Encounter With A Stranger

A woman encounters a stranger.

Written for "The Creative Detailing Contest " 

Encounter With a Stranger

Moonlight filtered through the window, the soft glow spilling across the room with an eerie luminescence. Its beam reveals an array of perfume and cosmetics, scattered across the scarred surface of a rickety dresser, before glinting off the mirror and bouncing back across the room.

In the corner of the room a pair of jeans and a blouse lay crumpled on the floor, where they had been carelessly tossed, a few feet away, a bra and panties.

A big, overstuffed, King sized bed took up the majority of the room, a small carpeted pathway between it and the dresser leading to the bathroom. The bed, pushed up against the wall, directly beneath the window, was occupied by a woman whose bleached blonde hair had been rinsed once too often in the damaging chemical. She was nude, her body partially covered by a flowered comforter, splattered in shades of yellow, blues, greens and reds.

The comforter, soaked with blood, covered the gaping wound in her stomach. When it had first been inflicted, blood had poured out of the opening, gushing as fast as her heart could pump it, then, as her heart began to fail, the blood flow slowed and then eventually stopped. She was dead only minutes after being gutted by the knife. Her eyes were closed at the time, having been in the throes of passion. She never even saw it coming.

After only a day, the bugs had found her. Flies landed, feeding on her body and laying eggs in the wound. Maggots writhed, squirming in and out of the gore that had been their birthing place, wriggling in and out of her nose and mouth. Cockroaches too, had found their way to this feast, along with a variety of other insects and rodents. At the moment a rat was chewing out one of her eyes, the other having been a feast for one of his brothers.

It was a week since she had first brought the stranger home. She was high from the heroin shot he had given her and horny. She didn’t care that she’d only just met him, most of the men she took home she didn’t know. Some paid for her services, but this was just gratitude and desperation. She had needed a fix badly when she’d entered that bar. Nearly an hour had passed before he approached her, asking if she was alright.

“You’re in pretty bad shape,” he had said. “I’ve got something in my car that might help you out.”

And just like that, she’d followed him out to his car. She rolled her sleeve up, revealing the tracks on her arm, anxious for him to inject the drug into her blood stream. She didn’t even notice when he didn’t inject himself. He hated drugs and losing control. When you lose control, you become a victim. He was not the victim.

He wasn’t surprised when she asked him back to her place. Her mother had probably warned her of the perils of going home with a stranger. That lesson had been washed away by years of drug use and hard drinking, mixed in with the occasional homelessness women like her experienced. He was sure she had probably sold her body more than once, just to survive. One more time wouldn’t kill her. Well, maybe it would.

Right after he’d killed her, he had showered in her bathroom, washing the blood that had sprayed across his body away. He hadn’t been worried about leaving DNA behind. Any decent crime scene investigator would be able to find traces, no matter how well he cleaned the place up. They needed to catch him for it to do any good and, as God’s servant; he didn’t plan to get caught.

Before leaving, he had stood over her body, seeing the angel she used to be, before drugs and alcohol had taken over her life. That was his purpose; ending the pain God’s lost children were in. No one would choose to live like she did, if they could find their way out. He knew, Satan had control of her and she would never be free, unless he helped her. That was his job. God’s Instrument is what he called himself.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” he asked, pulling the blanket over the wound. “Now you are free. You’re welcome.”

Then he had left. He wouldn’t go back to that bar for a while. Once the police found her, they would be retracing her steps. Someone may have noticed them leave together. But there were other bars, other women that needed help and he was ready to help them all.

Word Count: 780