The Girl in the Black Scarf

He had thought he had gotten over it, that feeling when he saw certain girls. The pretty ones with the pretty necks.

It had been six months now since his last really big disappointment, when he had wanted to play with a girl's neck and she had left him. Yes, he was sure it was that long.

At least his dim memory told him she had left him, but equally vague, buried some where deep in the recesses of his mind, was this feeling that he had seen something in a newspaper about a naked girl being found in a park down in Cornwall where he had been. Naked but for one shoe.

There was something about that shoe, as if he had seen stories in papers saying the same thing about other girls in other places. He really could not be certain though.

And yet sometimes that memory, a more recent one kept at him, some other disappointment with a girl who ran away from him. Yes, quite recent, but still too far away to really remember the details, but he could hear her choking screams sometimes late at night.

Then he saw her, this new girl, crossing the park from the university and she took his breath away.

She was utterly beautiful, so painfully pretty. His legs felt weak as she came towards him, her slim frame erect, her walk having all of the grace and liquid smoothness of a catwalk model without any of that phony swing he so hated.

He watched her as she passed from sun to shade through the dappled light beneath the trees, her exquisite white skin flashing in its flawless purity as she entered lit patches then showing even whiter still against the darker background when in shade.

He had seen her before, he knew, but from a great distance. He knew this because of what she always wore, a scarf about her neck.

The fact did not concern him before as he had never been close enough to see her loveliness. Or her neck. Or, rather that part of it not hidden behind the cloth.

And now as he saw her up close he had to know her, had to get her to like him like all the other girls had liked him before they behaved so silly. Before they left him.

And above all he had to see that which she was so unfairly hiding from him, keeping secret behind her scarf.

She had no right to tease him like that, to hide away from his view so much of her beauty, that divine part of her that lay beyond his capacity to see, to love.

Timothy felt the old urge well up and begin to dominate him, but he knew not what that urge really was walking there under the trees.

All he knew was that he had to see the beauty which lay beyond his vision, stolen from his gaze by a creation of man, material daring to hide from him an exquisite creation of heaven.

He had to remove that scarf from her for it was the sole spoiler of her perfection.

As they passed the girl in the black scarf looked up at him and, as was her manner, that shared always by the truly lovely when they think they are being looked at, immediately looked down again.

Then he saw her lovely head lift quickly on her long slender neck, what he could see of it, white in the sun.

And then look straight at him.

And she smiled.

Leanne Giles saw the tall slim boy approaching from a distance and wondered if he was new on campus. She did not think she had seen him before and as they got closer she knew she had not for she would surely remember a boy as good looking as this one ever growing in her vision.

She felt that shyness she always felt when a nice boy looked at her so she cast her eyes down in that shyness, hating herself for doing it.

Then she stole a quick upward glance their eyes meeting, hers brown, his bright blue. She smiled at him feeling a slight blush spread over her cheeks in her embarrassment at being caught at it.

And the boy smiled back in what seemed to her in a manner as shy and embarrassed as she herself was and she thought it was so sweet.

Leanne made up her mind, the hell with her weakling nerd of a boy friend. If the Gods permitted, she would get to know him and when it came to picking a boy friend, Leanne knew some very friendly Gods.

She needed someone good and gentle and sweet after the horrible thing which happened to her a week ago and she knew, just knew, that the boy in the park would help her forget.

It was the night of their third date and Leanne wanted to look her best. She was happy for he had turned out to be just as sweet and nice as she knew he would be. Plus he was simply just the best looking boy on campus.

Funny, she mused looking at her reflection in the mirror, he never seemed to want to tell her what undergrad stream he was doing, something he called "only old arty stuff".

Leanne thought he was a bit put out that she was a leading civil engineering student. Some boys thought girls shouldn't do such things so he was probably envious. That was it, he was envious. She laughed at the thought and her image in the mirror laughed back as she carefully applied her light, smooth make up

She tried to use some heavier foundation and finish on her only blemish, but it was still too clear on her skin. Anyway he said he loved her scarf although he did tease her about it last time they went out, said something funny about it being there to torture him.

She remembered his funny look as he said it as well, but soon his yummy face returned to normal and she never thought of it again.

She almost told him why she was wearing her scarf, but the memory was too vivid and she did not yet feel able to discuss serious things with him.

Maybe she could tonight. Maybe.

Her two flat mates had gone out so she could bring him back after the dinner they had together. Leanne did not know it until then that Timothy was quite well off, he had to be didn't he to take her to the Tuxedo Junction Restaurant in the heart of Cambridge. Of course it never occurred to her that Timothy might be an accomplished thief just as it never occurred to her that he might not be a student.

He was too nice to deceive, to be dishonest.

To hurt her.

They were sitting on the lounge and finishing their coffee and the last bit of port left of a bottle the girls had felt so extravagant in buying out of their allowance when his fingers touched it, his eyes went to it. When he first questioned why she wore her black scarf.

Leanne looked at him her eyes studying his and she saw in them nothing but tender care. She would tell him.

She had been crossing the playground to the rear of the block of flats she lived in, she told him, coming home after a late tutorial. It was quite dark there under the trees, away from any street lights. Children only use playgrounds in the day time so why would local ratepayers provide lights?

He had come out of the trees the man, out of the darkest part of the park between the toilets and the swings and she told Timothy how she saw him with his hands out and that it was so awful how all she could see were his hands coming for her.

For her neck.

And then his eyes huge and white and his teeth bared behind drawn lips as each were caught in the light of the distant street lamp to which she started to run, a scream in her throat, but which her terror kept imprisoned.

And she told him, her eyes looking at the floor avoiding contact with his, of how there was a cord between the hands coming for her neck and how it had bit into her throat and how she had ran again when the man strangling her had tripped over a tree root.

And how she had screamed at last.

Leanne felt Tim's lovely long fingered hands graze her bare shoulders as they came to her neck. She would let him remove her black scarf and see the fading wound, the first person to do so since that horrible night.

She would let Tim see it and she knew after he did so she would be able to let others see it, that she could start to put the nightmares behind her. Soon the memory would fade as was the thin line which ran low down on her neck marring the silky white perfection of her throat.

Leanne raised her head a little to let Timothy ease the material away and then she looked to him, to his eyes, knowing she would see in him, in them, understanding of her trauma and her ongoing emotional pain

She heard a little intake of his breath as the scarf left its contact with her neck and then his fingers on her skin as they traced slowly down her neck to caress ever so gently and soothingly the thin faint dark band across the curve of her throat.

As Timothy's fingers first touched the scarf, worn simply hanging loose about her neck, the ends dangling down her back, as his fingers first brushed the silky flesh of her smooth white throat, he knew that he loved her.

And it was then when his eyes first feasted on the revelation of the whole beautiful vista of her of slender neck as it was slowly revealed to his gaze, he knew he must have her, his true love forever.

Then it all changed for him. She had deceived him.

For when Timothy saw the cruel mark of a rival's attempt to steal her from him he knew it was her fault, that she had to have encouraged him, bared her beautiful neck to another She had to be punished for this complicity in letting a rival so mar her beauty.

How could they, the two of them, his other voice raged in his head. How could they let this thing happen to her most exquisite feature, let mere man made barbarity encircle her neck when only hands were meant to visit the neck of girls in final adoration.

He knew he had to save her from ever being so crudely tempted again. And he knew he had to cover up from his view the abomination on her neck, not with the scarf, but with his thumbs.

He could feel as a palpable thing her gratitude for what he was about to do for her.

Gratitude radiating through her to him, through his touch as his fingers encircled her neck and through his loving thumbs, one tip in contact with the other, as they lay across her lower throat hiding forever from both their eyes the thing which so spoiled its smooth, milky white perfection.

Her first inkling that something might be wrong showed then on her lovely face, in her eyes, but Timothy knew in reality she was showing to him her eternal gratitude for what they both knew he had to do to her.

So she would be saved.

Timothy, leaned forward to kiss the girl goodbye and then while in contact with her lips shifted the position of his elbows such that her slim arms were trapped against the roll of the lounge settee.

Timothy knew his girls struggled as he loved them for the last time. He knew he hurt them, but he also knew deep down they accepted the pain born of his love for it made them his for ever.

And made them pure.

And they all wanted that so very much.

And Timothy knew that the pain this girl would have to accept would be worse than that of any of the other lovely girls who were now his for he knew that girls were meant to be strangled with thumbs pressing their throats higher up, in that soft place just above where their lovely voices came from, the place God specially put there on pretty girls with pretty necks.

Put there just for him.

Leanne never sensed the change in him until it was way too late.

She thought the way Tim showed his concern a little odd, the look on his face a little detached, dreamy was the word. But the feel of his hands, his long slim fingers touching so lightly on her neck it almost tickled, was wonderful.

Boys touching her neck, kissing it, always was a turn on for her and no hands had caressed her throat and neck with such tenderness and sensuality as did these hands at that moment so alive on her flesh.

She closed her eyes, her passion skyrocketing as he came to her. She felt his lips touch hers, the touch turning from lingering contact into gentle but deep tongue contact, his thumbs gliding gently along the place where the line ran across her neck.

She thought nothing of it at first, that the thumbs were ever so slowly pressing into her neck, until at the same time as his lips left hers the first sharp pain began its invasion into the space from where pleasure was retreating.

She wanted to say something, ask him what he was doing, but before she could frame those words in her mind she wanted to get a far more urgent message to him. She now wanted to tell him to stop it as it was hurting her very badly, then that she could not breathe, but by then it was too late for she could not say anything at all.

He was strangling her and in her terror and in her pain, as it spread from her throat to her chest, all she wanted to do was fight for her life, to take his hands from her throat and breathe, but her hands, her arms seemed trapped somehow.

There was nothing she could do, nothing she could take hold of to help her fight the terrible thing which was at her throat, hurting her, killing her.

Leanne tried to look at him.

If she could only get him to look at her then surely he could see what he was doing to her, how much he was hurting her. But the pain, the terrible pain stopped her even doing that.

And she wanted to live. It was not just her body clamouring through the all pervasive pain to tell her she needed to do something to stay alive, but an active pleading in her brain.

Leanne was beautiful and intelligent and loved by parents and friends and lecturers. She was in her honours year, knew the world was hers and she was so terribly afraid. And she was dying in terrible pain and despair. And she so very much wanted to live.

And as Leanne struggled in her agony, as she felt a long searing pain in her throat as something gave deep within, as light flared and waned in her vision, as death came crawling ever so slowly to meet her, all her mind could do in the end was scream, "WHY?"

It had been, still was beautiful. Timothy felt the struggling slim lithe body weakening beneath him. He pressed down with the heals of his hands onto her collar bones to control her, the advantage in strangling the girl so low on her neck, he thought, feeling them sharp and fine under his touch.

He felt her throat give under the pressure of his thumbs, far more pressure than he had ever needed to strangle the other girls, felt the delicate structures distort and then fracture as he applied the bruising, awful force necessary to kill her.

He felt her body heave under him at the pain she must have felt at that instant, felt a long groan of agony vibrate under his thumbs for no sound could escape her beautiful lips ever again.

And as the girl's struggles for life ebbed in her body, its struggles for death began.

He had loved this in each of the girls he had killed, the feeling of their lovely young bodies going into uncontrolled convulsions, the very special involuntary movement he had read only occurred as a girl died this way.

The feeling always reminded him of holding a girl after she had been crying, the feel of her as sobs first rack her body then slowly ease as she relaxes from her stress. The contraction and release of young muscles running through a slim female body as it died were, to him, away and above the joy to be had in common unimaginative sex, never to be remotely compared to those tremors she passes to him in mere sexual climax.

For the tremors which seized a girl as she was killed by strangulation had to be, he knew, born of the greatest orgasm of all. An orgasm to last her through to eternity.

For Timothy knew that in giving herself to him this way, each of her movements were for him alone, never to be shared by another. He was feeling her love for him pulse and surge through her dying body.

And even after the gentler pulse, that in her neck and under his hands had stopped its frantic fluttering and had stilled forever, her body still spoke to him in little tremors of its gratitude for the beautiful death he had given it.

A death worthy only of the truly pretty with the truly pretty necks.

The body of the dead girl was naked now except for one shoe on a dainty foot.

He looked at the body a long time after the last of its movements had subsided. He had positioned it such that the head hung back slightly over the edge of the cushion. There was a little blood coming from the nose and it had ran down the top lip to trickle into the mouth, the redness of it staining the white teeth pink, a little on the gums in between.

He looked from the body's face to its neck.

He was so pleased that the bruises he put there had almost covered with their own purple and blue those cast by the actions of another far less sensitive and understanding than he of the true needs of pretty girls.

But Timothy could still see that thin line and it still marred the neck and therefore the whole matte white perfection of the now perfectly still and slowly cooling body.

So he picked up the scarf and placed it over the neck, low down, leaving a long slender expanse of white throat above to the view of the next person lucky enough to enter the room and see it unblemished and beautiful

And then he left to go to another town, to another girl.

And this one already forgotten save for the abyss wherein resided dim memories of four others who were there before her.