Hot Spring

Part 5

One day earlier

Mike hung up the phone, smiling to himself at his own cunning. Marley believed him, as usual. She really thought he was in Vancouver. He'd made sure his number was blocked when he'd called, from a motel about an hour from her cabin in Vermont. There was no way he was going to let those girls ruin everything.

Marley had let it slip that her niece was staying at the cabin, along with a friend.

"Bad move, Marley," he said with a burst of laughter, packing his clothes in the old suitcase he had. The edge of a Polaroid peeked out from an inside pocket of the suitcase. All that was visible were a man's wrists, handcuffed to the posts on either side of the bed he lay on. He pulled it out almost affectionately, caressing the man's face. The man was blindfolded, his mouth open as if screaming. Or wailing.

More like wailing.

"Rodriguez," he purred, shaking his head. "You were quite beside yourself in the last moments. Quite the pathetic creature, not even able to form words anymore. I'll always remember you." He kissed the photo, and pushed it deeper into the side pocket, with the others. He liked to pull them out now and then to reminisce.

The Polaroid camera was his baby. He could get instantaneous images of his work, without the risk of any digital trace.

"I'm a genius," he thought, not for the first time. He stripped off all his clothing except for his boxers, and stood in front of the grimy, full-length mirror that was propped in a corner of the tiny motel room.

He flexed his muscles, turning right and left, as if posing for a photo shoot. He went to the gym regularly, and ran three miles per day, to keep his fit, muscular body. Even at 62, the young men he met online were in awe of his perfect physical form. His white hair gave away the fact that he was a lot older than them, but his face had few wrinkles, and he had a perfect set of teeth.

How surprised the sheep were when those perfect teeth, displayed in a winning smile, turned into the deadly teeth of a snarling wolf, he thought, grinning mischievously into the mirror.

A wolf that would bite, and draw blood.

"You can't run, Little Red Riding Hood!" he'd called out to one of them once, when the young man had leapt up from the bed in the cabin in terror, screaming like a little girl.

"Get back here, you faggot!" he'd said, kicking the man in the back, where he'd fallen onto the floor in a sobbing heap.

"Are you a man, or are you a sheep?" he'd asked, his tone taunting, as he'd dragged the young man back into the bedroom after tying his wrists together.

What was that one's name?

Thomas. That was it.

The mirror was warped in the middle and spotted with rust stains, causing Mike's body to appear freakish and out of proportion in places. He flexed his muscles again, admiring the tattoos on his biceps. The tattoo on his right bicep was of a crown, and "King" was written under it in bold letters. The tattoo on his left bicep was a snarling wolf's head.

Even when he showed the sheep these tattoos, waiting for a look of dawning horror, they never suspected what lay in store for them.

Stupid, mindless sheep. Trusting, naïve, stupid sheep. Blinded by desire, they walked right into his trap, every time.

Well, he'd showed them.