English Language Horror Short Story
"First Date"
I'm currently sitting in a restaurant with a woman named Alice McDermott. She's blond, slightly overweight, brown eyes, about 5"1'. Sort of attractive. She's been rattling on for about an hour about one of her work colleagues who's having an affair with her boss. I'm not listening at all, just thinking about what her head would look like on my mantel, how long it would take to get her back to my apartment on West Avenue and decapitate her with an axe. Eventually dinner arrives. Nothing too exciting, just wagyu steak for me and almas caviar for her. Dinner is a long affair. I finish eating pretty quickly but Alice takes about an hour and a half to get three quarters of the way through her meal. The waiter brings over more drinks, a San Pellegrino water for me and a gin and tonic for her. Time flies by in a blur from this point, and suddenly we're back at my place and I'm fixing us some drinks. I put a David Bowie CD, 'Scary Monsters', which is a personal favourite of mine, on for music, to create the illusion that this is going somewhere. Alice is getting quite drunk.
"What's that?" she giggles, pointing at a very, very expensive Pablo Picasso original.
"It's an original Picasso, you dumb bitch." I mutter that last part under my breath so she can't hear me.
"Oh", she sighs as she waves a hand in front of her face to check if she's hallucinating, not impressed in the slightest at the fact I have a painting worth hundreds of thousands hung on my wall. She probably is hallucinating in all fairness, since I spiked her Château d'Yquem white wine with LSD. I hand her another glass of the expensive liquid, and quickly excuse myself to the bathroom. I lock the door, and splash my face with some cold water. I try and relax, the adrenaline is pumping through me, since I'm about to brutally murder a woman in my living room. I remove the axe from behind the marble bath, where it was perfectly hidden, and check my reflection in the gleaming steel. I look pretty good. Hair is jet black, short and slicked back. Teeth are pearly white, and my eyes are like two crystal pools of blue. I'm wearing a faded pair of jeans and an open collar shirt, as I decided earlier I'd go casual for this date. I put the, surprisingly heavy, axe by the door, and step back to the sink, where I quickly prepare and then do a line of cocaine. I splash more water on my face, turn around, pick up the axe and unlock the door. I slowly walk to the living room, my boots hitting the floor with dull thuds. I gently place the axe by the living room door, made entirely out of oak, and enter. Alice is lying on the floor and laughing like a maniac.
"The wine has gone straight to my head", she says in between maniacal bouts of laughter. I don't reply, merely make my way over to the CD player and switch it off.
"Hey, Owen, why did you switch off the music? I was enjoying it!", shouts Alice from across the room, still unable to control her inane giggling. I have no idea who Owen is, since that isn't my name. The drugs must really be messing with her head. I walk across the room, step out and grab the axe, and the weight of it still surprises me. I walk over to Alice, who is still on the white panelled floor, and show her the instrument of death. She doesn't really pick up on the fact she's about to have her life ended, and this annoys me. I raise the axe above my head and bring it down swiftly but with immense strength on her arm, completely severing it from her body. Blood is spurting everywhere, and a little piece of bone lies just beneath where her elbow should be. Alice looks up at me, wide eyed, and tries to scream but she can't. She's in such a state of shock she literally cannot make a sound. I use this opportunity to sadistically goad her, telling her she's a stupid little tart for splattering my nice, shiny white walls with blood. There's streaks of it all along the right side, and I sigh, knowing that means a trip to a DIY store tomorrow morning for some paint. It's my own fault of course, I didn't anticipate doing this when I was in the office this morning and as such I was not prepared. Alice is writhing around on the floor and clutching the stump where her left arm should be. I raise the axe again and bring it down hard on her right arm. This time, she does scream. It's so loud and piercing I actually have to take a step back and adjust. I slap her for this, calling her a pathetic whore, and I decide to finish her off. I prop her up against the wall, take a few steps back and run at her, bringing the axe down on her skull with an almighty whack. Crimson red bursts from her head, and I hit her again, the axe's blade now slick with blood and brains. She's making gurgling noises, which makes me feel uncomfortable, so I keep bashing her relentlessly with the instrument of suffering, until she's finally dead. The walls, the leather sofa, the arm chairs, everything in the room is coated red. There's patches of white along the walls where blood didn't hit, but they're few and far between. I get up, panting, and make my way across the room. Alice knocked a picture of my wife off my coffee table, somehow, and the frame is smashed. I pick it up, rid it of the sharp blades of glass with my hand, which causes little cuts to open on my palm. I'm drenched in gore anyway so it doesn't matter. I stare at the picture for a long time, thinking back to the night I came home and found her gutted, and I start to cry, the tears leaving stripes on my face of faint red, where they've partially washed away drying blood. I set the picture back down on the table and proceed to clear up. Not a bad date, all in all, I think to myself as I pile Alice's mutilated body parts into a black bag.