The Bus Route: Part VI

The Bus Route: Part VI of a brand new KDG story

I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. I am sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part VI

 

I didn’t go to Jon’s suite. I went home instead. I’d not been there in several days. I wasn’t sure how many. The place was cold and smelled like stale take aways. I took three nighttime cold tablets and crawled into bed, but my sleep was riddled with nightmares, a heaviness in my chest, a pillow pressed against my face. Then my soul was leaving my body, looking down from above only to discover that it was Claire Richardson’s body below me displayed like sleeping beauty on satin sheets. And then I was trapped inside Eleanor’s corpse, and there was no escape from her decaying flesh, and no one knew where I was.

I woke unrested, tangled in sweaty sheets. My head pounded and everything ached. I crawled into a tracksuit I taken off days ago and sat bleary-eyed looking at a text from Jon.

You were asleep when I found you. I left you to it. Breakfast on the counter. Eat something. You look thin. 

I ignored the bakery bag in the kitchen. The thought of food nauseated me. I took more cold tablets instead. The TV droned background noise as I leaned against the counter making tea. There was no milk in the fridge and I didn’t feel like getting any.

“The body of missing mining heiress, Eleanor Willis St. Charles was found early this morning at a scrap yard in greater London,” the announcer said.

I burnt my tongue on the tea and slopped the cup on the counter as I fumbled to turn up the volume.

“Authorities have released no further details at present,” the announcer went on.

It had to be the Bus Route. It was too much of a coincidence not to be.

When no more information was forthcoming, I pulled up my laptop. With no illusions about being a good citizen, I never paid much attention to current events, until now. The news of Eleanor’s death was all over the web. There were no new details, but lots of stories about the woman’s past and her unhappy relationships with hubby and daddy. And then there were the comments.

You can’t tell me this isn’t another Incubus killing.

Got to be the Incubus Killer. Willis St. Charles was a looker.

In spite of police efforts to keep things quiet, most commenters suspected the Bus Route was the crime scene.

Honestly,one comment said, who would even risk a hook up at a place like that with the Incubus Killer out there?

I didn’t live in a vacuum, but I had little time for news when I was busy trying to keep a roof over my head. I never even looked at a newspaper before I met Jon, but clearly I had missed the bigger picture.

When I Googled Incubus, there were dozens of hits, some giving definitions varying in length and detail, of the mythological male demon who came to people in their dreams and drained them of their life force while impregnating the women who survived. Most of the hits, however, were about the serial killer who had been plaguing the more sleazy bars and meat markets in Greater London for almost a year.

Autopsies always showed that there had been sex not long before the time of death, which as far as coroners could tell was consensual. Any sign of struggle was more in line with kink rather than rape. The truly strange thing about the deaths was that there were never any visible causes. Police suspected the killer might be a chemist or a doctor who knew how to cover his tracks. So far there was no real evidence other than the rising body count of people who shouldn’t be dead.

It was when I saw the images of the victims that my stomach gave up the battle for containment, and I spent the next ten minutes on the bathroom floor hugging the toilet. When there was nothing left to puke and my legs would finally support me again, I forced myself back to the laptop. While I didn’t recognize them all, there were at least four victims I was certain I’d seen and several more that looked familiar. All of them had passed through the Bus Stop. All of them had been with Jon. I had watched him seduce them, I had admired his finesse, his grace. I had even considered studying his technique and trying it myself. But I had none of his charm and good looks, none of his skill at seduction.

According to the articles, the victims of the Incubus Killer were always found displayed in some cross between strange funeral rites and works of art, always with a great deal of care and tenderness and lots of symbolism that baffled police. I recalled the strange way Jon had behaved when we found Claire Richardson dead, almost like he wasn’t surprised. But bloody hell, if it was Jon, why did he bring me there? If it was him. But it had to be him, didn’t it? There were too many coincidences.

An update popped up on the site I was reading. Police were interviewing people who frequented the Bus Stop. Just like that, all doubt disappeared. Surely that explained why Jon had come to me when he certainly didn’t need my help. Were my videos trophies? Did he want to capture the act for posterity? Was that the only reason Jon had involved me? It hurt that he used me like a fool when I thought he admired me. I thought we had a bond, even if it was just the bond between thieves. When the light bulb finally went on, it was all I could do not to puke again. He was toying with me. Had been all along, and the only plausible reason he had sought me out was that I was his next victim! Christ! Had he been drugging me all along? I thought back over the few weeks I’d known him. I wasn’t fond of wine, and I never drank when I was working. I couldn’t afford to. And yet somehow, even after Eleanor disappeared, I had convinced myself I’d celebrated our successes a little too hard and was hung over. Then there were the flu symptoms that only went away when I was feeling drunk and euphoric, only when Jon was around. And the nightmares – me who never remembered dreams! With a shiver I recalled last night’s horror fest. This couldn’t be happening. I thought he was my friend.

One thought on “The Bus Route: Part VI

Comments are closed.