Page 1 of Little Puppet

Chapter 1

Her kind of beauty makes me fucking feral.

Blonde hair wisps on the wind in sinuous, twining quivers. The fact that she’s outside right now, on night one of my hunt, means she’s not from around here.

All the better.

She’s got her head on a swivel in an unfamiliar town. She doesn’t seem to feel my eyes on her from the shadows.

My breath expels, sounding trapped behind my mask as I keep my eyes on her.

Her front plate says New York State, and I wonder what’s brought the beautiful damsel to Dunhaven.

When she replaces the pump nozzle and waits for her receipt, she shivers against the curl of a cold December wind. Although December in Florida is milder than in any other state, the salty, muggy air chills to the bone.

She growls when the machine tells her it’s out of paper. She turns, hits the fob to lock her car, and heads inside to see the clerk. Little does she know that the most unsafe thing is her, not the belongings inside her vehicle.

The bell tolls as she enters, and I take a moment to crank my engine.

Once she’s on her way, the hunt begins.

I toggle my gearshift back and forth, toying with my sense of calm as I eagerly await her reappearance.

Last year’s girl hailed from the north, too. The kinds of girls who travel this far south alone always surprise me.

It’s either a skewed sense of safety or it’s ignorance. Either one, I find refreshing in prey. However, last year’s girl didn’t last long. I hope that doesn’t happen again this year.

Part of it was my impatience with seeing her bleed and hearing her scream, but the other part was an oversight on my end. Had I checked her vehicle for clues about her, I’d have known she had diabetes and needed insulin.

I’ll be more careful this year.

I’ll take care of this one.

At least until the end.

Her Honda Civicis making great time down the dead straight of County Road 402, and I’m keeping my distance for now. She doesn’t know she’s being followed. How could she?

She can’t know that no one in this area will be out this late, not on a day like today, not during the week leading up to Christmas.

Because it’s when I’m on the prowl.

They don’t know who I am but know I live amongst them. For ten years, I’ve been preying on the town of Dunhaven during Christmas—the one week I hate the most. It’s how I turned my life around and made myself a functional member of their society by limiting my bloodlust.

Whittling it down to its root.

When I was a teenager, I learned so much about myself with the help of a therapist. She called it introspection.

She helped me see that my hate of Christmas was due to what happened to my parents the week before it when I was only ten.

Double homicide will leave a crack in one’s psyche, especially in the ever-growing mind of a child. Hidden away in the hall closet, I witnessed it all: the blood, the thrill, the atrocity.

The murder.

And while it left me a bit fucked up, it also molded me. It turned me into the man I was meant to be.

For years, I thought they’d catch me. After all, they know where I am for this perfect week every December.

But they’ve never come.

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