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SERIAL KILLER MEET CUTE
Hazel
I never really considered whatI’d be doing the first time I met a serial killer but if I had, it wouldn’t have been dancing around my bedroom in nothing but my nightshirt. And yet here I am, headphones on, singing along to Taylor Swift like I’m getting over a breakup.
I’m not. Getting over a breakup that is. In reality I’m having a dry spell longer than an aquaphobic witch (get it? dry spell?). Okay, my lack of pun-ability may contribute to why I’m still single, that and the fact I work twelve-hour shifts as a 911 operator.
The long hours and intense job are also to blame for me dancing around the house at two in the morning. It’s less carefree and more turn the music up loud to drown the world out. My shift today was brutal and dancing it out is pretty much the only way I’ll be able to get to sleep without being haunted by the frightened whispers of yet another rape victim.
Honestly my job is slowly killing me and it’s nights like these I wonder what my life would be like if my parents had survived and we’d moved to Canada like my mom had always dreamed. She wanted to live a quiet life, raising me in the small town shegrew up in. Instead, she didn’t even get the chance to call 911 before her life was stolen.
I love my job, I do, but I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.
So, can you blame me for having the music too loud to hear the siren? And really, shouldn’t the psychiatric prison have a more updated signal to alert those of us stupid enough to live within a five-mile radius that one of their prisoners has escaped? A text message maybe?We interrupt your regularly scheduled solo dance party to tell you a highly dangerous and clinically insane prisoner has escaped from Drayford Secure Psychiatric Facility. Please lock all your doors and windows and remain inside.
Yeah, that’s what’s running through my head when I spin around to find a truly and unfairly stunning man leaning beside my open window.
His arms are crossed over his gray top and, yep, I’m ninety percent sure he’s holding back a laugh.
His lip twitches as I pull off my headphones and stumble back. “Please,” he says. “Don’t stop on my account.”
The alarm blares in the distance and my mind stumbles, slowly putting together the whining siren and the gray prison uniform the guy is wearing. Side note: no one should look that good in prison get up.
My mind shouts at me that this man is dangerous and eventually my body gets the message.
I reach behind me, grabbing whatever I can off my bedside table and brandishing it in front of me. “Stay back.”
My intruder brings his palm to the slight shadow covering his jaw and it takes me a moment to realize he’s trying not to laugh.
“You know, in most home invasions the homeowner’s weapon ends up being used against them.” Light plays in his paleblue eyes and it’s not till I follow his amused gaze to the weapon I’m holding that I realize why.
My weapon of choice? A vibrator wand. The overly attractive prison escapee can go ahead and kill me now.
The tips of my ears burn, and it takes everything in me not to close my eyes and die of embarrassment. At least that way he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of murdering me. “I mean it,” I say, for some reason sticking to my guns and not lowering the damn vibrator.
He smirks. “So do I.”
I run back over his words and now my cheeks are burning too as a series of highly inappropriate images of this man using my vibrator on me flurry through my mind.
Now I do drop it, holding my hands up instead. I talk people down for a living, I can get myself out of this situation.
“Look,” I say, trying to ignore the fact that my heart is beating in my throat. I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about, right? Hearts are supposed to beat like they’re on speed.
I screw up my face and try again. “Okay, there are no doubt dozens of people looking for you right now, which means you probably want to get as far away from here as possible.”
The guy nods, his black curls tumbling over his forehead. “Right. Exceptthere are dozens of people looking for me right now.”
I wince. “So the chances of you climbing back out of that window and pretending this never happened…?”
Amusement quirks his lips. “Pretty slim.”
Fuck.
“Any chance you were wrongly incarcerated?” Hey, a girl’s gotta ask. Working the job I do I know it happens far, far too often.
“Again, pretty slim.”
