Roy appeared to be sleeping, but he was actually still half-awake. He felt a slight tickle on his calf, someone was using their foot to lightly graze the top of his leg.

The twin beds of this motel were barely able to squeeze two people in. With his eyes closed, he s.h.i.+fted to side, trying to make more s.p.a.ce for the other person.

It wasn't a few minutes later before he was completely roused by the feeling he received from his member being held.

"Shhh…" One hand covered his mouth, while the other hand drew itself from between his legs, gliding over his waist, fingers probing through the openings of his b.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, gingerly twisting the faint protrusions on his chest, as if they were switches to prevent the other person from struggling. The man's husky voice calmly whispered in his ear, "Don't wake the other guy up."

"Alden…" Roy forcefully pulled away from the palm that was covering his mouth and nose, and then hissed, "What do you think you're doing…get your hand out now!"

Alden chuckled silently, and Roy could feel the slight vibrations from his throat on the nape of his neck.

"What do you think?" He began to roll his fingertips slowly, playfully pinching the small nubs. He was pleased to hear the other's shortness of breath, and he gently sucked on the young man's earlobe, "We're similar, but I'm sure you already knew that though."

Roy breathlessly replied, "I suspected it, but I didn't want to do it with you…maybe you can find someone else and have s.e.x with them, but don’t expect me to join you."

"You're so shy and cute, my Chinese baby. I love how modest and reserved you are1…how about thinking of this as the beginnings of our first love?" He wasn't sure whether it was because sound of his voice was extremely low, but compared to before, Alden's tone seemed to undergo a subtle change. He no longer appeared refined and polite; it was as if something sinister emerged, freeing him from the etiquette rules and the restraints that bound him, unleas.h.i.+ng his wild, unruly nature.

The sensation created by the tip of his warm, moist tongue trailing down the back of his neck made Roy shudder. He insistently pushed the other side away, attempting to create some distance between them. "Even if it's love, I don’t want it starting from a single bed in a cheap hotel. And what's more, there's a spectator in the room."

"That guy's dead asleep, his snore is even louder than thunder. As long as you don't make too much noise, I'm sure he won't wake up, that's unless you like to scream and cry out when you come." Alden nimbly untied his trousers, "But I doubt you're like that, eh?"

Roy gripped his hand, "Are you sure he's asleep? He's not pretending to snore?"

Alden froze, then laughed, "Pretending? That's some weird thinking you got there."

Roy opened his eyes wide, he looked towards the neighboring bed, but it was too dark to see anything clearly. He put his lips close to Alden's ear, his voice was hushed and solemn as he uttered, "I think he's a very dangerous person, like…'The Night Killer'."

Alden clung to his body, suddenly quivering; he involuntarily called out, "What?"

"I know this sounds ridiculous, but…he was wandering alone on the road in the middle of the night, saying that his drunk friends had kicked him out his car. But when he rode with me, there wasn't any smell of alcohol on him. He kept telling me details about the murder, details that never even showed up on the news. He seemed extremely concerned about other people's reaction to this matter, like he was proud that they were scared and worried and like he was trying to show off his accomplishments…What do you think this means?"

Alden withdrew his hand from the inside of Roy's trousers and subconsciously glanced at the adjacent bed; the outline of the dark undulating figure on the bed was accompanied by booming snores that were indefinitely amplified in this silence—if Roy's suspicions were correct, then what were they doing, playing with fire2?! To be in the same room as a killer? Oh, h.e.l.l no!

"None of that can be cla.s.sified as evidence. It could be that he's just a 'zealous fan of killers' or perhaps he just prefers to imagine himself as a crazed psychopath…" Alden wasn't so sure if his remark was meant to rea.s.sure Roy or to comfort his own self.

"Then we'll find some evidence." Roy pulled his trousers up, quietly went down from the bed, and took the lighter from the small round table. He didn't dare turn on the lights, and under the dim glow of the lighter's flame, he searched through Quinn's clothes, his trousers and his jacket that he laid on the sofa.

While digging through the pockets of his trousers, his fingers touched an object with a hard, flat surface, and he immediately yanked it out.

"It's a notebook," he whispered, stuffing the lighter into the Alden's hands and quietly reading through the pages.

The notebook was brittle, it wasn't any larger than the size of one's palm. Pen and pencil markings were scribbled all over, the handwriting was scratchy, the lines were messy, and there were many indications of corrections. The owner must have valued it quite a bit; he read and wrote in it so often that the edges of the sheets started curling.

"…he stumbled as he ran, crying out for help, constantly looking over his shoulder. He was terrified, a helpless lamb being chased by a wolf, waiting to be tied by his feet, dragged back. His screaming voice made one's blood boil with pa.s.sion…" Alden leaned forward; he wrinkled his brows as he read aloud. "Is this supposed to be a fantasy novel? If it is, then the writing style is truly lacking. And what's this?" He pointed at the crooked geometric shape right below the text

Roy attentively examined it, "Is it an inverted pentagram?" His fingertips moved upwards along the ink dots on the middle of the page, coming to a stop at the top of the page. Because they were too preoccupied with the text, the ink scrawls at the upper corner of the page were completely overlooked by them—a few rigid dark curves, presumably signifying tree branches, a long hanging shadow indicating…a corpse! And the ink dots represented the blood dripping from its body!

Roy's hand trembled, he nearly flung this gruesome and evil object far away!

Alden put the lighter away, grabbed his wrist with one hand, and drew him into his arms, embracing him tightly. "Calm down…Don't make any noise, let's sneak out of here."

Roy took a deep breath, "Should we call the police?"

"For a damaged notebook? We'll first end up being made fun of by the police. Although it's definitely evil, it's not something that will be considered sufficient proof. Listen to me, let's get out of here first. Grab anything you need and drive your car to the hotel. In the meantime, I'll go and wake Jessica up. We have to leave now."

"…Okay," Roy said, "I'll listen to you."

Alden carefully tucked the car keys into Roy's hand before he left, then tenderly kissed his lips in the darkness, "Go fast, baby."

Roy had to go back and forth twice; he drove both the Volvo and the Chevrolet to the roadside all the way from the small parking lot behind the hotel. When he finished, he saw Alden hurrying out the door, but he was alone.

"What about Jessica?"

"I knocked on the door several times, but she still didn't respond. Later, I went around outside and checked the window, the curtains were opened, but she wasn't even in her room. I think she probably…went to look for a place to drink." Alden shrugged. His eyes flashed with a faint emotion which he quickly tried to hide, but Roy sharply managed to catch it and deduced the meaning behind that expression: an undeniable feeling of revulsion and hatred.

"You have zero obligations to take care of a drug addict," Roy patted his arm in comfort, "Since this is the case, let's just leave her. We'll go by ourselves."

"Kind of like eloping?" Alden captured his fingers, his eyes lit up like a burst of fireworks in the darkness of the night.

Roy gazed into his eyes and softly laughed, "Yes, like eloping."

On this night, two black cars raced along the deserted road, competing with each other, speeding no less than 100 miles per hour. It was as if they were chasing some sort of pa.s.sionate flame. They were hardly reluctant to leave behind the wasteland forests surrounding them, the rivers, the orchards, as well as the two smaller towns that pa.s.sed them by.

The Volvo suddenly slowed down. The owner of the car, who was also sitting in the driver's seat, rolled down his window and winked at Roy, shouting loudly amid the midnight breeze, "Far enough?"

Roy pondered for a moment, "Mhm, this should be far enough." They kept driving non-stop for more than an hour, and at this point, they were at least a hundred miles away from that slumbering demon in the hotel.

Alden's stared at him, a blazing fervor s.h.i.+ned in his eyes, and his urgent desires were evidently displayed on his face. He swiftly reeled the steering wheel, drove the car off the interstate, and rolled down the sloping, gra.s.sy hills along the roadside, creating a new trail in the knee-high gra.s.s.

Roy paused for a moment, then he turned his car around and followed the pioneer who entered the wilderness in order to avoid civilization3.

Two parallel lines streaked through the gra.s.s, stretching into the depths of the wilderness, eventually coming to an end with the sound of the brake.

Alden got out of the car and walked over to open the Chevrolet's door. He stuck his head inside the driver's seat, and gave his new love a lingering, impa.s.sioned kiss. Both sides had no choice but to part from each other to take a breath; he gasped for air then huskily whispered in Roy's ear, "Here?"

With a flushed face, Roy hesitated, "It's somewhat far…"

"It's so no one disturbs us, you can scream as much as you like." Holding the back of his head with his left hand, and rounding his waist with his right hand, Alden pulled Roy from the driver's seat towards his direction. The two people aggressively clung to each other, pandering to their l.u.s.t, entangling themselves in the other's amorous kisses. Their bodies rolled along the edge of the car as they moved to the front of the car hood.

Alden pressed Roy against the cold metal plate. He impatiently tore apart his b.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt and coa.r.s.ely tugged at the belt of his d.a.m.n trousers. Under the stimulus of the cool, damp summer night's breeze in this forest, the young man's lovely red nipples stood erect. Alden buried his face in the young man’s chest and proceeded to tease those exquisite buds with his tongue and lips. With one hand, he firmly caught the other's half-clothed manhood through his thin clothes, then gratifyingly rubbed it up and down. The other's irrepressible, broken moans were music to his ears. It was just like the fragmented reflection of the beautiful night's moon, scattered and distorted on a blue lake, rippling into a glamorous and charming oil painting.

He almost had the urge to give up in that moment.

But soon, a strong desire welled up from the depths of his heart, completely engulfing that weak impulse of hesitation. His other hand stealthily moved, like an insidious serpent hidden in the cl.u.s.ters of gra.s.s. A small amount of white a.r.s.enic4 glittered at the tip of the needle, slowly slithering towards the neck of the unsuspecting lamb, planning to take a bite!

Right before the tip of the needle pierced the skin, a flawlessly white and extremely strong hand brusquely clutched his wrist. The snake was suddenly caught in a twist! In a blink of an eye, the needle was thrusted back and pierced the original sinner's5 body!

The look of shock was frozen on Alden's face. He stared with wide eyes, his lips moved in vain for he couldn't utter the slightest of sounds. He only felt an inexplicable tingle spreading from his top of his skin to the limbs of his body, penetrating his bones, and rapidly reaching his heart. If not all, another bone-chilling fear burst from the bottom of his heart, and after colliding with each other, all that was left was an explosion of overwhelming pain!

He took a look at the beautiful face that was only a breath away—those few strands of damp black hair that stuck to the forehead, those glossy pink lips that were slightly swollen and undeniably alluring, those cheeks that still remained flushed from that pa.s.sionate aftertaste, and those eyes—he had never seen such dark, indifferent eyes, as though the stars were annihilated from the universe, not even the slightest ray of light would s.h.i.+ne. This kind of ice-cold darkness was tremendously oppressive, heavily suffocating. He subconsciously tried to reach out and cover his head, but dreadfully, he found that his brain no longer had control over his body.

He was very much well aware of what had happened to him; this was the effect of saxitoxin. This toxin, which was extracted directly from the poisonous body of an Alaskan stone chamber clam, had always been his good fortune6, but now, he was devoured by it.7

What added more to his horror was that in order to take pleasure in his prey's bitter struggles in death, he intentionally diluted the toxin so that it only paralyzed the muscles, rather than completely shut off one's nervous system—in other words, once the prey had fallen into his hands, he would clearly get to enjoy the victim's gradual journey to their death: the anguish, the fear, the desperation, the ruin…

His rigid body dropped to the gra.s.s like a lump of dead wood. That young man idly crouched down beside him. He stared at him with the dark eyes of death itself, as if he were looking at the crawling moss on a rotten tree, and then cheerfully ridiculed him, "Rest a.s.sured, it's such a remote place, no one will disturb us. We can spend out last warm moments together, isn't that right, my dearest Mr. Serial Killer? Or perhaps I should call you by the name the police gave you—The Night Killer?"

Alden's brain was on the verge of collapsing when a sudden surmise popped into his mind; that speculation soon turned into unbelievable yet accurate conclusion—he finally knew who the target was in tonight's deadly encounter! He had seen reports in the newspaper several times, yet he always delightedly laughed at the doom of those who fell into his hands—after all, people always tend to believe they have more luck than others. But today, that same fate befell him; he finally tasted that agonizingly painful consequence of underestimating the enemy.

"Sha Qing!"

The serial killer who targets other serial killers. Up until now, the police had only released seven cases related to him, but sure enough, he, “The Nightmare of Oregon", was bound to become his eight achievement.

Each serial killer had his modus operandi, it was a sign of their ident.i.ty. Sha Qing's maxim was “to give as good as one gets8", to kill others using their exact style of killing.

"In my country's culture, the number eight is a very lucky number." Roy said to Alden with a grin, "For this reason, I will reward you by allowing you to pick the most beautiful tree as your grave—what do you think about the beech tree to the left?"

Alden was unable to turn his stiff neck, his sluggish gaze filled with despair as he looked to the heavens; the night skies above were packed with dense clouds, the stars were missing.

The mournful, shrill shrieks of a crow emerged from the distant spa.r.s.e trees of the forest, strikingly similar to the death cries of the prey that was slaughtered.

Two hours later, a black Chevy raced down from the deep wilderness, promptly crossing onto the interstate highway. Before daybreak, this car may be discarded into some deep lake, but until then, it had yet to complete its task.

The shadow of night gradually faded from the skies, varying from a deep violet to a light, hazy indigo. The early morning had finally arrived. The Chevrolet's car radio suddenly returned to normal again, just as suddenly as when it had been damaged, and the soothing nostalgic melody of John Lennon's characteristically low and raspy singing played in the background.

A small piece paper doodled with sketches was blown out the window, fluttering in the wind like a b.u.t.terfly. A few lines were drawn with a pencil; a dark pool of blood was outlined, entrails dangled from above that blood splatter, and on the tree branches, a wolf hanged upside down.

1He actually said "I love your conservative traditions". In other words, "I love how you (Asians in general) are 'reserved and modest'."

2與狼共舞—Original: "Dancing with wolves".

3開闢者進入了避離文明的荒野—No idea. I just translated it how it was…

4紅信—Although the literal translates to: red & a.r.s.enic, it's actually "a.r.s.enic.u.m sublimatum", which is white a.r.s.enic.

5始作俑者— Shǐ zuò yǒng zhě. The first person to bury funerary dolls (Idiom); the originator of an evil practice.

6He always depended on it, and it never let him down.

7of the toxin and the clam.

8以其人之道還治其人之身—yǐ qí rén zhī dào huán zhì qí rén zhī shēn. Deal a man as he deals with you, answer a fool according to his foolery, do unto them what they do unto you, serve what they deserve, etc.

9Still had some use.

Have you any idea how many times I had to go back and change this entire chap….I'm done…Do excuse any mistakes…Taida here is also terrible with s.e.x scenes (or even pseudo-s.e.x scenes) so don't expect good ones lol. If anyone can help me with them, I will be forever grateful. orz