Chapter 14: Broken Dolls

[Undated Entry]
Oxford, Oxfordshire

WHEN IT WAS over, he smiled. He smiled because he felt complete. Finished. Sated. Empty, momentarily. Sexually, that was what this was about as well as power. Sex and power always went together. He’d learned that early on when he watched his father beat his mother and then tup her. When his father had been around, that is, which wasn’t often even if the small man had two older brothers.

He felt accomplished. He felt like he’d done something no one had done before, and moreover he felt the satisfaction of knowing no one would be able to identify him. At the same time this made him sad and a little angry, in fact. He wanted the world to know what he’d done. For the ordinary person in the street to see him and know him and fear him, but that was impossible. Not if he wished to keep doing what he needed to do for this feeling to return. And he wanted it to return. Very badly.

She lay silent, her neck oddly turned. Like a broken doll, one he had no more use for. He shook his shrunken penis over her and watched two or three last drop strike her stomach. He didn’t care, really, but this time she’d died right at the peak of her climax. If she died happy that was a good thing he supposed, although it wasn’t the point of his act. The point was for her to die at the moment of his climax, and today he succeeded. That she had also experienced orgasm was a bonus.

It didn’t always happen that way. There was that other girl, dark, rounded, a good smile and lips he wanted to bite, a month or so ago. He’d bitten those when they got started. The tight knots of her nipples, too. She’d liked that and she urged him on. When he bit her neck she seemed to realize this was not going to go the way she perhaps hoped it would, but by then it was too late.

He’d bound her arms as part of the game before they started so there wasn’t much of a chance she could escape, and he thought he had her under control. Indeed, when he entered her she seemed to like that and she urged her hips up to capture as much of him as she could. It turned sour when he put a rag in her mouth. For a moment, for a second, she evidently thought this was part of the game, too, and the silver he’d paid her was enough, she thought, to make these small cruelties worthwhile.

When he struck the side of the girl’s head as he gave her an especially vicious thrust that seemed to split her in two, she gave up any hope this was a game or was consensual. She screamed through the rag he’d stuffed in her mouth, just as he thought he heard sounds outside the door. He wasn’t close then but he couldn’t afford to wait so he took care of her right then and there. The only satisfaction he got, and it was meager, was to spend on her face as she lay quiet and silent, the way she would remain forever.

Tonight, though it had all come together. This girl, Rosemary was her name, he thought, lived with another girl who was away for a few days because her mother had fallen ill. The two girls kept to themselves, it was not an establishment where the renters cared very much about their fellow lodgers. Her absence would not be noticed immediately. The weather had turned cold and the heating was practically non-existent, so it was safe to assume she wouldn’t begin to smell noticeably for a day or two. He’d leave one window partly open just to be sure.

He shook his penis one last time and tucked himself away. He leaned down and kissed Rosemary’s cheek in farewell, although he could not have explained, to himself or to anyone else, why he’d done such a thing. In the hall there was no one, not at this time of night. He shut her door behind him and locked it with the key he’d seen on her dresser and walked swiftly to the stairs and down and out into the street. No one saw him leave.

At work the following day he was silent, withdrawn. His co-workers at the brickyard did not pay much attention to him, for he was usually silent and withdrawn. They’d learned early on not to disturb him or jest with him. One particularly outspoken individual attempted to joke with the small man and mock-wrestle him the first month the small man had joined the crew. It took three other workers to pull the small man off of the jokester. The small man would have killed him otherwise, everyone was sure. Two broken arms meant the unfortunate soul was out of a job for at least six months, if he was lucky.

The small man shrugged when the boss asked what had happened. “He hit me first,” was his only response but it was sufficient when his account was supported by onlookers. That the blow had been intended as a friendly one did not seem to be relevant, especially since the small man, new as he was, had no way of knowing that. No one disturbed him after the altercation, and this seemed to suit everyone.

The blonde’s name was Lucy. She worked part time in the nameless pub he visited sometimes. He supposed the pub actually had a name but he’d never bothered to learn it. The prancing pony was enough to identify it to him. He wasn’t stupid enough to select his next partner, he thought of them as partners because they were his partners, willing or not, in the dance he’d planned for them, in a pub he frequented. His pub was the one next to the brickyard.

He’d spotted the blonde one day as she returned to the pub from some errand. There was something in her walk that called to him. A twitch and roll of her hips, perhaps. Her dress was modest, at least by pub standards, although he’d noticed she made adjustments later in the evening when she was serving. Adjustments that displayed her charms to advantage. Her breasts were not large ones but they appeared firm and high. He hadn’t yet had the opportunity to get close enough to smell her but he knew somehow she would smell sweet.

She laughed easily, that was a good sign. Most nights he was in the pub she’d left toward the end of the evening with a man. A different man every time. Sometimes with a woman. They hadn’t gone far, that was certain, because she’d returned each time in an hour or so, her face flushed, her smile a little loose but still very welcoming. One night he’d been close enough to her when she passed to smell her, to smell her own flavours mixed with contributions from the man she’d left with. The smell of ejaculate was instantly recognizable.

There were bite marks on her neck and on the slopes of her breasts, he saw one night. Another promising sign of delights to come. This was going to be good. Good enough he almost couldn’t wait, but he vented some of his frustrations against the wall of an alley not far from the pub with a comely whore who promised him whatever he wanted. He wasn’t stupid enough to put his manhood at risk in her no doubt diseased cunt, but her mouth was pleasant enough and he did his best to fuck her mouth to his own completion in minutes. She swallowed and swallowed and when he finished and withdrew she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and smiled up at him.