The Night Crawler

First, the closing of the club at which he hunted with a patriotic sense of routine, then the empty withdrawal of potential targets. Then the bartender—in all his forty-three years of walking this lonely planet, he'd never met such a disrespectful bartender. And now this sickness. A meek and tiny voice advised that he'd best pack up and go home. He'd still have the skin on his back that he came with, and, luckily, his clothes and wallet and car. If he was further lucky, Marianne might still be up and in the mood for a tumble or two. He'd have lost nothing more than a few dollars on drinks, and—

And pride. I don't think I'll be able to do this anymore if I quit tonight.

And wouldn't that be a good thing for the world?

But if I pull through now, nothing will be able to stop me next time! Never! Do you hear? Besides, I enjoy this job!

Craig smiled; he could sense that voice starting to back down. But it wouldn't leave without one last fight.

C'mon Craig don't be an idiot you win some you lose some. Your wins so far were just luck. You don't have any promises to Mr. DePulez or his associates. They aren't even expecting you tonight, remember? You'd surprise them with sudden merchandize, and probably not get as much from it anyway. Call it off now, we all walk away from this. Perhaps Mary will even give you a weekend blowjob. Who knows? Huh? Whaddya say? But if you don't quit now—and I mean now, Craig—you might never get another chance. There's a bad feeling about this one. A really bad, bad feeling, Craig. If I could beg you, I'd be down on all fours begging like a whipped pup, follow your instincts, not your pride, you know this is a bad one, a setup, like there's someone here looking for you!

That last phrase hit him through the spine and cerebrum and every single neuron in his body with the force of a million high-watted volts. His whole body shuddered.

There was a moment when Craig considered following his instincts, when he thought he'd pay his tab, get behind the wheel and go back to the wife, then see what became of that.

But it wasn't about the sex. Not tonight, anyway. This was about a way of life. If he quit now, he saw that he'd never pick up the guts again to try this. And he loved this hobby. It gave him a thrill that no other adrenaline booster or the hottest turns with his wife or any woman young or old could give. Craig thought that if tonight his mission was to apprehend an eighty-year-old man, he would be just as unwilling to drop it.

The Voice of Advice said nothing.

Craig rejoiced in the fact that not only was that irritating, cowardly voice vanquished, but that he'd also located the bathroom. His penis surged powerfully in anticipation of its forthcoming treats, but Craig bade it relax for now. Pissing with an erection was hard work. Thankfully, it complied.

He closed his hand around the shining brass knob and pushed the door in when a thought suddenly filled his mind with cold, dreadful certainty:

Tonight, the city will have its last abduction.

Craig choked in shock. He tried blinking back the fright that jolted through his bones like a tuning fork. He hadn't thought those words, but he'd heard it nonetheless from somewhere inside him. That untrained voice surfacing for one last word, no doubt. He was about to brush it completely off and enter the cubicle when a click came from the Ladies' opposite his, and the door opened.

Craig saw her and suddenly felt well again.

The pangs and cramps fled, taking with them the nausea. His bladder and bowels were no longer full. Where their filling had gone left him puzzled, but he didn't want to dwell on the negative. Now was time for reveling in the positive. His mind beamed and Mr. Softee twitched and began to grow hard. He felt life flowing through him again at the prospect of this wonderful taker. That a person could have such an effect on him was thrilling in itself.

He found his mark.

5

The girl was petite—a little short, but in her heeled boots, she stood the perfect height.

Her straight blonde hair was neat and dropped to the nape of her neck. It swayed outward like a skirt of leaves when she stopped and looked up at the man outside the door. He smiled at her. She smiled back. The girl was cute, too—not as young as the junior student he'd targeted earlier, but enough to perhaps have just finished high school, or to be almost graduating. A perfect row of pearly whites gleamed up at him from between naturally pink lips, straight in alignment and perfection as the rest of her wonderfully attractive body. He thought of what he would make her do with those lips later and had to suppress a great squeal.

"Uh...hi," Craig managed to say, finding that elusive word somewhere in his collection of phrases and deep grammar. She smiled wider, blushing.

"Hi," the girl beamed, clutching her hands behind her back and fidgeting like a nervous schoolgirl. She looked up at him with the surprise and furious interest of a deer suddenly caught in the glaring spotlights of a speeding rig—a slender, vivacious deer that would instantly put any stag into a burning desire to reproduce.

But the thing that caught his attention most of all was not her dental perfection or her Hollywood smile and hair, nor the pert, firm body that awaited him under that shiny leather outfit. Above all, it was her eyes. Wide, huge spheres that shone in the flashing club lights. Innocent. Blazing with a so far undiscovered hunger he would help her realize. Hypnotic eyes that would make Greek goddesses hide in shame.

They sparkled with the vibrancy of choice sapphires.

6

When the drug he slipped into her Shirley Temple took effect, it was nothing so sudden that she—or anyone else dancing and stoning around them—noticed. The girl felt weak. Dizzy. He asked her if she wanted to sit down and helped her to a seat in the back of the club.

She still had enough wits to engage in reasonable conversation and keep the glasses of spiked Shirleys empty. The simple subject of age eventually surfaced and Craig told her the truth. She just laughed as if him being older than her father was the funniest thing in the world since genital deodorant. Craig asked hers but she refused to tell, saying only that a friend's ID got her in. He smiled a shit-filled grin, said, "No kidding," then leaned in and kissed her.

He insisted on being told her age.

Craig gloated on his perverted accomplishment. Blushing again, the girl whispered something in his ear. Craig suddenly realized that the leather outfit and lights were making her look older than she really was. He'd been wrong about her age by at least a couple—or triplet or quadruple—of years. Laughing for no reason, Craig thought he might go out to the payphone first and call Mr. DePulez. Perhaps he might be able to twist a heftier charge from him for this one.

Craig laughed again and she joined in with him.

She introduced herself as Marlene. He told her his real name. No point in trying to connive a lie to someone who would never see him beyond tonight.

"Craig?" she slurred. "Your name is Craig?"

"Yes," he smiled. The only thing better than screwing a cute thing was doing one that thought you were someone else. "Why?" He tried to look as innocent as possible.

She bent up as if to kiss him, but instead put her nose behind his ear. The sensation was so erotically charged that Craig's mind blurred for a moment.

"Craig Joner?" she asked.

Craig felt his heart skip one beat, then another. It wasn't until the fourth skip that he realized his entire skin had gone cold and numb, racked in goosebumps and raised hairs. His mouth was dry. It took him awhile to find back his voice.

"Y...yes," he said, all good humor gone. "Craig Joner...that's me." He tried to force a smile, but it refused to come.

"Oh, wow! Craig Joner!" She was thoroughly wasted, but that was more than common interest in her voice. Marlene was shouting. A couple from another turned around to look at them. When she spoke, it was in a voice suddenly void of all intoxication. It was excited but sharp. Alert. Craig misinterpreted it for lust and teenage sexual infatuation. He was well-versed in the intoxicated version of such a phenomenon. "I've heard so much about you!"

Now he was uncomfortable. His day business was lucrative but small. No one should have heard of him, especially not a young girl who probably couldn't yet get her driving license. And his night activities were not something he wanted to be famous for—not among the normal folk, anyway.

"What have you heard?" he asked, trying to stay calm.

"Oh. Not much," she said with sudden wariness. "Just I've been waiting so long to meet you." Her smile dropped entirely.

That did it for him. Craig smiled. He was sure that was the alcohol and powder talking.

"Really? Well, that's wonderful! I've always wanted to meet someone like you too. What do you say we get out of here? Maybe to my car?"

Marlene was happy to agree, but she decided to give him one last chance.

"Sorry," she said, tilting her head to the side and looking into his face. "I have to go home. My parents will be waiting for me."

"But—"

"Besides," she smiled, getting up from the couch, "I have school tomorrow. High School, you know?"

It was all out now. If he persisted, there would be no mistake about his nature.

"Oh," he said, then watched as she swayed like a tree and fell back on the couch.

"Oww," she groaned. "My head! It hurts. It hurrrrts."

Marlene sat next to him and leaned over his lap in feigned sickness. She stayed that way for awhile as he ran his hands through her hair and caressed her face. Then she sat up and downed the rest of her tampered cocktail. It was against her code to abuse substance—such would make one weak and dull senses needed for later on—but the façade was necessary to uphold.

Again, he suggested they leave. Marlene made sure she was only able to gurgle an incomprehensive reply as he helped her out of Zodiac.

7

They stumbled out into the night, his arm wrapped around her hips.

Outside his car, Craig pushed her against passenger door and kissed her. She looked up at him with those wide, innocent blue eyes, and a chill suddenly ran through Craig, from the base of his spine to his brain and throughout his entire body.

Last abduction, those eyes seemed to say. I know you!

Craig steeled himself against the guilt threatening to fill him for the first time since he began this wicked hobby.

"You'll remember this night forever," he said, then gave that charming smile. Marlene could only grunt a reply.

Craig shuddered and bundled her into the car. Getting in on the other side, he backed quickly out of the parking lot, crunching gravel under his worn tires, and sped out of the vicinity.

8

They were speeding over the deserted country road in open-aired silence.

Craig put his hand across the space between him and Marlene and rested his large palm on her thigh. She jerked from the sudden contact, moving her leg away and turning up to his face with a fearfully restrained look. Craig looked away from the road just long enough to return her gaze with one as menacing as hers was terrified. He did not remove his hand. He slid it higher up her leg till it breached the hemline of her leather skirt. She was still staring at him.

He looked at her again and laughed.

Then she smiled and his blood thickened to slushy meat puree; he was clothed in a skin of gooseflesh.

heard so much about you been waiting to meet you tonight the city will give up it's last victim—

A bolt of lightning rent the sky and struck the road ahead of them. Craig snapped his head back to road. The light blinded his vision in the front, erasing all but the blazing white column of sparks and Nature's power. For that split-moment it flooded his car with burning luminosity, but from the corner of his eye, Craig saw the girl change.

He screamed and let go of the wheel and—

(oh no don't do it Craig don't turn around!)

—turned back to her.

She was as he'd seen her all along: A cute, innocent schoolgirl with erotically pale blue eyes and Barbie-straight blonde hair, more afraid of him and what he would do to her than the approaching storm.

The wind that had been rocking the car slowed. The only sounds were the distant retreat of black thunder.

Craig forced out a chuckle, more to comfort himself than to express humor, and faced back to the road. He eased the car down when he saw the needle quivering past the one-hundred-miles-per-hour mark. His hands were shaking.

Marlene shifted farther away from him.

It was all right. Everything was all right. He was tempted to turn back to her—to make sure, just to make sure that everything he saw was a piece of his imagination catalyzed by his tired, frustrated mind—but willed against it. She should be afraid of him. Not the other way around. The next few hours of her life would be filled with greater fear and humiliation and uncertainty than she'd ever known or ever would know—until she met Mr. DePulez. Then Craig would personally oversee her punishment for his moments of fear. Oh yes, that sounded about right.

Everything was all right.

She rustled in the corner but Craig refused to look. She was just scared. Yes. That's it. Afraid. Terrified of him and her obscured future. Craig breathed in slowly and exhaled, watching as his hands stopped shaking over the wheel.

But if everything was going to be fine, then why did he refuse to look at her?

9

Craig stopped the Crown on the shoulder of Loral Highway—not so much a highway as a dirt-and-gravel shortcut from the main town to the suburban residential—in a desolate portion surrounded by forest on either side.

It was not a preserve. These trees were wild—ancient as the sun, and they looked even older, like trees straight out from a fairytale's enchanted wood: Gnarled, twisted branches that reached out with grappling fingers; massive trunks that twenty men couldn't have formed a circle around, the rough bark peeling off in sheets resembling overcooked bacon. At night, no light from the city or town reached into the thick woods, and the treetops covered all traces of light that the stars or moon might have bestowed.

The road slithered through the dense labyrinth of pines and sequoias. The trees towered above the tiny vehicle like club-bearing ogres and Cyclopses preparing to beat hapless midgets. When the wind blew, the tops of the trees bowed forward, only adding to that suspiciously real impression of animated life. But the road wound safely through the silhouettes, a safe path through treacherous woods.

Ordinarily, Loral Highway would have made a convenient—if not safe and quick—route from urban to rural, but lately, heavy rains had washed away most of the road, making travel through it as hazardous as trekking through the Mojave Desert on foot without a map or water. Trees were scattered randomly, as if whoever had first built the road did so with the intention to confuse all but the most veteran travelers. Because of the faint visibility of the road, it had been officially closed a month before Craig started using it, but such only made for his increased convenience. They were alone in the woods—she was alone with him—without any chance of disturbance.

That was why he always brought his victims here.

10

Craig looked at his passenger, Marlene: Terrified, gorgeous, young; fifteen, if what she said was to be trusted. Craig thought she had no reason to lie.

"I...is something wrong, Mr. Joner?" she asked in a shaky voice. The fear was oozing from her like strong musk, and Craig groveled in the scent.

"Move to the backseat, Marlene," he said, his voice suddenly cold and commanding, devoid of the terror that had gripped him earlier.

It was a moment of great intensity. What Marlene did now would dictate the way the rest of the night went. She knew what was going to happen to her. The difference lay in her choice to resist or accept it.

Sometimes they tried to run. The first runner had pissed off Craig, because he hated running. Chasing after them meant his ploy—whether charm or terror—had failed, and that did nothing to better his mood. He had chased that first runner into the woods—she wasn't young like this one, and she ran like a state representative—caught her at long last when she fell over a tangle of ensnaring vines, and shoved her hard into a tree trunk. He did her as she writhed in semi-consciousness, but the adrenalin of the raw deal was gone. But she had been a good piece, screaming and crying as he used her six ways from Sunday—all that running and fighting spirit gone.

Following that, Craig had been more cautious. He always kept the child-lock on, making it impossible to open the door from inside. So far, none of his victims had broken the windows. One woman had tried, but her fear made her weak.

Marlene sat still, nervously glancing up at Craig's grim expression. She was beautiful. Craig Joner gently ran a hand through her blonde hair. He leaned his head back against his headrest.

"Don't make this any harder on yourself, Marlene," he said. "Just get in the back, please."

This one was obviously not a fighter. At the start of tonight he thought he wanted someone to tame—someone to subdue and break in with force—but as the night escalated, Craig was glad this one was weak. He didn't think he would be able to summon enough energy to deal with a fighter after everything that happened so far. He wanted a slow, relaxed session. Then, he might kill her or let her go.

Or sell her to the Bulgarian.

Marlene tried to open the door. Not desperately, hopefully. The handle turned down but the door did not open. She looked back up at Craig, a shimmering fear floating in her pale blue eyes. Was she caught?

"Just climb back between the seats," Craig said softly, willing to pretend to himself that he truly believed that had she opened the door, she would have obediently stepped around to the back and got back into his car.

Marlene squeezed herself into the narrow space between the front seats. Craig watched her in his rear-view mirror. As she climbed, her short black leather skirt rode up, revealing a glimpse of—

Oh my God ohmyGod what IS THAT?

Craig jerked his eyes away from the mirror as if the glass had reflected a demon. His whole body began to shake, his lungs pumped with the violent exertions of a suffocating man.

"Is anything the matter?" her voice wafted in from behind him, but he barely heard. Though he refused to look back at her, even through the mirror, Craig could feel her smile. That made it worse.

God oh god what's going on here?

It took awhile before his body managed to control itself and subdue the shivering. Then, he spoke.

"Marlene," he said, "you've done okay so far." He paused and took a breath. "I think you know that you don't have to get hurt tonight."

But it was all an act of self-reassurance.

Something was wrong. Something was so, so wrong, but he did not know what. Until Craig could identify the crisis, he could convene no other option than to continue with his original plan.

"When we're done," he continued, and gulped down a cold lump in his esophagus, "I can drive you home or somewhere to catch a bus or...or a cab," he lied, "and you can never think about this night again." He paused, looking into those mysteriously helpless blue eyes. "If you're good. But if not..."

He left it unfinished. He knew she was a smart girl; she understood that if she fought him, things would only be worse for her.

"I'm willing and prepared to follow through with either option tonight, Marlene," Craig said. "Makes no difference to me. The choice is up to you, whether in the next twenty seconds I see your clothes up here in the front seat."