"You sure Sam and his boys will be in the market for a second one?"
"You better fucking believe it. He told me himself that they were tired of all the fucked-up-looking junkies and whores I been getting them. Debbie's gonna really please them. And that other bitch? She may not be no fucking beauty queen like Debbie, but she's got a nice wholesome image, you know? They'll like that-that's what they asked for anyway."
Lisa shuddered at the conversation. She felt her limbs go numb. It's going to be tonigijt, she thought. Oh God, not tonight, please help me get through this-
"Fine," the blond guy said. Then the sound of the door opening rolled through the cabin and they stepped inside.
"I'm fucking starving," the blond man said as three pairs of booted feet stomped into the cabin. "All that arguing made me hungry. Animal, you hungry?"
A muffled, throaty" No."
"You?"
Tim: "Nah. I'm gonna go outside and take a walk around the grounds to make sure everything is cool. Why don't you go on ahead."
"Okay. I'll be right back."Ibe blond man stomped back outside. A moment later she heard a car door open and close and then the sound of the engine starting.
Tim: "You want to come with me and check things out?"
"No" At the sound of Animal's voice, Lisa felt her skin tremble. His voice sounded so normal, so unassuming. "I think I'll stay here",
"Well, don't fuck with them," Tim said, walking to the door. "You want to fuck with them, wait until Al gets back so he can film it."
"Okay."
Tim left the cabin, and she heard his footsteps on the porch for a minute, then click down the front steps and around to the side of the house. A second set of footsteps slowly approached the bedroom, and Lisa felt her skin crawl as they grew closer, a large shadow materializing in the doorway, and then Animal was standing in the threshold of the room.
They stared at each other for a minute. Lisa couldn't tear her eyes away from him; her mouth went suddenly dry. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Standing before her was a tall, slim, nice-looking man in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in a clean pair of faded blue jeans and a green polo shirt. There was no trace of bondage apparatus anywhere on his person. Without his bondage hood, Animal could have passed for a young executive at a large corporation, or maybe a lawyer at the firm she worked at.
His features were angular, his jaw strong, his cheekbones sharp. He had mesmerizing green eyes that danced and complemented his smile, which was now cracking his boyish features. His mouth was fine, framed by sensuous lips, clean, even, white teeth. His hair was black and wavy, cut short and stylish. He looked like an All American Boy.
They looked at each other and for a moment Lisa was too stunned to say anything. This is the man they call Animas This is the man that almost killed Debbie yesterday. This is the man that is going to kill me either today or tomorrow in a snuff film.
Her mind was reeling; she couldn't get over how normal he looked.
"Why?" The question came unbidden, her voice sounding strong to her for the first time in days.
Animal blinked; he seemed surprised by the question. He's probably expecting me to beg for my life right now, she thought.
"Why… what?" he asked, his lips curling upward slightly in a grin.
"Why do you do it?" She gestured at the room; the bloody tarp, the bed with the worn mattress, Debbie lying in a bloody stupor. "Why do you do this? Snuff movies… kill people…?"
"Why do you want to know?"
Lisa looked at him, meeting his gaze. "As long as you're going to kill me, I think I would like to know the reason why before you do it."
For a moment, Lisa didn't think Animal was going to answer her. He looked at her in silence. Then he glanced behind him into the living room-the sound of Tim's footsteps had receded-and then took a step into the room. For the first time since laying eyes on him, Animal looked human-he looked like the kind of guy that she would pal around with at the office. "You really Want to know?"
Lisa nodded, trying not to appear too desperate. "Yeah, I would."
Animal shrugged. "Guess it can't hurt." Then he stepped into the room and began to tell her how he acquired the taste for hurting and torturing other human beings.
"I used to work for a large, international consulting firm," Animal began. "It was through my employment there that I met a woman who I became involved with. She introduced me to the scene. Even then, to look at her you wouldn't have guessed she was into the painful arts. She looked like she could've been a cheerleader in high school. She was pretty and incredibly sexy. At work she had a bubbly personality-lively, free-spirited, fun to be with. But she was sharp. When it came to her work, she was a real professional.
"It started innocently enough. We became lovers. We had a good time, but I could sense that for her she was just going through the motions. At first I thought that perhaps she didn't want to get emotionally involved with me, that she only wanted me for a fuck toy or something. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I only wanted her for the sex. See…" He began pacing the floor, his brow furrowed in concentration as if he were trying to think of a way to express himself most clearly. "I was never much of a ladies' man. I'd always had an inferiority complex around women. I'd only lost my virginity two years before and I was pretty much racing to catch up, if you know what I mean."
Lisa nodded, accepting his confession but finding it hard to believe that a man as handsome as Animal would have lost his virginity well into his twenties. Physically, he was a hunk. But the more she watched him, the more she listened to his speech, the way he carried him self, the more she began to get the sense that he was something far different.
Anyway," he said, stopping his pacing to look at her. "It was a sexual thing. It always was. And the more we got into it, the more she started… demanding certain things!
"What kind of things?"
"It started with biting," he said. "We were having sex one night and she begged me to bite her while we were fucking. I was so into it that I did, and she loved it. At first I thought I had hurt her… my teeth had actually broken the skin and drawn blood, but she'd been ecstatic. She actually came. It was like that night was the happiest day of her life. And it was then that I learned the first lesson in the painful arts." He took a step forward, regarding her as a teacher would a student. "Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. Pain tolerance goes up during sexual arousal. The brain also produces endorphins during sex to compensate for pain. It gets you high. It's the same rush you get while eating chili peppers. It comes from that same center in the brain where pain and pleasure come from, and that's what makes it enjoyable for S&M players being whipped or spanked or whatever. It isn't pain to them. It's pleasure." He smiled.
Lisa felt a shudder run through her body, along with a slight stab of guilt. The mild bondage she and Brad had participated in-tying each other up, slipping into the role of the naughty girl and begging Brad to spank herwas nothing compared to this.
"That was the first step toward my initiation," Animal said, still smiling. "When I first saw her naked body, I was shocked. The skin along her back and her torso and breasts was like one big puckered scar. It was so bad she looked like a burn victim. I thought she had been in an accident. When I learned that they were self-inflicted or from others, I felt… a combination of revulsion and attraction. And the more we talked about it, the more she told me that she really enjoyed pain and being abused, the more I saw that she was serious. And seeing that she was serious, that she was willing to put herself through such scenes, turned me on."