Hitchhikers and the people who pick them up

"Hello, Ma'am. How are you doing? A bit hot out to be walking this far out on the highway, don't you think?" Ted ground his canines. This was it. This was going to be one of his. A person he could keep forever and ever and ever. He had dug sixteen graves for sixteen hitchhikers, up and down this lonely stretch of desert leading out of Laughlin. Not a one of them had been found. The woman in the red dress would soon make that seventeen.

"Mister, I need a ride. It's real hot out here, and I don't think I have enough water to make it back to town." Her name was Lynette, a beautiful young girl fresh out of college, with a squeaky voice and an easygoing manner. She was a good girl, except when she left men dead beside the road, with their throats cut and a heart drawn on their cheek with lipstick. In her purse, she carried vitamins, a straight razor, feminine hygiene products, granola bars, garrotte wire, and a syringe full of tetrodotoxin, normal girly stuff for a gal full of vigor and youth.

"Well then, Miss, where you headed?" Ted thought he could have a lot of fun with this one. She had a pretty mouth. Oh, the things he imagined that mouth doing...

"I was headed to Laughlin until my car broke down. My phone was dead, so I figured I could walk to a gas station.. God, Lynnie, how stupid could you be?! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She smacked herself in the forehead, trying to sell the act. The vehicle she had been driving was strategically parked to avoid showing the public a roadside blood bath. God, she loved the red stuff. Soon, this man would be a portrait, Masculinity in Crimson, she would call it.

"I'm Ted. What's your name?" Soon, she would be face down in a ditch, but he knew in his heart he would come back and visit her. He always did. Even in death, he appreciated the company of his victims. He would come to their resting sites and speak with them, a conversation of the macabre. It would soon be her, he thought.

"I'm Lynnie. I come from California, been making my way across the country. Gee, mister, I really want to thank you for what you're done, picking me up. I surely would have died if it hadn't been for you." She readied the syringe.

"I make it my duty to pick up hitchhikers. It's dangerous on these here roads... You're a really naive girl, you know.. Getting into cars with strangers?" Inside, he chuckled. He readied his knife, getting ready for a quick cut. He felt something bite him on the thigh.

"You know, you're a bit too trusting of hitchhikers yourself." Lynnette watched as Teddy tried to speak. "I just injected you with pufferfish venom. Powerful paralytic. Leaves you able to feel things, but completely incapable of movement. If I were to leave you alone, you'd die of suffocation. Oh, if only you were so lucky." The grin plastered on her face was like that of a child at Christmas. Ted's face, however, was as close to a panicked expression as his paralysis would allow.

"Hhhuh--..hh-uhh..puh--...please-..." Ted managed to get a single word out, but the damned girl wouldn't listen. He couldn't die like this. He refused to die like this. As she began cutting on him, he wondered if this what was his victims felt like, and if she felt the power he normally relished. As his vision went dark, he saw nothing. No lights, no fire, just eternity.

a reply to: Grifter42

I think this belongs in the short stories forum. Keep it here and people might get the wrong idea.

It was good writing, but I don't care for the subject matter though. I like things more positive, especially when it deals with travelling.

Thanks for posting it though because I am working on something that I'm going to put in the story forum soon. It's been awhile since I added to it and this just served as a reminder to get busy with it again.

S & F for the contribution.

Agreed, this really isn't a rant. Plus I remember watching an interview on either Colbert or the Daily Show where this guy went on an epic hitchhiking adventure. It reminded me that we have been bred to fear everything.

a reply to: Taupin Desciple

Nobody ever listens to short stories. My posts are rants in an interpretive way of my life, an occluded and extremely exaggerated version of my expression of my experiences.

a reply to: Grifter42

"Nobody ever listens to short stories." (SO! It IS a short story!)
(No they don't listen either. For the most part...they READ short stories. Unless they are AUDIO BOOKS.)

"My posts are rants in an interpretive way of my life..." (POSTS and THREADS are 2 different things. This is your THREAD that you are POSTING. RANTS by nature and design are equally different. Ss...your interpretation that they are RANTS...is incorrect by plain intent and content).

"...an occluded (CLOUDY)and extremely exaggerated (FALSE and fictional?)..."version of my expression" (There are others?)

Other wise....a short story with little or no basis in fact. Fiction. This thread should have been placed elsewhere.

This is my RANT.(Yes...mine DOES qualify as such!) Thanks