Dangerous Bloodlines

Episode 1: Ainslie’s Obsession

By W. T. Paterson

     “The most notorious serials killers of the 80’s were the Wolfe brothers,”  Ainslie said to a group of middle-aged tourists withcameras and fanny packs, “and this was their house.”   She turned around and started leading the group into the living room when she heard a camera click. There was nothing in the hallways to take a picture of, except for her from behind. In those jeans, with the rips right below the folds of her cheeks showing just enough skin and just enough black underwear, it was a common sound. Then came the all too familiar reprimand from the angry wife who whisper-scolded her husband for being too damn obvious.

     “I was just seeing if the camera was on,” the man protested.

     “Then delete the photo!” his wife said, through clenched teeth and a forced smile.

     “When the tour is over,” he said suddenly starting to sweat. Ainslie smiled wryly and walked with a little more sway in her steps. She knew what she could get away with and it was more than most other girls. Her lips were always slightly pursed and her eyes were always half closed. She would only smile out of the very corner of her mouth and slightly raise an eyebrow. It was the, “I want you,” look, the “I don’t want to know your name, I just want you inside me,” face.

     The other girls who gave tours often complained because Ainslie’s groups would be full and she’d pull in two, sometimes three hundred dollars alone in tips per tour with phone numbers written on the twenties. On a good night, she’d come home with close to two grand.

     To be fair, the other girls were from the historical society and were very passionate about having visitors get excited about history. They maybe walked away with twelve dollars on a good night and some random guy asking what type of crown molding was used around the doors.

     Yet Ainslie pulled the crowds, so she was the “it” girl. Every tour she gave was sold out, and sometimes people had to be turned away at the door to stay in compliance with the fire code. It nearly caused a number of fistfights in the parking lot with the rejected men.

     If someone were to type in “The Wolfe Brothers” on the internet, they’d find that just past the Wikipedia page and underneath a CNN documentary, was a site called “Slasher-Sluts.” There, hot girls stripped down to their underwear and took controversial photos re-creating crime scenes, victim poses, and bedroom antics. Topping the list with a staggering gap between her and the rest was Ainslie. Half a million hits a week kept tours selling out and kept Historical Horrors Inc. very well off.

     “Silas was the charmer, according to those who knew him, and it’s rumored that he could sweet talk a vegetarian into eating a thick, juicy steak,” she said, drawing out all the right words in all the right places. “Happy, which was his actual given name, was the more brooding one. Quiet, reserved, calculated, he was the brute force behind the two. Silas was the brains, Happy was the muscle.”

     The living room had re-created crime scene tape and exact replicas of the furniture that was found in the house when the two brothers were killed during the three day police standoff. The couches even had bullet holes and blood spatter designed by Hollywood special effects experts. They offered their services for free as long as, “you know…Ainslie takes some pictures and posts them to her site for

us…”

     In the living room, the cameras clicked and the young girl stood by the window in her loose black tank top that showed both her black bra and tanned sides. It was reminiscent of the photo on Slasher-Sluts where she stood by the same window in only black panties holding a gun pointed at the window, her arms hiding the nipples. As long as the nipples didn’t show and she had bottoms on, it wasn’t porn.

     Now, tourists were getting almost the same photo for their home collections to brag to their friends that they were actually there and yeah, don’t let my wife hear, but that’s the same girl.

     “The FBI finally caved and called in S.W.A.T. snipers on the third day of the stand off when the brothers were fatally shot. Bang bang. Right through this window.”

     “Why didn’t they just kick the door down?” A woman from the crowd asked. Someone always asked. It was a bit of knowledge that the FBI had tried to keep secret, but the truth came out during the civil trial.

     The house was booby-trapped.

     “Only the brothers knew where to step,” the vixen said, strutting over to the woman with slow, planned steps. “Any wrong move in any room and razor wire would slice open your neck.” She lightly pushed across the tourist woman’s neck with a gentle finger. “Or a spring loaded blade would slice through your calf muscles, maybe sever your Achilles tendon.”

     Ainslie bent over at the waist and made two swiping motions against the woman’s ankles. With the rips in her pants, the angle she was folded, the sunlight becoming a spotlight, the room didn’t dare breathe. “But my favorite was that they’d soak nails in rattlesnake venom and push them through slabs of meat. When the first cop broke the door down, he felt a wet slap against his face and only saw the meat. He didn’t see the ends of the nails sticking out, which punctured tiny holes in the side of his cheek.” She got right up to the woman’s ear and brushed the back of a knuckle down her touristy sunburned face. “They say the brothers sat around eating popcorn and laughing while the officer went into paralysis and died in full view of the rest of the force. They had to rethink their entire raid.” The last words were whispered like a seduction and the woman who asked let out a quivered sigh.

     “Oh my,” she said feeling flush. Ainslie smiled her miniature smile and turned around.

“Any other questions?” she asked.

     Every hand went up.

     After the tour, Ainslie went home and in the master bath - stripped down to her underwear. She lived with her boyfriend Spike who had tattoos up and down both arms and worked as a ship builder by the Savannah docks. He wore a tight fisherman’s cap during all times except for when he slept and showered. Right then he was lying on her bed reading his Kindle. Most everything in the apartment belonged to the girl, the money coming from both the tours and the traffic on the site. They lived comfortably for their age, more comfortably than many adults, but it was primarily Spike’s doing. If it were up to Ainslie, she’d live in an unfurnished studio apartment with a single mattress on the floor, thrift shop clothes that she could cut up, and stack of books about the Wolfe Brothers. She was obsessed with them, it was all she ever thought about.

     “Come to bed,” Spike said. He was reading A History of Moonshine in Appalachia in his boxers and gray v-neck jersey. The book was talking about how miners went blind with bad batches, and how the brewers kept outsmarting cops. “These guys would always have two cars. One had the moonshine, and one was a ringer. The police would follow the ringer because the ringer would drive all crazy. Can you believe that?”

     Ainslie was staring at herself in the mirror oblivious to what Spike was saying. Spike’s real name was Jamie, but that didn’t sound dangerous at all so she said she wouldn’t sleep with him unless he stepped it up. After that he came home with more visible tattoos and started calling himself Rust. When that didn’t stick, it went to Spike. When a girl like Ainslie wanted something, she got it and people like Spike were gladly willing to give it.

     “Come here,” she said in the soft light of the bathroom mirror. Spike got up and walked in noticing his girlfriend standing half-naked against the sink.

     “You ok?” he asked.

     “You look so much like him,” she said to Spike’s reflection, opening the top drawer and pulling out a long butcher knife.

 “Come on, not tonight,” Spike protested, but she bent forward and thrust her backside into his crotch. She gyrated just enough to keep his interest.

     “Come on big boy, I’m your victim. Make me feel like I have to fuck you to save my life,” Ainslie teased, making Spike hold the knife. It was a real knife too, not a prop, and every time they role played like this things were always on the cusp of going too far.

     “Ainslie…”

     “Hold it to my throat and say you’re going to kill me,” she said moving his hand up to her neck so the blade touched the skin. “And this time, call me Lacey Moorish.”

     “That was one of their victims Ains…”

     “I know,” the girl said, and slid her fingers down the front of her black panties. “I want to feel the terror. Make me feel your power.”

In the light of the bathroom, her body was flawless and smooth. With just enough of a tan, seductively sinister curves, and a body flaunting natural tightness, she was nearly irresistible. In Spike’s able hands was the girl that millions of people would literally kill to be with.

     “Fine,” he conceded, “safe word?”

     “No safe word tonight. No matter how hard I fight back, no matter how much I cry and scream, you don’t stop until you’ve come. Got it?”

     “You need help, Ainslie,” he said running his finger around the back of her panties. The soft skin was ready for him. The curve at the top of her backside was warm, her breasts perky and firm.

     Ainslie grabbed Spike’s hand with the knife and pushed it just hard enough into her throat that it broke the skin and drew some blood.

     “Pleas sir…” she trembled, her voice changing entirely, “I don’t know who you are or what you want but I’ll do anything! Please just don’t hurt me!”

     “Shut the fuck up!” Spike screamed, his voice changing too, and grabbed the back of her hair and shoved her violently towards the sink so she bent in half. He grabbed the back of her underwear and yanked it so hard that it tore off of her leaving her completely exposed and vulnerable. “Suck me,” he said pulling back on her hair as tears began streaming down her face. She got on her knees and quickly undid his pants. “Faster, bitch,” Spike demanded in his best serial killer voice.

     Ainslie wrapped her mouth around him and bobbed her head. She began making choking and gurgling noises, which only made Spike push harder into her mouth. He was jamming so hard that Ainslie kept hitting her head on the cabinets beneath the sink. Then he grabbed her by the top of the hair and pulled her up pressing the tip of the blade of the blade into the fleshy underside of her jaw.

     “Please, sir!” she screamed, “Just don’t hurt me again.”

     “Shut up, slut!” he said, and spun her around bending her at the waist again.

     This time he jammed himself inside of her, even though she was crying out in pain.

     “This is what happens Lacey, when you become treasured!”

     Ainslie was so turned on that even her crying character couldn’t help but moan. She was flooded with ecstasy and through the tears was the unmistakable look of deep satisfaction.

     “Somebody help me please!” she screamed, but Spike stabbed the knife into the wall and shoved his hand over her mouth. She could barely breathe. With his other hand, he violently squeezed her breasts over the bra. Ainslie was beginning to hyperventilate, her heartbeat was still climbing and she was choking for air between Spike’s fingers. He was on the verge of finishing, she could feel it coming. He was so close. He was right there.

     Pushing into her over and over again, slamming into her from behind in an increasing intensity, she felt him go even stiffer. He pulled out finishing his all over Ainslie’s glistening back. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. Then, he pulled the knife from the wall and walked into the kitchen throwing it into the stainless steel sink. He didn’t like that her blood was on it for real. Her role-play obsession was getting out of hand.

     When he came back into the room, Ainslie was still standing naked by the mirror smiling a sick, fulfilled smile. She dabbed at the small knife slit on her neck with a cotton swab, and then put some lotion on it. Then she hit the lights, unclasped her bra letting it fall to the floor, and walked naked to the bed where Spike was already laying down staring at the ceiling, through the ceiling.

     They were quiet for a moment. Then she turned into him and stroked his chest with a delicacy that could not have not exist only moments ago.

     “I don’t like it when you say that,” he finally uttered.

     “Say what?”

     “That I look like him…” he answered flatly.

     “Trust me babe,” she said kissing him on the cheek and then biting his earlobe, “it’s a good thing.”

     During the next tour, another familiar question arose. The hordes of tourists trying to re-live a great American massacre always treated the Wolfe house as they would a Hollywood superstar. But that’s how it always went; the serial killers of history pulled more weight than the biggest action star of the time. “What made them do it?” A teen asked. He was with his parents and it was hard to tell who begged who to come along. Usually the teens on Ainslie’s tours were dressed in all black and wore upside down cross necklaces. They walked with a disenfranchised lurch and always seemed unimpressed. In truth, they loved every gruesome detail of every terrible story. Yet, this kid looked like a first year college student trying to test his new Psychology major.

     “The Wolfe Brothers were made out to be insane, but they weren’t,” she smiled at him. Her shoulders were pulled back as she walked with unbreakable eye contact. The group parted giving her a pathway to the teen.

     “It’s clear they had some disorder. Sociopaths, or paranoid schizophrenics, it seems like they thought of their victims as a disease.” His smugness was apparent, but that was tested when Ainslie walked into his personal bubble. She smelled the way that a bad idea would smell, but the type of bad idea that made a person forget the difference between right and wrong. It was somewhere between whiskey, tobacco, and lilac scented lotion.

     “Quite the opposite really. They operated on a near genius level and had immense respect for their victims.”

     “All the news reports said they killed at random though,” the kid said, and swallowed hard. It was suddenly hard to get words out. Small bits of sweat beaded his forehead.

     “Imagine you meet a man and he shakes your hand like you’re old friends.  The way he speaks, you start to think you are friends. Then your guard drops and he’s extracting information from you. Though really, you give it up freely. Things like where you live, if you’re married, have kids, have roommates, have a job. But here’s the kicker: you wouldn’t be the target. Whoever you talked the most about –your wife, your husband, your kid, your sister, your best friend – they are the target.”

     The crowd went silent. Ainslie was smirking and the college student had lost his smugness. His heart was beating so hard that his pulse jutting out of the veins in his neck. She was so far into his personal space that her breasts were brushing against his chest every time she inhaled.

     “That doesn’t make sense,” he managed to choke out.

     “No? They take away the thing that is the second most important part of your life and what happens?”

     She dipped her hands into her back pockets and rocked between tiptoes and heel. With each pass, she lifted her chin and teased his lips with hers. The kid struggled to find words.

     “If you take away the second most important thing, it will feel like the most important, and therefore you crumble.”

     “Two for the price of one,” Ainslie jested.

     “Well, what’s the first most important thing?!” a guy with a fanny pack asked. Ainslie put her hand on the back of the kid’s neck and pulled him down to her face. Her sweet breath went straight into his ear sending shivers down to his toes.

     “Tell them, college boy,” she whispered, then traced her finger across his throat.

     “Your… your own life is the most important thing,” he said and shoved his hands into his pockets to hide his raging hard-on. She blew him a kiss and moved the tour upstairs.

     “Happy Wolfe wrote in his journal, ‘True beauty is the flaw of our species. It has no place amongst the violent and ugly world of men.’ He also carved a Ouija board into his bedroom floor, a firm believer that there was more than just life and deathm” Ainslie said.  There was a hushed rumble in the crowd. People were hesitant to follow her up the stairs, which sometimes happened because good people – people without the urge to set fire to the world – realized the gravity of death. Suddenly they felt uncomfortable being in the home of the most notorious serial killers of the 80’s, even though they paid $25-$40 a ticket.

     “How many people did they kill again?” a woman asked. She clutched her necklace and inside of her palm is the charm of a cross.

     “42 that we know of,” Ainslie said moaned, “but those were just the ones they wanted police to find.”

     Slowly, the crowd walked up the creaky wooden stairs to see the rooms where the brothers slept and devised ways to eradicate beauty from the world. This was always the part of the tour where someone fainted. Ten minutes later, a guy went down. Though he blamed the heat, he saw something that no one else did. Ainslie called them the eyes of darkness and when the guy looked into a mirror in Silas’ bedroom, darkness looked back.

     Spike got home and walked into the bedroom. Ainslie was sprawled out on the bed, slash wounds across her throat and wrists, blood soaking into the sheets.

     “Ains, we just bought these,” he said softly, dropping his jacket frustratingly onto the chair. He was teetering on exhaustion and looking to catch a quick nap before dinner but now had to do laundry.

     “Can you imagine?” the girl asked, fake blood turning her white shirt into a crimson see through. Her nipples were hard with excitement. “What if you came home and the Wolfe Brother’s got to me first? What if you actually found me like this?” She pursed her lips and arched her back.

     “Honestly, I’d think it was a joke until you shit yourself,” he said walking into the kitchen and cracking open a soda. It popped aggressively open. Spike took a big frustrated sip.

     “There are no more great men anymore,” she said trailing off.

     “Are you high? Ainslie, I know you love researching the brothers and have a fascination with them, but any normal person wouldn’t come home to this and think it was ok. Whatever happened to dinner and a movie? Nice sex, you know, without the threats of violence and getting slapped around? Maybe for one night we can live out my fantasy?”

     Ainslie curled her lips and sat up. This struck her as interesting.

     “What’s your fantasy?”

    “A functional household,” he said with declaration, and without hesitation. Clearly he’d thought about this before. “You play happy wife. I play husband. We watch the game, have some beers, then we have sex, slow sex, and hold each other afterwards.  No blood, no threats, just...us.”

     “I know your mother was a drunk and you never knew your father, and I know your childhood was fucked up with that whole gun thing,” she said trying to gloss over some less than savory details, “but why would you want to pretend to be the image of something you aren’t?”

     “Says the girl who fakes her own death on a daily basis,” he laughed condescendingly, “and I don’t know, maybe it’s because if sometimes you fake it, you actually start to feel it. Maybe I just want some comfort.”

     “Come here.” Instead of motioning with one curling finger, she used her whole arm. It looked welcoming, more than any other time before, and so Spike went and sat on the edge of the bed. Ainslie massaged his thick shoulders, the fake blood smoothing out his skin. She kissed him on the cheek leaving a big blood stained lip mark. They stared at each other in the mirror by the door.

     “That feels good,” he said.

     “You have me,” she told him, looking into his eyes through the reflection, “and I won’t let masked men come into your home and threaten to murder you while you sleep.”

     Spike started to tremble. That night, the darkest of nights was scorched into his memory. Hearing his mother drunkenly beg for her life in the next room, being threatened by good people, it was a nightmare that he never woke up from. They – the masked intruders – wanted vigilante justice, unlawful revenge, and they got it.

     “Ever since that day, I’ve had this thing inside me that just wants to…” and Spike paused hating the words that were coming out of his mouth, hating the thoughts he was having.

     “Kill them?” Ainslie finished.

     “…yeah…” the boy said, looking ashamed.

     “Like father like son,” she whispered moving her hands from his shoulders to under his shirt and across his chest. “They were scared of you, scared of your bloodline.”

     “I’m the bastard son of the worst killer in U.S. History,” he said.

     “That’s a rare power, an almost unheard of legacy Jamie.” Ainslie used his real name and it took him a moment for it to register.   

     “And that’s the only reason you’re with me, I know it. I’m just trying to fool

myself into thinking that I’m not the son of Silas Wolfe, and you’re attracted to me

because I’m a good person and take care of you.”

     “That is the reason,” Ainslie said. But she lied. “I’ve also never come so hard as I do when I’m with you.”

     That part was true.

     “I guess it doesn’t matter why you’re with me,” Spike said slowly losing his train of thought. “You’re with me. I’ll chalk it up to having lucky stars.”

     “You sit on the couch and flip on the game. Take a load off tonight, I’ll take care of dinner.”

     “Yeah?”

     “And I’ll wash the sheets.”

     Ainslie kissed him again and then wiped the fake blood off. Spike stood up to change and then went into the living room to flip through the channels.

     Ainslie stripped the sheets, showered up, re-sheeted the bed, and cooked dinner with her hair in a ponytail. She sat next to Spike with her feet tucked underneath her and ate while they watched football.

     That night they had slow, passionate sex. Their bodies went black, blue and white from the glow of the moon and their skin sparkled with sweat. For the first time, Ainslie felt Spike, really felt his body and affection for her. Yet even amidst his restrained love making, his hand stroking her hair, their midsections slick with lust, she felt in him an insatiable darkness. It was a madness that harbored evil, a lifestyle that begged to be set free.

     It was in that moment that she wondered whether or not to tell him that she had missed her period for the second month in a row.

     Ainslie waited until Spike was asleep before she silently dug herself out from under the covers and slipped on her shoes. Wearing tiny white gym shorts and a plain white tee shirt that hugged her curves like skin, she walked through the night to the Wolfe Brother’s house. Ainslie had made keys for herself during the second day on the job. Since she gave the most tours, the managers of Historical Horrors Inc. also gave her the passwords for the alarm system.

     This wasn’t uncommon. Ainslie often wandered into the house in the early hours of the morning to sit and revel in the atrocities. It was there that she stumbled upon the most curious feature of the house…

     The Brothers were still there.

     The Ouija board that had been carved into the floor often pulled the glasses off of tourists and acted as a makeshift planchette. When the girl noticed, she came back that night with one made out of the broken glass window of one of their victims. She had it sent to her by one of the Slasher-Slut fans who paid an enormous amount of money for it on eBay. All he asked for in return was a date. Ainslie accepted the gift but never went on a date. Instead, she used her cell phone to take a bunch of selfies in her underwear holding the glass piece to her throat. She sent it from the website’s standard email address so any responses would be filtered and ultimately discarded.

     Yet using this glass, she could communicate with Happy Wolfe.

     The eyes of darkness, she found, was really the apparition of Silas Wolfe. In the mirror, two dark spots would appear on the wall behind the looker that only existed in the reflection. When they realized this and looked back, they would see into Silas’ soul and become deeply afraid. This led to the fainting spells, but the tour wasn’t a haunted tour and Ainslie wanted to keep the information to herself.

     On that night, she felt particularly excited. Using the hand etched board to summon Happy and then calling forth Silas from the mirror, she stood ready to receive the praise of the men she admired.

     The air became cool and ambient voices echoed like a wind about the room.

     “Hello boys,” she said with a smirk as an invisible hand pushed through her hair and a foul stench like hot, dry breath hit her shoulders. There was a faint scent of pomade and cedar.

     “To what do we owe the pleasure?” the first disembodied voice echoed. It was Silas. She knew this because of his smooth and articulate cadence. Happy had a slower, more lumbering speech.

     “I want to feel your touch again,” she said as a ghostly hand cupped her breasts with steady, sophisticated fingers. Ainslie let her head fall backwards and let herself be fully felt up. “Yes…” she whispered.

     Another ghostly hand ran up her legs like an electric tingle and slowly back down. Though she couldn’t be certain, the passes and tingles started to feel like they were coming from callused, hair-on- the-knuckles hands.

     “You remind me Lacey Moorish,” said Happy’s floating voice. It sounded like he was saying it through a snarled smile.

     “I love it when you say that,” Ainslie whispered. She loved being compared to their first known victim.

     “Wait,” Silas’ voice said. The unseen hands cupping her breasts moved away.

     “You’re different.” The pomade scent gave way to the metallic, iron scent of freshly spilled blood. Then it became beer soaked sweat. Ainslie took off her shirt and sat on the ground as if the words hadn’t affected her.

     “Let me feel your power,” she said through closed eyes and pinched vocals.

     “No,” Silas said, and suddenly she couldn’t feel them near her anymore. This made her suddenly concerned. The tension in the air grew thick. She no longer felt safe, and worse…she no longer felt wanted.

     “What?” she asked, trying not to sound desperate or rejected.

     “You carry our bloodline,” Silas said.

     “A boy,” Happy echoed.

     “Yes, so you can live on forever!” she triumphantly exclaimed. She started squirming on the floor and ended up on her hands and knees with legs spread apart. A haunting, menacing laughter filled the dark room. It bounced off the wooden walls.

     “They should have killed him that night,” a whisper said, and she couldn’t tell which brother was speaking. Ainslie sat back on her heels and looked around the room. It was alarmingly empty.

     “Beauty has no place in the world of men,” another voice echoed, and it sounded like Happy, but she couldn’t be sure.

     “Am I beautiful?” the girl asked slowly gripping the bunched up tee shirt next to her. She brought it to her bare chest now coarse with goosebumps.

     “My child, you are no such thing. You confuse carnal lust with beauty, you confuse loyalty for love. You think power is the ability to give or take life, but this is not true. Power is the ability to maintain it. Dying is easy, and this is your flaw.” It was Silas speaking. “My son will never be normal. You have taken that from him because you make him relive the shame of his father. It’s your obsession with fantasy. Now another will soon come into this world and our theory will prove true.”

     “There is no hope, only suffering and rejection.” This voice was Happy’s.  “Everything else is a thin veil.”

     “Why do you tell me this?” Ainslie said, her eyes welling up.

     “Because we also take from you the things that made you cling to hope. You will never have us, only in your fantasies. You will never fully have my son, only his body. You will never have a functional family because of these choices, all which have led to us and all of which will one day leave you unglued,” Silas said.

     There was a rumble against the windows and the floorboards began to creek. She felt another voice on her throat, hot with decay and madness. An unseen chest pushed at her shoulders, firm but not muscular.

     “This is the price of having your dreams come true,” Happy grunted, “it opens your eyes to the disappointments that came before and will surely come after.”

     Ainslie put a quivering hand on her belly as hot tears silently poured down her cheeks. In the darkness, she sat almost naked as the room felt like a window had been opened. The pressure changed. The air grew thin and stale. The familiar smells vanished.

     Whatever had existed before was gone, in every sense of the word. She was alone. She was shivering. She had been abandoned yet again by the men she looked up to the most.

     At that moment, something inside of her belly moved and for the first time in her adult life, Ainslie felt the unfamiliar grip of fear find a home inside of her mind.

     And it wouldn’t be the last.