The real monsters look just like people . . . I'm the last person in the world you'd imagine picking up a hitchhiker, but there was something about this woman.

She held out her thumb, her dark hair blowing in the wind. It looked as if a small storm cloud had escaped and enveloped her head. Her wild hair didn't hide the delicate vulnerability of her features. She wore low-slung jeans that hugged slim hips. When the wind caressed it just right, and indentation of her navel peeked from under her cropped T-shirt. My mind started composing a letter to the Penthouse forum. The things I'd like to do with a woman like that.

Those possibilities drowned out the warnings that she might be a crazed crackhead or that her burly boyfriend might be hiding in the brush waiting to prey upon the trusting fools who opened their car doors. The idea of running my tongue over that honeyed belly button eased my foot down on the brake.

She opened the door, threw her duffle bag into the back seat and slid inside in one fluid motion. Then she smiled at me and I thought I'd have a heart attack. The word beautiful wasn't good enough to describe this woman. She was Nefertiti, Halle Berry and Josephine Baker all rolled into one petite package. I was in love.

"Where are you going?" I managed to ask.
She sighed heavily and furrowed her brow as if I'd asked her for a discourse on the Pythagorean theorem.

"Where are you going?" she finally asked. Her voice matched her skin, like sweet, thick honey. Sexual awareness coursed through me as if someone stepped on my grave.

"I'm headed home from work."

She glanced at the watch on her arm. "It's seven o'clock. Why so late?"

"We've got a new account at work. I'm a computer network consultant. I'm installing some new software for them and there are all sorts of problems."

"You must be in a hurry to get home."

I shrugged. "Not really."  My life seemed to be nothing but a series of problems. Problems at work, problems at home--they seemed to be breeding off one another. My problems were fucking out-of-control. Those happy bastards were screwing and breeding like rabbits.

"By the way, what's your name," I asked.

She hesitated. "Jane Smith."

Smith? What a lame pseudonym. Imagination was obviously not her strong suit.

"My name is Edward. Ed Stevens. It's nice to meet you."

She nodded, her gaze fixed on the passing scenery.

"Uh. Where are you headed?" I asked again.

She pointed to a tiny dirt road off the main highway. "Turn off on that road," she said.

The tires shrieked in protest as I slammed on the brakes and made the tight turn.

"Why don't you pull off on the side of the road?" she asked, giving me a lazy smile as she pulled her T-shirt over her head. I barely got the car into park before her fingers tugged at my belt, her head lowering.

Afterwards, silence settled between us as I pulled back onto the main highway. Not the stifling silence between strangers, but a silence filled with our own personal thoughts and plans. I had no need to question her further. It has been settled before her warm lips closed around my penis and her tongue swirled around its head. We would be together.

For some reason, my wife and kids were simply a minor complication. I reached for my cell phone.
"What do you mean that you won't be home?" my wife demanded. "Where the hell are you going to be? Don't lie and say you're going to be at work. If they haven't made you work the entire damn night in fifteen years, I don't know why they'd start now."

"I'm not coming home," I repeated. Before my wife could reply, the woman reached over and took the phone from my hand.

"He's not coming home," she said with a wicked giggle and clicked off.

"Why did you do that? That's going to start big trouble," I said with sort of a numb disbelief.

"I'm not starting any trouble," she said. "I'm just giving it a good reason."

There was no reply to that, so I turned on the radio. Maybe sound between us would break the cobwebs this woman was tangling me with inside . Then she caressed my thigh and coherent thought fled from my mind.

"Police are still searching for Victoria Freeburg, the wife of a prominent Indianapolis businessman. Her husband and their six-month-old child were found brutally slain two days ago. Authorities fear the worse."

I heard a low-pitched giggle, and I knew that without a doubt, the woman sitting beside me was Victoria Freeburg--missing and presumed dead.

I turned my head to stare at her. "You can call me Vicky," she said.

I started to slow down. "Keep driving," she said, her honey tones edging with broken glass. "Head south."

I started to hyperventilate and she gave me a sympathetic glance. "Don't worry. I'm going to do you a favor, sweetie." She rubbed her stomach. "I'm starving."

At the drive through window, as I paid the pimply faced kid that handed me our food, I wondered why I didn't get out of the car and walk away. Why didn't I say something to the kid? Tell him to call the police or something? It felt as if I were encased in a sticky cocoon. I looked into the kid's eyes, wanting to plead, to beg him to help save my life. But I couldn't do a thing.

"Do you want anything else, sir?" he asked.

"No. No I don't," I said.

Vicky chuckled as I pulled away.

Something was wrong. It wasn't as if I couldn't move. It was as if I couldn't do anything that she didn't want me to do. "What have you done to me?" I asked.

"Not a thing that deep down in your heart that you didn't want me to do. It doesn't work like that."

"So how does it work?" I forced the words through dry lips and reached for my Coke.

"Bending a person's will can't be forced," she said around the hamburger that filled her mouth. "You have to allow it."
Allow it? She was crazy. She had to be crazy. But it didn't explain why . . . why I followed her every whim like I'd been transformed into a panting puppy dog.

My wife got on my nerves most of the time, but I still loved her. My kids were everything to me. Why was I driving away from them with a women that I grew more and more certain was going to kill me without a movement or word in protest?

"Because you want to," she said.

Could she read my mind?

"No, she answered. "Just your intentions."

"Are you some sort of witch?"

"I suppose you could say that."

"What about your husband and your child?" I asked.

"When you know the lamb is to be slaughtered there's no reason to become attached to it."

"Your god is a demanding one." I don't know what made me say the words, but they seemed apropos.

"You got that right, baby." She gave me a sideways glance. "You know, evil is relative," she said. "There actually is no such thing."

"How can you say there's no such thing?" I asked. "What about Hitler? Osama Bin Ladin?"

"Do you think Hitler's mother thought he was evil? He was merely a man," she said. "But I do agree that eventually he turned into more. But that didn't make him evil."

"But millions died . . . "

"What's evil about death? I always wondered why people who call themselves good fear heaven so. Newsflash, sweetie, we're all going to die, and there's nothing evil about it."

A rush of exhilaration ran through me and curled in my belly. I wanted to prolong the debate, not to argue the point with her, but to experience her. Even talking to her was intoxicating. "Yeah, but what about those who kill?" I asked. "You can't say that's not evil."

"A lion kills and enjoys it. Is a lion evil?"

"A lion kills to eat," I said.

"Oh, so you're saying if you have a reason to kill, it's not evil," she answered, as she finished the last French fry in the box and dug around the bottom of the sack looking for more.

I drew in a breath and took my attention off the road to stare at her. I'd never felt so alive in my life. It was as if I'd known this woman forever. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

She yawned and stretched, licking her fingers. "Let's go to a motel and fuck, okay?"

"Okay," I answered. The main problem with being with her was that I knew the rest of my life would be short.
Why didn't I care?

A short time later, the orgasm rippled through my body like a riptide, tearing it apart, making me gasp and cry with the force if it. I'd never experienced the like in my life.

"It's a kind of like pain, isn't it?" she whispered in my ear.

That's when I noticed the knife at my neck. The pain was delicate as she gently pushed the sharp edge through my skin. The blood slowly oozed down my chest. I waited for the killing thrust. Too calm, I was too calm. I could throw her light body off me with one push, yet I didn't move. The wonder of it.

"Death is only a change of location, sweetie." Suddenly, she withdrew the knife and sat up on the side of the bed.

I felt bereft. I couldn't believe that I wanted it. Was she really a vampire? I craved the pain and the death she'd give me.

"Transformation only comes if it belongs to you already," she murmured as if she were speaking to the air. She stood and walked into the bathroom. A second later, I heard the shower start.

I looked at the pile of my clothes on the floor. I knew that I could go now. Whatever hold she had on me, she'd released. But the ache to be with her still held, and something new remained. A part of me that didn't care about dying, who craved the pain. I picked up my pants and went home.

My wife sat in a dark room when I walked in the front door. I turned on the light and saw the tear tracks that had dried on her face. "We have to talk," she said, her voice strained and cracking with emotion.

"About what?" I answered. Something about the fresh tears that started to run down her cheeks pleasured me.
"You--you were with another woman . . ."

"And?"

She took a tissue from the box beside her, her movements tense and jerky. "What's wrong with you?" she moaned. "What our marriage? The years we've invested . . . "

"Yeah, right. I'm going to bed."

I turned away right after I saw the look on her face, the anguish mixed with disbelief. It was hard not to laugh. I felt better than I had in years.

When I reached the bedroom, I hesitated and turned around, making a quick stop in the kitchen before I returned to the living room.

"I changed my mind," I said. "We should talk." I sat close beside her on the couch. She burst into tears. I cradled her in my arms, kissing her face, tasting her salty tears, savoring her pain. Her eyes widened when I cut her windpipe. She made a wet gurgle of sound that managed to wind its way out through the gushing blood. An incredible rush went through my body, as if I were a god. The glory of the snatching of life, of hopes and dreams, of everything she'd ever become. Her eyes became dull and empty as her life drained away completely.

I laughed as peeled the bloody clothes off my body. I'd never felt such power, such complete freedom. I thought about the knife and the kids as I showered. But it would be too much effort. I whistled a show tune and decided to let them be. I needed to get on the road.

The metallic tang of my wife's blood wafting up my nostrils from the mess I'd left on the couch. It smelled wonderful. I looked back towards the kid's bedrooms, craving more pain, terror and death, but I heard a car pass the house as it drove on down the road. The sun would come up soon. I shut the door softly behind me. I didn't bother to lock it.

Driving down the road, free as a wild animal with as few worries, I knew something had changed fundamentally inside me. She'd spoke the word transformation. I wondered how many people did she allow to come close to her and live? Probably not many. But the ones she chose could be forever changed. Maybe she was some sort of a vampire after all.

I turned the radio to a rock and roll station, and tapped my hand on the wheel in rhythm with the music. A hand that from now on would frequently drip with blood, for the mere joy of killing. Joy had to be as good of a reason to kill as any. How could I possibly be a monster and feel and look this good? I sped down the road, brimming with excitement and power.
Some time has passed, but I know that I'm still basically a decent man. You have to understand that evil is nothing but a relative notion. I simply spread truth. Pain is as exciting as an orgasm and death is only a change of location. Now, don't you see? I'm no monster, no, not at all.