Death Orchid

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

North Las Vegas, Two Years Later.

Off Fremont Street, the toilet sewer of N. Vegas was a b***h, different from the neon, chrome and concrete of the Strip as depicted in every travel brochure ever printed or every television special ever filmed. Near Washington and “D” street, under the overpass, it was f****d up, worse. Drugs, prostitution, crack gangs, meth queens, the death of the human soul festered like garbage and it was-f*****g-everywhere.

The locals got it, as well as the monster that haunted the alleys, the slums and run-down motels bolted into a poor, violent world of no hope and no futures. There was a vampire, not in the sense of lore, but a man, ice cold blood, a f**k who murdered lasciviously, violently as he’d done in Canada some years earlier. He was not Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer kinda guy; it was just a commerce thing for him. He was simply said a bent, ruthless businessman doing his business the American way.

Crippled emotionally, yeah, for sure and SHE was a vagrant, homeless young, French Canadian, laying silent on a piece of cardboard in the garbage, strewn alley. Cryptic blue eyes, pin balls, static, confused, filled with fear as she leered at a sliver of moon still stuck in the sky.

A shopping cart, crammed with her stuff was set before her as she crouched, partially hidden next to a dumpster. Trash bags and mounds of discarded clothing covered her slender body. It was winter and the bite of winter ate her mind. It was night, cold and her life was un merciful as well as stricken with horrible mental illnesses. Pressed in her small palm were six shiny quarters. One quarter for each vile-man that had f****d her through the night. Her name was Mary. She was blond, irresistibly beautiful, and totally f*****g insane.

She was eighteen years old.

Blue eyes, barely evident, peeking out from her home for the night, she felt terrified. She could feel the urine gathering in her filthy jeans. Though a very sick girl, mentally she still knew when to be afraid. In this instant, with what was going down in her homeless world, she was rigid, petrified in fear.

Panic pulsed through her, hammering her heart. She had often seen HIM before.

There was something, a monster she thought, huddling in the back of the alley now, standing some thirty feet from her. It was a man or a creature she was familiar with. Being a shadow, herself, she had seen him murder twice before without him knowing that she was there.

Now he was there.

Off an alley near Eastern and Sahara, right near Fremont Street it was black. The moon gave just enough light for her to slowly focus her eyes. She dared hardly breathe. She could barely make out his image. She could barely see his eyes.

What she did see broke her fragile mind just a little further along the road into insanity.

What she did see with her crippled mind, was a massive knife, with the moon glinting on its blade.

For some time he remained immobile. She could see his icy breath plume out from the Shadow’s; breathe in and out, in and out. A cloud passed. She could see his ice blue eyes, ones that she was positive could see right through her. In her disturbed mind, she thought, as she’d seen him do before to other homeless that he would simply walk over to her, kill her. Her hands trembled. She felt the warm urine gather around her legs. It was not the first time she would feel such fear nor would it be the last.

Like the clouds that evening that kept materializing in the sky, she continued to watch his icy breath as it fogged each time he breathed. Though her story was a tragic one, she like any wild animal pushed into a corner thought survival first, even though her type of continuation of life was a most barbaric kind.

Panic grew around her, both odd creatures remained motionless. He slithered from the back of the alley, began to walk in his long coat towards her. He was tall, maybe six foot two, lean and muscled. She knew him to be a man of incredible strength, not to mention violence.

Knowing nothing else to do, she took a deep breath, held it, her lips quivered, tears streamed down her cheeks. He hesitated near her, his blue eyes sweeping up and down the alley. Only ever able to hold a lucid thought for more than a moment, she could not help thinking that the all too familiar face was very handsome.

As she sat there staring at him, her eyes lowered and focused on the eight-inch knife dangling in his hand. A momentary slab of moonlight reflected off of it. She thought it was beautiful.

Like a predatory animal he sniffed at the air, winced from the various odors reeking along the alley. Finding no scent to fulfill his business for the evening, he walked to the alley’s entrance and turned again, feeling something he leered back into the recesses of the alley.

Her eyes wide, blue and white were seemingly vibrating in her skull. She watched him turn and walk from the entrance. Within that brief moment of time she wondered if he had been there at all. Perhaps she was hallucinating again. Though her brain was scarred horribly from an accident at birth, she was autistic, often seeing wonderful images where none actually existed.

Thinking about the man again, she closed her eyes, began to dream, mostly of colorful and gorgeous things, remembering him no longer. Soon though her memory of such things would either kill her or save her, no one, certainly not she knew the answer to that puzzle.

Pushing at a trash bag, she began to move, instantly froze.

Once again there was a man at the alleys mouth, long coat swaying, standing, leering, eyes looking into the pitch. Slumping back, she thought she recognized the man. She thought the killer had returned, having forgotten to murder her.

For her it seemed as if an eternity as the tall man simply seemed to look right at her. Then he lifted a camera, began to click off photographs. Unable to make out his face, for it was back lit by neon, lights glowing behind him, she watched as he finished, looked once again at her, turned and vanished from her sight.

Exhaling, and over stressed, her lovely mind cooled and calmed as she laid down and pulled her discarded green trash bags over her body. As her eyes closed she began to dream. What she saw as she began to drift to sleep were images of blood, cut bone and a man’s severed head.

In the morning she would again awake to a life not worth living, memories as those that she had dreamed of locked away in her mind, for some time, but not forever.