He rose from his bed. It was dark. He reached for his glasses on the night stand just as he heard a light tap against the bedroom door. He couldn’t be sure if he’d heard it earlier. His stomach churned and cramped from the bottle of scotch that he had drained just hours ago. Sterling snored softly by his bedside and gave no hint of any disturbance. He reached down to the coarse bristles of Sterling’s fur. And there it was again. A light tap, no, more of a rap this second time, or was it the third time? The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and he froze, constricted by his own stiffened muscles as they clamped down on his breath.

His service pistol was in the top drawer of the nightstand but he was paralyzed. He knew that it wouldn’t be too much longer now. Sterling rose with a low, gurgling growl and stood pointed at the door. He dove for his pistol knocking the nightstand lamp onto the floor. He frantically pulled the .45 caliber weapon out of the drawer and wheeled it around towards the door.

“I’m a cop! You picked the wrong house! I’m not fucking around,” he yelled as rage supplanted his fear. His bravado was emboldened by the firepower that once again trembled in his soon to be cold, dead hands.

“Oh I know, Officer Markum!” a soft, feminine voice echoed through the thin, laminate, bedroom door as the knob turned ever so slowly.

“Don’t come in here or you’re dead!” he warned, as the door steadily opened and a small, blurry, feminine figure glided through.

The panicked policeman pulled the trigger and the pistol clicked impotently. He pulled it again, and then repeatedly, to no avail. Sterling leapt towards the figure with a shrill bark and bolted past her. He would live. Markum floundered and thrashed around the bed before bracing his corpulent body against the headboard. He pulled his heft onto his knees while pointing the pistol at the advancing figure.

The slight intruder moved towards the far bedroom wall, observing her quarry’s every move. “I want you to see Officer Markum. I want you to see how you die!” The lights flicked on, and there before him, stood a slender woman cloaked in black. Her hair was cropped short against her temples. Her eyes, terrible eyes, pierced with the darkest hatred that humanity could harbor.

He rose to his feet at the head of the bed. His hands grabbed at his naked, overhanging midsection. “Who are you?”

The slender woman reached behind her back and threw a shimmering silver-metallic object at him. It landed at his feet on top of the sweat-stained mattress. Even without his glasses, he could identify the familiar Star and Crescent badge he’d worn as a New Orleans police officer so many years ago.

“I found something of yours. Maybe you should put it on? I like a man in uniform.” The intruder’s voice sharpened, like a blade over a whetstone, as she spoke.

He’d had enough! Who was this little bitch anyway? Markum brightened beet-red and hurled curses at the insolent woman as he took two lumbering steps, jumping awkwardly off of the edge of the bed.

The woman, like a sable panther, pounced quickly into ambush. She closed quickly with her airborne prey, side-stepped his ungainly mass, and thrust a three-inch dagger twice into his liver. Markum landed on hard on his feet and rebounded into the wall. He braced himself against it as he prepared to flail around for another attack. He was too late. She was an efficient huntress, going for the jugular immediately. Markum thrashed violently as his neck was sliced by the tightening, wire-edge garrote. The woman was on his back and he could not reach her. He swung desperately attempting to free himself from her deadly clutch. His world was closing in around him as the blood flow to his brain slowed. He felt the warmth of his blood as it bubbled out of his punctured liver and down his legs.

Markum fell to his knees, his life slipping away with every spilled drop. The woman fastened the garrote and sprang off of his back. She squatted down in front of her dying prey and showed him the murder weapon, a delicate little dagger.

“They say this feels better when you’re choking”, she spoke softly into his ear, as she castrated him.

© J. Manuel Writes