The Joy of Killin’

Deputy Ricky Benoit stalks a pretty young thing home from bar but bites off more than he can chew

[CW: Cops, drugs and mentions of overdose, mentions of sex work, sexual language, attempted sexual assault, violence, blood]

Ricky Benoit swiped his tongue through the hoppy foam of his beer before taking a sip and grimacing as the piss-warm liquid sluiced down his throat. Fuck if he didn’t hate a warm beer. That’s why he came to Moreaux’s. The beer was always cold and the waitress’s asses always hung out of their tight denim shorts.

That, and there weren’t too many other bars to choose from in Penderville that weren’t smack dab between home and the sheriff’s station.

“Stopped serving the beers cold, Jack?” he asked, a false laugh catching in his throat like a thick wad of phlegm. The laugh was a warning. Everyone knew Ricky only really laughed at dirty jokes, and the roasts given during the county’s annual fundraiser — unless they were levied at him. Ricky never could take good-natured ribbing on the chin.

Moreaux’s used to be owned by Bill Moreaux, until his heart gave out one morning while he was mowing his front lawn and his wife found him face down in a pile of fresh cuttings. The mower kept going until it shredded through Miss Abileen’s violets and got trapped in her azalea bush. The old bat still complained about that to anyone who would listen.

Widow Moreaux — too heartbroken to keep the bar herself and no children to pass it along to — sold the bar to a young drifter who had slid into town under Ricky’s nose and bought up the property before anyone else could. To everyone’s relief — and Ricky’s suspicion — Moreaux’s reopened with the same name and same menu, even some of the same waitresses.

Jack brushed sandy blond hair out his face and grinned, unperturbed by Ricky’s warning laugh. “Sorry, Deputy. Fridge is on the fritz again. I’ve got someone coming to take a look tomorrow.”

Pissant.

Ricky grunted and rubbed the spot over his chest where his badge would lay over his tan relegation uniform button-up. The star that marked him as the law. Sometimes more when the mood struck him. His fingers grazed the sharp points of the star he had pinned to his undershirt. Ricky never liked being apart from his license to do what he thought necessary to protect and serve Penderville.

A sweet laugh mingled with the sound of pool balls smacking into each other and captured Ricky’s attention.

All he could see was her back as she leaned over the edge of the pool table, shorts riding up and showing off the perfectly round globe of her ass cheeks threatening to spill out. A plain white cotton shirt rested just above the hem of her denim shorts. Strawberry blond hair styled in that wannabe Farrah Fawcett style shook as she tilted her head back and laughed at what some joker in a plaid shirt said.

Probably a fake laugh to soothe that poor fucker’s ego.

He knew nearly every girl that worked the dirt roads in town but she was a new face. Fresh face. But he still knew her. Ricky knew girls like that well. Walked around with goods on display, practically begging these hillbillies around here to paw at them. But nothing ever came free. He wondered what her vice of choice was. Acid. Coke. Weed. Probably a mix of all three. Girls like her weren’t particular so long as they got high, and they’d do anything to get there.

He could get her there.

As if she heard his thoughts, she glanced over her shoulder and fixed baby blue eyes on him. Glossy lips curved into a smile and he swore she stuck her hips out as if to entice him into getting up from his comfortable seat at the bar and bend her over the pool table in front of everyone.

Blood raced through him but didn’t go to the one place it should. That pissed him off. He slammed back the rest of his beer and wiped the foam from his mouth. Jack didn’t need to be told to pour him another, bottle fizzing as Jack popped off the cap and poured it into Ricky’s glass.

She laughed again. Ricky’s heart thundered in his ears, turning them bright red. That bitch was making fun of him. Laughing at his expense. If they were alone, he’d show her he wasn’t someone to be laughed at. Some of the girls around here knew that, the ones still able to talk at least. They should tell her. Warn her. But Ricky wants to do it himself. Wants to hear that pretty lip-glossed mouth tell him she’s sorry, she won’t laugh at him ever again.

He had to get out of there. Get away from that blond-haired vixen that threatened him with her big blue eyes and plush lips. Ricky slammed a few bucks down on the bar — it was bullshit that he had to pay at all — as he drained his last glass and pushed himself off the stool.

“Have a good night, Deputy,” Jack called after him.

Ricky nearly flipped the bird at Jack as he stumbled out of the bar, gravel crunching under his steel-toed boots. Sticky summer air suffocated him. His shirt grew damp, clinging to the prominent points of his badge. Rivulets drip from his forehead and down his neck. Heat lightning danced between clouds. Thunder rumbled false promises of a rain that wouldn’t come.

The door of his faded yellow Camaro screeched open and Ricky tossed himself into the front seat. But he didn’t leave. Not yet. He rolled open the front windows — hoping for enough of a breeze to cool the sweat dripping down his face — and waited.

Minutes rolled into hours. Drunkards stumbled out of the bar, some leaving on foot because they lived in the trailer park a few minutes down the road. Others fumbled their keys several times before getting into their cars and pulling out of the parking lot, swerving and screeching the brakes. Ricky could call them in. Report the plate numbers and let the deputy on duty handle it.

But he didn’t give a shit about those bastards who would somehow make it home unscathed, parking their cars on their front lawn instead of in their driveway or ending up half in a ditch. A night in the tank wouldn’t stop them from doing it all again next week.

Ricky waited for her.

Any minute she would walk out of those doors, and he would be ready. Shouldn’t be too hard to catch her. He had everything she might want stashed in his glovebox. Evidence from lockup that no one gave a shit about. No one ever really cared about what sat in there, and no one would come looking into some small county’s business.

Ricky undid the button of his pants and shoved his hand down into his boxers, fondling his flaccid cock, squeezing it with his meaty hand as if it might spring to life. Which it never did. Not like this. He needed more. Something else.

He zipped himself back up.

The door swung open and she walked out, all swaying hips and bouncing hair. If she noticed him waiting — most of the cars had gone by now — she paid him no mind as she walked to the edge of the gravel lot and turned right onto Decateur. Ricky counted to five and turned on the car, the low rumble of the engine getting lost in a burst of thunder as if God himself spoke and approved of Ricky’s undertaking.

Gravel pinged in the wheel well until he turned onto the smooth asphalt. Only a few main roads had the privilege of being coated in the thick tar and painted with white and yellow lines. Ricky followed her down the main road for five minutes. Ten minutes. He kept his lights off as the Camaro crawled down the empty main street, traffic lights flashing yellow, and buildings dark and empty.

He waited until she turned down the small side street beside the Piggly Wiggly. A red light bounced in front of her face, leaving a thin trail of smoke as she walked. Sparse streetlights lit the dirt road and Ricky turned his lights on then.

She finally turned. For the briefest moment, the lights of his car reflected in her eyes but she held up her hand and they were back to being a bright, ethereal blue. Her lips curved into a seductive smile.

“It’s dangerous for a pretty thing like you to be out this late,” he said, pulling to a stop beside her.

She leaned her elbows on the open window, nipples straining against her shirt, and took a drag of her cigarette. “You think I’m pretty, Deputy?”

“Well, that can’t be a surprise to you…” he trailed off expectantly.

She switched her cigarette to her left hand and reached in with her right. “Joy.”

“Pretty name, Joy,” he said, barely concealing his top lip curling in disgust as she took a deep drag of the cigarette. “You need a ride somewhere?”

Joy leaned away and tilted her head back — exposing a pale throat — and blew a plume of smoke away from his car. At least she had some decency on her. Though not much.

“Are you offering, Deputy?”

He was briefly mesmerized by the way her teeth tugged at her bottom lip. “Like I said, it’s dangerous out here. Never know what you might run into.”

She twirled a lock of hair around her finger, eyes dragging down his torso to stare at his lap for a few seconds longer than necessary. She giggled. “Sure.”

Ricky’s cock finally twitched in anticipation.

“No smoking in the car,” he said, pointing to the cigarette.

Joy took one last drag before rubbing it out on the sole of her sandal and tossing it into the grass, her eyes catching his as if to challenge him. Lure him into showing his temper far too soon. Ricky gnashed his teeth in annoyance but said nothing.

“Where do you live?” he asked, gently easing the car forward as she settled into the passenger seat.

Joy stretched out her legs, pale thighs squeezing together and raised her arms over her head, the hem of her shirt riding up until she nearly flashed him. His finger’s tightened on the wheel. How long could he hold out?

“Over on Cedar. The park,” she answered, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

By the park, she meant the trailer park tucked off the main road and separated from thick woods by a flimsy chain link fence. Ricky had received more than his fair share of calls out there. Mostly domestic violence disputes, some drunk beating on his wife or girlfriend, and overdoses. Living an hour away from a hospital meant Ricky beat the paramedics to those calls by a mile — the county ambulance a shitty piece of machinery on wheels — and he could watch those poor fucks writhe on the ground as their battered bodies seized. If he was lucky, he could watch them die, choking on their own vomit.

“Yeah? You like it there?”

“Mhm.” She kicked off her sandals and wiggled her toes. “There’s always a party.”

Ricky smiled. He had her right where he wanted her. “You like to party, Joy?”

“I love to party.”

He leaned over and popped open the glove box. “What’s your poison, darlin’?”

Joy squealed and rummaged through the box like a kid at Christmas. “I knew I liked you, Deputy. The moment I saw you at the bar, I told myself “now that’s a man who knows how to have fun” and I was right.” She pinched a baggie of white powder between her fingers.

“A cocaine girl, huh?”

“Did you have me pegged for something else?”

He took his time looking her up and down, gaze gliding over her lithe legs and pausing at the sliver of denim that hid her pussy from view. “Cocaine is exactly what I expected.”

She wiggled the bag. “Care to join me?”

“Nah, not my thing, but you go ahead and enjoy yourself.”

Her lower lip poked out in a pout. “I thought you wanted to party with me, Deputy?”

“Oh, darlin’, you have no idea.”

“Show me.”

His grin grew wide. Feral. He was a wolf with a sweet little black sheep practically in his lap and he was going to devour her. Make her whimper and beg for mercy. His cock wept imagining wide tear-filled eyes, black mascara streaked down her pale cheeks, and the trembling of her bottom lip as he laid her against the hood of his Camaro. Maybe he’d use the gun this time. Point it between her pretty eyes when he thrust his cock between her plush lips.

Joy turned away from him, presumably so he wouldn’t see her shove as much cocaine up her nose as she could take, blissfully unaware of what she had walked into. There were only two ways out of his car. But he had a feeling Joy would be a good, pliant girl. She’d do whatever he told her to, and he’d take her home when he was done with a warning that if she thought of speaking up, he’d come back and finish what he had started. He pulled down a dirt path and parked, turning the car off.

“Where are we?” she asked, turning back to him, her pupils blown wide. “I thought we were going back to my — “

“Get out of the car, Joy.”

Her eyebrows knit together for a moment and she swallowed. Was she getting scared now? Good. Ricky liked it better when they were scared. The seconds ticked by as she waited for him to perhaps ease the moment with a laugh or a joke.

But it didn’t come.

Trembling fingers wrapped around the handle and she slowly opened the door. She moved cautiously. A doe carefully treading the woods in the hopes of escaping the hunter’s notice. She walked in front of the headlights, her skin glowing in the dim yellow lights. He waited. Wondered what she would do. Would she bolt? Try to run and get help? Wouldn’t do her any good. Ricky wasn’t a fucking moron. There were ways to stop her. They were deep in hunting season and nobody blinked an eye when he bought traps.

She didn’t run.

He watched — fingers so tight around the wheel his knuckles were white — as she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it to the side. Dusky pink areolas framed puffy nipples. He sucked in a breath as she cupped her small tits. Her pale pink tongue darted out, dragging across her bottom lip.

The shorts were the next to go. Joy pushed the denim down over her hips until they reached her knees. She kicked them off. No underwear. He could’ve guessed that. Dark blond curls hid her cunt from view.

She placed her hands down on the hood of the car and leaned over, maintaining eye contact with him, daring him to come out and fuck her over his car. So he hadn’t been wrong when she had done the same in the bar. Had she known he would follow her? Invite her into his car under the pretense of keeping her safe?

His cock softened.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” Ricky hissed.

He left the gun. He wanted — needed — the feel of her throat against his palm. The ghost of her wheezing breaths on his skin. The tendrils of her hair wrapped around his fingers as he yanked her head back. He grasped Joy by the elbow and shoved her over onto her back, slamming her against the hood.

She just smiled.

“Like it rough, Deputy?”

Ricky didn’t answer as he grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the Camaro. “Shut up,” he snarled, his nose inches away from hers as his fumbling fingers tried to undo the button on his pants.

“I can he — “

He squeezed her neck and she gasped but it was…wrong. Almost performative. As if she had practiced. Fake. No. He was imagining things.

His cock hung limp between his legs. Rage roiled through him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to be scared. Pleading. Not smirking at him with a knowing expression. As if she knew he couldn’t fuck her unless she was terrified. Unless she didn’t want it. He lifted her head up and slammed her back down on the hood.

Maybe if he rattled her brain, she’d act like she was supposed to.

Joy grunted. Blood, thick and dark, smeared across the yellow paint.

But she didn’t stop smiling.

“I thought you’d be better at this by now, Ricky,” she purred.

He froze, rabbit heart thudding against his sternum. It shouldn’t have scared him that she knew his name — everyone in town knew he was even if he hadn’t personally crossed their path — but she spoke as if she knew him but he had never met her before tonight. He would’ve remembered. Would have followed her down a dark street well before tonight if he had seen her at the bar with her ass nearly bouncing out of her shorts. Something cold touched his thigh and he jumped before realizing she was dragging her foot up the inside of his leg.

The skin under his palm was cold and clammy. He squeezed her throat but her breath didn’t hitch at all. In fact, he didn’t hear her breathe. Couldn’t see the rise and fall of her chest.

“What the fuck — “

He tried to pull away but her freezing fingers wrapped around his wrist and locked his hand around her throat.

“Come now, Ricky. Not getting scared of little ol’ me, are you?” She giggled. “Hit me again. Harder this time.”

“N-no, I’m going to take you home — “

“Home?” she hissed, fingers tightening around his wrist until he whimpered. “You want to take me back to the worms, Ricky? Back to the riverbank you left me on, half-dead and naked for some poor fucker to find.”

His eyes widened. “I don’t — “

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” she cooed.

He shook his head. There was no way she knew. Not unless…no, she was high and fucking with him. She didn’t know shit. And she definitely wasn’t the ghost of some dead slut coming back to enact justice. He was justice. The arm of the law.

That’s right.

He was the law.

Ricky cocked his fist back and slammed it into the hard bridge of her nose. Cartilage crunched under his knuckles. His ring caught the skin of her cheek and tore it open. Clotted blood rolled out of the open wound like black cottage cheese.

Acid and warm beer filled his mouth and he faltered, stumbling back and wretching at her feet. What the fuck was wrong with her?

Joy sighed, sounding more annoyed than anything. “I knew you did this a lot, Ricky, but I’m a little hurt you don’t remember me.”

He reached for his hip, forgetting he had left the gun in his car. Ice speared his heart, spreading to his ribs and sinking into his gut. Joy sat up, her face a mess of black blood. Her gums cracked open as she smiled, thick ichor oozing out of her mouth and rolling down her chin. His hits hadn’t pained her, but she grimaced as her eyeteeth grew long and sharp.

“Master says it will stop hurting eventually; that I’ll get used to it,” she whined, touching her teeth and hissing under breath. “But it’s taking forever.”

“M-master?”

Her eyes flashed and her gaze bored into him. “He found me, you know. Not long after you left me to die. He saved me. Gave me a gift.”

Ricky swallowed. The gun was in the center console. All he had to do was get around her. He didn’t give a fuck what she was, what gift her master had given her. A bullet would shut her up. Keep her sharp teeth away from him.

But he trembled. Scared for the first time in a long time.

“What gift?” he asked, slowly inching closer to the open driver’s side door.

Joy didn’t miss his movement but she didn’t move to stop him either. Amusement danced in her eyes. “Eternity. I will outlive you Ricky Benoit, and any bastards you could possibly make. Master tried to comfort me with that fact, but it’s just not good enough. Not anymore.”

He darted for the door but she was faster. Stronger. A palm smashed into his chest and the air flew out of his lungs. Wet leaves slicked the back of his shirt. He didn’t have time to think or scream. Joy was on him, claws in his hair. She wrenched his head to the side and pain — hot and sharp — exploded in his neck.

She had starved herself for days to prepare for this. She wanted to be hungry, angry, almost feral. She wanted Ricky Benoit’s blood in her mouth and his skin in her teeth, and she wanted it to hurt.

Greedy sucking noises echoed in the clearing. Ricky babbled incoherently beneath her. Shock. She had fed enough — though usually closely supervised — to know that humans either defaulted to arousal or shock depending on how she went about feeding. And Ricky couldn’t move even if she gave him the opportunity.

He deserved this.

She wasn’t his first. Maybe he would have remembered her better if she had been, but Ricky had been killing girls for a long time. Girls just like her. Trailer trash that everyone wrote off. Girls in so much pain they turned to drugs to detach from their bodies every time a hand slipped up their shirt or down their pants. Everyone took from her, from those like her, without a care of what she wanted.

And Ricky took everything.

Girls like her went missing all the time. Some never found. Some turning up in fields or rivers or on the side of the road where people drove by them as if they were roadkill — too inconvenient to stop for.

Nobody fucking cared.

Joy sat up, ripping away a chunk of Ricky’s skin with a wet squelch as she did, and he groaned. Glassy eyes stared up at her. Unfocused. His fingers and toes would be cold by now, his body trying so hard to protect his vital organs from shutting down. Blood oozed from the wound in his neck. Red stained the brown leaves scattered on the ground.

The taste of him was heavy in her mouth. Everyone had their own taste. Some sweet. Some sour. Ricky Benoit’s blood was rotten. Putrid. As if his own tendencies had spoiled his blood. Joy spat a mouthful onto his face. He could only shake underneath her.

Enough.

The voice — soft but authoritative — slid up her spine and Joy closed her eyes. Cold fingers brushed the back of her neck. A claw tucked hair behind her ear.

“Was this everything you hoped?”

It was and it wasn’t. She had hoped for a sense of satisfaction, of justice, watching Ricky choke underneath her, but she didn’t feel much of anything. Just a mellow sadness that had burrowed deep in her chest. A grief that she hadn’t looked at since she woke up, newly undead. Killing Ricky wouldn’t bring her back to life. Wouldn’t restore what she had lost — what little of it there was.

But he would never do this to anyone else. He would die alone and scared, and none of the girls around here would have to be afraid of him again. There would be others though. There were always others just like him. False judges, juries, and executioners.

Could she kill them all? Would she ever truly be able to?

“Are you mad at me?” she asked again, hating how small her voice shrank under the weight of potential disapproval.

Joy waited for the rebuke. The smack that would put her back in her place.

It never came.

Her master — her Nathaniel — cradled her face in his pale hands and he kissed her bloodied lips. Raven hair tickled her cheeks as he licked the foul blood from her mouth. Hands slid down to her waist. Sharp fingers drew beads of blood to the surface.

“No,” Nathaniel murmured, drawing back to kiss her temple. “I knew this might happen when we came here.”

Joy opened her eyes. His violet eyes captured hers. They were the first thing she had noticed about him when he found her. She thought he was Death. The pale specter coming to claim her soul and lead her into the Hell her daddy said awaited her. He had smiled at her, canines sharp, but she hadn’t been afraid. Not even as he brushed her hair — sticky with blood — away from her face and asked if she wanted to be his forever.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” she whispered.

“Would you have wanted me to?”

She looked down at Ricky, pale and unmoving. On the cusp of death but not quite there yet. No. She wanted this. Needed this. If only to stop him from hurting anyone else.

Nathaniel took her silence as his answer and reached for her hand.

“Let’s go home, Joy.”

Luna Fiore is a speculative fiction author from Eastern North Carolina with a MFA in Creative Writing from SNHU. She’s dreamed of other worlds since she was a child making potions out of mud, sticks, and roly-polys. When she isn’t writing her dark fantasy series, The Underhill Saga, she is playing in video game worlds, corralling her small zoo of three cats and two St. Bernards, and lamenting about how time always slips through her fingers.
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