Death of a Beautiful Woman

Part one. - Love at first sight.

Like all good love stories, they met by chance - the stars aligned just right in the sky, a butterfly flapped its wings, and by some random stroke of fate, he laid eyes upon the most beautiful woman he would ever kill. If what Edgar Allan Poe said about the death of a beautiful woman being the most poetical thing in the world was true, then she was the most inspirational of the muses he could have wished for. He couldn’t place what it was about her that was so perfect, so absolutely heavenly in the way that she moved, but he knew that he loved her.

On that fateful day, he was transfixed as she glanced up at him (shyly, he thought, as her smile was slow to come to her lips) and spoke with a voice like angels singing: “Welcome to Starbucks. What can I get for you today?” Though he came to this franchise often and knew his order by heart, he was at a loss for words. His mouth was like he’d shoved it full of cotton and his palms clammy.

Her smile faltered, eyes moving to the line behind him then back to him, “Sir?” She prompted him again, impatience in her face as words were grumbled just below the level of clear hearing. He cleared his throat and tried to speak in English, though his thoughts were so jumbled he could scarcely remember his own name. “A coffee, please. Grande.” His voice was low, lower than normal because his breath was stuck in his lungs.

His eyes glanced down at her uniform - if her name tag was truly hers, then her name was Alyson, a cute hand-written smiley face tagged onto the end that showed her sweet personality. He lifted his glance back up to meet her gaze as he slid a ten dollar bill across the counter. “Keep the change, Alyson.” He didn’t even remember what his total was, but he knew he was tipping her far more than what most people would given how expensive the coffee itself was.

He moved from the register to the sign open counter to the left where a sign was hung that read ‘pick up’. The way her body moved was like poetry in motion, everything smooth as if she were dancing to a slow beat that was in her mind. Her step had a bounce that was almost literally a skip and her smile so genuine. There was something so beautiful about her that he wanted to keep it close and cherish it forever.

He wanted to take the most beautiful thing about her and keep it to himself. He couldn’t deny it, he was selfish and wanted her all to himself.

It took less than a minute for her to pour his coffee, her pale and slender hands securing the top onto the cup before she offered it out to him, steam rising from the small holes in the top. He took it gingerly, feeling the intense heat from the cup and the brush of her fingers as it slid from her grasp.

A smile came slow to his lips as he slid his thumb beneath the lip of the lid and felt it pop loose, watching as she turned her back to him to tend to other customers that had come to the register in that short time. “Alyson?” He called her name firmly, but with affection in its own way, her hair spinning around her like ribbon as she turned. Her eyes were bits of amber trapped in white, beautiful gems that were polished to fucking perfection.

“You’re so beautiful,” He commented, watching as her cheeks turned pink and her gaze softened, but had confusion, her mouth opening up slowly as his arm moved quickly, tossing the still almost-boiling coffee directly into her face. Instead of a polite ‘thank you,’ her scream filling the room as if it were tangible.

The black liquid had turned her pink cheeks red, blisters popping up on her face slowly and coming to burst as her hands instinctively reached up to stop the pain in some way. He was equally apathetic as he was in awe of the way she agonized, his breathing ragged as she fell to the floor, her coworkers rushing to her aide and screaming profanities at him at the same time. Somewhere behind him, he heard someone state they had called the police. His lips spread into a slow smile, eyes closing as he drank in the symphony of her despair.

When his eyes opened, the coffee was still hot and fresh in his hands, the lid secured safely on the top as Alyson returned to the register. It was just a fantasy, one so much like the ones he’d suffered from as a child, but this time so much more vivid. He came to the realization that he was standing at the pick up counter like a zombie, staring at her blankly as she continued to service the line and hand off cups to her coworkers. He couldn’t linger. He could already feel the cameras staring at him as he stood transfixed by her.

He took one step, then the next, feeling like a robot as he forced himself to walk away, to leave the coffee shop without another glance at her. Her image still lingered behind his eyes, and when he took the first timid sip of his coffee, the feel of his own burned taste buds had never been so bitter sweet.

Part two. - Dreams

For the first time, he finds that he can’t sleep. He can feel the fatigue tug at his eyelids and can feel his limbs get heavy, but his mind is far too awake for him to slip off that final cliff into the dark abyss that is his nightly routine. Every time he closes his eyes he can see her behind those dark lids, from the way that her lips curl to how her hair moves when she walks. He hasn’t ever felt like this before and he can’t explain what it is that has him so… Consumed.

Love is something that has always fascinated and eluded him, and for the longest time he ponders the possibility of the fact that he might actually be in love with her. But love doesn’t come for those of his kind and love is reserved for those who feel something - anything - when they look at another human being. He doesn’t know what he feels for her, but he knows that it’s not love.

He opens his eyes to look at the clock on his nightstand, the glowing numbers being the only illumination in the otherwise pitch black room. It’s past midnight now and he knows that it’s very unusual for him to be up this late. Instead of attempting sleep, he pushes himself out of bed and crosses the room by memory to his desk, the familiar feel of the worn wood a comfort as his fingers slide across it.

With a flick of a switch, his desk lamp throws harsh light across the desk top, revealing things precisely as he’d left them. His laptop was in the center of the desk, the charging port blinking slowly, pens of different varieties as well as highlighters in a tall metal mesh pencil holder directly next to the lamp, and a stack of neatly lined papers to the left of it all. He opens his laptop and takes a seat in his chair, leaning it back as he rubs his eyes and waits for it all to boot up.

The moment his familiar and non personal background shows up, he opens up his browser, sliding a sheet of paper down to the space between himself and the laptop. He’d done some research on the girl before he went home, enough that he would know a decent enough about her. The fun thing about living in the cyber age was that people tended to lose the sense of privacy. Everything you wanted to know about a person was broadcast onto the internet in a never-ending stream of useless bullshit. He loved every minute of it.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr told him everything that he needed to know about the girl he’d encountered this morning. Her full name was Alyson Leigh Camden and she attended the local community college where she majored in nursing. She had dreams of being a labor and delivery nurse when she graduated and had high hopes in the future of adopting children of her own, if she ever settled down. None of this information was shocking to him.

What caught his attention was the double life he’d found on her Tumblr account, a lewd and downright dirty blog that was filled to the brim with hardcore bondage porn, innocent girls in compromising situations, and fetishes that would have belonged better on motherless.com than anywhere else. Riddled between the stills and gifs of hard, dirty sex were small entries of fantasies of her own. She was surprisingly detailed in her wants, the entries reading more like seductive suggestions to a lover than just mere fantasies.

He couldn’t bring himself to browse her deliciously deviant fantasies any longer than he already had, so he turned his attention instead towards her other social media sites, digging into her life a little further than what he had with his first cursory glance. Instagram detailed her life through a series of pictures - #workflow, #partying, and #girltimmmme seemed to be pretty popular in her tags, his eyes committing the faces of her closest friends and coworkers to memory.

Alyson was a vibrant girl and most certainly an intriguing creature, what with her dual nature hidden beneath the mask of pure mediocrity. Her life had been nothing spectacular on her other sites, though it had given him enough information to deduce where she lived as well as several of her routine hang out spots. He started to pen to paper the address he would need, forming out a prediction of her schedule.

The good thing about normal people who lived normal lives was that they all craved the same thing when it really boiled down to it - routine reigned supreme for most. They enjoyed doing things to the beat of their own drum so to speak and people formed schedules for themselves whether they knew it or not. Alyson was no different in this respect, as her schedule formed in front of him without him having to put much thought to it

She lived a very public life, and because of that he had few opportunities in which he could get another close encounter with her - the easiest place would be a dance club that she attended every other Saturday called “Night Lyfe”, a place that was located close enough to the community college that it was composed of either current students or dropouts that had preferred the party life more than the academic life.

The only other opportunity would be much more difficult, as she stilled lived with her parents, would be at home. He’d seen glimpses of her house’s face from her facebook, had learned her car’s license plate from there as well. He was blatantly shocked at how little people realized they broadcast out into the world for quite literally anyone to see. It was a shame, really, that the hunt had been reduced now to a few minutes on Google.

There was a loss in the romance of the entire ordeal if he could hunt while taking a shit

By now sleep was tugging at his lids again and this time he felt more inclined to ease into the temptation. He glanced at the clock at the bottom of his screen - 3:21 AM. Sleep would be light and unfulfilling, but it wouldn’t do to ignore one of his body’s basic needs for rest. He shut the laptop, satisfied in the information hed gotten for the night as he clicked off the lamp and sought his way back to the comfort of the sheets.

This time, as he closed his eyes he didn’t see her face. His beast had been satiated in the thrill of research, filled its stomach to the brim with information, and it would rest too while he slept. He drifted without so much as trying for it, his mind turning over now to the dream world.

And in his dreams, his mind played out her fantasies.