Sometimes the cross in his room bled, Lyle would be sitting there in his room concentrating on the wall when the cross would begin to bleed in long thick strands like a scarlet spiderweb. It was his sickness, he knew it, it meant that he was evil and he was doing to Hell for all his sinful thoughts about other boys. All the pornography he jerked off to silently in the late hours of the night, his dreams about sucking men’s cocks. God was telling him he was evil, that’s when Lyle began seducing men and killing them—picking them up by the side of the road—and, and…

   Um, having sex with their corpses? Oh god, too Jeffrey Dahmer. How about he just kept the heads and performed oral sex on himself with them. Eww, how would a cold stiff purple tongue feel on a man’s penis? Hmmm.

   Audrey Votweiller lit another cigarette, she wrote horror fiction for a living, it was her job and trying to tap into the psyche of modern America and figuring out what made them shit their pants was so easy task. The critics were sharks all swimming in the same, feces polluted tank, ready to crucify you for not quoting Shakespeare. It was a tough business out there now, especially in the horror industry, he had to hack up the corpses yourself and then write about it or else be a middle-aged white man with  repressed homosexual longings. Audrey just liked to pretend she were a gay serial killer, she got off on it. It was sort of fascinating, the way one finds a car wreck fascinating.

   The Prozac helped, she had been maniacally depressed most of her life since the tender age of sweet sixteen when she tried to slit her wrists for the first time. Her mother refused to take her to the hospital, tying two white washcloths over her wrists and telling her to go to her room and think about what she had done. She did and it made her even more depressed so she tried to down three bottles of medicine, finally she had woken up in a hospital and then was committed. She didn’t see her mother for two years after that, that was how she moved out of her house.

   "See that’s the kind of stuff you put on paper," her agent said, "Forget therapy, forget the drugs, use this to your advantage! I can’t say all that, the worst thing my parents ever did to me was call me ‘Fatso’ but people still do that to me, so what!"

   Audrey could see the sincerity in his eyes and a nice fat paycheck every month wasn’t too bad either. However there was only one thing, Audrey had never been able to find in her entire life…love.

*********

  She was laying in the forest, it was late and she heard the sounds of owls hooting. A sort of eerie coldness crept across her body, where was she? How did she get here again? She opened her eyes and felt the wind blowing through the flap of skin dangling from her throat. It was slit. Her dress was torn, the spaghetti straps broken and it was stained with semen at the bottom. She wanted to vomit, she felt like Monica Lewinsky. Somehow she was still alive, there was no blood oozing from her neck, only that hanging flap of skin which seemed to wave hello to God.

   She was sitting in a pile of her own blood, it had congealed and dried up until it was the color of grape juice. Not very sticky, just matted into the dirt like a stain in a rug. A sort of grayness filled the world, she saw with a new pair of eyes, her vision had changed, it was sort of beautiful in it’s melancholy way. She looked over near the trees, there were ghosts there with wings. Angels?

   They seemed to be sobbing over something as if a tragedy underneath the kingdom of Heaven had been committed.

**************

   Audrey didn’t have many chances to go out and meet people, they were few and far between, so she did something which meant against all her morals and beliefs…she signed on to America On-line and got an account. Oh god, this was the dating method for the loneliest and most desperate people of the nineties but she supposed that she fit into that category.

   After three months of having cybersex with ugly, old fat balding men, she met a guy who actually seemed worth her time. His name was Rob Esteban and he was an account a few miles from her estate in Northern Colorado, he was quite handsome, a few years younger than her but very mature for his age. He was twenty-six, very muscular with blond hair and blue-green eyes, he sent her a shirtless pic and one of his penis. Which looked a good eight inches long and four inches around, it would be like sucking on a rather large pork sausage. She giggled when she thought about this, the whole idea of people sending nude pics to each other before they even met seemed grotesque to her at first but then again she wasn’t a normal person.

   Why should the same rules apply to her that would to some old christian lady living in the boonies? She wrote about rape, murder and suicide for a living—seeing a cock was hardly a shock. That rhymes, she thought and laughed.

   So they had met a few times, he was a perfect gentleman and took her to the nicest restaurants she had ever seen in her life. She knew on their first date that she wanted to fuck him, that he would be an animals in bed and his ass was probably more muscular than her arms and thighs combined. She sucked his cock on the second date, he ate her out on the third and they were going to motels every time after that.

   She rode him like a pony and he pumped faster than a gas station with full service, it was beautiful debauchery and every night that Audrey came home, she found that she had more to write. Her sex/rape/murder scenes were almost perfect now.

   "I love the way you suck my cock," he said, one time after they had finished in bed, "And you don’t complain like other girls about swallowing my cum."

   "I like it," she said, lying her ass off, "It tastes good, I love everything about men, I could never do the whole lesbian thing. Even though both of my sisters are superdykes but I love them to pieces."

   "I have a fantasy," he said, "About being with a man and a woman at the same time, I hope that doesn’t freak you out…"

   "Have you ever been with a man before?" she asked.

   "Only once," he said smiling, "The guy was a total faggot though, he dressed in drag and everything, he had this very feminine face and this very feminine voice. It made me sick, I only let him suck my cock then I ditched him."

   "Oh," she said.

   "Does it make you uncomfortable that I have bisexual tendencies?" he asked.

   "No, no, it’s cool. It’s almost a turn-on," she lied again.

   For a moment a chill went up her spine and she felt very afraid and wished she wasn’t there in bed with him anymore, she felt like she was in one of her stories where the killer was always some repressed stereotypically aged 20-25 year old male with a history of anti-social behavior who ended up killing his girlfriend because he thought of a man while they were having sex. Rob now began to remind her of one of her characters and it scared her, it scared her a lot. She hated being scared, she liked to be the one doing the scaring not the other way around. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair.

*************

   Two weeks later they had the fateful date and that’s when she awoke in the forest to find herself a murder victim. The semen on her dress and the angels weeping by the trees. Everything pissed her off about the fact that she would be murdered right now at this point in her life, it seemed so unfair. She was in the middle of her sequel to Midnight Killers, still reading the new Stephen King book which she really loved and she only had five more payments left on that dishware set from Fingerhut.

   Life just couldn’t stop when you didn’t finish a crossword puzzle, could it? When you still had dirty dishes that needed washing or a cat that must be fed. She always pictured death in a much more dramatic way like she was on a trip in another country being chased by spies and must drive over a cliff with an FBI Agent to keep national secrets buried forever. Stupid, she knew but she thought it and her thoughts were real to her as dreams.

   Her favorite group at the moment was Marilyn Manson, they seemed to represent everything about modern day American society. She had seen them in concert once, their style was cool, original and very suited to the times.

   They had been listening to "The Dope Show" on the radio when Rob drove her out near the forest saying he had a special picnic waiting for them. How romantic, she had thought stupidly and was jerking him off along the way. She was singing the lyrics to the song, "We’re all stars now in the dope show…we’re all stars now…in the dope show…" while jerking Rob’s cock up and down, up and down and he moaned wildly.

   "Oh baby, oh baby," he kept saying.

   Then he seemed to stop in the middle of nowhere and opened her door for her.

   "Where’s the picnic?" she asked.

   "Right here, bitch, life’s a picnic," he said and pulled out a switchblade.

   "What the fuck is your problem!" she screamed at him.

   "You’re a woman!" he said, "That’s the problem, if you were a man maybe I wouldn’t kill you but now that I think about all those times I let you suck my dick! You and that ruby-red lipped mouth of yours, oh god, I want to cut your face open!"

   "You’re a sick fuck, you know that," she said, "Sick fuck, that’s you! If there was a picture of sick fuck in the dictionary—"

   "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" he whined like a little boy, "This is my show now! I set it up, I’m directing, writing and producing it, so you just play the scared little woman who is about to get her throat slit and I’ll be happy!"

   "You read my books," she said, "You know who I am…you’re trying to reenact a scene from one of my books!"

   "Well, duh," he laughed, "Like I ever really believed your name was Marilyn for a minute! God, you have a low opinion of men, don’t you? But I already knew that from all your books, according to you we’re all a bunch of homorepressed serial killers just waiting to take out our rage on lonely women."

   "Well you aren’t exactly changing that opinion," she sneered sarcastically, trying to come up with a plan in her mind while talking.

   He grinned, he had a vampire tooth that hung too long out, otherwise he was a Calvin Klein model, all except for that vampire tooth.

   "I read all your books, I read every webpage every made about you, I’ve traveled all across the country to all your book signings."

   "I never saw you.." she said.

   "I never went up to you!" he shouted, "I just watched you, just wondering what was going through that sick mind of yours! Thinking how could this pretty, young attractive women have such sick and violent thoughts. I mean your stuff doesn’t even have the romance of Anne Rice in it, it’s just pure blood and gore, you’re the female Stephen King!"

   "Oh and your the poster boy for sanity standing there with a switchblade in his hand, your favorite singer is Celine Dion! You thought ‘Titanic’ was a wonderful movie, I should have known you were gay!’

   Then he started chasing after her and as much as she hated reenacting the scene from her novel, she ran from him, she ran and ran until he caught up to her and jumped on top of her.

   "Suck my cock," he said pulling it out and started jerking off over her dress.

   "I thought you wanted a man, asshole! Make up your mind, I think Leonardo Decaprio’s available!"

   He slapped her once, twice across the face.

   "I’m an important person," she said, "They’ll catch you and cut your balls off, you’ll have a whole truckload of boyfriend’s loosening up your asshole in the slammer every night!"

   "Oh I want to get caught," he smiled, "I plan to confess…don’t you see? Life is meaningless, I don’t have a writing skill like you do, so I have to do anything I can to be famous…"

   Go on Jerry Springer, you fucking nut, she wanted to yell but decided against it. She was only antagonizing him out of fear anyway and she had no doubt that he would use that switchblade in an instant.

   "So you want to be the guy who killed Audrey Votweiller? I got news for you, I’m not that well-known, nobody will give a shit."

   "Oh but they will…don’t you see? Once I murder you, more people will buy your books and I’ll be famous. They’ll interview me in the insane asylum like Charles Manson. Barbara Walters will ask me about my childhood and I might even get a record deal! As you said in your book ‘Twilight of the Lost Pyramid’: ‘Fame is a bitch and she’ll put out for anybody, even a burn victim’."

   "Boy, you really are a fan…" she said grimly.

   "Yeah, without people like us you’d be nothing," he laughed and pressed the blade to her throat.

   "Rob…" she said.

   "Yes?" he said, tracing infinity signs on her throats with the tip of the blade.

   "I lied, I don’t like swallowing a guy’s cum," she said and kneed him in the balls.

   She ran them as fast as she could, faster, faster and…then she slammed into a tree. Then there was the flash of a knife, a burning across her throat, blackness and she was dead. No drama. Just instant eternity.

   "I’m a mess," Audrey said and took off her clothes and got into the shower. She tried not to think of all the blood or the huge wound in her throat or the fact that she had no pulse anymore. Instead she took the longest shower of her entire life and tried to think of all the chores she still had to do about the house.

   She followed her regular schedule and did everything as she normally would, she ate dinner at 7:30 and watched The Simpsons, she sat in front of her computer and wrote for two hours or revised some of her old stuff, then took a half-hour break to break the Stephen King book and then she signed on-line. This was her usual routine.

   The place was swamped with the desperate, lonely and suicidal as always. Her buddy list was filled with the names of gothic teens, old ladies and the horny men in Florida she talked to.

   That’s when she saw Rob on-line, his screenname was: GOTAHOT14U. She instant messaged him, laughing to herself.

   UFOnmyHEAD: Hello Rob.

   GOTAHOT14U: Who is this?

    You could almost feel the tension through the screen. If computers had emotions or background music, but it was the landscape of the emotionally dead.

   UFOnmyHEAD: Um, slit my throat a few hours ago, we had a bloody picnic in the woods, remember now?

   GOTAHOT1U: Look I don’t know who you are (he wrote) but I’m gonna report you for harassment…

   UFOnmyHEAD: Sweetie, why so cold? I thought you liked the way I sucked dick.

   Pause.

   GOTAHOT1U: This can’t be you. You’re dead.

   UFOnmyHEAD: Maybe you didn’t finish the job, come on over, asshole…you know where I live.

   GOTAHOT1U: Maybe I will.

   Then he signed off-line. She did too, she poured herself a nice glass of brandy and started a fire in the fireplace. She better get ready, she had company soon.

   She finally heard the sounds of a car driving up to her house by one o’clock in the morning. She was in her nightie, her breasts a sort of strange purplish color now and the flap in her throat had crusted over and yellowed a little. There was a knock at the door, she had left it unlocked and turned off all the lights in the house. She had lit three candles and they were burning on the kitchen table.

   "Hello, Audrey?" he said, she saw the gleam of the switchblade in the candlelight.

   "Oh Rob…" she whispered and the sound of her voice sounded profoundly disturbing with that cut in her throat. It sounded long and winding, like a play on the mind, barely audible like the sound of the wind talking.

   He looked scared, really scared, she was happy.

   "I got an idea, Rob…" she said, "For my new book…"

   "Y—yeah?" he stuttered.

   He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from.

   "It’s about this writer who goes crazy and she, I mean, he kidnaps this guy he meets off the internet and he rapes and he tortures him repeatedly, then locks him up in the basement where he starves him to death. The guy keeps begging for mercy but the writer only laughs and says, ‘You’re my inspiration…I need to hear and understand your agony in order to write my book’. You wanna know what happens Rob? You wanna?"

   "What?" he said, detached and mechanically.

   "It’s the biggest bestseller on the charts, it goes number one in the New York Times and The LA Times, I mean forget about all the pain and suffering in the world, all the starving children in Africa…Getting on the Top Ten of the New York Times is like, the meaning of life. Anyway, the guy he has locked up in the basement dies a horrible and agonizing death, he is devoured by rats and snakes. But who cares about him? It’s art that matters, not people, art…" she said and began laughing, it sounded like a bagpipe wheezing.

   "I—I—I’m sorry?" he said.

   "Apology accepted!" she screamed and burst out of a closet door and drove a butcher knife into his back, near the spine. He collapsed underneath his own feet and went unconscious. She unlocked the door to the basement and dragged his body down, let the decaying begin…

   Two weeks later, Rob was dead and the first two hundred pages of a new novel was written, her agent told her that it was her best yet. She told him for this new book though that there wasn’t going to be any book signings, she was thinking of becoming a reclusive, a J.D. Salinger type, y’know? He said he understood and could respect that, after she offered him forty percent of the profits.

   The reason this was the best book she had ever written, she knew was because now she could writing horror unbiased by emotions. She was seeing things from the best perspective of all, from that of a dead person and she wasn’t just pretending to be dead like those gothic girls on the internet.