. Like the ancient times when a princess is trained her whole life since birth to serve her future king husband—she was naturally born to be his.

"We'll be back," Kirsten said, and they disappeared from the room.

This was perfect. It was now time for the pre-show ritual; the moment to exchange a few final words of advice with your associate. Willy approached Spencer and slapped a hand on his shoulder.

"This is it, man," he said softly. "No turning back now. I'm geared up and ready to go, and you need to be to. Because if you don't finish that bitch, I'm going to. And I don't have a problem doing it. You sure you're ready?"

Spencer displayed a smile for his friend, and without thinking he placed both his hands on his shoulders. To reach out and grab someone like that, especially to somebody on Willy's level was unthinkable. The mood that was charging through his essence was making parts of him do things that were out of his control.

"Willy," he said in a quiet tone to match his. "I have been ready for this ever since I broke the skin on my mom's nipple with my first tooth. I had a new special love for a different bodily fluid that I know only a woman could provide me with."

Willy, much to Spencer's bewilderment, was struck with something that came to impact right to his face after what he had just said. His eyes widened in total shock, his jaw falling slowly until it reached the limit of its hinges; he remained beat and immobile from absolute awe. Spencer knew him long enough to tell when he was bullshitting or when he was dead serious. And if he was dramatically playing with his emotions right now, he was definitely steering away from a better, healthier profession.

At least not for the first three seconds until a new emotion waved over him. His features began to rise...rise and shine. Willy broke out into a laugh that filled the entire house; his eyes were now glaring with excitement and giddiness, a bright toothy smile beamed across his lips, his hands clawed at his shoulders from the thrill and anticipation that was visibly taking him over. Spencer feared for a millisecond that he was about to do something that would blow their cover.

"My nigga!" Willy almost shouted, but calmly brought it down to their secretive tone. "You're a fucking natural! I can tell you that right now, man!" Willy looked over his shoulder, concerned the ladies might have come back to see what the commotion was; once he saw the coast was clear, he calmed himself by straightening the top of his shirt and then leaned in to Spencer to resume their heart-to-heart in a discreet volume. "Now remember, this is the evening that will define your entire life on this planet. It was like that the first time I wasted my first skank. She trusted me, liked me a lot, and when I felt the blade penetrate her chest..."

The look in Willy's eyes; the tone wavering in his voice; the way his hands began to tremble, Spencer was again worried he would lose all control, run down the hall and into the bathroom to do Kirsten right now, and if he did that, there would be no argument he would do Holly along with her, ruining the night for the both of them. Luckily he seemed to restrain himself and take composure of his voice.

"...all five inches as I looked into her eyes. The eyes are where the fuck it's at. It's never worth it unless you look into the eyes, dude. Oh, and of course the shedding. All the beautiful, glorious blood they shit endlessly from their wound. Speaking of which, sometimes those nasty bitches shit themselves, so just to give you a heads up. Piss themselves or shit themselves, or both."

Spencer nodded, taking heed in all of his best friend's words.

"The bottom line here is don't let any bullshit get in your way of enjoying this memorable occasion. Remember, this is the ultimate drug that will put all that street smack to shame. You'll be taken to a different realm, carefree of the world surrounding you; you will walk tall, you will become a man of power, you will be a God, Spencer. Just remember to look into the eyes. When you do, you'll be absorbing her soul. Devouring it.

"It's the next level—it's what everyone wants...it's what everyone works for...it's what everyone lives for...it's what everyone needs...and this is the only way to achieve it. Why? Because every mother fucker that you and I see walking down the sidewalk is a fucking pussy! They're all afraid! Don't you see? It's the final level! Taking a life is equivalent to destroying a universe. Human beings are the strongest and greatest creation known to mankind in all the galaxy—well, men are. All the greenhorns are supposed to start with women; it's overwhelming at first, but it's only a warm-up before you move onto the men—and that is where the Tootsie Roll is beyond all that hard Tootsie Pop. You remember that one Vietnam movie when the captain killed that deranged colonel? And that guy was gargantuan—I mean large and in charge, even before he had an army of spearchucking Cambodians backing him up; he had an impeccable military record and a family and everyone looked up to him. And then one single man cut him to ribbons with a fucking machete! And what happened after? What happened after, Spence? He became the new colonel! He became the new Kurtz! Those psycho-native fucks were all of a sudden bowing to him! That's no unrealistic Hollywood exaggeration, that is for real!

"There are several hundred species of animal that roam the world, then there are women, and then there is man! Why do you think Hitler referred to them the Masters of the Universe? When you master the master, what does that make you? Eternal! Say it with me, Spense! Eternal!"

"Eternal."

"Eternal!"

"Eternal!"

"Eternal!"

"Eternal!"

Willy grabbed Spencer's shoulders again, tightening the squeeze and shaking him playfully until his head bobbed like a nodder figurine. He grinned and felt like he and his football teammate were in the locker room prepping themselves up for the Superbowl.

"And speaking of historic icons," Willy said. "Wasn't it Sun Ti-zoo that said that the instinct to kill is as common as the need to procreate?"

Spencer thought about correcting his pronunciation of but didn't want to spoil the moment.

"It's in all of us. Ti-zoo couldn't have said it better. It's even every one of us—even the ones who abhor the concept of violence. They say it's what makes the human race damned; I say it's even more damned without it! It's a part of us! We need it as much as we need the blood that runs in our veins to live; it's what makes us human. Back in medieval times, families got enjoyment out of watching live beheadings, the Romans watched people mangled and mauled by lions as gaily and happily as we would watch a ball game today. As time and human knowledge and morale evolved, we transferred this urge from real-life executions to absorbing that comic books, television, film and video games—fictional characters in a fictional world where no physical harm is done to anyone. You get what I'm saying so far? Man was so much more wiser and living life to its absolute fullest and rawest—basically just being human—and then the idiot box sucked all those impulses and appetites from us—"

Willy clutched a fist in front of his heart, indicating real mightily emotion in this part.

"—robbed us of our primal essence and leaving us a boring moronic mutant offspring of real hardcore bad-ass motherfuckers that went extinct before the twenty-first century.

"You and I, Spence...you and I are unfortunate enough to be a part of this generation but very fortunate enough to have acquired a common sense more unique than you're average bear. Am I right, homie? We're gonna take that sense and take our knives and take those lives and then take a hand right to our crotches and say, 'You wanna suck the human part out of me? Suck on this while you're at it, you bitch-ass tricks!'"

Willy held out a fist, Spencer bumped it even though he wasn't sure he was following him a hundred percent.

"The bottom line here is through a genius, knowledgeable perspective...it's normal. It's totally normal. Everyone should be doing this. That's what separates us from them. You think you're different because you're the one who's not normal? It's actually quite the contrary. They are the coward motherfuckers who aren't normal...you're the one heading to the final level."

Spencer felt his heart increase in size, warming his innards to a comforting level, granting him a dose of confidentiality and comfort...he liked where this was going. He felt his mouth water, imagining those beautiful ambers of her looking at him, tearing and suffering from pain, betrayal, shock, the plea to make it stop and bring her back before the next world captivated her and swallowed her existence whole and erasing her from the face of this planet for all eternity.

He settled his eyes onto Willy's so they could lock securely to express his genuine determination.

"Willy," he said, "she can sprout anything out of any opening her body wants to...but as sure as I have ever been about anything in my whole life, I want to see her bloom...and I want to see her eyes...I want to go to that final—"

Spencer stopped himself.

"What?" Willy said.

"What makes it the final level? How do we know there's not anything after this?"

A smile widened across Willy's face as he shook his head, staring disbelieving at his accomplice. Then he laughed.

"That's a special privilege a rare few get, and we have the honor of finding out ourselves. If you're still willing to walk that path. Are you with me?"

Spencer stared at the floorboards for a second or two, letting the thought ponder in his head. He instantly killed it off and looked back at Willy.

"You better believe I am."

"That's my man. Now quick, before they come back, let's toast."

Spencer reached down to pull his right pant leg up and unbutton the ankle holster that carried his CRTK Ultima Hunter's tactical knife that Willy had bought one for him and another for himself from a surplus store downtown—five inches of black steel lined with a razor-sharp serrated edge with a comfortable black leather grip—he said it would be just perfect for his first time.

"Remember," Willy said, "these bad boys aren't designed for this kind of practice, they don't have a fuller. So you gotta twist it to break the suction."

"Got it."

Willy and Spencer held out their weapons, blades up.

"To the final level," said Willy, wearing a proud smile.

Spencer replied feeling that same smile of self-contentedness pull across his face.

"To the final level."

They clinked blades.

Kirsten opened the bathroom door to find Holly waiting outside.

"I'm all done," she said. "Now get your buns in here."

Holly stepped into the lavatory to find that it wasn't too bad with two people in here. The girls cracked open their purses and looked into the mirror to do a few last minute preps; shuffling hair, applying another coat of lipstick, clearing their faces of any eye crust, outdoor mildew or gunk of any kind.

"What are you feeling right now, hon?" Kirsten said.

"I feel..." Holly knew what she felt, just had to search for the right description. "...I feel leery but at the same time more pumped for this than I've ever been for anything that I can remember."

Kirsten pushed her hair behind her shoulders.

"Get rid of that leery feeling. It'll do you no good. I swear, man, the looser and more relaxed you are, the better this is gonna feel. Trust me on this."

Her friend's knowledgeable words sent a wave of ease over her, washing away any minor tension, but there was still one part that refused to be eradicated.

"It's supposed to hurt, though, right?" she asked.

Kirsten furrowed her eyebrows, chuckled and shook her head.

"That's all a myth. They call it pain but it's really an extraordinary type of pleasure; if there's any pain it's gonna feel so unimaginably, inconceivably glorious. You'll feel the bliss more than you will the sting."

They heard them both shout something down the hall, like a chant or a cry of victory. It sounded something like Reversal! or Eternal! Both looked at the door, and then to each other. Holly gave a look of some disorientation; Kirsten just smiled wryly and shook her head.

"Anyway," Holly said. "What were we saying?"

"The pain. There simply is none. It's two different types of pleasures: one that's plain pleasure and one that exceeds that plain pleasure by a hundred...a hundred-million." Kirsten winked and smiled.

Holly looked at herself in the mirror. A simple, ordinary girl with a void yawning and yearning to be fulfilled, and no one in the world knew about it besides Kirsten and herself. Her whole life, she woke up every morning with the sickening feeling that she would have to carry this emptiness in the pit of her stomach through the everyday world. And now, finally tonight, after all those days of feeling extrinsic to the stranger that she walked past on the sidewalk or in a public place somewhere...it was going to be all over. Or at least this evening was to be the first step to fill the gap.

Tonight, she was going to reach the end of that long line to humanity. This is what was keeping her from having some peace of mind; a happy life; this was her destiny. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin, observing a different, hardened, femme fatale Holly now. Nothing—and not one fucking thing—was going to get in the way of what she wanted.

"Doesn't matter," she said, hearing her tone deepen a notch. "As long as it makes me feel a hundred-percent, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will."

"Now that's what I'm talking about, bitch!"

She made a few last-second adjustments to her hair, make-up and breasts, and then turned face to face with her mentor and said, "Bring it on."

Kirsten smiled proudly, raising an open palm up for her to high-five, which she gladly welcomed with a responsive slap with her own hand.

"Oh yeah," Kirsten remembered, "and I know this goes without saying but try not to get any of it in your hair."

When the girls came back, Spencer at once managed to harness the giddiness and bloodlust that was electrifying his innards and bottle it before it caused an unexpected, unwanted expression across his face, blowing everything to hell. He displayed a pleasant, courteous smile for his date as she walked to him. She returned the gesture, but hers had exhibited coyness, or so he had thought.

Kirsten leaped right on Willy, who caught her and was embraced by the locking of her arms, legs and a hungrily-tongued French kiss. To avoid further embarrassment, Spencer spoke right up.

"So do we get a tour upstairs or what?"

Willy broke from the kiss and turned his head to Spencer.

"Yeah, that's something I gotta tell ya's," he said, and let Kirsten down. "There's a master bedroom up on the second floor and for some reason there's a bed in the attic. Guest bedroom, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, since I went through all the hard work finding this place, I only think it fair that my lovely and I retire to the more elegant second-floor suite while you two douches can take the web-infested attic."

Kirsten guffawed almost uncontrollably as if she'd been intoxicated. Willy joined her in her amusement.

Spencer shot a frown at them both, and then turned to look at Holly. Again she gave the shrug of her shoulders and rolled her eyes. Whatever.

"Nah, I'm kidding, I'm kidding," Willy said. "It's not really webby at all. Plus, the floors are double-insulated, so neither of us can hear one another."

"How the fuck do you know they're double-insulated?" Kirsten said.

Willy spread his arms out in a defensive What gives? gesture.

"I stamped my feet up there and I could just tell they're reinforced with extra fiberglass shit. I've seen those construction shows, okay? I know my shit." He neared Kirsten's face with his and said in good-nature, "Now, may I please tap that now?"

Kirsten playfully struck him on the shoulder as they both once again broke out in laughter just before locking lips to tongue-blast in a desperate and unmannerly fashion.

Spencer stole another glance at Holly, whom he found already staring at him. He could see the affection swirling her those sparkling amber jewels, but there was something else in them that looked more overpowering. She held a gaze on him that suggested something he ought to be concerned about. Although it was slight, it looked like there was aggressiveness in those beady little Bambi pupils.

Then she beamed another sweet innocent smile across her lovely face.

"Shall we?" she said, extending a hand outwards for him to take.

"Yes, we shall." he replied, taking it; and off they all went for the staircase.

They followed Willy and Kirsten up to the second floor. The set of stairs proceeded up to the attic while the two higher-levels trailed off down towards the end of the hallway where the master bedroom was. They turned around to face their green counterparts.

"Well, kids, this is where we part," Willy said. "Make all the noise you want, because like I said..."—with all the strength he could muster, he gave the floorboards three vicious pounds with the heel of his foot—"...we won't be able to hear shit. You guys good?"

Spencer and Holly both nodded.

"Alright, and I know I needn't remind you guys about the little 'protection protocol,'" Willy said. "Go ape-shit, tear the place apart, let those raging hormones of yours take control! But be safe, right?"

Willy gave Spencer a thumbs-up and a wink, Spencer acknowledged with a nod; Kirsten said something with her face to Holly without speaking any actual word, Holly, too, received the message and nodded in affirmation.

"Peace out then!" Willy said, and he guided the laughing Kirsten into the master bedroom with an arm around her shoulder, shutting the door behind them.

This was it. The point of no return.

Well, this was it. At this point, from here to the next time they saw him—or in technical terms, when he saw him and her bloody lump of a mutilated corpse—the moment, everything to make this occasion worthy to mark, was all in his hands. No more guiding. No more holding hands. He was the maestro, the director, the ringleader. Everything depended on him. He turned to look at Holly, who simply stood there, hands together in front of her stomach, looking innocently at him. He smiled, and she smiled back.

"He better be right about those floors," he said. "I wouldn't wanna hear him galloping and hollering all night—he's probably gonna cry right afterwards."

Whoa. He couldn't believe he just said that about "Playboy" Willy Critchfield, the one and only, the "ultimate mack daddy", not to mention his friend and mentor; he still couldn't fathom how lucky he was to have someone of his level befriend him and respect him as an equal. He couldn't even try to picture it hypothetically in his head if he were to just blurt that out with him in the same room.

Holly laughed and responded, "Guys who use that macho facade like him usually do it to hide their sensitivity, so you could be right."

Spencer scoffed at himself and grinned.

"C'mon," he said, stretching a smile that just glowed with self-assurance.

He took her hand and led her up two sets of steep stairs that stopped at a door. Spencer grabbed the old dirtied brass doorknob and turned, pushing it open. The room wasn't as unkempt as Willy described it to be, but it clearly wasn't a match for what they had downstairs. The floorboards were warped and naily, it was slightly drafty from the chill of the night air seeping through the cracks in the ceiling above and the air felt a little polluted. But it was better than nothing.

The king-size bed, perfectly made, lay against the center of the northern wall, with a nightstand on either side. A couple of dressers—one with a mirror—were placed against the wall, and there was even an old inexpensive 90's-manufactured television sitting on one of them.

Spencer walked to the bed to inspect it; dust had coated the entire surface of the blanket. He pulled it off and took it to the west window and opened it to pound the dust off the cover.

"Guess they either forgot what was up here or just didn't wanna bother with the extra weight or what," he said.

Holly wandered around, browsing the vicinity as she waited patiently for him to tend to that and then discuss what the next step would be. She looked at the wall behind them where they had first entered and noticed a framed painting on the wall. She approached it to get a closer look; it was an old oil painting, the nature and style of it suggested something biblical. There was a woman in a red dress and a green cloak sitting down on a stone or rock looking up to a larger, darker figure standing over her; a man dressed in a dark brown robe and attached to his back were a pair large dark-brown feathered wings and in his hand a sickle. Holly noticed a tiny bronze plaque centered at the bottom of the frame, it read "EROS / THANATOS"

Once Spencer had thrown the oversized blanket enough to his satisfaction, he tossed it back on the bed, clapped his hands and rubbed them together as he approached Holly, who turned around to acknowledge him.

They stood there, looking at each other and looking away for about ten seconds until their eyes met again. They laughed.

"So..." Spencer said.

"Ssso..." Holly replied.

"Um, do you...should we...I don't know...kiss first?"

She chuckled. "Sure, why not?"

Spencer answered with a chuckle of his own and with slight hesitance he managed to lean forward, lagging as he did so, to make his way to her lips.

"No, wait..." Holly suddenly said at the last second, making Spencer throw his head back immediately and looking at her with great concern. He tried to speak, but his eyes did the job for him.

"Let's wait until..." she said, hoping he was getting the rest. "...You know, until we...get in—"

Spencer immediately complied with no objections, almost gladly.

"Oh, yeah, sure!" he said. "Yeah, no problem, yeah. Um....yeah, okay."

Then he scoffed and shook his head.

"Here I am talking like we should go by the unwritten book—as if there's rules and regulations for this sort of thing."

Holly nodded, veering her gaze casually off to the side. And again another curse of awkward silence befell them.

"So, how should we start this then?" Spencer asked. "Do you maybe want to go somewhere and...then I can stay here and....or we could do it the other way around...I could go somewhere and you could stay here...or whatever, I guess we could both do it in here if you're cool with that, or...maybe we—"

"There's a bathroom..." Holly interrupted as she pointed off to the side. "...right over there. I'll go and use it while you can...stay here?"

Spencer nodded long and wide, protruding his lower lip.

"Sounds good," he said. "Sounds good to me. I'll be right here waiting."

"Well, all-righty." Holly said.

As she closed the bathroom door behind her, Spencer began to undress. He peeled off his polo, then his jeans, shoes, socks...should he leave his briefs on to hide the blade in them, or keep it somewhere in the bed? Like say, under the pillow? Nah, he would leave it tucked in the back of his tighty-whiteys where it would be secure and wouldn't be able to roll off or get away on its own and not have it be there when he needed it.

He picked up his clothes and tossed them in a darkened corner so that they wouldn't be seen strewn across the floor, keeping this beautiful scene neat and sophisticated as it could possibly get given the circumstances; he lifted the covers and slid into the bed, cautiously as not to slice his own buttcheeks with the knife. Then he had to think about positioning. He first tried lying back with his hands locked behind his head, casually, cool...then realized it was macho and ignorant. Besides, he could feel the knife pinching him. He then switched into a different stance: laid across the bed, resting his head on his left palm and having the other one rub a finger sensually across the blanket. Seducing, humorous...this would do.

Then he felt the knife fall into his shorts. He should have known it was too heavy for the elastic waistband to hold. Stupid idea.

"Fuck," Spencer shouted through a whisper.

He carefully picked himself up and tried getting up in a crabwalk position to reach into his briefs to retrieve the knife which he could feel the handle pressing against his buttock. He took a hand back there and tried to pull it out when as he stood higher, the knife slipped and fell lower, now dangling underneath his scrotum.

"Son of a motherfucking bitch!" Spencer whisper-shouted again through gritted teeth.

Then he heard the bathroom door knock.

"Are you ready?" Holly said through the other end.

Are you fucking KIDDING me?! Spencer hollered in his head, agitation boiling.

Then Spencer stopped himself dead in his tracks, stopped the panicking, stopped the frustration, he put it all to a halt. Inhaled, exhaled.

"One more second!" Spencer said back.

"'Kay..."

Roll with the punches...if a problem presents itself, just deal with it...

The stress nearly took him over, but he remained still as it cooled and evaporated within two seconds. This was his first time. This was his only first time; he would enjoy the many many more future "cherry-killings" ahead of him, but there was only going to be one first time. This was not something that was to be done and put behind him...this was going to be the most important...most vital part of his youth. It was what defined him. It was what was going to make him feel alive; like a king; like a god, erasing him of any self-conflicts or doubts as the average common Joe had used illegal contraband for. It was going to be his milestone. Not a milestone; the milestone; his milestone.

Spencer calmly got on both of his knees, fished the knife out of his underwear and placed it underneath his pillow. Then he laid back and locked his hands behind his head. He was about to call out to Holly when he forgot he didn't want that position. So he instead laid his hands across his chest, locking his fingers together like a small, cherubic young boy awaiting his mother to tuck him in.

"I'm ready now." Spencer called.

The bathroom door slowly creaked open, and out came Holly, wearing a large towel or blanket wrapped around her from the top of her breasts all the way down dragging across the floor. She held the top of the cloth up with both hands as to be certain it wouldn't fall on her before she could get underneath the covers with him. Cute. There was a wan smile drawn across her lips. The thing that stood out more than her pleasant, innocent, friendly expression were those beautiful, shining ambers that had locked onto Spencer's as she was slowly approaching. He could feel something fierce in them, some kind of hunger that said that it was going to get what it wanted no matter what the cost was. She might have been the sweet, coy, friendly, obedient type, but this bitch was going to play rough.

She came to the side of the bed, lifted the covers and slid in next to him, unraveling the towel while underneath the blanket. She kept about a foot's distance from Spencer as she laced her fingers and rested them on her chest, mimicking him.

Holly looked at him with those wild, animalistic eyes; Spencer looked back with his own, couldn't tell what his face was saying; what he felt was that right now it looked like she was wanting to go hardcore; she would probably end up scratching him, biting him, and Lord knows what else. The thought shot through his head for a millisecond that he thought maybe he could give this chick a quick test drive before her disposal—he was suddenly getting so goddamn hungry for it that he couldn't wait. She looked even hungrier for it. Too bad she wasn't getting it. Ha, she wished!

She stared at him, and he stared back...with their eyes, their lips, their emotions. Neither made the first move for a while as to where this would go next; he waited patiently for her to say or do something, but until then he swam and basked in those radiant, engulfing, chocolate-sweet amber pupils.

Then in a flash, she grabbed the cover, lifted it up and climbed right on top of him. Spencer gasped so fast and hard that the cold, murky air scratched inside his throat; his heart nearly shooting out of his chest...and then it all quickly settled once the warm, strong, heavy feeling of Holly straddling over his pelvis cooled his nerves tenfold. On instinct he ran his hands up and down her thighs. God, they felt so warm, so soft, so strong; the slightest squeeze could probably blow every ounce of air right out of his lungs, he couldn't control the erection that fired right up underneath her.

Holly slapped his hands away.

"Heel, doggy," she said, a new tone of confidence in her voice. "I'm gonna take the first shot at the wheel."

Whoa, holy shit, thought Spencer. Who the fuck is this and where did she come from?

Spencer's heart pounded like it never had before; his breaths dug deep and cold as he inhaled like when dipping himself in a pool of ice water. She was so entranced, so presumptuous into what she believed they were about to engage in. This was going beautifully as planned. She was never going to see it coming!

He saw something hung around her shoulder; the same on her other one. Of course; brastraps. She was still wearing her bra, so translucent that the color matched the warm paleness of her skin. He could also feel that she still had her underwear on as well. Talk about a match made in Heaven. He thought about questioning her, but the urge died almost as quickly as it had aroused.

The look in her sparkling brown eyes held him locked tight again. Right now they were so oblivious, so free, so determined and fully locked and loaded for total annihilation.

Like feedback transmitting noisily and with raging hostility from a microphone in the face of a loud speaker, the trance was awakening the bloodlust in him; simmering, sizzling, boiling, rising...hotter, faster...

Spencer saw white as he swung his right arm for underneath his pillow to grab his blade—

Then the sight of something mind-bending and explosive and terrifying and so many other things gargantuan to him had punched through the field of blindness and caught his attention in full force.

Holly had something in her hand raised over her head; the illumination of the moonlight from the window over the bed revealed her little secret by gleaming the light over the shiny material.

A fucking knife!

On quick reaction—instinctive reaction—Spencer twisted his whole torso off to the side and Holly hammered the object so swiftly and so vengefully down onto the bed sheet and through into the mattress. Spencer's heart skipped a beat, maybe several, at the uncanny sight of how fast and how furious she slammed that fucker down, tempted to drive it down into his own heart! He felt his own face narrow vertically, his mouth in the form of an O and his eyes popping out of their sockets.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Spencer screamed, voice cracking, his heart traveling up his throat, followed by the coursing of his ice-cold blood, his breath decreasing ever more so. "What are you doing, bitch?!"

Spencer was still dangling off the edge of the bed, but still straddled underneath the transformed maniac. Quickly he managed to take both hands—one still clutching his own knife—and shove her with great force backwards off the other side of the bed. He got off, the knife still clenched in his hand, but his mind was still warped in confusion, dismay, fear, anger, he didn't know what he was feeling or what was going on. The whole world had suddenly blown into total and utter chaos.

Holly rose up from behind the other side of the bed, like a horror movie where she was putting on a juicy look for the camera; except this was not for show. Hazardous, dangerous, actual life-threatening situations presented themselves a few feet away from him.

Holy fuck, this was not Holly anymore.

In a second, she was already scrambling across the bed like a fierce predator, grunting and growling like a wild animal, her eyes locked onto his the whole way. Without a moment's thought or hesitation, Spencer backpedaled as his instincts begin to panic, screaming at him to find something he could use to defend himself.

A shield! A shield! Get a fucking shield!

She was already on the other side of the bed, poised in a half-crouching position, knife gripped in her white knuckles and ready to drive it through him.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Spencer shouted, voice cracking.

Holly replied with another raising of the knife and a war cry that would have awoken the slumbering residents of China as she charged right after him.

Spencer tried to dodge the attack, and was halfway successful; Holly swung the knife down again in that same breathtaking and dreadful fashion but as he parried to his right, the blade had come down carving a nice long slit down his right bicep. Spencer shrieked to the top of his lungs in absolute pain, using his left hand to clutch the wound.

Then Spencer conjured something in his head. Something had clicked and whirred and was revving the engines with both the gas and the oil burning at full capacity. That pain that he was feeling, the blood that he could see seeping from the wound in his right arm, and how there was lots of it now...this was supposed to be her pain, her blood; the knife he was still holding in his hand. This was supposed to be his night! His kill! There was to be blood tonight...but not his own! So what the fuck!

Now his war mask was bulging into position behind the flesh of his face, displaying it for her to see, morphing so translucently and solidifying that his mask of sanity was cracking and crumbling to pieces.

"You fucking cunt!" he screamed. "You're fucking DEAD!!!"

He squeezed the handle of his blade with vengeful wrath and determination, and raised it high in the air as he set his blazing red eyes onto hers and unleashed a fierce, bloodcurdling howl of his own...and charged for his target. This was it. Only a second away and all that separated him from finally reaching his destination; his legacy; his goal in life was only a few feet's worth of space.

Spencer ran for the Olympic gold medal, aiming for Holly, who transported from one spot to the next with the blessed quick reflexes the female race were known for. With all that pent-up frustration bunched in the muscles of his arms and his shoulders, he threw the knife down hard and was unfortunately was too late to catch the swift psychotic bitch; leaving him swinging at nothing but air and throwing himself almost stabbing the floorboards.

He caught himself as he pedaled a few steps forward before he stopped and looked back at Holly. Her eyes had still blazed with fury and madness but this time they were laced with a tinge of shock and disbelief. In a second's time that brief moment of abashment had evaporated and the animalistic hunger for carnage had spread back across her face, just like Spencer's was.

She kept her stance, and he kept his; two menacing, growling, psychotic, half-naked college students wielding hunter's knives and dead-set on slaughtering the other, facing each other with a yard in between them, staring each other down gravely with only the moonlight to depend on, awaiting their opponent to employ the next move.

It was Holly who broke the trance first, this time running after him and bringing her right arm across her chest readying to launch it sideways, either to penetrate him in his arm or his ribs or was probably aiming to give him a good slice across his throat.

He bent down, almost hugging his knees to his chest, ducking the knife that pierced the cold drafty air with a loud, blood-chilling whish!

Holy shit! Spencer heard his head say. Whatever this psychopath's issue was, there was no mistake about it that she was not bullshitting. Jesus, just hearing that sound made his bowels unclench.

Spencer ran straight across the attic, running past an open window—through the beam of moonlight provided by the last quarter kindling through the frame—and retreated back into the darkness to look for something to serve as a guard. He had a weapon, he just needed a shield. He was a Spartan warrior now—time to take this diseased wench's head off and stick it on a pig pole.

Impatiently and violently, he yanked the top drawer out from the big wooden shelf that rested in the corner, pulled it out, splaying the contents out every which way. It was a last-minute scenario and there was no time to get anything sturdier or fancier and its only real purpose was to help create distance between him and her, plus it also had the power to knock her out if he was lucky with the throw.

Spencer held the drawer horizontally outward towards her with both hands to keep her back, while also holding his knife the best he could; and in perfect timing, too, because she was just stopping herself practically at arm's length right when he had turned wielding his new cover of defense. His heart skipped at beat at the sight.

There was not even a second's thought on her side, however, as she kept scrambling forward, wildly and savagely as she swung and stabbed the knife at the drawer, chipping and denting the wood, bad enough to where it was becoming demolished.

Spencer's heart was pulsing, throbbing so uncontrollably that part of him was bracing for a death by heart attack before being snuffed by this demented bitch. She was so fast and so desirous to kill him with her own hands, and there were no second-thoughts involved in this whatsoever. It was either going to be him or her. A lousy wooden object wasn't going to buy him much time. He took what was left of it and with all of his might rammed it into her face. The sound he heard made Spencer feel giddy and merry inside; a nice, juicy punk! And along with it a crack! She screamed.

It was the piece of plywood that connected with her face that caved in and made the cracking sound, not her nose. He was too panicky to remember this type of wood was not cut and welded for self-defense.

Apparently it still did the job just fine. Holly had been knocked backwards, falling on her ass, hands covering her nose. The sight of it filled amusement in Spencer, and had nearly let loose a long, hardy laugh until he heard a noise in the dark, he felt the thump of it through the floorboards and then the clinging sound of a metallic object as it came to impact with the ground. She had dropped her knife. This was his chance.

The sound emerged somewhere from the right near the bed, so without a second or even a first thought he immediately scrambled towards the bottom end of the mattress, patting the floor in the dark hollows of the shadows in search for the carving instrument. There was no time to consider that his move was a foolish one, because the hazard that was involved had already took place before he could turn around.

Holly slammed herself so hard against his back that he almost fell face forward on the rusty, splintery surface of the ground. Those claws of hers went straight to work; one had clutched a fistful of his hair, the roots being plucked out from his scalp while the other dug ruthlessly into his chest, nails going in deep enough to her satisfaction until she could take those punctured wounds and pull diagonally, creating four extremely-grotesque-looking streaks across his flesh.

Spencer screamed and screamed and screamed so badly that the same blindness came back again and this time had almost consumed him whole.

Holly wrapped her legs tightly around him (and he was right about them before, they worked like a vise) securing her spot to avoid being knocked off, and continuously howled and then bit a mouthful of flesh from his neck, feeling unfathomable fury and electrifying pain clenched in between those jaws, causing Spencer's screams to escalate several octaves. She felt her saliva run everywhere, getting into his wounds.

Oh Jesus now I'm gonna get an infection from this menstrual-cycled piece-of-shit, rabies, AIDS, God knows what...

Amidst the thickening, building and almost-unbearable agony, Spencer remembered the knife in his hand; somehow it ended up being in his left. Holly's thigh—what was once beautiful and lovely and so much wanted to caress and kiss and hump was now just an ugly, pale, bloody, veiny useless limb attached to a mind-fucked psycho bitch—was right there practically on a silver platter. The foreleg wouldn't be as painful; he wanted the top part, which was pressed hard against his waste. Straining his left arm, and ignoring the unthinkable pain inflicting and firing everywhere through his body, he ripped a nice, swift, deep-enough line right through the skin of her thigh. He could have plunged that motherfucker all the way to the bone had he wanted to, but to skim a nice, clean opening like that would have set her nerves ablaze faster and efficiently enough to let go of him. Plus the fact that he didn't want to do any serious damage to her just yet; he was saving that special energy for when she'd been restrained.

His plan had worked; she let go, shrieking to high heavens as she planted both those bony, disgusting claws atop of her wound, blood beginning to run down her leg. Spencer sucked a wallop of air straight down his lungs. Now defenseless, he abandoned the plan of retrieving her weapon, which was now clear on the other side of the room, and in order to get it back she would have to fight past him, who was now armed with his own bigger, meaner, uglier hunter's knife.

This was it. It was over. He had her now. The time had finally come! THIS WAS IT!!!!

Spencer started for Holly, his left hand extended out, ready to reach behind her head to clutch a fistful of that curly brown hair back to get a perfect look right into those eyes—those barbarian woman's eyes would suddenly switch back to those frigid, Bambi, vulnerable eyes and they were going to shine plea, desperation, sadness, shock, awe, betrayal, denial...while his right was ready to—

Before he could even touch her, he felt a mysterious blow pummel him out of nowhere right in his stomach, shooting all the air—every ounce—out of his lungs. He doubled over on instinct, he tried fighting not to drop on his knees, but he did anyway. He crossed his forearms across his abs to prevent further attacks to the mid-section, gasping for air. At least he had kept the notion strong enough to make sure the knife wouldn't drop out of his hand. Man, the girl was like a ninja; uncanny reflexes, strikes so fast they were barely visible.

His instinct was horn-strobing the rotating red signal in his gray matter: PANIC! PANIC! Oxygen tank zeroed out! Chamber decompressing! Immediate evac! Immediate evac! Spencer fought through that and looked straight dead ahead at the picture; the current situation. It helped him retrieve air more efficiently and put all the shattered pieces in his mind right back in place.

He turned to find Holly on all fours crawling on the floor, searching for her knife that she had lost. His quickly took action before any thoughts had processed in his temple; he lunged forward, grabbed the back of her neck with one hand, squeezing it with writhing fury, and placed the other against the small of her back, using every burning, flaming, malevolent strength that were now empowering his muscle mass to sweep her underneath her feet with the hand on her back, lifting her face-up like Hulk Hogan or Macho Randy Savage in the WWF, and heaved her the best he could. She landed against the dresser, her hip colliding against the edge of the old piece of furniture and her head puncturing the mirror, creating a web of cracks, quadrupling the reflection.

Yeah, bitch! Hulk-smash!!!

Holly didn't move, she stood there, leaning over the top of the dresser, one hand on her forehead where she collided against the glass, the other covering the hip bone where it came to crash against the solid wood surface.

What began as a high-pitched squeal quickly evolved into the painful sobbing of a poor, innocent young girl.

It didn't bust through the red mist that was now encompassing Spencer's world right away, but after about ten seconds of hearing it, it suddenly began to. He felt all the fire and brimstone and anarchy that was frothing and raging inside him begin to flush coldly down the drain; he felt his face unclench from the scowling and the tightening. What the hell was he doing? This was a girl!

His inner voice beckoned to him.

Whoa, there, cowboy! Really? Honestly? Seriously?! She was actually intent and fighting to get that knife of hers stuck into you! The stupid cunt-vampire bit you and literally ripped the flesh off your fucking chest! And here you are getting a sudden change of heart now?! Yeah, I know she's just a girl and can't defend herself as well, but if you're so concerned then take it slowly and casually. Keep your guard up. Don't try anything but don't fall for any bullshit. Remember the golden MMA rule while standing up: hands up, chin down.

Wait a minute. Spencer was a little amazed with himself that he had been struck with this. Wasn't this what he wanted? The vulnerability, the trust, the hurt, the pain...this was what he was working to achieve tonight. And now he was backpedalling. So why was he feeling this way right now?

Holly continued to cry, hanging her head down until her face was nearly touching the top of the dresser, hands still placed on both points of impact. Boy, this cry was real, too. Everyone knew the difference between an imitated cry and one of genuine pain. Hearing her cry, it was like the pain she'd been physically and mentally suffering was being absorbed into him, through the tone of that sobbing.

Spencer began to approach her, but very slowly. He held out his hands, one still brandishing his CRTK Ultima, one hand to hold out, open-palm, indicating a sign of halfhearted solace.

Holly remained bent over the set of drawers, sobbing horribly in agony, her face buried and blubbering, the multi-reflected Hollies mimicking her in each broken fragment.

Spencer could barely hear himself speak let alone get the words out, and could barely do that as his heart was beating so bad it broke his speech with short gasps of air.

"I..." he said, or had tried to. "I...I...I'm...I'm...s—so—sor—"

Like a wild, crazed piranha shooting itself out from underwater to retrieve fresh live meat, the right hand she'd been holding to comfort her hurt hip suddenly clenched into a white-knuckled fist, rose high and mightily and fired straight for the shattered mirror, so unbelievably fast and even more so unbelievably hard that the quicksilver had detonated into several pieces of shards, scattering everywhere in the room.

Spencer jumped back two or three steps in total shock, holding his knife out in front of him, his heart skipped a series of beats and he felt it go cold and hollow as it once again felt it shoot up through his throat and could practically feel it thump against his voice box; his jaw dropped to the floor, the veins that coursed his blood froze into ice; he felt his own face pull back as the cold air curled around the sides of his eyes.

He watched as Holly picked up one of the shards of shattered mirror, and slowly turned to face him.

It was as if Pazuzu found itself a new home in her. Her face was wrinkled and haggard and being pulled and stretched here and there; her upper lip curled up high to bare the gritting, even white teeth that used to look so beautiful before now looked dangerous and ready to chomp through a valuable artery of his. But once again and as always, more than that, more than anything, were the fucking eyes...the browns of hers burned to a red hue, not to mention the fact that they had scowled so intensely and so loudly that if it were true looks could kill, she would have easily been the victor here.

Goblin Holly, that's what the fuck she was. She was no longer the girl next door. That chick was long gone; what he had seen before him was an anomaly of an alter ego; so frightening; so blood-chilling; so unfathomable, like a troll. Her spine curved like a demon from a fairy tale, she strained every muscle from top to bottom to form the fingers of her hands into ravenous claws; her body, darkened and tainted from dark of the blood and the ugliness just revealed. And that face was more hideous than it was the first time. Long, frothing like a rabies-diseased creature, the tip of her nose somehow had lifted on its own, enhancing the appearance more into that of an aggressive, carnivorous and extremely hostile animal, baring those teeth like a dog out to defend territory, or just in the mood to mangle something unrecognizable with those lethal choppers...and of course there were those fucking eyes...

This was not the shy girl next door anymore. It was an actual genuine cold-blooded troll straight out from under the bridge in a fairy tale world and into the confines of reality standing just a few feet away in the flesh.

Holly tilted her head back, eyes still locked stiff right into her enemy's, raising a hand over her head that had equipped a large tall triangular-shaped glass shard in her hand, and released another banshee scream that sent shivers wavering everywhere up, down his flesh, and charged straight for him.

Spencer—despite the overwhelming shock that had still been coursing through him, as well as the physical injuries that were beginning to spread throughout his body as well—went into a defensive position that he'd learned from someone he knew who used to play high school football. Shoulder out, arm tucked in, bend the knees, and then charge and ram straight into the motherfucker, splaying him down.

Spencer repeated the steps in his mind and engaged them on the bitch.

She was practically weightless. Before he even knew it, she'd been swept off her feet and she was right on top of him, although he was still in control. He also knew how to avoid tipping over forward after the clash; after he came to collide with Holly, he quickly straightened his back and brought out his right foot as a brake to prevent diving face-first into the ground, and his left foot spread out behind him as to make sure the weight of his opponent didn't topple backwards, which would make him fall on his back and giving her the advantage.

In this case, though, it didn't last long. Spencer held her over his head for not even a second as she wildly flailed her legs up and down as far as they could; she used her nails once again to inflict more brutal carnage by delivering more grisly pain to his forearm. She had literally dug her nails down as deep as she could into his tissue, and then—using the fingers she'd been penetrating him with—grabbing his flesh and then began pulling at it with the most extreme of brute force; literally attempting to skin him alive.

Spencer's world became a fiery Armageddon of blinding, outrageous pain and agony, enough to charge him up with enough grit and devastating forcefulness to take this demon that he'd been holding above his head and for the second time heave this schizo bitch as hard as he could at something. This time it was to be the wall.

He mentally tried to absorb every stinging jolt of pain that was now electrifying several different points of his body straight into the muscles of his chest and biceps as he gathered the courage and the strength to do it. Somewhere in his mind, a small distant region played the theme from Popeye whenever the sailor downed a whole can of spinach to help back him out of whatever corner he was in.

Ignoring the agonizing pain in his body, he held her up underneath his palms, feeling like a professional wrestler, and chucked her straight across the room like trying to throw a bail of hay in the back of a pickup truck. She hit the wall with a loud blam! falling to the floorboards, and rolling a foot or two away from the impact.

To both his blood-chilling surprise and his chagrin, she didn't even make a sound. In fact, she was on her feet in a second. Spencer moved without even thinking.

Spencer ran straight for her, but again—and to his shock and awe—she used her preternatural reflexes to strafe off to the right; it almost looked like a teleport. The bitch had just been thrown against a wall and she got up like it was nothing, beaming from here to there like fucking Scotty. Part of him really had to give it to her—what a fuckin' warrior. Too bad she was a dead one.

Spencer failed to remember to use the braking procedure after this particular charge, as he found out he had missed his intended target, he tried desperately to bring his feet forward to slow himself down, but the weight of his body which he had used to try to knock her down like a battering ram had sent him staggering and then stumbling down on the floor, falling and crashing down hard like a driver under the influence. There was pain—new pain—but he ignored it and quickly swung his head over his shoulder to see what the she-devil was up to.

She was hunched on the floor on the other side of the room near the bed; she was still looking for her knife.

Get up! Get the fuck up! Now!!!

Spencer got up.

He grasped the knife in his hand; the solidness of the black rubber clenching against the muscle and bone of his hand—it had been scarred, but these were scars to be proud of. They were war scars. Scars that represented more courage, determination, pride and dignity than any form of steel or metal wielded together. He would have them embedded in his person for life and although the pain was beyond anything bearable, he was proud as shit that he had them. This stupid bitch—whatever her dilemma was—he had to tip his hat to her. She was a warrior and a half. He saluted the fuck out of her...but he was on a mission to retrieve his very first trophy, and as much as he respected her persistence, her indomitability...he couldn't let that stop him from getting it. And he had been honored to have this one as his first.

He looked over at Holly, her back turned to him as she was on her hands and knees still rummaging through the shadows sprawled over the floor in search of her weapon. Spencer—the knife being held tightly in his hand, blade positioned downward bracing for a beautifully-orchestrated stabbing melody—marched toward her.

The paleness of her back and the rigid lines of her spinal cord that arched up like a cat illuminated brightly in the dark of the room, giving away her position.

As he made it about three feet to where Holly had been, he struck his knife high to the ceiling; he wanted to slam it high and deep enough to where he wanted to stick his whole goddamn arm through her back and out the fucking fat of her breast! The current manic mental state he was in held no objections or second thoughts of any kind. Hell, he was gonna grab the fat of her titty and dangle it in front of her! Shove it up her vagina!!!

Spencer readied to plunge the knife...

...and then Holly stood up and nimbly whirled facing his position.

Yet again, instinct acted first; Spencer backed way the fuck up. The knife was still held over his head readied to massacre the cunt, but now, as he stood ten feet away, bleeding to death, his body on the verge of collapsing from all the anguish, unconsciousness nearly swallowing him; he was uncertain how he was ever going to catch her.

He stood his ground, watching her.

Quickly, he went over to the switch next to the door and flicked it upwards.

The light blasted into the room, eliminating every stint of dark that had cursed the highest floor of the attic. The blast blinded them both—holding a forearm to their eyes, and then squinting to fight for clearer focus. After a few seconds, the world was now full of color, brightness, white...

The vicinity looked like a hurricane, a tornado, a tsunami, and a street-riot all bunched into one unfathomable abomination of Mother Nature and had unleashed total fury in the room. Shards of broken mirror splayed everywhere; pieces of furniture all over the place; holes in the walls; blood on the floorboards; there had been pieces of everything that he hadn't even recalled even coming to contact with.

And then there was Holly.

Holly stood her ground, holding something in her hand. The knife. She found her damn knife. And her condition had not looked any healthier than Spencer's, given the fact she broke his skin severely in numerous places on his body.

She stood there, in her bra and panties, wobbly-legged, that beautifully-purply-pale flesh splattered with blood; shivering from the pain and the intensity, her right hand squeezing the handle of her blade, which had been held downward bracing for a long-and-highly-anticipated incision...

...just like he had.

For the life of him, he could not tell how he knew this, but he did; just from the look of her state.

It was as if the creature that was Holly less than a minute ago was finally driven away from the light after Spencer had just flipped the switch, suddenly here was Holly again. Like she'd been exposed and she was now shocked and speechless. But she kept her eyes locked onto Spencer's, and never once did they dart away for anything. What had once been those two gleaming fiery-red pupils of infernal insanity suddenly transformed back to those precious amber doe windows that displayed right through to her soul.

Quite a soul it was at that. She managed to work with both the sweetest compassion and utmost brutal savagery, and both were so genuinely pure. He thought neither would ever be compatible; you were either one or the other; mixing them together was like water and electricity: neither is compatible with the other.

He watched as she had been staring back at him, observing the protruding look of absolute awe and bewilderment swipe across her features. A moment of faint, silent, awkward lucidity took over the room.

Two young people: coy, wayward, naïve, guided hand-in-hand by their higher-level BFF's, enjoying each other's company (or had at least pretended to) now found themselves half-dead, adrenaline still burning with bloodlust, trying desperately to tear one another to ribbons. The world, time, everything that had been and was in possession as far as the eye could see had just fast-forwarded all the way to a different realm; he could see that she had felt the same in her perspective.

All reason was lost; nothing made sense anymore.

The two of them stood there, panting, aching, sweating, feverish for more battle, and kept staring at each other; watching time, space and all circumstance had slowly begun to dissipate, and in turn were emotions of confusion, abashment, overwhelming them into a paralyzed state. Pieces of the world, that were obliterated and scattered every which way five minutes or so ago were finally being put back in place...but things...time...the air...life...everything had felt differently. The sight of the blood, so much of it splotched on her legs and arms and chest and had even reddened her undergarments had the drool circulating and curling around his tongue, but something about her—his intended victim—had seemed all but untouchable now.

She had been thinking the same about him, he knew because of what he saw in those captivating browns of hers. It was some esoteric gift his kind was blessed with at birth; his kind had carried a secret flag for their brethren to take notice of, and he had seen it.

He knew it...because he had been staring directly at himself in those eyes.

This is too much, he thought. This is just absolutely too fucking much to take in as reality. This is impossible; this is beyond coincidence; this is nuts; it just can't be. It just can't be at all.

But it was. And here it is. She was after the same thing he was after; she intended to do it the exact same time he had planned. Coincidence? Fate? Accident? Whichever multiple choice you had circled, the fact was it was sure proof that the old saying "what can happen will happen" does indeed happen.

Spencer tried to speak, fought the voice to emerge from his throat and was unsuccessful. He saw as she took in a breath of air, her Adam's apple slightly rising and then falling, failing to break the awkward silence as well.

And then out of nowhere, as the two of them kept their profound stupefied stares locked tightly on each other—partially out of instinct, partially out of something he dared not attempt to learn about himself deep in the undiscovered depths of his own humanity in question—Spencer slowly began to curl the corner of his lips into a smirk...transforming slowly afterwards into a carefully-crafted wan smile.

Holly, momentarily frozen with surprise at first, repeated the facial gesture, and formed a smile of her own.

And then a chuckle.

The most extremely softest of chuckles, that is.

Strangely pleasant as it appeared to be, Spencer could feel his vision of reality begin to bend and twist, stretching and snapping to total destruction again. There was the old Holly again, that smile and that heartwarming laugh—but the laugh that had been warming his heart before was earlier sending pints of ice-cold Kool Aid blood streaming and ventilating through his organs; the pure angel of a woman that was Holly returned in the body of the wretchedly-pale, bruised, bloody body of the troll that he'd been dueling fiercely in hand-to-hand combat only minutes ago. He had heard about unreal phenomenas shared by real people in so-called factual events on TV programs and had understood the term and never denied the truth in the people's stories...but it was not until now that he'd fully experienced and now fully appreciated the term and having to know what it's like to have one wrapped around him etching a memory that he would face with for every day of his life.

Holly's smile broadened, her soft chuckling evolving into laughter. Spencer felt the gist that happened between them, and joined her.

The cackling began normally, then ascended louder, and louder...and then the tension that polluted the room slowly began to clear as the two had almost embedded themselves in their peculiar amusement feeling their own cheek muscles ache from boasting too much uncontrolled laughter, losing the feeling in their legs, having to bend their knees, throwing their heads down, laughing like two friends that had pulled off an incredibly-risky, death-defying prank and were now venting in joyous celebration.

Spencer was the first to speak.

"You..." he said, shaking his head, grinning.

Holly knew what the rest of his statement was going to be, and retorted.

"You!" she said, continuously laughing, triggering more out of Spencer.

A different sort of vibe took place in the murky attic at the top of this strange house that lay in the middle of nowhere. Just like that, somehow, something came in between them and this woman was no longer his enemy, and also no longer a stranger.

Spencer tried again.

"I..." he got out so far, "...I can't fucking believe this..."

Holly's smile faltered a little, and she shook her head.

"I can't either."

A pause came between them, and then she spoke again.

"I kind of thought at first you were only trying to defend yourself," she said. "But I could just tell...you were ...you were about to..."

Spencer nodded slowly, disbelievingly. Holly put both hands over her mouth in absolute shock. The two bruised, bloody and damaged young people could not tear their gazes away from each other even if they desired so.

"Oh my God..." she said in a tiny voice. "I'm just...never before have I ever been so fucking mindblown in my life than I am right now."

"How...how long..." Spencer knew what he had wanted to ask but failed to approach the question in a correct manner.

Like twins separated at birth, discovering they shared the same feeling, opinions, emotions, pains at the exact same moment and are able to identify them by a mile away, she knew what he'd been trying to ask.

"As long as I can remember," she answered.

He felt a tremendous and mysterious feeling completely wash over him; the tiny hairs of his flesh prickling upwards so erect that it stung; his heart doubling, tripling in size. Never, since the days of his adolescence to his elementary school days up to the days in high school escalating to his time in the big-shot University...had he met someone like her.

Spencer kept it secret from everyone; it was a secret that shut him out from the world. It was like a disfigurement that molded his face like a trash compactor designed it; it cast him out from the social public. The kids on the playground at Miriam (his preschool) saw it and vented their aggression for his indifference by throwing sticks and rocks and pushing him into puddles; the kids at elementary school constantly name-called him and did other horrid acts to him in class and out; high school was a little more mature but not any better in the department of terrible malicious pranks; it was awful the entire time. But here...with another human being...there was a mutual bonding. It was the first for him. He found one of his own kind. He found another part of him that grew into a beautiful young woman. Both bruised, both bloodied and both damaged, they both found each other after an act of death, survival and sex. It was as if they had made love like they were supposed to, but hadn't. Or perhaps they did.

"I never would have thought..." Spencer said, "...I mean, from the look of you."

Holly nodded.

"Turns out everybody's full of surprises, aren't they?" she said.

Spencer shook his head.

"Before," he said. "I couldn't see it. I mean, I seriously had no clue. You know how to hide it to a T. You'd make a great undercover narc or something."

Holly giggled; the same easy-going, fun-loving giggle she had in response with Spencer's funny dialogue while on their blind date.

"I don't think they'd want someone like me," she said. "I considered it at one point, though? You know? I figured I'm a natural at stealth and talking my way in and out and around things, and I'm locking up murderers and rapists anyway. You ever watch Dexter? That kind of inspired me."

Then Holly's smile faded. She looked at him listlessly, changing the topic.

"You were trying to kill me, though," she said.

There had been an obvious and easy counter to that statement, but for a reason he could not figure out, Spencer was speechless. Here was someone throwing stones in a glass house and the golf ball that was lodged in his throat along with his heart (which went from ginormous to small and cold back to ginormous again) both declared him guilty as charged.

He made an effort to call her out on it anyway, only with words and barely any feeling.

"And you me."

She replied with only silent breathing patterns and a bloody, blank face that kept staring at him, but not as heavily as before. He stared back, unsure of what to say next, unsure of what to do next. All he could do was wait, watch, and think the best he could, making sure he didn't get lost in thought while she could come out like a bat out of hell making another ninjitsu move out of the blue.

"I can't believe I ran into you." she said after a long pause, and once again with her esoteric body-face language, "I can't...believe we ran into each other."

Spencer chuckled. There was no thinking at first, no smile; that soft chuckle was his first kneejerk reaction.

He was not able to unfold his wings; he was not able to break from his cocoon, and evolve happily into the next life, but for one moment, he felt that he was there. He found a different route, and he felt more refreshed and more alive and more open than he had in his entire life in this one single moment. His bladder relaxed, his heart finally resumed beating at a normal rate. He was no longer concealed and suffocating in his dark, diseased sack of grief and misery. He could feel it—he was at the translucent lair of substance and could see right through. Although he came near, he still felt that trapping feeling of engulfment.

It was all too big and so much at once that Spencer brought his palms up to his eyes, bent down to his knees, and sobbed. Uncontrollably.

He could not remember if anything made him break down like this before or if this had actually been his first time shedding tears and crying over something. He was not sad, he was not hurt, but he literally screamed to his lungs as he convulsed, curled in a fetal position on the floorboards. Pushing and fighting this out of his system was more important than anything else; he didn't care if he had been offered a whole gullible sorority group weak and spaced-out from every drug in the market, blossoming somebody was his last concern. A new thing was happening to him now, and he had to go through with it. The world had always been oblivious to him, and for the first time in his life, he was oblivious to the world.

Spencer could barely even feel Holly as she placed a hand on his shoulder.

Bare, save for their undergarments, Kirsten laughed hysterically, running to get away from Willy, as he imitated a dog, growling with her ringer tank top in between his teeth and chasing her around the master bedroom in circles.

The good time was important; they both had to have a good time in order to gain his trust, and for that to happen, she had to actually experience a good time. She had to enjoy his company, enjoy herself to put on a good, genuine impression, make the mood right—and she really did—this guy was cute, fun and really funny, that was where the tinge of regret had flickered dimly. What a waste. But she needed her fix for the night and if she didn't get it tonight, there was no telling what she would do next. Would she stick the other one? The one who was kind of cute but also kind of a pussy? Probably. He was also a perfect first timer for Holly, so ultimately the match-ups tonight couldn't have been planned better.

What if it came down to just Holly? Would she do her? She didn't know...yeah, maybe she would. She hadn't killed many women in her life (one or two) and it wasn't that she didn't like it—of course she had no qualms about it—she just got her thrills eliminating the malefolk. It had started when she was thirteen, which would make this her ninth year now. She would go as far as to say it was better than intercourse; as the days and killings went by and she got more sexually-concerned, the killings made her feel more and more tingly and overwhelming with a lustful desire afterwards. In fact, the last one that happened two months before nearly made her climax in her panties. She...it...whatever it was was evolving into something gargantuan, something immortal, something above law, above all power, and she was lucky to have possessed it, fulfilled it and have it become a part of her.

Holly was a good listener and a follower, and she was fun to be around, too. It was still unclear to her as to why she'd taken her under her wing. Maybe because playing a shepherd was therapeutic; guiding the weak and vulnerable to reach out and touch that disclosed, off-limits, God-knows-what-lies-beyond-that-point region in the fogged, muddled and shadowed depths to where the human mind feared to tread but believed an answer to so many issues would be found. She herself found that special place when she blessed Toby Matthews—the ugly burnout loser from school, at the age of thirteen.

To make a long story short: although they shared answers and joked around in science class, he was on a whole other lower level than her and he should have kept his place. They were assigned to dissect a frog together, that led to a comparison between the human-like organs of the frog to the organs and insides of different horror movies. She confessed to him, in a moment of weakness that she'd like to refer it, that she loved blood and guts ever since she could remember; he responded energetically and enthusiastically—ecstatic as though he found and shared a bond with an attractive girl—that had a library of different imported Euro-trash gorefests, imitated snuff films, the whole nine. She tried her best to keep their pseudo-friendship at a minimum and only in science class where it was to stay; anywhere outside that room, walking down the hall, in the cafeteria or otherwise, she did not acknowledge his presence. If he noticed, he never said anything. Then came the day of her thirteenth birthday, and Toby must have figured the so-called relationship was open-to-the-public because he had drawn a picture and posted it on her locker with Scotch tape. The picture was of her, sitting and smiling and before her was a pile of human organs in the shape of a birthday cake, poked with exactly thirteen candles on the top surface. She looked at how he had drawn her. In the midst of her ravaging fury and overwhelming humiliation, she felt it—a very small and very brief feeling that flashed and gone like the glowing of a firefly—she felt touched, perhaps a little infatuated with him. It poked gently at her heart giving it a very warm feeling, but again, it was only in passing. That day the kids let her have it. The boys laughed at her, her girl friends second-guessed her, other losers in his clique began frolicking with her as if they had a chance, too. Never in her thirteen years in existence did she want to destroy something with the strength of her bare hands so badly. About a month later, when it all simmered down, she whispered to Toby in science that day that she would like to meet after school at 3:20. She wanted to wait twenty minutes after everyone left so they wouldn't be seen together. Once they met outside, she told him of a creek she liked to go to to skip rocks and asked if he was interested in going to which he had greatly accepted. They reached the creek and they walked deeper down the creek, and deeper, and deeper. Toby's concern grew and was asking why she had come down this deep in the creek to skip rocks when he had been interrupted mid-sentence when a large rock collided to the back of his head several times. Kirsten sobbed, lifting the heavy rock and slamming it down onto his head continuously, screaming him, cursing him.

After a hundred, two-hundred, five-hundred times, she stopped to take a look at him.

Holy shit, what a rush...

There was a streaming river not too far from where they were, were the water bumped into several rocks and stones and a mini-waterfall was stationed somewhere down the path. Kirsten grabbed him by his ankles and pulled him all the way down to the running current and pushed him in. It was twelve days before a kid and his dad found his body washed up on the riverbank half a mile down from the mini-waterfall. The school was in tears. Students, faculty, collages of family pictures in the hallways. Even her own girl friends and boys they hung out with were hugging and crying! She was absolutely astounded that everyone was so torn up over this guy! She was the closest thing he had to as a "friend" that she was aware of. She thought nothing at school or anywhere else in the world would change with him gone. She stood corrected, big time. After a week of mourning, the police began to arrive, roaming the halls, asking questions. The word "terrifying" reached an entirely new level for her; panic was pulsing, throbbing every nerve in her body. Then the second day of the police interrogations, she had been called in to the principal's office for a little sit-down. She informed him that they had talked and cut a frog open together and joked around, telling each other what movies they liked, and that he drew a picture for her, and that was when she erupted in sobs—it wasn't hard to do; in fact it was a little (very little) genuine, looking at the drawing of her, she remembered that heartwarming feeling and managed to take a little of it and prolong it to an uncontrollable fit of tears. The detective laid his rugged, heavy hand on her shoulder and said that unfortunate accidents happen and sometimes happens to those who don't deserve it—

Ha!

—and the only thing we can do is keep him in our hearts, remember his positive aspects, know that he's in a much better, happier place and remember we owe it to him to live our lives as merrily and joyfully as we can. Kirsten played the old man like the big dumb cello that he was. She then heard that the killing was ruled out as accidental. That was all fine and dandy for her, but it didn't mean the trace of it was totally gone. A handful of kids in particular, those who were to recall the drama between her and Toby, raised an eyebrow to her every now and then, but eventually that minor tension had cooled and evaporated, and that was just as well, for afterwards was right around the time her and her family were packing everything in cardboard boxes and moving to St. Louis.

Kirsten would always feel that block of solid concrete in her hands; the weight of it as she heaved it over her head; the way she threw it down with such extravagant force; the puncturing, cracking sounds of his skull and the dripping, suckling, sploshing sounds of his innards; the amounts of blood and brain that his tiny fat head produced and were now splattered on the dirt ground, clinging to leaves and sticks...it was as close to God as you could possibly get.

That was what she became that day in that creek—an immortal, esoteric goddess. It was better than anything in the world; more satisfying than slipping into a hot tub; more captivating than winning the Olympic gold; more rewarding than accomplishing a friendly deed like rescuing an old couple from a burning building...this was as close to the next world—the greatest technology; the next POWER as you could get. Hell, everyone should be doing this. But then again, if you gave it that much thought, if everyone did, then she would just be another ordinary. And being "ordinary" was never her style. Never was and never would be. She had the grade-A package and what was beautiful about it was that it was all a hundred-percent natural. No surgery, cosmetic or plastic; of course there was the make-up even though her elder relatives said that it debased women but they were some over-the-hill fucktards anyway—the ass and her prized-possession of a 38D chest, including her genuine long blonde hair, she was just more than a goddess—she was a fucking goddess that spawned from the imagination of every sheepish being that walked the earth; the object of every male's wet dream (and female for that matter; they were either desirous or envious) and walked the earth as a physical embodiment, destroying everything in her path.

And Holly was her first minion.

The bitch had potential, and looks; looks nowhere near good as hers, but looks that would help get the job done, nonetheless.

When Kirsten first laid eyes on Holly, she could sense that aura right away, like a scent that only a chosen few could only pick up and respond to; she didn't figure her for having the same pleasures she had, but just the look of her, it was written all over her, mingling everywhere outside of her...something was off with this chick. Something made her different, some secret, and her instincts had known right away that it was a dark one—deep, damp and dreadfully dark!

Intrigued, she sat down next to her on a bench on campus during lunch one day, introducing herself and making small-talk, which then turned into a lengthy discussion that had been picked up right after school the same day as they both went down to her house and talk some more. Her secret had been revealed to her through their first fight they both had eight months later. Holly was flat-out jealous (she didn't actually say those words even though it was all but obvious) of her lifestyle, her looks, her energy; she was pretty much the opposite: quiet, boring, unless she'd been around her, at least. Her guy friends had always told her they thought she was cute, and that's what she told her to make her feel better. Holly had accused her of enjoying her easygoing life of glamor and popularity more than she had her company. She remembered it like it was last night: in her room, dark save for the only lit desk lamp, she and her trading screams back and forth, tension growing and then it just...popped, exploded like a firework right in the middle of the room, permanently staining a black mark on everything.

"You don't know what I have to suffer every day!" Holly shouted.

"You think just because I have these looks that everything is fucking sunshine and rainbows for me? Fuck you! I pay my dues just like everybody else on this block, in this neighborhood, at our school, in the world!!"

"Not like I do. And never like I do! You don't know what I carry on my back every day of my life!"

"Yeah, like you do, Holly, baby. Just like you."

That's when Holly walked straight up to her face, lip trembling, on the verge of tears.

"Like wanting to kill someone, hacking it to bits and setting them on fire??!!"

She remembered the way those eyes looked: simmering with rage, quivering with pain, both emotions building a film of tears that streamed down her face, smearing her make-up. Kirsten felt a prick in her heart that pierced deeper slowly as she realized she herself had found a counterpart. She began taking in huge wafts of air; she placed her fingers over her mouth in total shock, beginning to form glassy-eyes herself, and then wrapped her arms around her in a hug. She was stiff, reluctant at first, then loosened up and gave in, burying her face into her chest, unloading tears and mucus on her favorite purple fuzzy sweater. She didn't mind.

"What are you saying?" said Kirsten. "Oh, my God...sweetie...did you?"

Holly shook her head.

"No," she said through a wavering tone. "But...it's like I...I kind of have these urges...this need that I can remember ever since kindergarten. I just wanna do it sometimes. I really wanna do it sometimes. You know?"

She broke down, hugging her knees to her chest, sobbing.

"I can't fight it! I don't wanna fight it then I do wanna fight it! I don't know what to do!"

Kirsten knelt down to her distraught friend, wrapped her arms around her and rocked her back and forth like a mother and baby.

"Small world," she whispered in her ear.

Holly brought her gaze up to her, this time she was shocked and puzzled...and then morphed into a look of wonder, affection...like she finally found her long lost sister she'd been searching for all her life.

"You too?"

"Yes," she said, "...and then some."

First disbelief struck, like she might have misheard or misinterpreted, but she was well aware of what words her ears had pieced together, and she picked up the truth that hindered within those words as well. Then her ears rang loud; time froze; her world became a haven of discombobulation; stupefied awe.

She reached up and wrapped her arms around her in an embracing hug.

Holly felt herself moved, and she also felt herself granted a first member of her alliance. Her high school cliche was being the general of an army of insecure pretty girls—well this was the same thing and a can of gutsy, chunky, watch-out-when-you-heat-it-up-or-it'll-splatter-everywhere-inside-your-microwave SPAM.

It was then that the friendship changed a whole three-sixty. After twenty-four hours of silence, consoling, allowing the smoke to clear, she confessed the murders of eleven people ever since the age of thirteen, explaining her usual routine: how and where to lure them, her favorite snuffing method, what tools and other prerequisites were required to dispose of the body afterwards.

As quid pro quo would have it, Holly then explained to her what had happened to her at six years old when she opened the door to her parent's bedroom, her mother soaked head to toe in blood, holding a gigantic knife, standing over the mutilated carcass of what was once her father. His head was positioned towards the door, his eyes looking directly at her daughter. She told Kirsten that she could see the dimming of life in his eyes, like a candlelight flickering and minimizing as the wax had all but disintegrated into a pile of liquid. She remembered locking her gaze into those eyes...a pair of eyes that were round and protruding with uncanny fright, total and immense refusal to believe what had just happened to him...and then the lights went out.

Holly loved it.

Before this altering occasion, she told Kirsten that she also remembered the beatings her mother suffered from the hands of her drunken asshole of a father. She told her she remembered the screams, the cries, the way he hollered at her to go to her room. She told her that as the nights went by, the fear and hatred for him grew intensively worse.

Looking at him like that—looking at a face (his face) that was looking at something far more dangerous, far more stronger, far more dreadful and overpowering—was the most uplifting and most desirous and most fulfilling thing she had felt and would ever ever feel in her whole life. She liked the results, but wanted to perform the deed herself. It was probably double the satisfaction and the relief and experience if it was done herself.

At the time, Kirsten found it moving; she had shed tears and found someone who shared the same dirty little secret. Weeks later, she remembered that in spite of the fact she had a bloodlust underneath that prissy, do-good, whiny pretense, she was just another spoiled, jealous bitch and never failed to get on her nerves more and more and she kept getting worse with it, too. She was kind of fun, but let's face it, she was a little on the nerdy side and pretty much a douche when it came to socializing and picking out clothes. "Oh, that's too flashy," "Aw, come on, I'll look like a slut!"

What does that mean? Does that mean that I like slutty clothes? Fucking bitch...

She would keep this on for a while and see where it would go, but she knew Holly well enough to know that she leaned more to the side of what was right, honorable, equality, blah blah blah. The bottom line would turn out that she would have to be added to her list as number thirteen, after number twelve here was dealt with.

Willy caught her and picked her up off her feet. She cried and laughed hardily as she was slung over his shoulder bouncing up and down as she was being carried to the bed and plopped down onto the mattress, her hair splayed over her face that was reddened from so much laughter. He climbed on top of her and the two engaged lips in another carnivorous French kiss. She could almost feel her tonsils beginning to shift now.

The blood in her veins burned and simmered like battery acid at the feel of squishing around on the bed against Willy's athletic build; she fought the urge to scamper under the bed where she was now keeping the knife and just drive it into that six-pack of his; she wanted to plunge it in there, she wanted to push and twist and just push some more through all that tight muscle—the blood, oh the gorgeous blood—and the look on his face! So unexpected, so out of nowhere, so submissive to the inevitable...he was going to the Promised Land—

"Hey!" he said, whacking her hard over the head with a pillow. "Where are you?"

"You can see me right here in front of you, can't you, dumbshit?" she said with a grin.

"Stay focused, now. I'm gonna show you how I earned the nickname 'Playboy Willy.'"

Oh, wow. I am so gonna make yours a slow one, she thought behind a face that fraudulently displayed eagerness.

He stuck his thumbs down behind the wasteband of his boxers, only a fraction of a second away from pulling them down until a knock on the door stopped him.

Willy spun his head over his shoulder looking at the door, then brought his confused and annoyed gaze back to Kirsten.

"Who is it?" he called.

No answer. Another rap ensued.

He stuck his hands out, irritated, denoting a is this really happening right now? face.

"Spense?" Willy said. "Did yours bust? Too bad, I'm dried out. Go ahead and slip it in anyway, she won't know the difference."

He looked at Kirsten to see her reaction; she smiled wanly and threw a fist to his shoulder out of playful nature. Willy snickered under his breath and froze to hear a response. The voice was so small that they had barely heard it.

"Kirsty?"

Holly.

Kirsten swung her legs around and off the mattress, heading straight for the door. She knew that voice and it meant that something was not going right. She stopped just before the door when she remembered she was wearing nothing but her thong. She turned around to grab a top and before she took a step towards the bed, Willy had out-thought her by tossing the ringer tank top she'd been wearing right into her arms. She slipped it on, approached the door, turned the knob and opened it five inches from the door frame as if a chain lock were there to stop an intruder from barging in.

One look at her said it all.

Whoooo-hooo! That's my girl! From what I can tell you ripped the shit out of him!

A cry nearly escaped her vocal cords; not a cry of fear, but a cry of victory, of love, of happiness. She had done it. She took a few hits herself, but needless to say it went with the territory—better that she discovered that on her own than telling her beforehand. She fought back the urge to jump on top of her, wrap her arms around her and plant every square inch of her beautiful profile with big sloppy kisses. Her heart rose in her chest, beating and pumping with triumphant excitement. She felt a great sense of pride, but more for herself than for Holly. Just the briefest glimpse of her current state proved to even a blind man that she was the truest of true warriors, thanks to her. She was gonna have this mutt trained to kill in no time at all.

Judging by her condition, he must have put up quite a struggle. Her makeup was smeared to shit, practically gone. She'd seen her without her makeup plenty of times before but nothing at all like this; indications of cuts that had been cleaned up; her gorgeous brown curls pulled back in a tail and the poor lighting from the hallway outside revealed the coily dirtiness that it suffered from the battle; she stood with her arms crossed, holding her elbows, knees locked together; shirt and pants on, barefoot.

Her eyes looked halfway blank; the other half had something indescribable in them—something aware, alive and kicking, that was for sure.

"'Sup, byaatch!" Kirsten exclaimed through a whispered shout, followed by a laugh. Holly didn't move a muscle. "What's up? Is everything alright?"

"Can you come outside?" she said, again in that distant, petite voice.

She would think it would be her natural instinct to be concerned at this point, but she wasn't. Kirsten knew it had to be a variety of different things. The first was always the shocker, the real deal, that moment when you've felt yourself evolve into something beyond humanity. It's a new reality and you've lost all sense of reason and morale and what the fuck you were supposed to do afterwards. So she's back for a few last-minute questions, to seek a little more counseling. She had this bitch on a leash, God she loved it.

Kirsten walked outside the hallway and closed the door, her eyes locked onto Holly's the entire time.

"Did you do it?" she whispered.

Holly said nothing, just kept staring with that war-torn face.

"Let's go into the other room," she said after a pause.

The other room turned out to be some type of upstairs living room—a library, relaxation room, no TV, just bookshelves lined up against the walls, a grandfather clock with no pendulum swinging, a framed painting, a sofa, some easy chairs, a coffee table and a window oddly positioned high up near the ceiling. Kirsten found the switch next to the door and flipped it on. The four bulbs connected beneath the ceiling fan lit the room to life, as it were.

Holly closed the door behind them.

"So what's up?" she said. "Is it done?"

Holly stood there, crooked-legged, staring deep into her friend's gaze with those fatigued, bloodshot pupils, and Kirsten was taken back to that same day in the courtyard on the bench. Something about her condition right now was stunningly similar to the way she stared ahead. An aura of something that was capable of action—lots of horrendous terror and havoc begging to be wreaked—it laid there quiet and lifeless, immobile, resting...like an alligator in the misty swamp waiting for the next piece of lively meat to wander near its incisors.

"Something's on your mind," Kirsten said, curling the corner of her lip.

Finally a sign of emotion crossed Holly's face when she tucked in her lips and raised her eyebrows.

"You won't believe it," she said, lacing her fingers behind her back.

"You know me, I'll believe anything."

For what seemed to be the longest and most anticipating pause she'd ever been through in her life, Holly stood and stared at her and spoke with a voice that withheld a brave, uprising tone that she never heard or thought was even possible to compose through her vocal cords, hers especially.

"I think I have just experienced my very first...I don't know...epiphany," she said, slowly beginning to grin. "Of course, in my perspective, I don't know if that's the right word, seeing as I might have been living the other side of the mirror for my whole life, would that still qualify as an intuition?"

Kirsten was speechless now.

"They make mirrors out of quicksilver, I think I heard somewhere. This feeling I have, it's like this whole changing mood—I'm the other side of the mirror, or the other side of the mirror is me! I'm switched! I'm out! I'm still in but I'm out! Don't you see?"

She did see. She saw perfectly. It was just that something was off here. Way off.

Holly's voice began to rise, quavering with giddiness, her eyes bulging with excitement, grin spreading ear to ear; like she was accepted into her dream school or she'd just been proposed to. Kirsten felt her face furrow from confusion, never taking her eyes off the friend who was suddenly starting to become a stranger—a strange stranger.

"I'm not one to jinx luck," she continued, "but I feel like if I take my time, things will start to make more sense. When I was little, I walked in on my mother stabbing my father to death over a sheet of plastic so that the blood wouldn't soak the carpet permanently and since then I was addicted to murder and blood. I didn't feel any remorse for the bag of shit because he always lied to her, hit her, cheated on her. I would say that was when I was caught in the flying shard of mirror that those three villains Superman's Dad trapped them in, remember? That's exactly where I was. Floating endlessly through this life in a fucking prison, looking out at the world before me. Then I remember my mother and I held each other and held and held for something that felt like an eternity when it was really four hours and then we called an old friend of hers, or a friend of a friend—I don't really recall—to help us with the body. I watched as he came at like two or three in the morning with a friend of his, they took him into the bathtub to hack him to pieces for the furnace at an old steel mill somewhere downtown. I wanted to watch, but my mom wouldn't let me, she made me sit in my room, but I snuck out to hear the sounds, and I loved them! I loved the sounds of sawed-fat, the squishing, the tearing, the crunching, the suckling, the dripping, the...oh god, I wanted more. But I wasn't ready. I don't know. Just something I wanted in me to keep pure, wait for the right person. Spencer told me that it was his first time sticking someone, too, and that we should do unto others as others do unto us. And I thought I'd do that..."

"Wait, what do you mean 'Spencer told—"

"Starting with you!"

Kirsten didn't know what happened, how fast it happened, when it had happened, or what in the world was going on. With a whistling noise like a martial arts movie, Holly charged at Kirsten with the blade and drove it straight home into her abdomen, her sweet amber eyes piercing delicately into hers in the process. The eyes did not burn with blood-lusting rage or any intensity...the same pure, harmless, innocent Bambi orbs that that sweet angel possessed during any other normal day.

Kirsten felt the stick of metal rotating in circles inside her, tugging, pulling and tearing at the muscles of her mid-section. Holly gripped onto her shoulder as she pulled it out. Then she felt and listened as the object slurped out of her stomach, a sucking-feeling out of her six-pack. The knife splurged out and then Holly stuck her again, this time the penetration was a little higher up.

"Don't stop looking at me, sweetie," she heard her shout, voice wavering and eyes bulging with profound derangement. "Please don't stop looking at me!"

She felt the knife vengefully jab inside her breast plate, sticking into something that she'd never felt physically before but knew right away what it was—her heart. There was pain, unbelievable amounts of it, burning and tearing and jolting of indescribable proportions, shooting through every pathway throughout her entire body that she became paralyzed. She managed to keep her eyes locked onto Holly's, who's face had not adjusted in the least bit. It was still the same angelic coy girl-next-door frame possessed with indescribable and inhuman madness.

Holly pulled the knife out, and then rammed it into another point on her body...to the side. Kirsten felt warm everywhere on her flesh, dampening her clothes. Warm, wet, and hot, getting even more hotter.

Holly was losing control; she began to make grunting noises, she saw as she felt some of her blood had streaked across her lips and she used the tip of her tongue to remove it. Wherever she didn't see a wound on her body, she made one; adding more and more to the puddle of blood that was expanding ever more so on top of her and all around her.

Then she knelt down and held her head in her hands, bringing her face up to hers close enough for a kiss.

"I'm sorry, Kirsty," she said softly. "I don't want you to think of this as a betrayal. It's not like that at all."

She planted her lips to hers, tracking the blood coughed up from her lungs onto her mouth.

"I love you," she whispered.

The last thought before she lost consciousness forever was

Why all over my best denim jacket you stupid bitch?...._________

Willy lied on his back all alone on the king-size bed, his hands laced behind his head, his erection still intact; youthful, fresh, energetic and ready to do some major hardcore damage...with his bad-ass CRTK Ulitma. Being so young and so crazy he took gratification in knowing he could have that fresh young monster of a cock under his control twenty-four, seven—compared to the sad, embarrassing stories he'd heard from his older counterparts. He knew he would reach that stage eventually when it operated on its own, firing up or slugging out on its own terms, and using medication to stick it up like a rod, but he would be damned if he'd waste one second of his youth wasting his good looks and his crowning jewel of a penis locked away in his pants. Plenty of gorgeous pussy out there would kill to get their lips (both types) around this beauty.

Speaking of which, what was that bitch doing right now? And why was that other one still breathing and walking and cock-blocking him right now? He wanted to go straight for the kill—no pun intended—once she got back. This all really did it in; him brushing up against her, her being all touchy-feely got his trouser snake hypnotized, charmed and aching to strike. He wondered if Spencer was thinking the same thing; from the vibe he was reading off him since the day he told him about the hookup, he's been wanting to do it and get the monkey off his back. Willy liked to bone them first and then grease 'em, but this was his accomplice's first time and he had his back and supported his needs or his problems, etcetera and he was to stand by him through this vital night—and if he was to kill her right away, then he would do the same. The problem was she was so frisky and she was begging for it, and his man down there was begging for it, too. So he thought what the fuck. What's he gonna know? Or even care? It's his first high; he'll be free of giving a fuck about anything. Ever.

He hadn't been counting down the minutes; he lost all track of time, but it felt like hours had ticked by, and she was still alive. Something wasn't right here. Did she—

Willy laughed at himself.

As if. That's all I gotta say. As-fucking-if.

Then again there was some sort of unusual disturbance that crept out every now and then...very faint, very brief; it would present itself from the both of them. They were probably just freaks, and that's what he was looking for in this chick—from what he'd read on her, she was definitely the cat's pajamas in that department. Yeah, once she got back he was going to unload all kinds of sexual fury like a jungle Samoan headhunter. And then afterwards he would do it.

Willy brought his head up to look at the door as if to see Kirsten or Holly walking in. Why was she still alive? Did he puss out? He better not have, after all the trouble he went through. On second thought, what trouble? Willy had no difficulties whatsoever when it came to hooking up with women. A poor schmuck like Spencer, on the other hand, needed a mentor like him to show him the ropes and adjust and work it like a pro. Not that he thought he was an ugly guy, or one to judge other dudes for that matter, but he was a good-looking lad—his molecules couldn't light a candle to his, though, that was for sure.

He was a good follower, very submissive and easy to control; not exactly a pushover, but certainly easy to control. He never thought in a million years he would come across another killer—or rather a closet wannabe killer. He believed he discovered the truth the day after the events at the Fountain of Youth, but no. Willy felt and heard the instincts react, familiarize, wail like sirens of a metal detector when he saw him being dragged out by the two bodyguards in the hall. He'd never seen it on another human being before, but by God and Sonny Jesus, he knew that face! It wasn't an easy one to fake; it wasn't rage, it wasn't anger, it wasn't anything other than wanting to do someone in!

He would keep him under his wing for a while, to see how it would work out. Although he was just another frail, geeky, quiet loser, he always kept in mind that he had that natural born killer blood run hotly and vigorously through his veins; compatible with only a very few chosen ones as he always told him. It would last that way for a while before he would do him in himself. He liked the guy, even though he was on a whole other lower level, but he was not in his league, and he was just extra baggage. It wasn't set in stone, but knowing himself, it's what was most likely going to happen.

Another reason was that he thought Spencer's first time would also maybe scare him and be left with an unreal, unbearable burden on his conscience that he'd be reduced to a perspirated, paranoid ticking timebomb. Sure, he talked the talk, but once he walked the walk, could he have the gall to keep walking? He wouldn't have it. He didn't like the risk. He was also kind of a bitch and he wouldn't miss him much, anyway.

Oh, Jesus, thought Willy. Could he have fucked it up and have the plan totally backfire as she somehow got ahold of the knife and killed him out of self-defense? Was that what this little emergency meeting was all about?

Unlikely. She wouldn't have come down talking under her breath all calm and serene like she was a few minutes ago; it would have been vice-versa and then some. Wailing and crying and acting all hysterical is what she would have been doing had that been the case.

Well, if it was, where the fuck was—

The door rapped again.

"Willy?" said the voice from the other side.

Willy stiffened, slowly rising as he held a firm, mindboggling stare at the door. What on God's green earth was happening right now? None of this had been computing; what was going on right now was jumbling the original plan they'd thoroughly went through. What was the matter with these dweebs? It was beginning to feel like Willy and Kirsten were the parents and the kids were interrupting them because of fear of the dark or a bad dream.

Without a word, Spencer got off the bed, headed for the door and opened it wide.

"Spence, what the—"

The first thing he saw was the head full of pale-blonde hair leaning forward to where his scalp was pointing to his face, as if he were charging him. Because he was. Something sharp, heavy and huge drove right through his midsection and felt his insides being demolished. He took all of this in as he was being pushed backwards with extreme force. The knife jabbing in and out of him repeatedly.

Spencer brought his piercing manic-eyed gaze to him and never once ripped it away during the whole horrific, agonizing process.

Willy looked down at what was happening to him down south. He watched—terror, confusion, anger, all scrambling, circulating, furiously, manicallly like the heat and cold of a tornado—as Spencer held a white-knuckled fist around the knife hearing the sucks and slurps as the knife exited the wounds—fresh with erupting, running crimson—and then slamming it down hard on every point on his chest and stomach. He tried fighting, wanted to fight, but he was weak from employing any type of action ever since that first blow, more from the confusion rather than the excruciation of physical affliction.

It went on like that for a long time; hell it could have been hours, he had no knowledge or care of time anymore. He was immobile, paralyzed, just lying back, taking the pain, waiting for the lights to dim and the power to shut down so that the pain could finally be over. But before the curtains had closed on him forever—through the blurring vision and the muffling sound, Spencer had stopped for a moment to lean into Willy's fading eyes and said,

"I think you've found my family," he said, voice growing more distant. "I know you've helped me find myself. And I love you for it, Willy. I always will."

He held a pause and as bad as his sight was getting, he could swear for the life of him that he saw a tear gleaming in Spencer's eye.

Then he resumed the puncturing, and Willy faded away knowing that for once in his long, prodigious, prideful life, he had finally done a good deed for someone.

As Spencer locked his eyes right onto the windows of Willy's expiring soul, he tasted the sweetness of the air for the very first time, and how much of it filled his lungs and intoxicated him with joy and energy like he'd never felt before, because he hadn't. He'd been cured of a disease that required him to live life inside a big plastic bubble suit, and after winning the fight, crushing the condition to death, he was out of the damned thing and was feeling room and space and freedom around him for the very first time.

He watched as the puddle of thick syrup-like crimson broadened into a puddle underneath him while he kept staring into his eyes—widening more and more like a blooming flower in the beginning of spring; which was the time when everyone could go outside and feel the fresh outdoor life for the first time since being locked up inside as it was too cold out...warmth, fresh air, freedom...liveliness.

Spring is here and I am out to enjoy it!

Spencer's right arm began to feel rubbery and tired after what must have been over a hundred stabs everywhere around Willy's bare torso and midsection not to mention the blood loss. The corpse had literally been covered neck-deep in blood; he couldn't find a speck of untouched flesh anywhere on him from his chin down to his waist. He was torn up all over. Spencer thought he looked like some kind of appetizing dessert—a type of Swiss cheese Danish that held raspberry jelly in the middle. He licked his lips at the thought.

He looked down at his knife, the same one his good (good and late) friend had bought him for that night, covered practically to the handle with his blood, dripping from the carved tip down onto the carpet.

Right now, Spencer knew that there was supposed to be remorse at this point. He had ended his best friend's life, now he was supposed to feel pity, regret, guilt, hating the fact that he was going to live the rest of his life with this.

But he didn't. He belittled him and treated him like a low-level lackey on and off through their relationship, but that had nothing to do with it. He was one of his own. It didn't dawn on him until now, but he never asked of what his life was before his first. Maybe it wasn't as bad as seeing as he came from a a different world. He thought of it now standing over his mangled corpse.

Come to think of it, Willy didn't die. He was right here, right inside Spencer's special room—a place his therapist recommended to him after witnessing the bike accident; he told her that he had "nightmares" about the carnage that took up just about the entire intersection, when to him they were actually sweet dreams; she made him think of a comfort zone, a place to re-energize confidence, a place where no one or nothing would be able to harm him with anything, a place where no bullshit could get to, no matter how much damage it normally dealt—that was where Willy was right now. His special room consisted of their parents' summer home in Nebraska, the traditional modern log-made atmosphere with the wall-mounted deer heads and the fireplace and the bear rug spread across the floor before it; the eighty-inch plasma screen high-definition TV playing so his father could watch the stock market, political debates and the news; but that wasn't what was playing in Willy's special player's suite room, his very own eighty-inch plasma-screen HDTV was playing a non-stop marathon of one of his all-time favorite shows, Mama's Family.

He'd always loved that show. Spencer did, not Willy. Willy always told him it was gay. Well, Willy belonged to Spencer and he was in his kingdom now, so he was going to have to learn to like it.

He saw Willy there right now. He remembered Willy toying with the idea that he wanted a three-way with two chicks, one white and one black. Spencer smiled. He always wanted what he called a vanilla-and-chocolate-sundae threesome. He was never able to pull it off before, but here, in Spencer's kingdom, Willy had them waiting in his player's suite on top of his bed, substituting for the traditional complementary mint.

Holly stood over her best friend Kirsten's mutilated body. Her white ringer tank top now permanent red, as was her expensive fifty-dollar bra behind it, the one she got from Kohl's. God, she always hated Kohl's.

What she didn't hate, however, was the feeling of energy and openness and the awareness of the world around her and how she somehow felt finally recognized her for the first time in her life. For the first time since she had been born, she was finally here!

I am here and I EXSIST!

Holly threw her head back and screamed, "Yeeeaaaaahhh!"

She looked back down at the corpse, breathing in delicious wisps of cool, refreshing air through a toothy grin. For some reason, this had made more sense than killing Spencer. How? She either had not the foggiest or just did not want to venture into that territory for reasons she feared to analyze.

There she was...there it was. Her very first, and it was the most overwhelming and most captivating rush of adrenaline and real feeling that charged through her bones like...like...like a drug. Who needed illegal contraband to torture yourself with a prolonging death with a needle or a razor or a pipe when there was this? Turn those tools away from your own body and use them on others! It's so easy!

Everyone should be doing this!

Holly chuckled at the thought as she continued to gaze lazily and dreamily down at Kirsten's lifeless pupils—those enhancing ice-blue retinas now dead, paling and reddened with her own blood. It was supposed to be wrong, but to her it just looked too beautiful for words. She knew her like a sister—sometimes a conniving, controlling, manipulative bitch of an older-sister—and everywhere she went, regardless whether it was public or private, she always avoided doing anything that she felt made her look unattractive. When walked, she walked with an ass-shake, doubled the bounce whenever cute guys were around; when she sat, she made sure those bare appendages of hers were crossed and with the top one facing either another group of boys or another competitive skank with a mini-skirt trying to be the top eye-candy in the joint, relaying a message like "Yeah, look at that, eighteen years of gymnastics, bitch." She made sure her cleavage was properly displayed, she made sure there hadn't been a speck of food anywhere on her shirt or if it was, she'd pick another but then that wouldn't have matched the skirt she was wearing, so she would have to pick something else for below.

Now look at her. A side that Holly had never seen before. Her limbs were splayed in every direction, she almost looked like she was impersonating a human-swastika. Her hair was in bloody tatters...and of course the face she made when it happened. That was exactly what Holly had been looking for, just like Spencer was. The face that is only seen when it happens; the face that nobody can even come close to acting out unless it is actually happening to them. And to have gotten it from a person of higher level...Holly was now the merciless galactic goddess and she had the entire universe under her control.

Holly jumped and nearly cried out at the sudden noise that emerged out of nowhere just underneath her, and along with it had been a nudge in the floorboards right under her bare feet. She looked down and saw the knife that she'd been holding stuck down into the ground. She didn't even feel it slip out of her grip. That was unusual. The handle was the heavier part, shouldn't that have landed first?

This night had been an evening of preternatural events—unplanned, unexplained, but in the end, everything mystically somehow fell into place...so to speak.

Holly took one last deep breath and stepped away from the bloody carnage and straight for the door, opening it and walking out into the hallway, leaning against the doorframe. She looked a few feet down and saw Spencer as he was just coming out from his room. He looked a bloody-terrible mess, his T-shirt and jeans splotched and stained in dark, heavy blood. They made eye contact. She smirked...and then smiled; a smile that wasn't just a smile but one that had been just like his—a smile with real feeling. Not the same repetitious friendly smile given to him all night, but one with actual life, actual happiness.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Spencer said.

Holly kept her grin intact, leaned her head forward so that a lock of her hair, dampened and straightened out from the sweat and blood, hung over her half-shadowed sinister look and answered him.

"Better."

It was a quarter to three now. That dreadful aftermath that befell Holly's mind, soul, the environment around her after the sight of a devastating bloodbath was hanging in the air, heavy, reeking, awful...and she was completely oblivious to it. She felt its presence but not its hazards. Killing Kirsten was the most overwhelming rush she had ever been through; her first roller coaster ride, the first time she shoplifted, all these moments gave her an adrenaline rush that jolted her nerves and sent a bolt of electricity to her heart and brain reminding her that she was alive.

This, however...this was more than a rush...it was life-altering; it was a transformation; it was the most ultimate remedy for a walking hollow shell such as she and Spencer both used to be. It granted not only fulfillment, but fulfillment and an immune system so unbelievably strong and unyielding towards aura or emotion.

She and Spencer both sat down on the floor with their backs to the wall, facing each other.

"So how were you gonna do it?" Spencer said.

"Huh?"

"What was your original plan going to be? You had to have had a plan, right? Did you bring any shovels? Trash bags? A plan on how to get rid of the corpses? Or were you planning on slicing and dicing us, leaving the evidence and just Thelma-and-Louise-ing off in Willy's car?"

Holly took a deep breath, held it and exhaled slowly.

"Kirsten's uncle passed away last year and left his house behind to her other aunt, it's west from here. It's a one-story cabin and it was pretty similar to this one; out in the middle of nowhere, two-bedroom, electricity and water still running up for another two months. I think she said her aunt wanted to keep it running and rent it out but for now it's legally hers and she doesn't want to do shit with it now. That's where we were gonna take you guys, or have you guys take us. Kirsten had everything she said we would need stashed over there—cutlery, trash bags, lighter fluid, Drano, fresh clothes—and had it all ready and hidden for when we went out there. She had everything arranged almost immediately after you guys—Willy asked us out.

"Then after that, Willy called her up and told her there was a development, which was this place. Thank God he did this in plenty of time, too. Kirsten objected it all to hell; I remember how pissed she was about it, too, after all the shit she just went through. Eventually Willy calmed her down and and Kirsten demanded to see it. So Willy drove her down to check it out. Later that day she called me and said 'You won't fucking believe how lucked-out we are right now. Think about my uncle's house but like four-stories and more spacious and has all the scenery that suits this evening perfectly.'

"She told me that after she saw the place and more than met to her standards, and unbeknownst to Willy, she took the directions down on the GPS system on her cell phone so that she could get her way back here to grab the necessities from her uncle's house over here, which she did just yesterday, too. And that was what she did—she drove to her uncle's, grabbed the stuff, and brought it all here. She told me she stashed it in a closet underneath the basement stairs."

The same wave of mind-numbing disbelief and bolt of awe-filled shock both attacked Spencer speechless. He had difficulty asking his next question.

"It...it didn't make...it didn't make her the least bit peculiar that it was another isolated house just like yours?"

Holly shrugged. "She was so mindblown that I guess she overlooked it. Fortuitous luck."

"What about our car?"

"That was going to be the scary part. Seeing as she was totally brain dead about this area, she had no idea about what to do with your car. Then she had the idea of after we...did you guys, we'd drive it all the way out to our original spot in the middle of the night and run it off a ditch that's about a mile from her uncle's house. We'd carry out our original plan, which was to clean the mess up quickly and efficiently as possible, drag your corpses out to your car, drive it down to the ditch near Kirsten's uncle's house, drive it off, and then go to a local diner to phone the cops, saying that our dates ditched us."

"You couldn't have just taken your own car?"

"That's exactly what I told her. But Kirsten said it was 'important to make you believe you guys were in control; to have everything go as ordinarily as possible; the less inconspicuous you were, the better and easier this would turn out.' And if Willy wanted to treat us to a ride out to a carnival and then a strange place to fuck, then we should just let him do so. Besides, people come up to pick their cars up anytime—anytime—at a bar, whether it's during the wee hours of the night or in broad daylight. No one would think a single solitary deviant thought if they saw one of us drive up in Willy's SUV and the other take Kirsten's car. If anything, they would think they were picking up a car for a friend that got hammered out of his skull the previous night."

Spencer continued to hold his gaze on her, computing every word she said, analyzing it, and then grinned.

"Pretty cool."

Holly smirked. "What was yours?"

"Basically the same thing, except we were gonna cut you to pieces, throw you in a Glad bag and stick you in the ground outside."

Holly's smirk disintegrated. She held a blank stare on him. Spencer's smile dimmed down to a thin straight line and watched back, returning an empty expression on his face as well. For a brief pause they held that moment of awkward silence, and then literally simultaneously, the two youngsters broke it with a sudden fit of boastful laughter. Laughing, sharing, enjoying the moment as they held their gaze upon each other like they were holding hands.

This was her hugging her mother again for three whole hours—this was the aftermath of the whole thing; the engulfment, the overwhelming breakdown, gargantuan sense of total shock—it was hanging in the air, but she was unfazed, untouched by it. It was like a contagious disease plaguing the entire world known as human emotion, but she and Spencer were both immune to it. Like Superheroes with their super science-law-defying abilities. Before, in her ragged, filthy, rotten cocoon she always recollected that moment as the most terrifying, daunting experience of her life, mainly because of her mother and the distraught, horrified state she was in; Holly had never seen her that way before. Now the same exact moment was here and she had it underneath her fingernail. Her mother would be proud.

After getting that out of their system, Spencer and Holly saw that it was still dark with at least two more hours left 'til sunrise and that it was wise to get a move on things now and reminisce later.

On instinct, Holly beckoned Spencer to follow her into the cellar to retrieve the items hidden by Kirsten, and Spencer's reply was another laugh. She looked at him abashed, baffled, and waved him off to go by herself. It took her some time to find the door to the basement; once she sought it, she flicked on the lights, went downstairs, and immediately went for the door installed in the wall mounted on the side of the staircase. Inside the closet were stacks of cardboard boxes, a broom, shelves of uninteresting objects, empty jars, jars filled with rusted nails, plastic grocery bags all crumpled into one, and resting on the floor stashed in the shadowed corner underneath the bottom shelf was a gym bag that looked occupied with an assortment of things. Holly reached down to pick it up, minimally straining from the weight, where she heard the instruments clink together and the liquid chemicals splosh inside. She unzipped it and took a peek inside where there were two hacksaws, two bottles of Drano, a huge box of Hefty trash bags, and wrapped in a plastic grocery bag were the clothes. Nothing too flashy, just sandals, sweatshirts and sweatpants—it was important they were light and didn't take up too much space in the bag. She then remembered another object she needed that took part in the body-removal process which was an eight-foot metal pole with a pedal-like object welded to one end of it; she went to see if she had almost overlooked it by peeking her head around the corner and sure enough there it was. Kirsten explained to her what this was for and she still had it down in her mind how to use it. She returned upstairs with her gym back just in time to find Spencer with his own gym bag. Holly finally got the joke and shared him in another laugh. He took notice of the long pole she was holding and nodded to it.

"What the hell is that for?" he said.

"Later," she said.

They made it a quick one, of course, as they quickly got their attention and focus straight back to the business at hand. The job itself was only a task that needed accomplishing, the real challenge was not to think; not to engage in conversation; keep the cogs in motion and make sure they don't stop for anything. They dashed upstairs and Spencer lifted Willy's body to take into the bathroom, he instructed Holly to clean the room up as much as possible with her Drano, and if she ran out, he had some hydrogen peroxide she could use. Spencer borrowed Holly's hacksaw because it looked stronger. He plopped the corpse into the bathtub and let the cold water run.

Spencer began with the arm, and amazingly it worked faster than he had anticipated. He remembered the instructions Willy had obtained from a website about butchering the human carcass: cut into the armpit straight to the shoulder, and remove the arm bone, the humerus, from the collar bone and shoulder blade. He repeated the process with the other arm, the two legs, his head, slicing the muscle and ligament around the neck, making it easy to twist his head around leaving the connection between the skull and spinal cord to be hacksawed. Willy had now been in five pieces; he looked like a life-size Ken doll after being experimented on by a bored child.

He was luckily able to stuff him all into one single bag, reinforced with five others. He checked his phone to find that it was a quarter to five now. Fuck!

Spencer hauled the two-hundred pound bag down the stairs, heaving it over his shoulder making it his best effort to move fast and efficiently out the front door and throw the bag into the back of the Ford with the trunk already open. He threw it over his shoulder with a loud annoyed grunt, feeling the soreness the weight created there, and slammed down the trunk door.

When he returned up to the room where Holly had been, he was struck with absolute dazzling amazement, a fresh cool feeling of hope filled his heart—she was scrubbing the last of the mess right now and not a drop was spotted anywhere. She was a fucking natural. He threw a joke at her asking if it was experience in the maid service, she replied asking how the process was coming along. Spencer slapped himself across the face figuratively and sprinted into the room where Kirsten was, then Holly called at him to stop, that they were going to take turns now. One of them cleans up their own mess, the other disposes of their own victim.

With the rooms literally spotless, Spencer and Holly both took turns with the shower, and wasted absolutely no second scrubbing with the soap and shampoo they both brought along with them. It took them both approximately ten minutes each. They dried off, put on their new light clothing, hers a pink hoodie sweatshirt and black white-striped track pants with ordinary sandals, his a Nantucket Nectars tee, brown khakis and tennis shoes. All of their victim's belongings were thrown in the bags along with them—wallets, combs, accessories, cell phones (they remembered to take the SIM card out first) but they had pocketed their car keys. They each took a handkerchief and wiped down anything they remember touching. They also remembered to clean up what little blood had been shed in the attic, which was hardly a task at all compared to what they had slaved through earlier.

The sky's hue was evolving to a bluish tint, the sun was approaching. The bodies had been dismembered and in bags, the cutlery, empty bottles of Drano and H.P., bloodied clothing, every shred of evidence had been confined into the gym bags thrown in right next to the weighed-down trash bags, and the rear door slammed home as Spencer got into the driver's seat and Holly joined him shotgun. He revved the vehicle to life, drove off down the path where they first entered, and turned right going west.

They had a mini-debate on whether or not they should stop to get Kirsten's car on the way. Spencer said would be the smart thing to do but Holly objected due to the fact that it contradicted the story: Kirsten told Willy about her uncle's barren house, and Willy took Spencer and drove out to the bar where she and Kirsten would drive over to meet.

"If that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense for you to drive us over there since she knows—or knew—where it is?"

"No," Holly said, slightly annoyed by his insulting tone, "because Willy was just supposed to drive us over to the carnival and then Kirsty came up with the idea of going to her uncle's house. It was a last minute thing. We didn't think to go back and get our car."

Spencer added to it almost automatically. "Then we went to the house and got drunk, got stoned, Willy and Kirsten really took a liking to each other..."

"And then they fucked..."

"And then we fucked..."

"We fucked all night until it tired us to sleep..."

"And then the next morning they disappeared without a trace."

"Probably to go and start a new life together for all we know."

Holly looked at him with a face that gleamed pure admiration. Spencer returned the same gaze.

"So then I guess we're walking from the house?" Spencer said.

"Trust me, it'll be good for the convincing factor."

Spencer drove down the eastward path, fighting the urge—and I mean really fighting—to keep the pressure on the gas pedal five miles above the speed limit, and only five miles. Taking the risk to get pulled over was, needless to say, out of the question. A ghost of a thought took form and quickly evaporated that they could take care of the cop as well—one of them could go for the walkie-talkie on his belt and the other just stick him in his aorta—but again, it was only an image conjured in his gray matter and a laughable one at that, and that's the way it was going to stay. For the time being, at least.

Once they passed the bar, with Kirsten's car parked in the lot along with one or two others, Holly proceeded to navigate Spencer towards the house.

It took a few miles; he looked at the time on the dashboard of the stereo and saw that they had fifteen more minutes until six. Somewhere in the back of his head, a gentle, composed part of him arose sending messages, or rather a serene radiation towards his paranoia—under control but feeling it rise—the message had said Relax. This is your special night. And what a success it turned out to be. Hell, success is hardly the word for what this is. This went light years beyond what you originally anticipated, wasn't it? Remember to be alert, do not let your guard down, but remain cool and don't try to outrun the sunrise. It's light enough out here for people to see anyway, dumbshit. Jeez, I hope she was right about this cliff she's talking about.

It took a few miles, when finally they reached a panned-out, thin rural community far in the distance, and almost immediately after that was in their sights, Holly instructed him to make a hard right, then a left, right, left, left...they were driving through more meadows, forests, land that looked ignored, barren, forgotten...and then finally to the cliff. Spencer relaxed, this was a good spot and a good disposal method; better than what Willy had in mind. No roads other than the one they headed on which technically wasn't even an official road, it was a moldy path fortunately in the shape of a one-lane road, trees, rocks, the wide blue raging, splashing river dominating all that they saw before them, and barely an entity in sight.

Spencer parked a guesstimation of ten yards from the ledge of the cliff. He and Holly both looked over their shoulders to see if they had been overlooking anything before they were about to perform the final task of this mission. Evidence was in place, bodies were in place, all belongings thrown in save for the keys which Spencer needed in the ignition. After a quick scan and noting everything was in place, Spencer looked at Holly. Holly looked back. They both nodded simultaneously at each other and exited the vehicle.

The river was probably eight to nine miles across, with nothing in sight on the other end but rocky cliffs and the everlasting row of trees that ran along the line. Holly told Spencer that the shore was downward slant that began at ten feet, but with the vehicle's weight ratio, it would sink down to the floor of the river which rested at least one hundred feet down by the day's end.

It was their first time doing anything like this, and he was fairly certain that it most likely wasn't as easy as it looked in movies. Placing a heavy rock down on the gas pedal, having the rock drive a straight line toward the cliff and flying off the ledge; he would place a bet that it required a little more than that. He patiently and hurriedly tried to find a rock.

"What are you doing? Come here and help me." he heard Holly say behind him.

"I'm trying to find a—"

He turned around and the sight froze him dead in his tracks. Holly was already in the rear of the SUV, pulling out a fence post driver from her gym bag, and from the look of it it appeared pretty weighty. Spencer furrowed his eyebrows in confusion and then dashed to go assist her.

"This is for the gas pedal?"

"Yeah, it's for the gas pedal. Kirsty had this all planned out, remember? She was no chump."

And she certainly wasn't at that, thought Spencer.

The two youngens flipped open the driver's side door. Holly grabbed the eight-foot long pole and used it to pin down the break pedal, smothering the rigged pedal at the bottom against it while Spencer put the vehicle in cruise control and stuffed the metal post driver in between the edge of the driver's seat and the gas pedal, which fit snug as a bug and literally floored it. Spencer flinched at the sudden roar the engine made, as if it were impatient and eager to burn some rubber and some fuel when it was being held back. Holly told him to get back, where Spencer backed off more than enough to keep himself out of harm's way, then Holly released the branch.

The 2013 Excursion charged off for the end of the world like a bull uncaged and bolting in a rage to ram into the first human it saw. Spencer and Holly watched and sprinted after it as it drove what must have been doing at least forty when it fled right off the ledge of land and disappeared off the other side and into thin air, listening as the roaring of the infuriating engine quickly went from ear-splitting to distant. They stood by the edge and saw in enough time to see the SUV driving down an invisible road that led straight down vertically into the surface of the river. The impact was heart-pounding, deafening, shocking...entrancing. The butt end stuck out and took little time for the vehicle to sink down below the river's surface and out of existence. Spencer and Holly watched as the air from inside rose to the surface in a violent boiling, like watching a massive pack of piranhas attacking their prey. They stared until the churning reduced to a few tiny bubbles, and watched as the last one—the last shred of evidence which was a morsel of air—had rose as a dome on the water surface, and then burst into nothingness.

A cascade of images, like a collage of home videos caught on a Super-8 began to play in Spencer's head. He was an exceptional human being, a jerk off sometimes, but also a king among men; a god among mortals. And he loved him. He loved him like one devoted brother to another, blood-related or not.

"She was awesome," Holly said. Spencer's heart almost skipped a beat. Again, the same exact thoughts ran through their noggins at whatever they'd been facing. Whatever he was experiencing, she experienced the same. Thick as thieves, they were. Thick as fucking thieves. "She kind of felt like an older sister, you know?"

Spencer nodded, and took him a while to answer. "Yeah."

There was a pause. Staring out into the river, taking in the beauty of the scenery.

"He killed people," he heard himself say. "I mean, he killed people that didn't deserve it. He killed girls he dated; he killed this one kid that didn't do anything to him, as far as I knew he was a legit, straight-arrow kid that did nothing to him. He just talked him into going somewhere and then butchered him...because he didn't like him. Flat-out, he said he just didn't like him."

Holly nodded weakly.

"She was the same way," she said. "She told me that her first was this 'burnout loser' that got the notion that she liked him and drew him a picture and taped it on her locker as a birthday present. She took him out to a creek and bashed his head in with a rock. Then she started killing other girls she didn't like, she said it was mostly 'more burnouts' but they never did a thing, never so much had the heart to swat a fly."

Spencer shook his head.

"That's not me, you know?" Spencer said, after some thought. "I thought I could do it, you know..." He tried fighting the stutter, hoping she would pick up what he was trying to blurt out. "With...you know...you?"

Again, she delivered another weary nod, but looking at him fixedly.

"I couldn't either. Killing a human was killing a human, regardless what their background is, or so I thought before..."

Spencer turned to her, feeling his eyebrows jump when he heard for the first time since the episode that one of them came out and said what their objective was to be, simple and blunt.

Holly turned her glare back to the world.

"...but I think there should also be a code for this. A code I will certainly honor."

"And so will I."

She looked back at him, blankly. Spencer looked back, enjoying the enrapturing effect those Bambi browns had on him. What was once two amber orbs of captivating godliness possessed nothing but pure, clean innocence switched sides like a rotating door that flipped one-eighty to reveal genuine, fiery adrenaline burning, exploding with an unmistakable intent—and appetite—for great, brutal, destructive slaughter towards a human being...gently, and with soothing caress rotated back to the sweet, delicate, breathtaking big amber pupils that easily stole men's hearts, knowing when you looked into them that the divine, angelic soul behind those windows that she respected and loved life and everything it had to offer.

"We better go back to Kirsty's uncle's house and make it look like we spent the night there. Rattle the blankets, get some dishes out and what not."

"Good idea."

"And then afterwards we're gonna go to this diner to call the cops."

"Cool."

They stole one more glance down at the river where their friends had now resided and then turned to walk off down the trail.

"Are you hungry?"

Holly turned to him with a blank look.

"Fuckin' famished," she said, smiling afterwards.

"Once this is all done and we're cleared, I know this awesome place, it's called Schirk's Original Waffle House. They have these homemade waffles that are to die for."

Spencer extended a hand, which Holly stared at it briefly in minor skepticism, then let it pass and comfortably took it as they walked.

"Do they have blueberry waffles?" she said.

"Of course!" he said. "But you gotta try their bacon-filled waffles."

"Um, ew?"

"I'm serious! They also have banana, Hawaiian, pecan, coconut, chocolate-chip, apple, fried, potato, fried-potato, cheese, onion, chicken, pickle, mayonnaise, spinach, jalapeno, pork, beef, shrimp, rice, pepperoni, hamburger, sausage, anchovies—for a little extra, I think they have this special where you can choose up to five of those and throw 'em all in one—ooh, you know what? Don't quote me on this, but I hear they even have ackee waffles."

"Ackee? Didn't I hear that was banned from the U.S.?"

Spencer shrugged.

"Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest."

They continued to amuse and laugh with one another as they set for east on foot, joining hands and watched as the top of the sun's head began to peek over the horizon through the trees.

THE END

90
