The Victim- A Story

It’s just past Labor Day, but the nights are already getting uncomfortably chilly. This one is so cold, if you’ve happened to lose your calendar, you could swear it’s mid January. Thin wisps of greyish fog rest on the ground, clinging to the edges of the low brush by the sidewalk. The bushes are moving gently, leaves rustling with little voices. For all you know, they’re crawling with smoking pixies. What stars can be seen are wan and muffled, as though an unseen hand had carefully wrapped them in cotton wool, later to store off in a labeled cardboard box in the attic.

A girl stands by the highway, shivering slightly in her sleeveless top and airy muslin mini skirt, her gaze fixed on the empty road. She cares little for the impish festivities in the bushes. Her round china-doll eyes are wide with worry and her mildly freckled face is phantom-pale.

Ten minutes go by, then fifteen, and the road remains still and void, as still as an old battlefield picked dry to the marrow by months worth of crow raids. From time to time she sends a nervous glance at her small golden watch, tapping at the asphalt with the tip of an uncomfortably high heeled pump in escalating anxiety.

Said pumps notwithstanding, she’s barely hovering on the brink of womanhood. With her milky skin and untinted lips, parted in an ethereal pout, her youth accentuated by the awkwardly protective posture of her frail figure, she looks like a specter child from between the pages of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales.

In a different face, her pale grey eyes would have looked cold, almost cruel. On her, however, they look lost, lethargic and dismally, intolerably sad. Though aesthetically pleasing, her features are quite discomfiting. It’s the kind of face that makes one look away in shame. A face so mirthless it’s downright accusatory. You cannot look into these eyes without feeling wicked and unworthy, as though you’ve just kicked a puppy while wearing a seal fur coat and chinchilla mittens.

The nearby streetlight spreads a puddle of bleak illumination around her, a fragile illusion of temporary safety. Her fingers clasp her shoulders in a deadly grip as she wraps her delicate arms around her in a piteous attempt to brace herself against the wind tearing at her clothes and her straw-colored tresses.

Half an hour slithers by. The motionless figure is still frozen to the spot beneath the crooked streetlight. Her expression, however, gradually switches from melancholy restlessness to outright despair. She raises a trembling hand to her mouth and starts gnawing at a short pearl-colored fingernail. The air grows chillier by the minute. Goosebumps stand out in little dots on her arms. Nevertheless, her brow is beaded with panicky drops of cold sweat. The ghastly fingernail mark of a moon sends her a misshapen, gloating grin from above.

"Come on," she whispers hoarsely. "Come on…"

Suddenly an evanescent, fragmentary flicker of hope touches her eyes and the corners of her mouth twitch for a second. Two light circles appear on the horizon, shining in the dark like yellow eyes. The hum of an old motor pierces the cold air as the circles grew larger, getting smeared at the edges and slowly metamorphosing into an ancient bumpy minivan. The girl steps closer to the road and raises her thumb in a sheepish but unequivocal gesture.

The passenger window rolls open with a squeak as the driver bends forward to face her. His meaty lips part in an ogry smile, revealing a set of yellowing teeth.

"Well, pop in, babe," he exclaims pointing at the passenger sit in a friendly motion. "What's a pretty gal like you doin' out there all on your lonesome at two in the morning, anyway?"

"I… it's a long story…" she murmurs in reply, her voice muffled by the monotonous groan of the vehicle's engine.

She climbs in, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the driver. Clearing her throat with a sof cough she buckles her seatbelt with numb, humid fingers and, after inhaling a shaky breath, adds: "I need to get to the Greyhound station, please. Drop me as close to it as you can…"

"Don't worry, princess, we'll get you exactly where you need." The man declares joyfully and his small, deep-set eyes seem to light up in a sudden wave of wild excitement. Or, perhaps, it’s just a reflection of the headlights. "I'm Guss, by the way." He adds, stretching out a crude, bulky hand for a shake.

"Roxy," she whispers accepting the shake reluctantly.

"Roxy..." he repeats, tasting the name, rolling it on his tongue. “Foxy Roxy. Had a girl named Roxy dance for me the other night in Phoenix. Never had a lovelier pair of tits shoved in my face.”

The girl stirs uncomfortably in her seat. She keeps staring straight ahead, where the road stretches out, seemingly to infinity, like a gigantic black snake tinted with sporadic spots of feeble light, until eventually it’s lost in the dark altogether.

"You're stressed, tootsie. That's not good for you. It'll give you wrinkles."

She remains silent, refusing to look at the driver. Her mouth is dry, her fingertips ice-cold.

“Hope you don’t mind my saying so, but isn’t your outfit a bit too light for the season?”

She tries not to grind her teeth. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“And you know, it could give a guy all sorts of ideas.”

Her knuckles go a couple of shades whiter.

“Hey, don’t be mad at me, pumpkin. I’m just saying. Not everyone out there is a nice guy, you know. I mean, you’re lucky I’m not the type to disrespect a gal or anything.”

They drive on quietly for an unknown period of time, anywhere between a couple of minutes and half an hour, the hum of the engine providing the sole relief from the heavily stretching conversational void.

The woods at the sides of the road are growing denser and the intervals between the streetlights are widening. The road gradually narrows and seems to merge with the surrounding forest. She sits upright in the passenger seat, frigid and stiff. She knows they have long since missed her turn, but dares not speak. Now the maniacal spark in his eyes, which she could have imagined before, is all too real. There’s no escape; the road they are riding can lead only in one direction.

The van crawls deeper and deeper into the woods, like an old battered animal making its slow progress through an endless jungle. The road is no longer paved and in places it’s pervaded by the underbrush. The buzz of the engine is a whisper of loneliness in the vast forest.

Abruptly the car stops altogether. The driver unbuckles his seatbelt, his shining eyes traveling towards the girl by his side. He’s breathing heavily and a putrid odor is rising from his rotten teeth with every exhalation. His forehead and thick upper lip are covered with tiny droplets of sweat. The heavy reek of his breath intermingles with the stench of his over-perspiring body. The result is nauseatingly malodorous.

"Out!" he commands, none of his former friendliness lingering in the short bark.

His eyes travel up and down her childlike body in a wild, bestial caress. One hand unbuckles her seatbelt, shivering as it touches her bare belly, resting on it for a brief eternity. He pushes the door open, grabs her arm in a grip that leaves ugly marks on her smooth skin and pushes her out of the car, following closely.

Outside, the cold wind is blowing fiercely through the woods, making the branches sway in grotesque dance moves. An owl cries in the distance, answered by another nocturnal bird, which neither the girl nor her companion can, or care to, identify. The ghastly audience of twisted tree-trunk grimaces shivers with anticipation. The languid moonlight penetrating through the thick foliage provides the final touch of malice for the scene.

He clasps her wrists, blocking off the blood supply to her palms. She grows faint, barely attempting to struggle as her back slams against the car. The impact bangs the passenger door closed. The thud echoes through the forest. If the owl heard it, it makes no response to indicate so.

Breathing frantically into her face he takes both her wrists in one fist and begins unbuttoning his old denim pants with his free hand. He leans in closer, squeezing her with his tremendous weight. His voice thick, choking with bestial exhilaration, he wheezes wetly in her ear: “You sluts are all the same… you all want it. It’s your lucky day, bitch. Today you get it. You get it hard…”

His fly undone, his paw clenches her throat, threatening to crush her windpipe. “Make a sound, and you’re dead, cunt!”

She gasps softly in a futile attempt to draw a breath, writhing beneath his smashing bulk. Her eyes acquire an uncanny, glazed quality. They seem to pierce his muscular shoulder and gaze far beyond.

He grabs her small buttocks, pinching painfully, his mouth closing on her throat. His heavy respiration sounds like the guttural growl of a rabid dog. His stubby worm fingers are crawling up her skirt. She clenches every muscle in her body, struggling not to scream.

Suddenly his body freezes. The breathing stops abruptly as his lungs fail to exhale the air they’ve sucked in.. His maniacal physiognomy is twisted in a horrid grimace of pain and bewilderment. As he steps backwards, a bloodcurdling bellow escapes his contracting throat. His hands reach helplessly for his groin and grasp it convulsively, dark blood seeping through his fingers.

He’s in too much pain to bother remembering when she managed to get her hand free. Every single emotion, every thought and every memory, to the very last scrap of his consciousness, are all instantaneously swallowed in a gargantuan stream of pure agony. Somewhere, at the very back of his head, lurks the realization that his hands are desperately clinging to a severed stump. It feels so alien, so raw and slippery with gore, an iota of disgust manages to slip through the wall of pain.

On the ground, at his feet, the remains of his driving organ are contorting in a final spasm in a pool of black mud where his blood drenches the ground.

Her face regains its animation as she inhales the rich coppery odor from the razor blade in her hand. She approaches him slowly, revealing a perfect row of tiny white teeth. The next moment her lips close on the side of his neck, her fangs tearing at the stubbly flesh.

“I sure want it, love,” she whispers. A note of wry huskiness crawls into her no-longer-childish voice. “And what I want, I get.”

Crushing the bloody slug on the ground with one stiletto, she adds: ”I have my doubts about the hard part, though.”

The man’s scream gradually dies away as the last remnants of life leave his limp carcass.


She saunters back through the woods, savoring the metallic aroma as she collects the last drops of blood from her lips with her tongue. Her pale eyes shine with an unearthly fire as she revels in anticipation, renewing her appetite for the next slice of human scum to be purged off the face of the earth. The little piece of shit was right about one thing, though. It is getting a tad too chilly for her outfit. She decides to lure the next one with a good old nun’s habit. God knows it’s just as easy.