Chapter 29: The Lipstick Killer

Chapter 29

The Lipstick Killer

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The car accident that will kill Tom Atari 

is still days away.

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Her name was Muriel Tesla, and tonight she would become the first victim of the Lipstick Killer.

Tonight- the night before Thanksgiving- was perfect: cool, calm, with a great surging fog, poisonous, intoxicating, falling slow from the hills like foam in a beer- overflow in slow motion. The city was alive with reunion, laughter, the sounds of kids out of school. In homes loving mothers stuffing turkeys for tomorrow’s feast, their cautious daughters watching, learning the requirements.

Muriel- neither mother or daughter- just a shop girl at Lavette’s department store on the corner of Century Boulevard, just voluptuous, round calves and thighs, lips so swollen with love that she had to bite them to maintain. She was blessed with dark hair, the eyes of a kitten that would blink and make a man a boy and back again the other way around. Ms. Tesla was used to the smiles.

Her days were spent in the camera department, and men would buy just to watch her say thank you. With her lips aligned and her dark hair parted she was angel cake, and her portrait was the first picture taken with every new camera once she showed her admirers how to load their weapons. Keith, her boyfriend, away at university, leaving her lonely, but Muriel never weakened. This weekend would be her chance, their chance to be together for the first time in forever.

She was off work for the evening, home in her fourth floor apartment, entering to the spotlight of her lamp, stretching her legs, letting the ache out for an evening alone. Tomorrow was the meal with the family but until then: her pocketbook tossed on the wooden chair, reading the mail that was bills.

On the street her murderer emerged from the bushes. The man was dressed in black, smoking with one hand, in his other his lucky charm: the paw from a white rabbit.

The man stood on the corner, using binoculars, a graduation present, watching the girl in the window. He could see her close, but she kept bursting out of frame, her breasts inviting him, crossing his wires. He tried to sort this out... but he was incapable.

Muriel, above, about her rounds, concerto on the hi-fi, unaware that for the man below this was a ballet, enticement divine: open season. Brushing her hair in the mirror and then, into the kitchen for a small glass of milk. What's good with milk is chocolate cookies, and so Muriel pulled one from the jar, secure in the knowledge that small bites don’t count.

And down below the man smiled, unholy and foul, the snarl, and he was into the building through the front door, his heart pumping new juices through his veins.

Muriel stepped lively, violin in her head, her legs warm, spinning in her bedroom with her new scarf wrapped around her neck and in front of the mirror... what to pair it with?

The building's door man was out, having a stroke, so it was easy for the man in black to slide on by, to press the elevator button and to cock his head to steal a headline from a discarded evening paper.

Muriel, lining up shoes, stacking folded sweaters, hair clips, miscellaneous monuments to her own natural beauty, which she would forever deny. Biting her lip... maybe another chocolate cookie?

The new elevators... they move so fast.

Back in the kitchen and a whole cookie now, but a glass of water this time, to balance.

The elevator arrived on four, smiling wide. The man, winking back, “Thank you.”

Muriel’s eyes as she swallowed, counting calendar blocks on the refrigerator magnet... one day... two day...

Chisel in the doorjam and-

Three day...four day... until the day that she and Keith could once again.

Hammer to the chisel, a splintering of natural wood. The cowardly door conceded, and the man was inside. The girl turned but there was no time.

The man in black put the chisel and hammer to Muriel Tesla’s head and began to sculpt. Gentle, loving caresses against her muted protests, carving through her sweet dreams and loneliness, through the bones in her neck and her love of horses. In only moments her head was in his hands, free of the body responsible, and the man in black did believe that she was smiling up at him, forever in love and allegiance. He sat on the sofa, stroking her raven hair, and across the room her toes wiggled for the last time.

He giggled, taking her lipstick to write “gobble gobble” on the bathroom mirror, hearing the rush in his head, twisting the tube and watching the red rise, applying a thick layer to his lips and puckering, kissing the glass cold. Then his member in his hand, standing among the blood and parts, smiling wide, dripping salty sweat, straining to catch his breath before soiling the floor, treating himself to a deep drink of toilet water, leaving the way he came in and sure of only one thing: he couldn't wait to do this again.

Somebody call Tom Atari.