posted on Aug, 27 2014 @ 10:33 PM
"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.