Ben had been in the coffee shop for ten minutes when he spotted the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Her hair was long and blonde, and there was a flower tucked behind her ear. She wore a white dress, not like the ones he usually saw girls wear, but one that looked more like a nightgown. Just like so many other people there, her headphones were in and her nose was buried in a book.
He wasn’t quite sure how to approach her. Most attractive girls wouldn’t give him the time of day. But he’d already downed most of his coffee and was feeling more confident than usual. Carrying the cup filled with what was left of his drink, he slowly made his way over to her table in the corner.
“Excuse me,” he said as he approached. “Is this seat taken?”
He wasn’t sure at first if she heard him over the headphones, but after a moment she pulled them out and looked up. “No,” she said, smiling. “Sit down.”
He took a seat and pointed at her book, a tattered copy of Frankenstein. “Required reading?” he asked.
“Oh.” She laughed. “No, I’m not a student. I work at a campground just outside of town.”
“Oh. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen you around campus.”
The girl nodded awkwardly, and Ben smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m terrible at pick up lines. Let me start over. I’m Ben. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“I’m Hannah. It’s nice to meet you too, Ben.”
Ben pointed to the book. “So, Frankenstein huh? I had to read that for English a few years ago,” he said. “I guess you’re just reading it for fun?”
“Yes, I love it.”
“It doesn’t scare you?”
She shook her head. “It was one of my dad’s favorites. He used to read it to me when I was a baby, even though my mom hated it.” She laughed. “But he died when I was a year old, so I don’t remember him or the book. Anyway, I wanted to read it to remind myself of him, in a way.”
“Wow, I’m sorry,” Ben said.
She shook her head. “I was so young, I don’t even remember him. You know…mom and I are close now. But sometimes I just have to get out, you know? Act like an adult.”
Ben shifted in his seat. “Look, this might sound a little bit weird since we just met. But there’s this new club that just opened up a couple blocks over. Do you think you might want to…I don’t know, check it out with me? That is, if you’re not busy.”
Hannah didn’t respond at first, fingering the edges of the book.
“You don’t have to go. I wouldn’t want to take you away from the doctor and his creation.”
“Actually, I’d love to go,” she said.
He smiled; he hadn’t expected it to be this easy. He didn’t even think he’d meet someone until he actually got to the club. “Really? All right then. Let me go to the bathroom, and we can leave.”
The coffee shop was in the heart of the city, which never seemed to sleep. Around them, street performers played music and put on mime shows for tourists. Pollen saturated the air.
Posters of missing people were plastered on street lights and the sides of brick buildings.
They rounded the corner into an enormous courtyard. Hannah looked up at the building that faced them. “It’s beautiful.”
“What is it?” Ben asked.
“St. Louis Cathedral. You’ve never seen it?”
Ever since arriving in Louisiana, Ben hadn’t ventured into the city much. And he wasn’t exactly an expert on churches. He hadn’t set foot in one since he was a kid.
“No, I just moved here,” he said.
“Oh really?” she asked. “What for?”
“For school. I just started at Tulane.”
“School,” she said wistfully. “I would have loved to continue school, but my mom wants me to work at the campground. She still owns the property and wants to pass it to me someday.” She sighed. “It’s as if my whole life has already been planned for me.”
“Wow,” Ben said. “So what’s a campground worker doing in the middle of New Orleans on a Saturday night?”
“Mom was kind enough to give me the night off, and I wanted to come out. I love it here.”
“Really? You’re not scared, being out here by yourself?”
She shrugged. “I guess I know how to take care of myself.”
They headed past the church, to the many shops and restaurants that lined the square. Several yards away, past a bakery and a toy shop, was an alley. It was narrow and covered in trash and dirt. Not much light shone in on it. So Ben was shocked when Hannah said, “Let’s go that way.”
“What?” he said. “Really? You want to go…in there?”
She nodded. “It’s got to lead to the club, right? There’s nowhere else we can go from here.”
“You said it’s on Rampart Street, right?” She pointed to their right, by the alley. “We can go this way. That should get us there.”
Stunned, he looked ahead and realized she was right. He’d been so focused on talking to her that he had missed their turn onto the street where the club was actually located. He didn’t even know if he’d told her where the club was. Did she figure it out? It was the only club for several blocks.
He really didn’t want to venture down a dark alley, especially at 9:30 on a Saturday night. The thought alone sounded like the beginning of a Dateline special. But what he wanted even less was to look like a moron in front of the girl he was trying to impress. Besides, if anything happened, he could protect her. He’d been doing tons of weightlifting lately.
So he followed her into the alley. She pulled out a phone and turned the flashlight on, and he followed suit. The sounds of the French Quarter faded behind them as they made their way down the long stretch of concrete. Ben didn’t keep time, but soon it felt like they’d been walking for hours.
As soon as he finally spotted a light that wasn’t portable, he also heard laughter. Ahead of them, by the end of the alley and next to a row of trash cans, were three men. None of them were particularly large, but they talked and laughed loudly as Ben and Hannah approached. In the light from the nearby shops, Ben distinctly saw the tallest of the group run his eyes up and down Hannah’s body. He frowned and clinched her waist.
Fortunately, the club was in the same block, and they reached it a few minutes later. Ben could hear the pulse pounding music from inside, and lights flashing. A bouncer stood at the entrance; the line to get in was long, but they progressed through quickly.
The bouncer loomed over them as they approached the front of the line. “ID’s,” he said curtly.
They pulled them out and the bouncer looked them over one by one, saying nothing. Finally, he lowered the flashlight, and Ben thought he would step aside to let them in. Instead, he said, “Sorry kids. 21 and up only.”
“What?” Ben protested. “I thought this place was all ages.”
The bouncer shook his head. “Nope. Gotta be 21.”
“But my friend said — ”
“I don’t care what your friend said, kid. Now get out of here.”
Ben turned away, expecting Hannah, who’d been silent this whole time, to leave. After all, if he couldn’t even get them into a club, what use was he? Instead, she closed the distance between her and the bouncer, grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him.
Ben was so stunned he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell if the bouncer felt the same, because he stood completely still during the kiss. When Hannah broke away, the bouncer looked like a cartoon character who had been hit on the head.
“All right,” he said. “Go on in.”
“What?” Ben asked. “But you just said…”
Hannah grabbed his hand, giggling. “Come on Ben, he said yes. Let’s go!”
The club was dark and loud. Ben hadn’t been to many clubs before and wasn’t sure what to expect. He coughed at the smoke coming from a machine in the corner.
“Do you want a drink?” he yelled in Hannah’s ear. He had to say it three times, but finally she nodded and he went to the bar. It wasn’t until he got there and started ordering that he realized he had no idea what she liked. He didn’t want to assume, but also didn’t want to leave and have to go back and yell in her ear again. So he settled on some cocktail the bartender recommended. He went back to Hannah and yelled the situation in her ear, which she seemed fine with.
She sipped her cocktail. They tried to make small talk as they danced, but after a few minutes, Ben could no longer stand the noise. He motioned to her, and she followed him outside to the front deck.
It wasn’t much better out there. The air was still thick with smoke — more from the cigarettes this time — and the people surrounding them were less than savory. But Ben could finally hear himself think, and continued his attempts to talk to Hannah.
“So what’s it like?” he said. “Working at a campground?”
She shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess. Mostly I just do it because my mother owns the place.” She rolled her eyes. “I still live with her.”
Ben had never asked for her age. But if the bouncer didn’t want to let her in, she had to have been under 21. And if she was lamenting the fact that she still lived with a parent, she was presumably at least 18…so nothing for him to worry about there.
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Lots of people our age still live with their parents.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But I feel like I’m living my entire life just to please her. Working at the campground, teaching a bunch of morons how to canoe all day, even living at home even though I could afford my own home…it was all her idea. It’s not that I’m terribly miserable. I just want her to be proud of me, and sometimes I worry that I’ll never be good enough.”
Ben’s heart sank. “Well, you know what? I bet your mom is proud. After all, she has a pretty awesome daughter.”
Hannah smiled.
Ben fidgeted with a hole in his jeans. “So do you want to go back inside, or…?”
Hannah whirled around and kissed him. It was slow at first, but then his tongue found hers and they formed a rhythm. His hand moved to her waist and he felt hers in his hair.
They broke apart a moment later; Ben was out of breath, but Hannah was not. “Do you want to get out of here?” she said.
Ben’s jaw nearly hit the wood floor. He hadn’t expected this to be so easy. Then he thought of something.
“I’d love to, but…isn’t your mother going to be there? I don’t think she’ll be too happy with a random guy in her house.”
She shook her head. “She’s out of town until tomorrow afternoon. She’ll never know.”
Ben couldn’t believe his luck, couldn’t even close his unhinged jaw. “Sure…let’s go.” As they walked off, the thought crossed his mind that Hannah and her mother both had the night off. Who was working at the campground, he wondered? But he shrugged it off; they probably had plenty of staff there. He laced his fingers through hers as they walked back down into the parking lot.
Hannah’s house was further out than he’d imagined. It took them nearly half an hour to get there, though Hannah thankfully insisted on paying the cab fare, since it was her idea. Maybe if they hit it off, he could buy her dinner sometime.
The house was in the middle of the woods and made entirely of it, surrounded by patchy grass and flowers. It was the literal manifestation of a cabin in the woods. He half expected to see a rabbit and a little man in the window, watching them.
The inside was cozy, but not exactly modern. A record player sat in the corner of a large room with a wooden dining table and couch. But there were no TV’s, no stereo, no computer.
“You have a nice house,” he said. And she really did. It looked straight out of the 1930’s — very retro.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Wow, it must get old. Staring at the same rooms every day for years. No wonder you want to get out so bad.”
“It does get old sometimes, I suppose. But it’s my home.”
He nodded toward the record player. “That’s really nice.”
“Thank you. It belonged to my older brother. He…died, along with my dad. He got that new, close to when it was first released. He was so happy to have it. It was one of his most treasured possessions. Now it reminds me of him.”
Ben furrowed his eyebrows. Record players like this hadn’t been made for awhile. If Hannah’s brother got this one new, just how much older had he been?
But he didn’t have much time to think about it before she was on him. Their tongues found a rhythm, their hands the buttons on each others’ jeans. Hannah nudged Ben backward until he reached a bedroom he assumed was hers.
“Ben,” she whispered. He opened his eyes, but she must have turned the lights off because everything was black. The last thing he remembered was his bare chest touching hers and falling back onto the bed.
He woke up to light streaming in from a nearby window. He felt stiff and sore, like he’d slept on the ground. Groaning, he lifted his head to see if anything about his environment had changed. But he was in the same bed he’d fallen asleep in.
Had he fallen asleep? He didn’t remember much about the night before, at least not after arriving here. He must have had much more to drink than he thought. Several of his friends had gotten into trouble with that — and not just from hangovers. One guy he knew hooked up with a girl who later regretted it and accused him of sexual assault. Luckily, they found text messages between them that showed she was lying, and the charges were dropped. But Ben still figured he should be more careful from now on…if he wasn’t past that point already.
Hannah sat beside him on the bed, wearing nothing but a thin tank top and underwear. She watched a TV mounted on the wall, playing some teen drama.
He moaned and sat up. “What happened?” he asked.
She giggled and turned to him. “What, you don’t remember? It was amazing. Best I ever had.”
His entire body felt weak, but he managed to prop himself up. “I feel like I got run over by a truck.”
She reached back and stroked his hair. “Well, we did get in pretty late last night, and it’s early. You’ll have to catch up on your sleep tonight.”
She leaned in to kiss his neck. He weakly set his arm on her back to brush her off, but it fell back down. He noticed his vision going black, and then, nothing.
When he woke up again, it took him several minutes to be able to see anything other than spots of color. His body felt even weaker than it had before. Hannah was nowhere to be seen.
He pulled himself up off the bed and headed toward a door on the far side of the room that he hoped was the bathroom. He used the toilet but could barely stand long enough to finish. What was going on? He didn’t remember having that much alcohol the night before, and didn’t feel hung over anyway.
He heard voices from down the hall. One of them sounded like Hannah, but the other was clearly that of an older woman. Had her mother come back home? He knew he should stay in the bedroom, not get involved in something that clearly didn’t concern him. But curiosity got the best of him. Throwing his pants and shirt back on without even bothering to button anything up, he made his way to the hallway, still stumbling every few steps. About halfway back to the living room, he could hear voices clearly from what sounded like the living room.
“I think it’s working,” Hannah said. “He seems to be going along.”
“Well, just be careful,” the older woman said.
Hannah scoffed. “Mother, I’m always careful! I’ve done this so many times already.”
“I know, darling. But you’re so young. Sometimes these things go wrong, and they’re difficult to clean up when they do.”
“Well it won’t go wrong. This is a typical case. I’m sure of it.”
“I know, and I have faith in you. But I’m always going to worry about you. It’s a mother’s job.” There was a pause. “Just be on your guard, that’s all.”
Ben’s blood ran cold. He had no idea what they were talking about, but it clearly wasn’t good. And a set of footsteps was heading his way.
His eyes scanned the room for something, anything to use as a weapon. As the footsteps crescendoed down the hall, his heart sped up and he finally grabbed a nail file and slipped it into his back pocket. Just as he moved his hand back, Hannah re-entered the room.
She exhaled. “Sorry I just took off. My mother came home early. But it’s okay; I don’t think she suspects anything.” She pointed behind them. “There’s a window back there that opens pretty easily — you can sneak out. That is…if you want to.” She played with the buttons on his shirt.
She slipped her tongue inside his mouth, and Ben used one hand to run his fingers through her hair. He used the other hand to grab the nail file and hold it up. As her hands found the top of his jeans, which he hadn’t even zipped up, he stabbed the file through her neck.
He opened his eyes and took a step back, expecting to see blood. Instead, Hannah stood unharmed, laughing. The file stuck out of her neck like a knife in a cake.
Hannah made a gasping noise that sounded more like one of surprise than pain. She felt around on the side of her neck before reaching the file, then reached across with her left hand and pulled it out. There was no blood on it.
Ben knew he should run, but couldn’t bring his legs to move at all. His throat was completely dry.
“Nice try, I’ll give you that. But you can’t win against me.” She exhaled and closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I’m sorry Ben. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you left me no choice. It’s been fun; really, it has.”
And then she was on him. Ben felt a sharp pain in his neck that spread throughout his body over several agonizing seconds. Then everything went black.
Hanna’s mother came in a few minutes later, when Ben’s body was almost completely drained. Hannah looked up abruptly when she heard the footsteps. She felt blood trickling down her chin though, fortunately, Ben hadn’t made too much of a mess.
Her mother gasped. “Hannah! What happened?”
She hung her head and the nail file fell out of her fingers and to the floor. “He was suspicious. I…had to do it.”
“Oh my goodness. Are you all right?”
Hannah felt her mother’s arms around her. “I’m fine, I suppose. I just can’t believe I actually had to…do this.”
Her mother bent down and kissed her cheek. “I know. None of us like this situation. But you acted accordingly.”
“What will happen? You know, to his body?”
“We’ll have to hide it in the woods. The rangers will think it’s another animal attack. If they’re suspicious…well, I’ll take care of it.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “You were right, darling. You acted accordingly, and very well. I’m very proud of you, Hannah.”
Hannah smiled.
Mary Hallberg, author 