This is the 78th in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.
Vixen, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 17th February 2013
Word count: 702
The story:
“Well that was a blast of fresh air. The girl I was just with liked it really freaky. I’ve been with plenty of women that thought that liked it freaky, but compared with tonight’s girl, there as vanilla as the yoghurt.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love vanilla, but cherry and spices made a real difference,” Craig the young man in the tight fitting expensively tailored beige suit said to his friends.
Each and everyone of his friends felt the instinctive desire to call bullshit. It was true that he seemed to have uncanny success with women, but blatantly he was prone to exaggeration.
“Okay,” Michael in the white open collared shirt said finally, “How did you meet this freaky girl?”
“Well I was in Bradford,” he started.
“Shit, you went out on the pull in Bradford. Do you not watch the news?” Tony in the blue rugby top asked.
“No why?” Craig asked bemused.
“There’s a serial killer targeting young men in night clubs. She’s been dubbed the Stairway to Heaven killer,” Tony informed his young boastful friend with relish.
“Yeah I was reading about that in the Metro,” Michael said.
“Oh if it’s in the Metro it must be true,” Craig observed drily. “Anyway, I can gaurentee, one night with me and she wouldn’t want to stab anyone anymore.”
“She doesn’t stab them, she poisons them,” Tony said.
“Doesn’t matter, I’m that good,” Craig’s bravado was up.
“Go on, finish your degenerate tale,” Michael prompted.
“Well I’m in this club, and it’s dead quiet for a Friday night,” he said.
“Can’t think why,” Tony interjected.
“So I get chatting to this cute little brunette, she’s dressed real nice, like she was there for a ball not a club. She said to me, ‘You’re just the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.’ She was mature, maybe forty, or late thirties , but very beautiful. And I mean drop dead gorgeous, pinch me I must be dreaming. Ow,” Tony had taken the opportunity to pinch him. “Not now, I meant then.”
“Sorry, couldn’t resist,” Tony laughed, all the others joined in, except Craig.
“Cheer up, it was just a joke,” Michael said.
“It’s not that,” Craig said clutching his abdomen and chest, “I feel really unwell.”
A look of panic passed between his two friends. “Get an ambulance.”
That evening in the hospital the police came to see Craig, there were two police detectives, a tall powerful looking man, and a middle aged woman, who both looked upon the stricken young man with sympathy.
“We know you’ve been through an ordeal, and this is very tough, but it’s important we get as much information as we can,” the tall detective said.
Craig trhough waves of drugs and intense pain related the whole sorry story, how he met the woman, they chatted, she suggested they went back to hers, and where she hadn’t in fact had sex. She’d changed her mind, and they had drinks instead before he stumbled back to the train station drunk. He told them where she’d taken him, what she looked like as best he could remember.
The police were thankful for his statement, and apologetic that there was nothing they could do, but they would try and capture this wicked woman. They asked if there was anything else they could do for him.
“No,” he said sombrely.
“Give me a minute with him,” the female detective said, and the tall policeman walked away. She bent down next to his ear and whispered, “You’re just the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time, for a degenerate womaniser.”
Craig tried to get up in a panic, suddenly his heart pounding away in his chest suddenly got stuck intensely painfully.
“We need help in here,” the female detective shouted, hitting the emergency button on Craig’s bedside equipment.
The doctors and nurses got there too late, they tried in vain to save him, but he was gone.
“Shame, another young life lost,” the tall detective said to his partner.
“We’ll get her,” the female detective said.
“Maybe,” the detective said without much heart. They’d been so close so many times, but somehow the serial killer just slipped beyond their reach.
Aspiring 