Arrogant

He was in the elevator, going down to the first floor, fuming about Laura, Laura the bitch, Laura the self-righteous, arrogant bitch who had just dumped him. He had been talking to his father, top floor of Naimler Tower, because daddy had the money; hell, daddy owned the building. He had asked his father to do something; buy her company and fire her, or buy her parent’s companies and fire them, but no. All his father had said was that Laura was a worthless piece of trash he never should have dated in the first place, and that he needed to get over the little slut and find someone a little more worthy of his zip code.

Fuck him. Fuck them both.

He watched the numbers going down, seven, six, five, four, three, two… and ding, there was one. The doors opened up to the lobby and he found himself face to face with a woman, tall, blond, maybe a couple years older than him, but with big blue eyes like a child’s. Phillip temporarily forgot about Laura and his father and instead put on his most charming smile. “Hello, gorgeous,” he said, a poor line he knew, but it didn’t really matter. “What’s your name?”

She could have answered, just to be polite, even just said “Hello,” right on back, but no, she just gave him a look, filled with arrogance and contempt, and slid past him into the elevator without saying a word. He stepped away and it went up. Shot down.

Fuck them all, he thought. Shot down even by some bitch in a cheap suit, some arrogant bitch, weren’t they all? He was going to go to his car, drive himself home at twice the speed limit and drown out his day in Jack Daniels, but suddenly he thought better of it. He went to the front desk instead, asked the man at the desk, a Mr. Tyler, to see the card of the woman who had just gotten into the elevator.  He was momentarily grateful to his father again, his father for making it so that you couldn’t get passed the front desk without handing over your driver’s license; his father who owned this building, so that Phillip could just walk up to the desk, ask and receive.

Mr. Tyler handed over the card with nothing more than, “Of course, sir.”

Phillip looked at the picture, the pretty face, but didn’t bother with the name. She hadn’t wanted him to know her name. He looked at the address instead, 1684 W. Eighteenth Street, Apartment 317. He smiled and handed back the card. “Thank you, Mr. Tyler,” he said, because he at least had been taught to be polite.

  She had had one hell of a day, the kind where nothing went right. Well, she had a lot of those days as a prosecutor. Of the six cases she currently had going, she had a witness change his story in one, the evidence go missing in another, a sudden insanity plea in the third, a judge who was obviously sympathetic to the defendant in the fourth, and endless string of extensions in the fifth, and of course, the last, the case she wasn’t even supposed to have, that should have been with someone junior but had inexplicably ended up on her desk, of Marie Madsen.

Marie was a secretary in Naimler Tower who either was or wasn’t filing domestic violence charges against her husband depending on her mood and the time of day.  Her husband had beat her until her entire face was shades of black, blue, red, and purple, but she changed her mind as to whether she wanted him prosecuted at least twice a day, which had lead the prosecutor to go out to Naimler Tower, at the end of what had been a miserably long day, to talk to Marie herself. The only thing she had succeeded at was making Mrs. Madsen cry.

Now she was just glad to be home. She had slipped off her pants and her jacket, grabbed a glass of Merlot and copy of Camus’s The Stranger and settled into the comfy chair in her den. Then the door rang.

Phillip had gone out and bought a knife instead of a bottle of Jack, shiny and new, with the textured sort of handle that wouldn’t show prints or slip when bloody.  He also bought two pairs of coveralls, the slate blue kind that maintenance men wear. He put one on, put another in a bag, and drove to west Eighteenth Street. From outside the building he saw that mostly the lights were off. It was a Friday night; most people would be out and late. There wasn’t even a doorman. 

The only person he saw inside the building was downstairs. They didn’t even give him a second look. He went up to the third floor, to 317 and tried the door. The lock on the knob was secure, but he could feel that the deadbolt was not. He rang the bell. After a second, he rang again.

“I’m coming,” someone yelled, not close enough.

He waited a minute, to give her a chance to get closer to the door, and then rang again.

“Damn it, I’m coming,” she said, now practically on the other side of the door.

He threw his weight at it then. He didn’t even have to break the frame, the lock gave first, and he burst in on her; with his momentum he collided with her; he grabbed her and dragged her down so that he was on top of her. The first thing he noticed as she flailed at him ineffectively was that no one had ever taught her how to fight. He grabbed her wrists and she was useless. The second thing he noticed was that she wasn’t wearing any pants and she had miles and miles of legs.

He kicked the door shut behind him and tossed his little bag, with its change of clothing into the corner. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth; she tried to bite it and he slapped her hard. He had to let go of her wrists to do that, and while he did she pulled pack her left arm to slug him. He caught it, grabbed her wrist again and slammed it into the hard wood floor, where it hit with a satisfying crunch. She screamed again now, high pitched with pain, so he covered her mouth again, content that at least she wasn’t going to hit him now.

He waited until she quieted down a little and then he pulled the knife. It was long and bright, it flashed in the light she went dead silent.

“That scares you, doesn’t it?” he said. “I advise that you stop making so much noise, at least if you want to live.”

She swallowed. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.” Her voice was raspy from the pain and the screams.

“You think so?” he said. He placed the tip of the blade at her temple, softly, just enough so it made a swallow cut, just enough to leave a little scar, if she were to live to scar, which he didn’t really intend. He guided the blade smoothly down the line of her jaw, from her temple almost to her chin. She gasped with the pain.

“Not so pretty now, are you?” he said. “So arrogant, I bet because you’re pretty, but see how easily that’s fixed?”

She looked at him fighting back tears, the blood running from her face into her hair. “Why are you doing this?” she said. “Who are you?”

He looked her in the eyes to make sure she wasn’t playing him, and that she really didn’t recognize him, but too bad for her she didn’t, and that only pissed him off more.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said.

He slid the knife down to her shirt, a long white button up, all that was left on of her cheap suit. The first two buttons were undone. With the knife he popped the third, then the fourth, then the fifth, all the way down. He had to sit up to get the last buttons, and when he did she kicked him in the balls.

The man rolled onto his side, clutching his groin, and she slid up and ran. She was going to her bedroom, going to get the phone, call the police and she almost made it. The man tackled her again onto her bedroom floor. For a second she damned the trendy open floor plan that meant there was no door on her bedroom she could have used to lock him out, at least to buy her a few moments.

“Bitch,” he yelled, on top of her again, and hit her hard this time with his fist. He hit her in the stomach and she curled up long enough from him to get off of her, grab the base of the phone and pull the jack by the cord out of the wall. Then he was on top of her again, he hit her again and she went still.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said.

She took a deep breath, gathered her courage to give it another go, and kicked at him again. He jumped back and she missed his manhood this time, and he had her again, around the waist, he lifted her up and slammed her into the heavy wooden wardrobe next to her bed. She felt her knee hit and shatter and the pain was beyond screaming, she almost blacked out. Her vision went dark for a moment, but she felt a cool hand on the left side of her face, the side that wasn’t bleeding.

“Don’t pass out on me now,” the man told her. “I want you awake for this.”

 

He finished taking off her shirt while she was too dazed to fight. He cut off her bra as well, a black lacy thing. He looked at her small, pale breasts, then looked her in the eyes and grinned.

“I have to admit, I’m just a little disappointed,” he said. “Bit on the small side to be so arrogant, aren’t you?”

She flinched like he had hit her and turned red, obviously embarrassed at his remarks, which made his grin larger, then he put the tip of the knife to the side of one little breast and traced around it, like a caress, again not deep, just enough to cut.

He could feel her, trying not to scream, trying not to make him any more knife happy than he already was. Too bad, he wasn’t done yet. He slipped down his hand and squeezed her broken knee and she screamed again. Then he slipped the knife down to the inside of her thigh, and cut around the edge of that, too. He considered cutting off her panties as well, but he decided on something a little bit more- hands on. He spread her legs with his knees and slipped is fingers inside the crouch of her panties, wiggled his fingers a little for the fun of it, just to feel her recoil, then got a good grip a yanked up hard, ripping them off. She squealed and he smiled at her, his best charming smile.

“You see the bad guys do that in the movies all the time, don’t you? Personally, I’ve always wanted to try it.”

He tossed the panties aside and looked at her pretty little hairless cunt. He rubbed the pad of his thumb against it, wondering if she shaved, but no, it was too smooth, it must be waxed.

She shut her eyes, knowing what would happen next.

Phillip unzipped the coveralls, pulled out little Phillip, and penetrated her tight, but magnificently wet little whole and laughed a little, knowing that she must feel terrible, and getting wet must make it worse. He slipped into her slowly, feeling all of it, and wanting her to feel all of it. He wasn’t anything more than slightly above the average, but he still filled her up. He went slowly, the whole way, just for her.

It was then that she finally started to cry. He actually admired her restraint, just a little, in that she had managed to go so long before breaking into tears. Her eyes were still tightly shut, and one by one the tears slipped out. Phillip watched the first drop slip down her face, down the front of her face, unlike the blood, which ran down the side into her hair. She still looked beautiful.

He waited until the drop was near the corner of her mouth before he decided to lick it up, just to be perverse. He started at the teardrop, and followed with his tongue up its trail, and stopped right beneath her eye. He then kissed her gently, right there.

She sobbed.

He fucked her the whole time, slowly. He went as long as he could, just to show her how good he might have been if she had given him the time of day. Arrogant bitch had it coming.

She didn’t open her eyes again until he came and pulled out of her. He looked her in the eyes, pretty, big blue eyes, like a child’s.

“You think I’m done?” he said. “I’m not done yet.”

She didn’t see it coming; he stabbed her once, twice, three, four, five times in the torso. Didn’t hit her heart, but by the choked noise she made and the fact she didn’t scream, he probably hit her at least once in a lung. He then took the knife and stabbed her hard, right beneath her collar bone, the blade going straight though her body and into the floor, pinning her there, like a pin through a butterfly.

She made a noise that would have been a scream if she was still capable and then passed out.

Phillip stood up and admired his handy work. Then he stripped of the bloody coverall, changed into his spares, and then exited the apartment and the building. No one noticed as he left, either.

She came to maybe a few minutes later, amazed she was still alive, because there was so much blood, and knowing that she was dying, because there was so much blood.

She had to get to her phone, had to call for help. The phone in the bedroom was useless, but there was one in the hall if she could get to it. She tried to get up, but the knife pinned her to the floor. She tried to lift her right arm to get to it, but she couldn’t do it. She reached across her chest with her left arm instead, the one with the broken wrist, grabbed the handle and pulled. It hurt the wrist almost as much as it hurt her shoulder, and she tried to scream, but her lungs felt wet.  She knew it had to be blood; that she would probably drown on her own blood if she didn’t get help.

But at least the knife came out.

She couldn’t get up, so she half crawled, half dragged herself into the hallway. The phone was on a table; she couldn’t reach up to grab it, so she took hold of the cord instead and pulled it down. The base fell and the cordless with it; it slip across the floor and she moaned, having to crawl a little farther to get to it. She got the phone in one hand, but couldn’t focus. Her thumb was on the speed dial button; she pushed it, then the first number her fingers found. It ringed and she prayed that someone would answer.

“Hello,” said a voice on the other side. She didn’t know who, probably someone she worked with. “Hello?”

“Help me, help me, please help me,” she whispered, before losing consciousness again.

“Audra?” the voice on the other side said, alarmed. “Audra, hold on.”