Banter

Part One: Chapter Nine.

She dropped the hammer in the bath, and he jolted when the claw end hit the bridge of his foot, sending a fresh shock of pain through his battered face. She bent down and patted him.

'Sorry, I tend to get a bit klutzy when I'm excited.'

She picked up the hammer and laid it on the vanity.

'This is exciting for me, meeting you. I know, most fans probably don't do what I'm about to do in order to show their appreciation, but that's not the only reason I'm doing it.'

She put the last tool down on the vanity and turned to him again. He resumed looking beyond her. If he was going to die like this, he could at least stop her from getting any pleasure out of it. She moved to his side, and from the corner of his eye he thought he saw her take off her robe, but he couldn't imagine why. Was she going to rape him? He had always been ambivalent about sex – it was neither a pleasure nor a pain; more a chore – so if that was what she wanted, he would just lay back and let her grind out her frustrations until she was spent. But why did she lay out his tools? Was it to show him what would happen if he tried to fight her?

That wasn't likely, unless she suspected he was freakishly adept at picking locks with his toes. She did say he was her hero; maybe it was a worship thing, and putting his instruments of torture on display turned her bathroom into some sort of museum, or shrine. If that was the case, he could relax; the majority of serial killer worshipers were socially inept nut jobs searching for a kindred spirit, and very few actually made the transition from fan to star attraction. He closed his eyes and awaited the inevitable, getting himself rigid by thinking of the simple girl, and willing himself to hold back long enough for his number one fan to get ten years-worth of anticipatory tension out of her system.

The robe blanketed his view, and he felt the tug of the sash tying it in place around his head. It was interesting to see things from this side for a change, and he mused that even if he could speak, he wouldn't tell her that he only employed the blindfold during the second act. The familiar softness of her young, un-dimpled behind perched on his stomach, and the hairs on his legs stood up as her flawless breasts came to rest against them. She wasn't raping him; she was making love to him. If it were possible for him to feel anything at all for her, he supposed it would be pity. Any fan worth their salt would have surmised by now that the sex was nothing but the means to an end. His initial impression of her as an intelligent woman amused him. The first painful grunt of laughter was only halfway out when the hammer came down onto his right foot and turned it into a scream. His jaw and the toes of his left foot cracked simultaneously.