Anyone know where I can get hold of The Switch?
The Switch
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Chapter One
Jo-Anne Flips Out
1
The girl in the bath was a screamer. She'd screamed earlier while they were in bed together, and he'd had to cover her mouth with his hands. Now she was screaming for a different reason entirely, but it didn't matter this time.
It didn't matter because her mouth was taped firmly closed and the screams were muffled in her throat. They were almost silenced by the time they whistled shrilly from her nostrils. And, of course, she was terrified, and cold water was falling on her from the shower head. Which meant that between the puppy-like squeals she was making she was shivering and gasping and choking as she fought for breath. This considerably lessened her capacity for making a noise loud enough to be heard in the rooms on either side of this one.
Which was a good thing.
Unless you happened to be sexy little Jo-Anne herself, he conceded, in which case it was about the worst thing possible. Because unless help came - which didn't look very likely, he was glad to know - terrible things were going to happen to her.
Keeping his head away from the shower spray, he leaned over her, smiling. She turned her face towards him and froze, slick and glistening and taut. There were goosebumps on her arms and legs.
'C'mon, Jo-Anne,' he said quietly, 'you can do better than that. Haven't you got a great big squeal for your uncle Don?'
Jo-Anne's eyes were dark and wide. She looked very frightened and vulnerable which gave her already pretty face a expression of pure beauty.
The man she knew as Don Reed - but probably now thought of as Mr Dangerously Unstable - smiled, knowing that she was almost certainly too terrified and tightly gagged to make much of a noise and also knowing that if it became necessary, he could reach over and pinch her dainty pink nostrils shut between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. That would quell the noise entirely.
Jo-Anne drew a deep shuddering breath and made a tiny, piping squeak which couldn't have been heard through the open door to the bedroom, let alone through the walls.
'What a shame, Jo-Anne,' he said, enjoying her beauty. 'But I'm a nice guy. Underneath all this fuss and bluster and threat, I'm a pussycat. And although it pleases me to see you frightened, I don't like to think you might be cold. So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make you a little more comfortable. I'll warm up the water a little.
Jo-Anne squeaked, obviously expecting to be scalded now that she'd been half frozen. 'What do you think I am, Jo-Anne?' he asked, amused and then added, 'No, you'd better not answer that. Wouldn't do to upset me, would it? Not with you tied up there and and unable to protect yourself. I'm not going to scald you, Jo-Anne, I'm going to keep you nice and warm. For later.'
He fiddled with the mixer taps until the water felt warm. The spray was a little more powerful now and Jo-Anne seemed to be having more of a struggle breathing, so presumably more water was finding its way into her nostrils. He doubted she'd drown, but he turned down the taps a little anyway.
Jo-Anne continued to make pathetic noises of fear, but they wouldn't be heard from outside the hotel room - not over the sound of the shower running - and he quite liked them anyway; didn't want them to stop. It was turning him on; making him grow, mentally rather than physically.
The man calling himself Don Reed was happy. He had what he wanted; a girl, a hotel room and time. Lots of time.
Time to play.
2
Like everything, it sometimes seemed, it had started with Black Rock.
He had discovered the empty house while he and Sophie were renting a flat in Bude. They hadn't used the flat very often. For the better part of the three years they'd called the flat home, they'd been out on the road in Europe, travelling, like two late crusaders seeking the Holy Grail. Except that they hadn't roughed it - or fought with anyone much - but had driven fine cars and stayed in the best hotels.
But it had been a kind of quest for both of them. Sophie had wanted to see everything in the hope that having seen, she might attain some understanding of life. He had travelled because his mind was a desert and he needed it to be verdant again.
Neither of them had found the secret they hoped for amongst the antiquities in Europe, and from time to time they'd flown home, either exhausted or despairing or both.
It was during one of these brief visits home, that he had discovered Black Rock - an empty house on the rocky coast a stone's throw from the ruins of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel. It looked as if it had been purpose built to house ghosts.
It also looked, on his first visit as though it might well hold some very good answers to some of the questions he'd been secretly harbouring. These questions were secret because they were not the type of questions a man would normally discuss with his wife - not if he wanted to keep her, that was. And he did want to keep Sophie. For many reasons - one of which was that (thanks to the timely death of her father out in Oman) she was currently holding the purse-strings.
Sophie's money had paid for Black Rock and they'd moved in.
And that was when it had all started.
There weren't any ghosts, of course, but what there was more than made up for it.
The house had an energy all of its own. It was a good place to be. His mind started teeming with ideas and he began to work. Holed up in the small rock-walled cellar that looked, judging from the manacle rings on the walls, as if it had once been a torture chamber, he'd written and made demo recordings of an album called Modern Soul. Six months later in The Power Station, New York he produced the album on which a dozen big-name singers starred. The guest list on Modern Soul read like a who's who of the rock industry. The album hit the top spot in the States and stayed there for four months. Hardly anyone cared who had produced it or written the songs - and those who did and requested interviews were turned down - so while accruing a burgeoning bank balance, he managed to keep a very low public profile.
Which was exactly the way he liked it.
But Modern Soul, as successful as it was, wasn't the real start. Money, as anyone who already has access to plenty of it would be only too pleased to tell you, isn't everything. And he already had access to Sophie's money.
The real start came when he went back down into the basement, or cellar, or chamber-of-horrors as Sophie called it, with a pencil, an A4 notepad and an idea for a screenplay called Black Rock.
To this day he didn't really know what it was about the act of writing that had loosened up his mind and unearthed the answers to some of his secret questions, but that was what had happened. Writing Black Rock - which was eventually screened by BBC2 as their Christmas Eve ghost story a year later - caused fundamental changes in him.
It was during the writing of Black Rock that he found his own Holy Grail. Because it was then that he developed The Switch Theory.
He had guarded this theory closely, resisting the powerful temptation to use it in his screenplay and keeping tight-lipped about it when Sophie began to wonder why he'd taken to walking around with a smug look fixed to his face. Maybe, if the theory worked in practise, he'd introduce it to Sophie, but it was going to have to stay secret for the moment.
But things hadn't been quite as simple as just keeping his mouth shut. Having formed The Switch Theory, or stumbled across it, or whatever had happened, he began to change. The mere act of discovering the theory had thrown some of his mental switches from the off to the on position, as though the theory itself was self-starting. Once in your mind, the theory, like the instructions of a computer programme, began to operate, seeking out fresh neural pathways and turning them on. And once those primary switches had been thrown, there was no turning back.
And no desire to turn back.
A month later, he had killed his first dog. It wasn't planned. He simply saw the dog - a medium-sized, placid and friendly-looking mongrel - and had known what the next step was. If he'd planned it, he would have chosen a much smaller dog. He had suffered fairly bad bites on his forearms and legs - bad enough to require three stitches in his right calf and a tetanus booster in his left buttock. He hadn't particularly liked dogs prior to this, now he held a strong dislike of them - and a certain respect which bordered on fear.
In the keeping fit industry they had an expression which went: No Pain, No Gain and he was happy to discover that on this particular occasion, the adage was true. The gain was well worth the pain.
Afterwards - shortly after his stitches had been removed - he discovered that he had a new talent. He had always been pretty good at what Desmond Morris had used to call Manwatching - reading people's body language and identifying how they were feeling from it - but the mental switches that had been tripped during the episode with the dog had kicked this ability into an entirely new dimension.
He could now detect and correctly identify the internal emotional weather between people, either singly or in couples or groups, as if he was actually tapped into their minds. All he had to do was look at either a single person, or a group and focus his attention on them. He knew if people were happy or sad or frightened or ill just by being in the same room and concentrating his attention on them.
And sometimes, if he focused on one particular person and that person's emotions were strong, there would be a transference: he would be able to experience their emotions as if they were his. And the received emotions were clearer, more vivid than your own. It was as if the transference cleared away all the mental mud from them and made them pure.
Experiencing other people's emotions was a powerful and ecstatic experience, whether those emotions were good or bad. He seemed to absorb them, to soak them up like blotting paper and for a few ecstatic moments they would run free in his body, a charge of warm energy which would trace the paths of his nerves, seek his spinal cord and rise, tingling their way toward his brain.
Most fizzled out somewhere around the area of his second cervical vertebra, but occasionally they reached right up into his brain and tickled one of those dormant pathways; made him aware of the gates that had to be opened, the switches that had to be flipped. He could make this happen every time he and Sophie had sex, by stealing and experiencing her orgasm which would combine with his own and blast through his brain like molten lead. Fresh pleasure pathways had been opened up in his brain using this method, but it wasn't enough. The big switches - the ones he needed to access and throw - were still out of reach.
But it wasn't always possible to achieve the transference of emotion. There were two conditions that had to be met before it could happen. The first and most important was that it was necessary for him to be in an emotionally heightened state himself, and the second was the proximity of the host.
Secret though this new talent might have stayed, the profound changes it caused in him were impossible to hide. And Sophie didn't care for them very much. At first, she blamed his new-found success for what she called his irritating sly and furtive mode, then she blamed the house.
She went on blaming the house until they moved out and took a small flat back in Bude, then she started blaming the stagnancy of being in England in wintertime and they began to travel again.
They were in St. Moritz when their estate agent rang and said he had sold the house and the new owner would be coming in to sign the contract this morning. An hour later, the house changed hands.
He and Sophie were sitting in the hotel bar and he actually felt it go, felt his ownership of the house dissolving. But he was happy; he'd had what he'd wanted - what he'd needed - from the house and this stayed with him, growing.
Eighteen months later - two days ago, in fact - in a scene that closely resembled the final twenty seconds of his screenplay, someone torched Black Rock. He and Sophie had been at home in Bude then, getting ready to move to the new house he'd found them.
He was certain he felt the house begin to burn. He'd been packing bone china into a tea chest and he'd suddenly begun to sweat. A few seconds later, a ripple of heat ran over his body. He knew from childhood experiments that if you poured lighter fluid over your finger and set fire to it, the flames wouldn't hurt you for a few moments, then, when the vapour began to lessen, the flames would come looking for your skin. He felt like this now - as if he might suddenly burst into flame.
The feeling of heat became intense and he began to smell singeing hair. It felt as if something huge had begun to rise inside him, pushing its way up like a huge pyramid.
He stood up straight, took deep breaths and willed the pyramid back down to wherever it had come from. His vision was blurring and his heart was beating too fast. A few flakes of ash fell from his hands. He stared at them, as if through an orange veil, but he was not on fire and his hands weren't damaged. The fifth deep breath pushed the pyramid back down and the heat left him. The smell of burning remained in his nose. Something, somewhere was shrieking, but he didn't know if it was his imagination or something external.
He sat down, weak and shaking - it had been close. Too close.
'What's wrong?' Sophie asked, but he couldn't tell her. All he could say was that he felt a little ill and had to go out for a little while for some fresh air.
He took the Mercedes and drove to Black Rock. He didn't know who owned it now - it had changed hands several times, apparently - but he knew who was responsible. There was a girl called Sarah-Jane something-or-other who lived just down the hall. She had burnt the house.
Sarah-Jane something-or-other was not present at the scene. When he arrived, the only people there were the fire brigade who had turned up only to find the steep track down to the isolated house was too narrow to admit a fire engine. Down at the water's edge, perched upon an outcrop of rock, what was left of the house blazed.
He stared at it for a few poignant moments. Even in flames the house was a beautiful sight. The house might be gone, but it didn't really matter. The valuable knowledge it had contained was now tucked safely away inside his head.
After a while he turned and headed back to his car. If Sophie had been there she would have undoubtedly pointed out that his secretive smirk had stolen over his face.
3
Jo-Anne's eyes were rolling and shower water sparkled on the silver coloured cloth adhesive tape that covered her full, soft lips. It was called Gaffa tape and they'd told him in the Leeds music shop, where he'd bought several rolls two months ago, that it was the best sticky tape money could buy. All the sound and lighting rig people from the big name bands used Gaffa tape, they'd said. At the time, he had nodded dumbly, resisting the urge to tell them he was using this stuff when they were still learning to walk. Now, standing over the girl in the hotel bathroom and showing her his nickel plated teaspoon, he nodded in agreement. The tape was the best money could buy. It had been getting wet for over ten minutes now and it was still foiling the girl's desperate attempts to force her jaw open.
'Hi Jo-Anne,' he said, turning the teaspoon over between finger and thumb. His voice held a distinct tremor that reflected the power of his heartbeat. He felt very hot and knew that he wouldn't be able to stand the fever-pitch excitement he was feeling for much longer.
Jo-Anne's eyes focused on the teaspoon for the briefest moment, then began to roll crazily again. She was obviously too far gone to understand the significance of the spoon.
'Soon,' he said, soothingly. 'All your questions will be answered soon. And then it'll be all over.' He turned off the shower tap, laid the teaspoon on Jo-Anne's chest between her breasts and padded back to the hotel bedroom.
Lying back on the bed, he held his breath and concentrated on slowing his heartbeat. His excitement and anticipation at what was to come were so great that his heart was kicking at his ribs like a rugby forward, his ears were roaring and his vision was heavy and dark with the blood. He found the pulse in his right wrist and timed it against the second hand on his big Pulsar wristwatch. It was whacking away at 212 over the first minute. Controlling his breathing and making it deep and even like Good King Wenceslas's snow slowed the rate to 157 in the next minute. The following sixty seconds brought it down to a relatively calm 105 and as the pressure left his brain he began to glow. He thought of Grand National racehorses steaming after a hard-fought thirty six furlongs and knew exactly how they felt.
And this was only the beginning.
4
The Switch Theory, when it came to him, had come in its entirety. It had seemed so whole, rounded and seamless that he'd been sure it was just his mind regurgitating something he'd read and forgotten. He'd done some research and hadn't been able to find anything already published, so as far as he knew, he was travelling over ground that was pretty well untrodden. And ground that might very well be strewn with land-mines. And although he had the theory, he didn't have an instruction book containing the do's and don'ts, so he was proceeding with care.
At the moment, it looked as if his first full test of The Switch Theory was going to be successful. The fierce tingle that was sweeping up and down his skin and raising gooseflesh, seemed to have its centre as a grating ache deep in his groin at the lower end of his spine, which was exactly what he'd hoped for. It was making him shiver in spite of the warmth of the hotel room, but the tingle was, as yet, only playing over the surface of his skin. Later, perhaps, it would submerge itself into the interior of his body and climb his spine. The ultimate goal was for it to reach his brain, and throw one of the big switches in there but he didn't really expect that to happen this time.
And anyway there were other rewards for the time being - switches he could flip himself with a combination of his own mind and deeds. They were only minor relays, small pleasure paths, but they would suffice for now. Most people never even got that far in their whole lifetimes. Hardly anyone knew of their existence, leave alone tinkered with them and found out what they were for.
He breathed deeply and listened. Jo-Anne's plaintive whimperings were inaudible through the closed bathroom door - if she was still making them, that was. She might have calmed down a little by now. Perhaps she was lying shivering in the white enamel bath and praying that he'd got dressed and checked out of the hotel and wasn't going to come back and do what she dreaded he was going to do.
5
He turned his attention to the hotel's late night noises while he thought how easy little Jo-Anne had been. The bass beat from the Magic-Late-Nite-Disco downstairs could be heard faintly and felt slightly more clearly through the materials of the hotel itself. In another ten minutes at one 'o clock, the disco would be closing for the night. It would be closing for ever as far as sexy little Jo-Anne with her knitted figure-hugging backless micro mini dress and black silk 'G' string and high heels was concerned.
There were footsteps approaching from down the corridor, heavy and irregular on the deep pile carpets. A drunken hotel inmate retiring from the disco to his room, no doubt. Whoever it was rapped on each door as he passed it, and said something in a slurred voice. After a minute, a little further down the corridor, a door opened and then slammed shut. There were more faint sounds of the drunk's clumsy movements as he knocked over things which were moveable and bounced off those which weren't. The drunk's room seemed quite close - next door but one, probably. There was total silence for a few seconds, then the unmistakable sound of spirited vomiting.
Several pairs of high heels click-clacked up the marble staircase at the other end of the corridor accompanied by high-pitched tittering, then a man's voice, yelling something crude.
Coming to this particular hotel had turned out to be very lucky indeed for him. When he'd set out this morning, having told Sophie he was going to London for a business meeting, he'd had no idea where he was going, only that he was going somewhere far away in order to kill someone. He didn't know if it was Providence that had brought him here, or just blind chance - or if it was an effect of choosing to put the Switch Theory into practise. It was too early in the game to tell. He preferred to think that there were parts of his brain - as yet inaccessible to him - in which certain switches had already been thrown. When he thought about it, it seemed as if he'd developed a kind of homing device.
But what had caused the stroke of luck wasn't terribly important yet. What was important was the luck itself.
Because while he was checking into the hotel, the receptionist had enquired if he was here with the seminar. 'Not exactly with,' he'd replied spotting the notice board directing the employees of Spirit Software to the conference hall, 'more because of.' On the spot - and without thinking about it at all - he'd concocted a story that sounded plausible to his own ears as well as those of the receptionist. He was a prospective employee, presently an IBM hardware designer, who'd been invited here by the software company because they wanted to suck his brains about the new generation of Pcs. He'd signed in as Don Reed of 225 Essex Road Camden, had become suitably embarrassed when it became obvious he'd left his credit cards at home and offered to pay in cash - up front if necessary.
The receptionist - who evidently quite liked the look of him - didn't think that would be necessary at all. He was welcome to pay cash when he left, Mister Reed, and if there was anything else she could do for him, she'd be glad to.
He told her he was fine at the moment, thank you, and went to his room where he sat and wondered.
At dinner, he discovered that the weekend seminar in this Sheffield hotel wasn't just for the employees of Spirit Software. They'd also brought along favoured clients and various people who retailed their products. There were people here from Blackburn, Leeds, and London, none of who seemed to know one another, which was handy. He altered his story slightly, now becoming a freelance journalist called Don Reed who was here to write a piece on Spirit's meteoric rise.
After dinner, he followed all the fed-watered-and-happy folk along to the disco and sat and watched them getting drunk and dancing while he kept a clear head, waited for his subject to appear and thanked whoever was up there looking after him for leading him to a hotel where a seminar was taking place.
The Spirit weekend was a good thing because weekend seminars were seminars only to the accountants and tax people. To everyone else they were a free break, during which the company gave them comfortable rooms to stay in, fed them, and most importantly, gave them plenty of free time to party.
Which meant there would be lots of drunken people coming and going, lots of exchanging places in bedrooms throughout the night and fair amount of banging, crashing and groaning noises as the alcohol-fuelled sexual athleticism took place. No one would think twice about any noise that might be heard in room 213. And it was doubtful that anyone would recall the freelance journalist in the morning.
And he doubted that come tomorrow morning, anyone would remember seeing Don Reed slip away from the disco with the bubbly eighteen-year-old blonde he'd picked up. Jo-Anne wasn't even with the seminar, but one of a sprinkling of locals who were at the disco. And as far as Don Reed was aware, no one had noticed them slip away to his luxury double room.
He'd known he wanted to kill Jo-Anne the moment he saw her strutting her sexy stuff on the dance floor. There was something in the way her slender, supple body moved and in the swell of her breasts and buttocks against the thin material of her dress that was inviting and enticing.
The display was overtly sexual, and he was sexually attracted to her, but this wasn't the reason he wanted to kill her. It was something to do with the level of energy she seemed to possess, not just her sexual energy - which radiated from her like the heat from a house burning down - but also her physical and, for want of a better word, her psychic energy.
He didn't yet truly understand how the switches in his brain worked, but he didn't for a moment think he was simply going to drain that energy off for himself, like a kind of psychic vampire, and in doing so, improve himself. It was more complex than that. He thought he was going to work the magic on himself by causing her pain. There was undoubtedly a sexual element involved - there was in practically everything - but it didn't link in the same way: he wasn't merely going to be hurting her to give himself pleasure (although it would give him pleasure, he was sure) but to force his own mind out of its shell and into a place it had never before visited. A point where new neural networks would be switched on.
Or maybe you're just a misogynist, he'd thought, watching the girl dancing.
Because there was an expression on her cute little face: a kind of grim determined look that made him want to hurt her.
She'd drawn his attention earlier on, but she'd been with a man then. A boy really; one of those kids with the pop star haircuts and the huge lumberjack shirts that hung below the bottom of their leather bomber jackets. He had the baggy trousers and boat-sized trainers too. All that was missing was the backwards baseball cap. They were just another teenage couple out on the town on a Friday night.
He'd noticed them, but only in passing - and mainly because of the girl's tiny dress. The thought of killing her hadn't even occurred to him. At that point his criteria for a victim had been an unattached female who was a little riper - maybe someone in their mid-to-late thirties like himself.
And he was still looking for a victim when the row broke out.
He was sitting at a table sipping Perrier and being totally ignored by two smooching couples from London. Jo-Anne and her man (Timmy his name was - he heard her scream it later) were in a huddle to his left about ten feet away. They were arguing. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he caught the atmosphere they were radiating and understood the body language.
Although he was truly excited tonight having decided to kill a human for the first time, he wasn't focusing his attention on Jo-Anne and Timmy and hadn't expected an emotional transfer. So it came as a shocking surprise to him when a blast of seething anger smacked into him. His heart was suddenly pounding, adrenalin poured into him, his jaw set tight, its muscles bulging, his fists clenched and his shoulders tensed. It took a few seconds for him to recover and compose himself.
The boiling, blood-red anger coming from the boy and girl scalded its way through in through his nervous system, found his spine and began to rise. It was the strongest transfer yet. The anger carried many undertones. There was a piquant kind of sorrow coming from the girl, a quiet but vicious sexual frustration from them both and a fairly powerful tinge of jealousy which came only from the boy.
With this steamy cocktail of feelings knocking at the door of his neural pathways, it was a little difficult to think. He forced himself to relax - which worked, in spite of it sounding like a contradiction in terms - and began to concentrate.
Judging from what they were feeling, it seemed that Jo-Anne had, in some way, (probably imagined if he remembered his own teens correctly) been unfaithful to Timmy.
He sat back, sipped his Perrier water, let the loud music batter his eardrums and enjoyed the emotional extravaganza in the way most people would watch a display of fireworks - amused and amazed and constantly awaiting the next, perhaps more spectacular, skyburst.
The unpleasantness between Jo-Anne and Timmy lasted for over an hour. He went to the bar twice and bought more drinks - alcoholic ones this time - while they argued.
A short, bellowed conversation with one of the smooching Spirit couples didn't distract him enough for the transference of emotions to cease and inside his head, switches - small lower-ranked ones - began to trip.
During this time, the idea of killing someone ceased to become an idea which would be very nice indeed should the circumstances present themselves, and started to become an imperative. Now, he knew, he was going to kill someone. Even if he had to break into their room to do it.
Twenty minutes later he began to think it wasn't going to be necessary to break down any doors because he'd spotted and targeted a tipsy brunette who didn't seem to belong to anyone but was trying very hard to rouse some male interest. The brunette was slim and aged about twenty eight. She was on the floor, dancing like a dervish and flashing black stocking top, pale thigh and high-cut black French knickers which showed a portion of firm, suspender-strapped buttock each time she spun by.
He watched her dance, trying to divert his emotional receiver away from the arguing couple and towards the brunette to find out how she felt, but this seemed to be beyond him. He was locked into them and there was nothing he could do about it. He studied the brunette closely, wishing he could mentally override the link with Jo-Anne and Timmy and connect with her instead.
He was imagining using the teaspoon on her, when a ragged black flash of emotion hit him in the stomach like a swinging punchbag. He gasped as the strike of pure burning hatred rippled through him. As it died away, somewhere in the clicking base of his brain, he turned towards the young couple, who were both moving as if they were about to take a swing at one another. Timmy's fists were clenched and Jo-Anne was clutching a pint glass of something that was probably lager.
'TIMMY, YOU'RE AN UTTER BASTARD!' Jo-Anne suddenly shouted and the fist that was wrapped around the lager glass flashed out. The action was accomplished with such speed that for a moment he thought the glass had gone into Timmy's face and what he could see pouring down on to the boy's shoulders was blood.
What had actually happened was that Jo-Anne had emptied the glass of lager over Timmy's head.
A rush of emotions from both sides followed. There was a wave of instant regret from Jo-Anne, and anger from Timmy who would undoubtedly have struck the girl if they hadn't been in a crowded place. Jo-Anne's regret was brief and was followed by resentment and an old and tired kind of guilt which was mixed with apprehension and excitement.
It became obvious that she wished Timmy would hit her and hit her now, and also that this was a well worn scenario, often practised and in some perverse way, enjoyed.
What there was of Timmy's hair was plastered to his head and dripping. His expression was dark and threatening. Lager glistened on his angry face and dripped from his pointed chin. His shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched. His anger was now fluctuating with waves of utter frustration.
Violence seemed to hang in the air around him. Timmy moved towards Jo-Anne, his right fist turned upward and tendons showing in his wrist. For an instant it seemed as though he would punch her in the guts. Then the moment passed and pushed by her, turned and strode out of the disco.
That was when Jo-Anne had made her way to the dance floor.
In less than ten seconds after she started to dance, Don Reed had forgotten that the brunette with the stocking-tops had ever existed. He was unable to take his eyes off Jo-Anne, who had suddenly been transformed from a pretty teenager into a kind of erotic enchantress whose hips moved to the music in a distinctly sexual way. Whose buttocks and breasts pressed against the thin material of her tiny dress with a kind of urgency, as though they couldn't stand to be covered for a moment longer. Whose finely wrought muscles worked tantalisingly beneath the silky smooth skin of her long, bare legs.
She wore a determined expression of concentration on her face and seemed completely unconscious of anything that was happening around her.
Don Reed was so transfixed that it took a further thirty seconds for him to realise that the emotional transfer had ceased. This simply increased her mystery, and in turn, his desire to possess her completely.
The girl looked as if she wanted sex. She looked as if she wanted to be punished, but she was also giving off a distinct aura warning that she wanted to be left alone and that anyone who ignored this would suffer the consequences.
But the way her body moved under her thin dress was far too enticing for him to tear his eyes away. A series of images lit in his mind: those long smooth legs wrapped tightly around his back while she bucked and writhed under him; her naked and bound body, tense and glistening under the water from the shower; the look in her eyes as he took her life.
A little later, when he estimated the peak of her anger had passed, he'd introduced himself and seen interest in her eyes. He bought her a few drinks, made her laugh, told her lies about his career as a journalist, and when the DJ began to play the slow, smoochy records, danced with her.
She realised he wanted her and thrust her hips against him to let him know she wanted him too. She tickled his neck with her false red fingernails and whispered that she thought he had the most gorgeous eyes. He whispered back, telling her that she was quite the most attractive woman he'd met in a very long while, and not just physically. She told him she was a photographic model and he told her he'd like to take some snaps of her one day. She asked if his Polaroid was in his room and he replied that he couldn't remember if he'd packed it, but that she was welcome to come back with him and help him look for it.
'And if we find it, will you want to take photographs of me naked?' she murmured, her lips brushing his ear.
'Probably,' he breathed.
'And afterwards, will you want to make love to me?'
'What do you think?' he whispered.
'I think,' she said, reaching down and squeezing his erection through the front of his trousers, 'that we're both going to be pretty damned tired tomorrow morning.'
6
Her naked body was lovely; perfect almost. There were bruises on her flat stomach where Timmy had at some time undoubtedly hit her and high on the inside of each thigh, he'd left dark finger marks.
She moaned when he entered her, then screamed when she came and he'd clamped his hand over her mouth. At some point during the passion, two of her false fingernails fell off. The real nails beneath were bitten to the quick. He retrieved the fallen claws and placed them on the bedside table where they wouldn't be forgotten.
She moaned when he entered her, then screamed when she came and he'd clamped his hand over her mouth. At some point during the passion, two of her false fingernails fell off. The real nails beneath were bitten to the quick. He retrieved the fallen claws and placed them on the bedside table where they wouldn't be forgotten.
'Can I tie you up?' he'd asked mischievously, rolling back to her welcoming body.
'Pervert!' she chided, but her face gave away her excitement and her eyes shone.
She turned over without complaint and let him bind her wrists together in the curved small of her back with the silver Gaffa tape. When he bound her ankles she asked if he shouldn't be tying her legs apart rather than together.
He turned her over, shook his head and smiled through the thundering of the blood in his brain. His head felt as though it might explode.
'But what are you going to do?' she asked, and there was the tiniest hint of concern in her big baby blues. For the first time she seemed to be realising that something was going badly wrong with her life.
'Play a game of monsters,' he said, breathing deeply and trying to slow his pulse. 'And improve my mind.'
He realised that his face must have borne a peculiar expression, because Jo-Anne's coquettish expression had faded completely and she started to struggle to release her hands.
'Let me go,' she said quietly when it became apparent to her that her hands weren't going to come free.
He closed his eyes and massaged them gently. He was trembling slightly and his groin was starting to ache.
'Please,' Jo-Anne pleaded. She sounded pathetic. He wished he could feel her emotions now, but since his connection had been broken, he hadn't been able to re-establish it - not even when they were having sex.
'I haven't started yet,' he said gently. He reached over and stroked a soft breast.
'I'll do anything you want. I promise. I'll eat you. Anything. If you untie me.'
'You're scared Jo-Anne, aren't you?' he asked quietly. 'Why?'
She ignored him. 'Just let me go and I'll f*ck your brains out. You know how good I am, don't you? I can make you hard again. I'll show you. Just untie me. Please.'
'Don't you want to play monsters with me?' he asked. He picked up one of her false fingernails and drew it across her stomach, watching as the muscle beneath her smooth skin tensed and drew away from it.
'Yes, but I want to be untied first.' There was a pause while she arranged her face in what she presumably thought was a pouting little-girl-lost expression but which looked more like a mask of unbridled terror. 'I'm frightened,' she added.
He wanted to hurt her. The need was tearing at his insides. He smiled his best caring smile at her.
'You have to be frightened to play monsters,' he said. 'And if I untie you, you won't be frightened. Which means we can't play monsters if you're untied,' he informed her. 'You have to be defenceless. Those are the rules of the game.'
Jo-Anne looked up at him, batting her eyelashes. 'My hands are going blue,' she said. 'I can feel it.'
He shook his head. 'You can't feel your hands going blue. It's impossible. What you can feel is your hands getting cold. That's probably because I've tied you up a bit too tight. Not to worry though, I'll undo them before gangrene sets in.'
'Gangrene?' she hissed, 'What do you mean, gangrene?'
'A joke,' he said. 'That's all. Your hands are only getting cold because you're lying on them. Don't panic.'
'I don't want to play monsters,' she said miserably.
'The game's started already,' he said. 'You're frightened and I'm scaring you, so we've got off on the right track. And you can't quit a game of monsters until you reach the end.'
'Why not?' she moaned.
'Because I'm the monster and I say so. Now, what you have to do for the next step in the game, is tell me what it is you're frightened of. You weren't frightened until I tied your ankles together, and then you were. Why?'
'Because...'
'Because what, exactly? Because I should have tied you with your legs spread?'
She nodded. After a short time during which she looked as if she was piecing the words together in the most diplomatic way possible, she said, 'Because I don't think you want to f*ck me again and I'm frightened of what else you might do.'
'Hurt you?' he asked innocently. 'I thought you liked to be hurt. I understood you got all turned on when Timmy put those bruises on you.'
Jo-Anne's face hardened. She looked almost ugly. 'Okay, buster, cut the shit and let me go or I'll scream rape!' she hissed and for a moment he felt her anger flare in his own chest.
His blood pressure increased and he gasped, sure that his head would explode.
'That's better Jo-Anne,' he told her when he opened his eyes again. 'Now we can really play.'
'Untie me, please!'
'I'm a monster!' He clawed his hands like an old witch and waggled his fingers at her.
'I'll scream!'
'I'll kill you!' he said in a sing-song voice.
Jo-Anne took a deep breath for her scream. Her ribs stood out. He hit her, bringing his fist down in the hollow between her ribs like an angry man banging the boss's desk. The air left Jo-Anne's lungs in a single wet cough and her diaphragm spasmed making her gasp and wheeze for the next breath.
'Bastard! You bastard!' she sobbed.
'Shh!' he said smiling. He got the roll of Gaffa tape and tore off a strip about six inches long.
Jo-Anne didn't want it stuck over her mouth, and she thrashed about on the big double bed, turning her head away from his hands each time he tried to apply it.
Eventually, he straddled her, buried his fingers in her bubbly blonde hair and yanked her head back as far as it would go, then tried to stick the tape over her full lips. She opened her mouth to prevent him, so he forced her jaw closed with one hand and put the tape on with the other. She tried to open her mouth again, but the adhesive was strong and yanked her skin - painfully he thought, because she only tried once.
He stuck on two more layers of the silver tape, overlapping them to give a greater area of adhesion, then he stood back and watched her.
There was terror in her blue eyes now and she was having trouble taking enough breath through her nostrils.
'See if you can escape,' he said. 'If you get free, I'll let you go. Five minutes.'
He set the countdown timer on his watch, turned it on and said, 'Go!'
She began to sweat after two minutes of struggling and writhing. He found the movements of her slick, smooth body entrancing. After three minutes, he wished she'd give up, because there seemed to be more blood in his head than there was in the rest of him and he was sure he was going to die. During the last two minutes he received two ten second bursts of her extreme panic which flooded through him like iced water and made him gasp at their purity and power.
When the alarm bleeped, the girl stopped struggling and looked at him hopefully. He leaned over her and brushed back the wisps of blonde hair that had stuck to her damp forehead. Then he picked her up and carried her to the bathroom, placed her in the bath and turned on the shower.
Then he went and got the nickel-plated teaspoon and showed it to her. That was when she started to scream again.
That was how easy it had all been.
7
Now he was out here, lying on the bed waiting for his heartbeat to steady and relishing the tingling glow on the surface of his skin while he wondered if one of the big switches in his brain would flip tonight.
By the time he took his pulse again, his heart rate had slowed to 98. This wasn't its optimum speed - in a relaxed state it would hammer out 70 beats per minute - but it was slow enough to start work again. The girl was there, the spoon was there and a game of monsters was waiting.
Jo-Anne started mewling and squeaking again when she saw him enter the bathroom, and as he leaned over her something in her eyes died.
Hope probably.
Jo-Anne had finally faced up to the truth - which was that she would never go to the Magic-Late-Nite-Disco again and strut her stuff on the dance floor. Neither would she collect any fresh bruises on her thighs from Timmy or ever pour his beer over him again. She knew now that those things had all finished for her the moment she thrust her hips against this man's on the dance floor. All she had to look forward to now was terror, pain and then death.
The teaspoon that had scared her so was no longer between her breasts where he'd left it, and for a moment he thought she'd managed to free her arms and was holding it behind her, waiting for him to come near enough to strike at. Then he saw a diluted trickle of blood dribbling down the plug hole. Jo-Anne had spirit; even though she must have been incredibly uncomfortable, tired and frightened she'd been trying to wriggle her way out of her bonds. He knew now what had happened. She'd struggled and the spoon had fallen off her and become trapped beneath her back, edge upwards. Her weight on it had driven it into her skin.
He reached under her waist, lifted her slightly and felt the bottom of the bath for the spoon which wasn't there. His fingers came away bloody and he checked her back, realising it was still stuck to her. The spoon was in her back, around the area of her right kidney. It wasn't so much stuck to her, as stuck in her, cutting an oval ring where its lip dug in.
The reason Jo-Anne had screamed when she saw the teaspoon was the same reason it was now clinging to her back. As soon as she'd laid eyes on it, she had recognised it for what it was - an implement of torture.
Because he had carefully honed the rim of the nickel-plated spoon until its edge was razor sharp.
He took the spoon handle and pulled it away from Jo-Anne's back. She screamed a muted yelp of pain. The spoon didn't come away as easily as he'd expected and when he saw it, he realised why. The spoon was filled with a perfect oval of sexy little Jo-Anne's raw flesh. He took it between thumb and forefinger, peeled it from the spoon and examined it. There was perfect white skin on one side and red, ripped flesh on the other. He tasted it.
Jo-Anne squealed.
The skin was cold and salty and tasted faintly of bath salts and scouring powder.
'I'm a monster,' he gasped, and sucked the skin into his mouth.
8
When he'd eaten the oval of skin, he had to leave the bathroom again to calm down. He thought he could feel some of Jo-Anne inside him now - not just the sliver of her flesh, but some of her essence. He wasn't sure if this sensation was real or imagined and at that moment he was ill equipped to think about it.
He sat down on the bed and did the deep breathing exercise again while he watched the pounding of his chest subside. The gooseflesh and the grating ache in his groin hadn't changed noticeably, but he was now shivering hard.
It had to be done slowly, he knew that. He had to fight off his own emotional bloodlust and the almost irresistible urge to kill her immediately and proceed with caution for three reasons. The first was that there must be no trace of Jo-Anne left in the bathroom or bedroom when he'd finished with her, so he had to be practical about how he did it. The second was that he wanted, needed, to extract the maximum amount of agony from her before letting her go. And the third was that he was unsure of what the net effect on himself might be. If he rushed his transformation, he might well end up mentally deranged, and in his research he'd read tales of people reaching for The Switch bursting into spontaneous fire and being consumed. It sounded crazy, of course, but he already felt like there was a furnace raging at the base of his spine, and if the emotional transfer from Jo-Anne took him full blast when she reached her zenith, his own tight nerves might not be able to cope with the added load. The stuff about spontaneous combustion was probably only analogy anyway - it was more likely that if things went askew you just felt like you were catching fire. But he wasn't sure what use an overloaded central nervous system would be to him afterwards and he'd already had glimpses of how much raw power could be generated when the switches got tickled, so it paid to be careful.
The shivering stopped and he began to glow again so he went back to the bathroom and the weeping Jo-Anne. She tried to speak to him between her whimpers, and he knew if he could understand the strangled noises she made she would be pleading with him to let her go.
He'd never scalped anyone before and he was surprised at how easy it was. He had to kneel on Jo-Anne's chest and shoulders, of course, to hold her still while he traced around the edges of her hairline with the sharp spoon, and there seemed to be an incredible quantity of blood released, but the scalp came off her head quite easily. He took the hair at the back of her neck in both hands and pulled forwards over the crown of her head. The scalp peeled away with a ripping noise not unlike the sound the Gaffa tape made when you pulled it off the roll. As he pulled, Jo-Anne's body tensed and locked, lifting him slightly. He'd driven the air from her lungs by kneeling on her so she was unable to scream, even if she wanted to. But her eyes rolled and fluttered and her face was an agonised, blood streaked mask.
For an instant the transfer took place. Jo-Anne's limitless pain rolled up through his body like a great, grey, foaming breaker, cruising from sea to shore. His blood pressure increased and he felt his whole body expand. His head was hot and heavy, but Jo-Anne's pain didn't make it up as far as his brain. He could feel his synapses stretching, reaching down for the power. The switches all ached. Little ones pulsed, medium sized ones he hadn't known existed made themselves known to him. And somewhere down there, deep inside, the BIG switches flexed. Something inside his head - an artery maybe - felt like it might snap. His hands were surely smouldering.
Then Jo-Anne fainted and the transfer ceased.
He collapsed onto her and, gasping and shuddering, he pressed his hot hands on his eyes which seemed to be bulging fit to burst.
It took a while to calm down.
When he could think again, he realised he was pressing Jo-Anne's scalp and hair to his face. It was wet and soggy. The bath and the surrounding tiles looked like a slaughter house. Blood had splashed up the the tiled walls, down the outside of the bath and on to the floor. Both he and Jo-Anne were smeared heavily with her blood. She lay under him still, unconscious and breathing in painful gasps. He got off her and turned on the shower full blast.
The jet was cold and soothed his system. He leaned over and deposited the girl's hair in the nearby sink, washed the blood off himself, then took down the shower head and hosed Jo-Anne, who moaned and shifted her position.
The instant she woke up, she started screaming and struggling. Her raw head banged from side to side, smearing the white porcelain red and even through the Gaffa tape her wailing became louder, more frantic. Blood welled up from what was left of her ruined scalp and ran down her face in rivulets. Her rolling eyes were mad with panic now and her bound legs kicked at him.
He dodged the blows, his body beginning to buzz again. The spoon lay on the rim of the bath. Suddenly it was in his hand and he was slashing at her legs with it in a fury. Great rents opened in her shins and thighs showing dark muscle. Still she kicked.
Another transfer whacked into him and shuddered through him, rising higher this time, almost up to his chest. His hammering heart skipped a beat, then another, then it went into overdrive, speeding up until it was almost fibrillating. The emotion wasn't pure fear this time. It was blended with disgust, loathing and hatred.
'Monster,' he breathed. 'You monster!'
He collapsed onto her, pulling himself up her struggling body until he was sitting on her stomach. 'Slow, monster, slow!' he said, calming slightly and stabbing behind him at the legs which kept coming up and slapping his back. The nickel-plated teaspoon found a thigh and dug in deep. Jo-Anne moaned and stopped kicking. A jet of hot blood hit him in the back and he realised he'd severed the femoral artery.
'Up to my chest, you monster!' he told her, willing her emotions higher still. He could hear the blood jetting from her leg, feel its warmth on his naked back. The switches were screaming to be flipped. 'More!' he cried. 'Give me more!'
The transfer ceased. Suddenly and unexpectedly he was empty. His heart squeezed his chest like a clenched fist and Jo-Anne's life was pulsing into his back. There was no time. He'd lost control and now she was dying.
In a last ditch attempt to increase her agony he took her right eye out with the spoon; gouged it out whole in one stroke. Jo-Anne's nose bubbled and the bubble turned red. Her muscles locked and lifted him again. 'Transfer!' he raged, holding the eye before her and crushing it in his hand. 'Monster!'
He felt it start. Different this time. This time the Real McCoy, the switch thrower. The dull ache at the base of his spine turned to a tingle and moved up to his lumbar region where it glowed like coals.
Switches were flipping like crazy. Dimly he realised he was being cheated; the switches were in Jo-Anne's brain, not his. They were Big switches and he was experiencing them being thrown through some kind of rapport with her. He could feel them flip in her, but the effects were hers alone.
Jo-Anne's good eye glazed over and he was suddenly very glad his empathy with her hadn't triggered off his own responses because Jo-Anne's Big switches were death switches.
Jo-Anne had flipped out.