Here's the next short story.
It's called X-O-X-O
You’re standing by the guest bedroom’s window, looking at the new security sensors that you’ve just attached to the window frames. “Done”, you say. It comes out almost like a whisper, this self-congratulatory message. You touch the glass pane, now covered with a thin glaze of morning frost and allow your gaze to travel through it and onto the gravel driveway that’s gently revealing itself thanks to the first rays of dawn. You wait for a few minutes more to watch the murky green of the night turn into a warm red. In a few hours, your guest will arrive and you need to ensure that the weekend tasting session that she’s paid for is exactly the way she’s asked for it to be.
You wipe the window frame, window ledge and glass panes carefully, pick up your tool box and walk towards the large king-seize bed that’s placed in the center of the room. You stand at the edge and pull the bed sheet off to reveal a young girl, lying prostate and absolutely naked. You feel your lips quiver ever so slightly as you gently move your fingertips across her thighs and up her belly towards her breasts. You place your large hands over them and squeeze gently. They feel harder today, more taught..
You shift your gaze to the bed-side table and reach for the injection that’s patiently been waiting to be used. It contains 150ml of human breast milk. You inject 50 ml of the milk into the girl’s left breast and bend down to take her blue nipples in your mouth. You suck on them, gently, until you feel the cold milk fill the dry cavity beneath your tongue. You roll the liquid around in your mouth and then swallow. She’s been dead for a week. Today, she tastes perfect.
You carefully inject the rest of the milk equally into each breast. Then, you wipe away your saliva from the nipple and replace the bed sheet over the body. You pick up your tool box, place the injection inside it and walk towards the bedroom door. After you open the door, you stand at the threshold and say, “You’re ready now, my dear. And, just in time. I’ll come to clean up tomorrow morning.”
You head back to your study and sit at your workstation. You open the package that you received yesterday afternoon and take a look at the contents. It’s one of the high school yearbooks that you had sent to a prospective client 4 weeks ago. The post-it note that you’d placed on the cover page is still there. You read the message that you had written on it, clear in bold, capital letters: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO TASTE? MARK IT WITH ‘X’. You open the yearbook and slowly go through each page, looking for the ‘X’. You finally come across it on the page that has a picture of the high school cheerleading squad. You stare at it for a few seconds and then close your eyes and think about how you’re going to make this tasting session happen.
It’s the first time you’ve seen an ‘X’ that covers the entire page.
