As Fate Would Have It Read online

  “Hey?” she asked, her voice soft, slipping into sultry tones even before the forthcoming glass of wine.

  “Hey,” he aped back and then draped a long, thin piece of black silk over her right shoulder.

  Heather furrowed her brow quizzically, closed her compact, dropped it into her purse and then turned her attentions to the silken scarf resting on her shoulder.

  What’s this?

  Was Montgomery kinky?

  Or, fear amassing into a quick barrage of tingles that danced beneath her skin, was he dangerous like Ashley suspected?

  Was he going to tie her up and beat her?

  A thrilling shudder shook her shoulders. Was it wrong to want as much? Not danger, but a good, firm, kinky beating?

  Heather touched the scarf lightly. Montgomery pulled it away and then gently brought it up and positioned it over her eyes. Just as gently, he tied it off behind her head. The blindfold hardly seemed necessary in the darkest room ever, but Heather was game. She thought she should say something but words eluded her. A comment perhaps? She didn’t want to kill the intensity of the moment by ruining it with jokes or soft words or nasty banter. Humor would kill passion. Lovey stuff seemed too wholesome and nice. Whereas on the other hand, sex talk, dirty stuff, was too porno, too gross, and would definitely make things feel weird. She opted to keep quiet.

  What was Montgomery’s next step? This seduction was most unexpected. Heather was planning on initiating and taking it to a certain point, or if it so happened, letting Montgomery push a little before cutting him off, but this new wrinkle complicated things a bit. This was much hotter.

  Red flag?

  If Montgomery was this forward with her on the first date, there had to be others. How many? Was he a freak?

  Thrill morphed into worry. Heather began to raise her hands to remove the scarf. She would politely tell him this was moving way too fast. He would understand.

  Right?

  Instantaneous fire consumed her.

  Her brain: What? What? Wh…

  The flame spread, originating from deep in her throat and arching fiery trails of searing heat throughout her entire system.

  She tried to scream or question or make sense of the escalating pain with words, the familiar, sounds to ground her rapidly dissolving sanity. Gurgling. Sputtering.

  Warm and wet and cold at the same time.

  Her jacket.

  Her lovely jacket.

  Ruined by a river of life.

  The blindfold didn’t help at all. Neither did the near absence of light. The blood, ever sticky, voluminous, muted by weakly flickering candle light, seemed to glow a bright, evil red, luminous and vivid, or at least it did in Montgomery’s mind’s eye.

  This fucking madness had to stop.

  It had to stop.

  Nausea welled and swirled and then dissipated.

  The knife was a Wusthof Classic Ikon. It was a very serviceable chef’s knife with a well-balanced nine inch blade made from high carbon stainless-steel. It sharpened up like nobody’s business and was super sturdy to boot. German knives tended to be very robust and were quite adept at butcher work. Montgomery used a nice set of Japanese Globals’ at the restaurant, but at home he primarily used Wusthof’s. There were a few Kershaw’s from an old set stowed in a kitchen drawer, but he only grabbed for one if the Wusthofs were dirty or in need of sharpening.

  In any case, this particular Wusthof was honed to razor-sharp perfection and made quick work of Heather’s delicate neck. It sliced through skin like soft, soft butter, severing capillaries and muscle and arteries and vocal cords and a whole host of nerves with ease.

  A popping, wheezing sound – drawn out, like a rush of air scraping through a damaged party favor – hissed and brought on a death rattle that shook the life from the poor girl’s petite bones. A few spastic convulsions tore through her cooling frame, wrenching Heather’s lifeless body free of Montgomery’s grip and toppling it to the floor with the Wusthof still wedged deep within the folds of her artfully ruined neck.

  A small grunt of panic stuck in Montgomery’s throat and sent him running around the couch to catch and right the profusely bleeding corpse. Unfortunately, on its way down, the body bumped the coffee table, in turn knocking over the small candle, extinguishing it and all illumination. Montgomery found himself fumbling through the dark until he smashed his shins on the coffee table. Dual blasts of pain shot through his legs. To make matters worse his feet struggled for balance. The wide arch of plastic he had laid down over the couch, and the second piece he had spread out beneath it, was now slick with blood and slippery as hell. Montgomery felt like a cartoon villain spinning his legs in midair before the eventual fall to his doom at the business end of some bottomless ravine.

  The spinning continued. Balance gave up the ghost. Montgomery lost it completely and fell. Lying there in the dark on the blood soiled plastic he swore to himself that this was the last one.

  No matter what Liz said, this was the last.

  He had lost his taste for murder and the negatives were beginning to outweigh the positives by a hefty margin.

  No matter what Liz said, this was the last.

  Slowly, deliberately, with a little assistance from the coffee table, he got to his feet. He turned in the direction of the front door, took a few steps forward and then squatted to feel for the edge of the plastic. Once at the border, he rolled his pant legs as high as he could, stood on one leg (still smarting from the run in with the table) removed his bloodied shoe, dropped it to the plastic and then stepped onto exposed carpet with a socked foot. Balancing on the un-shoed foot he repeated the process and then touched down the other socked foot to the carpet. After a few strides he made it to the front door where he felt for and clicked on the light switch (for real this time).

  When light flooded the room, Montgomery instinctively lowered his eyes. The rolled cuffs of his pants were soaked through with a deep crimson and the front of his slacks, up to about the pocket line, were speckled with heavy droplets. Raising his eyes slightly, just enough to make out the carpet between, but not the couch or the messy plastic beyond, he clenched his teeth when he saw a series of blood splotches tracked onto the carpet.

  Dammit. Shit. Fuck.

  He embraced the inevitable, raised his head, and took in the grisly scene.

  The plastic, as always, was a brilliant idea, same with the light trick, though if there was going to be another time (which there wasn’t) they could both stand a little refinement (as always).

  The carpet needed a bit of touch up, but nothing was drastically ruined or would have to be replaced. Aside from the splotches he tracked over, the blood seemed pretty contained. The scene wasn’t as bad as he had expected. There was loads of the red stuff, but Heather’s body had landed between the coffee table and the couch, face down in an ever growing pool of plasma, far from the edges of the plastic. Despite the apparent, grisly chaos you couldn’t see her face and it made everything seem less real somehow, less like murder and savagery and selfishness and more like a movie with really impressive special effects.

  Riding this wave of detachment, Montgomery rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He removed his blood sullied pants, wadded them up and then threw them onto the blood soaked plastic. He got some towels from the laundry room and then gently laid the couch on its back and the coffee table on its side. With the towels he thoroughly cleaned the legs of each piece of furniture and then carefully eased each corner of plastic up and over toward the center. When nothing but dry plastic was exposed he rolled the sheets, cocooning Heather’s corpse and the sanguine mess it made into a tight, clean bundle.

  Easy.

  Well, not too easy.

  He had to lug the plastic wrapped mess to the bath tub, extricate the body within and then clean and portion the remains for consumption. After that beleaguered process, he still had to clean any errant blood that accidentally spattered the front room carpeting and furniture – or rather he had to clean the err
ant blood first (to prevent stains from setting), then clean and portion, then dissolve, and then clean up and cook. Liz would be home just after three am. That gave him roughly five hours to get everything ready.

  Would it be enough time?

  It would take him about an hour to clean the rogue blood stains, unwrap the body, dispose of the plastic and personal effects and then clean the carcass. After that he had to cut and portion. He wanted to do an expert job and let nothing go to waste seeing on how this was to be their last harvest (ever, or so he hoped). The fruits of his labor had to sustain him and Liz for as long as possible. Given the precision required, the cutting and separating should take a good two, three hours. That only left him an hour or so to cook. He had to do a phenomenal job of it, a gourmet meal to put all others to shame. Liz had to love it. She had to love it so affectingly that when she found out that this was going to be the last time she would be too satiated to care. She had to love it so much that it wouldn’t matter to her that Heather was a female. Although, he could just keep quite and hide that pretty easily – meat was meat, there was no way to tell gender by taste, not the way he made dishes sing with flavor and spice – but he wanted to be completely honest with her. As rocky as they had been it was imperative for the well being of their relationship that he kept on the straight and narrow.

  Enough thought.

  Thought: The Great Procrastinator.

  It was always fucking him up in one way or another.

  Knives at the ready, the rhythm of his work carried Montgomery away.

  Ever since he could remember he wanted to be a chef.

  A gourmand.

  A master in the kitchen.

  His earliest memory: watching the great Wolfgang Puck joking and jibing his way through some cooking show.

  Though Wolfgang was a little too eccentric, a little too television, the diminutive chef had to be credited for piquing young Montgomery’s interest. Puck’s exuberance and flair planted long lasting seeds that flourished and took root within the fibers of his being. Of course the way he ran his kitchen was radically different from Puck’s loose television spots; Montgomery took his art dead serious and ran the kitchen at Maize accordingly. He could never see himself hawking gimmicky cookware on QVC.

  After Wolfgang, young Montgomery followed all of the TV chefs and then took it upon himself to branch out and study all of the masters who were less charismatic or too old or too ugly or too dead to appear on The Food Network or HGTV.

  Weekly trips to the library and diligent digging through biographies and history books and books about the fine art of cooking yielded amazing stories about the great Marie-Antoine Carême, father of haute cuisine, and his protégé Georges Auguste Escoffier who helped to popularize traditional French cooking methods throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traditions continued into the twentieth century where Max Bugnard, Simone Beck and Louisette Berthole, along with Julia Child, quirky persona and her penchant for casual fare aside, helped to establish an appreciation for the culinary arts stateside. Montgomery studied them religiously and researched the many influential chefs who came before and after. He collected facts and recipes the way his friends played fantasy football or traded baseball cards.

  By the time he was in junior high school he was cooking dinner for his family three times a week minimum, experimenting with techniques and tactics, recipes and cooking times, processes, the intricacies of craft. He would have cooked for the full seven days if he was allowed, but his mom enjoyed preparing meals as well.

  The high school he attended offered cooking classes all four years and young Montgomery took them, but by the time he reached the ninth grade he was far beyond anything his cooking teachers could offer. His exceptionality in the field drew attention and led to scholarships and invitations from the finest culinary schools in the country. The offers came from abroad as well, but though he kind of regretted it, he chose to stay in America.

  Plus, The College of Culinary Arts at Jonson and Wales University, an internationally acclaimed school with several campuses throughout the states, offered him a completely free ride. Everything was included: books, equipment, food and lodging at their Denver, Colorado site. All of the other institutions he was considering were giving anywhere from a twenty to eighty percent reduction in tuition. The choice was a no-brainer and financially, it made his decision to stay in America a justifiable one.

  Right out of college he relocated and apprenticed at Bastide, a five-starred restaurant heavy on French foundations located in Los Angeles, California. Montgomery paid his dues and worked for a hard three years under Executive Chef Ludocvic Lefebrve learning the philosophies of the kitchen. Lefebrve claimed he moved to America from Paris because he could get away with more experimentation, especially in the trendy LA restaurant. Montgomery took this to heart and when he was offered the Executive Chef position at Maize and he made the art of experimentation the very principal of his menu, an exotic mélange of French and South American flavors.

  The restaurant was still new and had yet to be starred, but this was definitely the year. Buzz had been building. Both the Mobil and Michelin guides were interested. Montgomery couldn’t see getting anything less than a five and a four star designation, each of the publication’s highest ratings respectively.

  Heather didn’t weigh more than one-hundred and ten pounds (tops), but dead weight made the body seem exponentially heavier.

  Once he lugged her in to the bathroom, he carefully unwrapped the plastic, mindful of the mess inside. The stupid blindfold, a fragile, silk thing he pilfered from Liz’s underwear drawer, had shifted on Heather’s face and a glint of her milky blue eyes peered at him accusatorily. Montgomery’s stomach did a little fearful somersault and he was quick to push it back in place.

  It didn’t help. But it did. Removing the eyes, covering them over even half heartedly, somehow dehumanized her and made what was to come a bit easier. Shaking off the brief glimpse of her creepy, dead stare, he leaned in, pulled the knife free of its meaty cradle, threw it into the sink and then began removing her clothes.

  The jacket was a beauty. Holding it up Montgomery pegged it to be about Liz’s size. There was an unfortunate blood stain spreading across the collar and front lapels, but if it came clean, Liz would be ecstatic. He draped it over the sink out of the way, hoping for the best, and then resumed stripping Heather of her garments. As he knelt over the body Montgomery’s back burned with strain. Thirty-four and the aches and pains were really beginning to set in. What happened to his twenties? Where did his tirelessness go?

  Each article of clothing removed revealed a perfect piece of flesh. Heather’s body was absolutely exquisite. From her perfect toes up, minus the blood coating and congealing around her, minus the bone deep gash in her neck, she was gorgeous. She had shoulder length, straight, fair hair with bright, pretty, blue eyes (mercifully hidden away for the time being) and the straightest, whitest teeth imaginable. Beneath the blood caked blotches, Montgomery could see that her skin was milky, flawless, and her ample bosom sent a slight thrill from his brain downward. It didn’t help that she was wearing a sexy underwear negligee thing. The heat made him feel like a pervert and he worked to quickly suppress it. After all she was dead. She had been dead since the moment he singled her out at the mall. And although his consumption habits could be deemed a bit suspect, his sexual predilections were as normal as could be.

  It was best to power through this part and get it over with just the same. Without looking too much he removed the negligee, her fancy bra and then her nothing panties. Ignoring the sexual tingle and alluring jiggle, he got his arms under her legs and upper back and then with a heaving grunt he lifted her from the blood run plastic and lowered her into the bathtub.

  The blindfold shifted again, the dead stare sizing him up, and again Montgomery was quick to readjust it.

  Before beginning on Heather he gathered all of her clothing and personal effects – a purse and a few pieces of jewelry a
nd sorted through it. He removed anything that wouldn’t burn and threw it in the sink with the nice jacket. Everything else he threw into the blood smeared plastic, rolled it up, and then pushed it off to a corner of the bathroom until he could take it out and burn it to ash in the large metal trash can out back.

  Next, he ran the water in the tub and while waiting for it to warm he dashed to the kitchen, retrieved some carpet cleaner from a cabinet and then sprinkled it all over the stains on the front room carpet.

  Back in the bathroom he switched the water flow from the bathtub faucet to the removable, massaging shower head, adjusted the stream to a steady spray and went to work. He got as comfortable as he could kneeling on the floor beside the tub. Holding the shower head with one hand and smoothing away debris and blood with the other he started from the head down. This made his blindfold precautions pointless. He knew he had to remove the thing eventually and even if he started with the feet there would come a time before he completed the job that it had to go, but he was planning on doing it at the last possible moment. Anything to avoid the eyes.

  At this point, in position and ready to go, it all seemed stupid and Montgomery didn’t have time to nitpick. Instead of rearranging and moving the whole operation to the feet, he stayed the course. In one quick movement he threw the blindfold over his shoulder, brought his free hand down and forced her eyelids to eclipse her unnerving, dead stare.

  The lids complied, but not before he got a good look at that which he didn’t want to see. Montgomery swallowed hard and tried to think away those bright, brilliant, inquisitive, blue eyes gone milky, cloudy, dull, pale and dead. Just a short while ago they were sparkling, dancing with questions and laughter and stories about her friends and family. Now they were listless, worm food, empty.

  Never again.

  This was it.

  The last one.

  No matter what Liz said, or threatened him with he simply couldn’t do it anymore.