This is what happens when I can’t write, and I really am needing to.

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At first, he couldn’t believe it. After all of the years of carefully constructed identity concealment – the aliases, the false starts; the red herrings. In fact, he wouldn’t. It couldn’t be that now she would drop her guard. Drop everything. That now, after so many years of waiting – searching, and failing, that he could try again. And this time, he wouldn’t fail. But it was impossible. How? She had all but vanished. Disappeared. Gone – without a trace. He knew she had meant to be. Why. And that he was the reason.

Extinguishing his cigarette upon the soft flesh of the woman currently bound and gagged at his feet, he half-wondered why more individuals like himself (multiply murdering psychopaths) hadn’t gotten into this whole Master-slash-Dom business. It was almost too easy. Almost as easy as her becoming a dominatrix. To piece back the remnants of her shattered personality, he figured. Rebuild her confidence, and somehow, regain her esteem. After all, he’d worked rather diligently to destroy it. He had little doubt that someday she’d attempt to reclaim herself. He was almost proud of her. Strange … Of course, had she only complied the first time around, he wouldn’t be hating her now. Had she not refused him, done what he said, and made him part of her life as he had so very much wanted, he wouldn’t be continuing to seek her destruction.

Alas, he had learned in the time in-between that we are indeed each responsible for our own actions, and cannot expect to control or ensure the actions of another. Though, as he looked into the pleading eyes of the young woman in front of him, the rope beginning to tear at the edges of her mouth, staining the soft nylon with the faintest shade of pink, he had come to admit this was somewhat folly. In this context, at least. This stupid creature was willing to do anything and everything that he wanted. Fuck, she even asked to be tied up! It almost took the fun out of the entire experience. He knew she was pretending and secretly loving the pain, but if he only used the fullest extent of his imagination, he could fancy with lesser fervour that she was really in terrible, horrible pain, silently praying for death, and his unwilling, desperate captive. Too bad he’d never been that good at pretending, despite his quite vivid and definitely terrible imagination.

It didn’t help that when he smiled at her, she smiled back. Or that his smile hadn’t the slightest to do with her; not this wretched being upon his floor who loved every dehumanising, degrading, vile and despicable thing he should choose to inflict upon it. His smile matched his gaze, which was far from here, and hoping to reach wherever she was. She who had hid from him for so long. She who was fooling herself into believing she could ever fathom her own freedom. To have control. Dominion over others; most importantly, herself. He knew she hated pain. He knew how much, in fact, and the thought filled him with more joy than he could process. She would not smile back. Her desperation, her silent prayers, her pleading would be real. Elation. Oh, how he was so sick and tired of pretending.

Its eyes watched him as he began sliding the rope through his fingers, pulling swiftly; his eyes widening at the impressive red patches left in its wake. The creature appeared confused, but said nothing. He knew it wouldn’t dare.

“Go.”

He stood with the rope in his hands. The young woman was a bit perplexed as to why she was being dismissed so soon, yet knew not to question. Soon, she would gather her clothes from the other room, dress, and leave. She would later thank him in email for a frighteningly authentic experience of being kidnaped and held prisoner by a sadistic serial killer, since it appeared to be one of her many fetishes. They would laugh at his ability to play the part with such skill and believability. Then, he would find another — and another. And another. There were dozens. Far more than he could ever imagine that wanted such horribleness inflicted upon them. To give the illusion of relinquishing control. Of being taken against one’s will. Forced into humiliating, terrifying, traumatising scenarios, and able to explore the catharsis one gets from having survived such an ordeal.

Pretend. More fucking pretend. He wondered if they knew how stupid they looked, begging and pleading. He wondered even more if they were secretly imagining how they might look at any given moment. If their hair was out of place, or their eyeliner running down their face. He hated the fact that he knew they cared. More than that, that they were able to care.

He suddenly found that he’d answered his own question as to why more real psychopaths don’t bother with the practise of lifestyle BDSM, despite the ridiculously large number of willing victims. It was the willing part he could never wrap his brain around. It really did take all of the fun out of it.

Pretend. That’s all it ever was.

More so than the average social situation, though it fooled itself into thinking it was more authentic. That because people within its context were willing to disrobe, fuck, and inflict innumerable methods and amounts of pain to their persons and those of others – oftentimes by near strangers – it meant there were greater intimacy. Greater connection. More truth, honesty, and trust.

What a fucking joke. He liked to watch her dress after their scenes. He had contemplated many times of suddenly coming up behind her and slitting her throat, bringing her slowly down to the carpet while the fresh warm blood covered them both. She’d never had seen it coming, either. Heavenly. But he knew that her husband would ask to where she’d gone, and he really didn’t feel like getting all caught up in that again. She smiles to him, and he smiles back. Of course. Must maintain the pretense at all times. He finds it almost funny that she tends to leave with the statement that it’s “been real”.

Real. Sure.

Well, he knew she didn’t really want to know that he was a sadistic murderer, and thus, he felt no real need to confess it. He remembered how well things went the last time someone had found out. But of course, no one disappears forever. Especially not when they were hiding in plain sight. It’s almost too easy. Too easy. But then this whole thing was too easy. And fake. So fucking fake. Fake, and pretending to be real. It would be nice to be something again. Something that he really was. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of revealing his true self in the midst of them all one night – to watch them gape in horror, suddenly taking back all of their foolish, prideful boasting of how they could stand so much, and how they longed to be made less than human; forced, unwilling, desperate, objectified. Ruined. Destroyed. A shell of what they used to be.

Forced – indeed – to pick back up the pieces and attempt to fit them back together again so that they could continue living their fake, worthless little lives. They wouldn’t survive. So easily controlled. Too easily, in fact. He wanted a challenge.

He was done with pretending. He wanted something real again. He wanted her.

“Soon,” he said, tapping the screen with his finger. With that, he snatched up his extra special toy bag and headed for downtown, being especially mindful of the shadows; though, he began to soon fear even they were unable to disguise the depth of his own darkness.

Tags: poseurs, psychopathy, serial murder, suspence fiction