Murderous Date(Dill McLain) Everett slowly opened his eyes and looked around. He was naked and lay on a flood of wonderfully soft pillows in a huge four-poster bed that was richly decorated all around with burgundy velvet ruffles combined with silk flounces. The back wall was lined with heavy burgundy taffeta embroidered with exotic birds in gold thread. He moved his toes, smiled sighing deeply and stretching his arms far out over his head, touching the exclusive fabric on the back wall of the large bed.

He emitted voluptuous sounds, almost a happy grunting and dug his shoulders and elbows deep into the soft cushions.

‘Oh, what an absolutely wonderful night I have just spent, what a highlight,’ he muttered to himself, completely self-satisfied with himself and the world. It was the wildest night ever. Full of passion and lust, and yearning drive up to the last movements of their bodies.

‘Uh man, what a lucky man you are to have found this, finally. You truly deserve every aspect of it. This is consummate happiness.’

He lay there blissfully and mused: What a fool he was not to have registered already much earlier, years ago with this dating agency. What a complete fool to have waited and wasted all those precious days, weeks and months with the old fashioned date approaches in dance halls and bars. They were all lengthy and cumbersome and brought most of the time nothing or maybe a single night with a future housewife or an average talented partner with no great interest or experience of how to pass a vibrating night.

He was against these online dates because he did not believe they would lead to a positive outcome. How could a machine find out about the passion of a person just based on some passages of text that are fed to the computer ? Furthermore, most of those persons do not write the truth about themselves at all. They glorified themselves beyond recognition and wrote things that never matched their personality but their dreams and wishes only. However, after several of his colleagues and friends met new partners in the shortest time through online dating, Everett finally thought ‘why not try it ?’

In the past three weeks he had regularly exchanged messages with Maribel whom he had selected from a first round of possible matching females according to the program of the dating agency. Maribel wrote several conservative messages before she became all of a sudden very definite and strong in outlining what they would do in all of these upcoming romantic nights. Everett started to look forward with feverish expectancy. He almost neglected his performance at work because of totally focusing on the exchange of messages with Maribel and on anticipating ardently these auspicious nights she put into his view.

Already in front of the screen staring at her lustful messages he used to sigh and generate growling sounds like a rutting stag and he realized that he regularly moved his legs and feet with excitement and several times he was about to slip off the chair.

After twice in business meetings he missed the point, got distracted thinking about Maribel and their common nights, he was unable to summarize the outcome of the talk and stuttered terribly. In such a way, that his colleagues all looked at him amused and shocked at the same time.

Everett then sent Maribel an urgent message with the wish to meet as soon as possible and she suggested immediately this wonderful manor house set in a large park surrounded by woods. The elegant and generous manor was in earlier decades and centuries inhabited by blue-blooded families, as Maribel explained to him and which additionally hauled him up into top form.

‘Oh man, it was so wonderful. How could I live before without this,’ he whispered into the pillows and moved excitedly the muscles of his backside.

He let his mind wander and wondered about the large space under the huge four-poster bed. One could store many large suitcases or sports equipment or even a canoe. One could hide people, or a lover if the husband returned unexpectedly early. ‘Ha, what a great idea !’

Everett turned around and moved forward on his belly to the bedside. He leaned over the edge of the bed and stretched out his right arm to find support on the floor. With his left hand he lifted the draped ruffles to look under the bed.

He let out a terrible scream, lost his balance and fell to the floor. Under the four-poster bed was a dead man. He was naked except for his tie and in his chest stuck a knife. His eyes were wide open and staring at Everett and the body was lying in a pool of blood that had seeped deep into the expensive carpet.

Everett forgot to breathe and sat there naked on the floor, totally shocked and shivering. In desperation he shouted: ‘Maribel, come out of the bathroom, immediately, there is a dead body under your bed ! Maribel … ‘

She appeared slowly and challengingly striding towards him, dressed in a very tight and provocative leather outfit consisting of a black bra, black garter belt, a blood red slip and black fishnet stockings. She wore blood red leather gloves that reached up the elbow. Her breasts were pushed high and any instant seemed to want to jump out of the bra. She wore a black half mask covering her eyes and her hair was styled right and left on her head in two aggressive snails. From her leather slip peered out, well visible, an Italian dagger. On her feet she wore blood-red high heel pumps, the deadliest high heels he had ever seen.

She walked ahead and stopped about one meter in front of him, stood there, legs apart, and said with the most devilish voice he ever heard:

‘Of course there is a dead body under our love nest, it carries the date of the day before yesterday !’

Everett gasped and felt scared to death. He tried to crawl backwards on his elbows. But Maribel strode along and finally stood directly over him, braced both hands on her hips and moving both murderous heels up and down. Slowly, she pulled the dagger from her red leather slip with her right hand, spitting in his face and then whispered with a terrible and hoarse voice:

‘And the same thing will now happen to you. You are nothing else but an ordinary pathetic voyeur. Dating is a dangerous game ! My favourite game !’

After these words she intended to throw herself at Everett, with the aim to plunge the dagger in his chest and murder him. But Everett moved his leg in an intuitive defence action and she fell over the edge of the bed and the dagger plunged into the pillows. Everett took advantage of this short moment and got on his legs. He grabbed the Louis XIV chair in front of the dressing table and held it as a shield in front of his naked body.

She collected herself, pulled the dagger from the cushion, erupting a wild cascade of tiny white down feathers around her body, and got back on her feet. The mask had slipped upwards and became stuck on her two hair snails, so that Everett could see her furiously glimmering eyes. Those were the eyes of a passionate murderess.

Everett decided in a fragment of a second to move toward the door keeping the Louis XIV chair as his protection shield. He was scared to death and kept both eyes on her while slowly edging along. Maribel climbed onto the four-poster bed and stood up with the dagger in her hand. Just when he passed the foot of the bed and made a large step towards the door, she jumped from the bed down on him and the chair. The dagger struck his shoulder. He howled in pain and lost his balance, the chair fell to the ground and he leaned against the large mirror on the wall.

Maribel was caught in the Louis XIV chair for her sharp heels broke during the jump through the seat and the exclusive chair crashed when she landed.

Everett gathered all of his strength and tried to move the rest of the chair to press her body down to the floor. His shoulder pained terribly and blood flowed incessantly.

Maribel wriggled and moved like a wild big animal trying to release herself and she continually spat out deadly curses. In his desperate situation, Everett reached out and seized the heavy ice bucket from their vibrating champagne hour of last night and hit her with it at full force on the head. And then he slipped the ice bucket over her ringing head.

He wanted to squeeze past but there was no space to walk by because Maribel and the chair were in his way. In the meantime she got back on her feet, still holding the dagger in her right hand, and blocking the way to the saving door.

Everett grabbed the empty magnum champagne bottle as weapon and just when she managed to take the ice bucket off her head, he hit her hard with the magnum on her icy head. She screamed and stumbled.

Everett moved backward to the window. She followed him, stumbling along and hissed loudly:

‘You will end up the same way, all my dates end this way !’

Everett gained new energy by the shear thought of being killed brutally by this monster woman and because he saw the window as a rescue route. Like a gladiator, he jumped towards her and hit her face with the empty magnum bottle as powerfully as he could. She fell backwards and landed on the edge of the four-poster bed with a terrible scream, because she tried to support herself at the edge of the bed, but fell and her dagger rammed deep into her buttock.

Everett rushed to the window, opened it, jumped up on the windowsill with his last strength and then he let himself fall.

He landed in the big bed of roses and his naked body was scratched all over by the thorns. His left shoulder was still bleeding. He tried to get on his feet but both his ankles were injured. He could not move.

Everett looked up to the window and saw Maribel appearing on the windowsill, dagger in her hand, ready to jump.

Then he awoke.

He looked around puzzled and was completely relieved. The gods be thanked, it was all just a horror dream.

Everett stretched his legs, yawned extensively, smiled happily and glanced around. He was lying in a wonderful four-poster bed, richly decorated with pompous wine red silk ruffles. Opposite on the Louis XIV desk on a large silver tablet stood the empty magnum champagne bottle of last night next to their two empty champagne glasses. And there was a tiny rest of the delicious goose liver pate and some grapes.

He sighed deeply and lustfully and closed his eyes again. Then he looked at the clock, it was only three o’clock.

‘Is everything all right, Maribel ?’ he asked in direction of the bathroom and snuggled back into the mountains of soft pillows.

‘Oh yes, I am fine, now comes my very special pleasure,’ said Maribel from the bathroom door.

Everett expectantly moved up on his elbows in order to get a better view and saw her walking slowly towards the bed. She was wearing a transparent silk nightgown, her long black hair fell in wild curls over her shoulders and in her right hand she was holding a flashing Indian sword.

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