Booty Call

I’ve always been different. Not like a My Chemical Romance/Emo trash kind of different, but a good different. When I was a little girl I got diagnosed with “Nervous Overstimulation Syndrome”, which basically means I feel everything that’s happening around me, but, like, times a thousand. My pain tolerance has always been a load of shit; If I prick my finger or graze my toe it feels like I’ve just been stabbed, and it made everyone think I was a massive drama queen for, like, years and years. But it's not just bad stuff.

Fucking feels great.

I can feel everything shuddering through every cell in my body. I can feel the spark inside every nerve when my skin touches someone else's. I can taste euphoria in every bead of sweat.

If you were blessed with these gifts, how could you not want to share them with as many people as you could? How could you not want to experience as many different beautiful ecstasies as you possibly could?

And that’s how I got my nickname.

“The Whore Of The County.”

If you grew up in Drabstone then you’re entire childhood would have been filled with

“OMG did you hear what Zoe Dadliani?”

“I can’t believe Zoe Dadliani let that guy…”

And

“Zoe Dadliani is such a SLUT!”

When I look back at everything that’s happened to me this past year, at everything that’s gone wrong, sometimes I wonder if it's all because of how I used to act; as if someone’s punishing me for sleeping around.

It all started last February, when I was seeing this guy called Darren. He was just a casual shag, but his girlfriend found out and went full psycho when she walked in on us. She started throwing stuff at me, and chased me out into the driveway, even though it was dark and fucking freezing.

“You really don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you, you slag?!” She was shrieking and sobbing, and going all red in the face.

“You just go around wrecking people's lives and-!”

I had started walking off by now, and it all just became a sort of angry, shouty mess. I’d heard this stuff a thousand times before, so it just fell on deaf ears, but it was when I was making my way back home that things started to get weird.

I’ve never been scared of the dark, so walking home wasn’t a problem. The lampposts on my road are proper shit, so you only get these awkward little patches of scratchy light to break up the blanket of darkness, but I’ve done this walk a thousand times, so I know where I’m going.

I’m making my way down the pavement, when I get all cold, like the temperatures just dropped a thousand fucking degrees. My skin goes numb, and breaks out in gooseprickles, and I’m wishing that I’d nabbed one of Darren’s hoodies before I headed off, when I feel something brush against the base of my neck.

Its this sharp prick, like someone’s jabbed me with a needle, biting into my skin and sending these sharp spikes of pain hissing through me.

And that’s when I heard the first whisper.

“He likes dancing in the dark.”

The voice was soft, and completely clear of emotion. It swept in on the wind, sighed in my ear, and then vanished as quickly as it had came.

I jumped right out of my fucking skin, and legged it the rest of the way home. Once my heart had stopped thudding in my ears I just kind’ve wrote it off as me hearing things, or some local kids pissing about, and pushed it from my mind. I woke up the next day, had a crack at some revision, and all was forgotten.

Until a few weeks later.

I was seeing this guy Henry, and all was going well, until he started getting overly-clingy and soppy on me. I decided to do the decent thing and break it off with him in person, but he really didn’t take it well, so I was stuck comforting him for what felt like forever. By the time he was in a stable place the sun had gone down, so I was stuck heading back from his in the dark.

I was waiting at the bus stop down the road for my Dad to come pick me up, when I started seeing shapes moving out of the corner of my eyes. They were these crooked shadows which came lurching through the darkness, but the second they came close to entering the moonlight they just kind’ve...fizzled out.

I was already pretty spooked when I felt that spike of pain in my neck again.

Then the voice. That cold, emotionless voice.

''“He dreams in black and red. How long before someone ends up dead?”''

I spent the next fuck knows how long curled up under the bus stop, and by the time my Dad came to pick me up I was in tears. He took me home, calmed me down, told me it was probably just some saddo fucking about in the night, and stayed in my room until I fell asleep.

I was pretty fucked up by this point, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. My grades slipped, I stopped going to parties, and I became jumpy as fuck.

By then end of the week I was a complete mess, and I needed to take my mind off of everything.

That’s when I met James.

He wasn’t the best looking, but he was sweet and kind, and I needed to get away from everything.

Our evening together wasn’t crazy animal sex so much as it was chilling and watching films, but he made me feel safe, and by the time I had to leave I felt calm enough to walk my usual route home.

A veil of darkness.

The sharp burning.

That cold voice.

''“He hides rot behind sweetness and caring. It would be a kindness to set them free.”''

And now, wherever I go, without fail; I get these sick fucking voices murmuring in my ear, just as soon as the sun goes down. It's driving me fucking crazy, and I just want it to stopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP

===

The Drabstone Police Department is asking for the public’s help in locating the person or persons responsible for the murder of local boys Darren Williams, Henry Ward, and James Davis.

Official spokespersons have been reluctant to confirm specific details regarding the crime scenes, but numerous inside sources have stated that the three victims were found heavily bruised and mutilated, with their eyes removed, throats slashed, and some kind of message scrawled nearby in an, as of yet, unidentified substance.

The messages are alleged to have read “STALKER.KILLER.RAPIST.”

One source claimed that the bruising on the bodies was likely to have been inflicted by an individual who was small in stature, with little mass. The source hypothesized that this was likely the work of a lithe male, although apparently a female killer has not been entirely ruled out.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the three shared some kind of romantic link, but their families declined to comment.