Fancy Meeting You Here

Norman Morris always hated crowds. To be honest Norman didn't like crowds, because Norman did not like other humans very much at all. The only thing Norman liked about them was witnessing the life leaving their eyes as he killed them. Only then did Norman's whole body feel as if it had come alive, finally.

But that feeling only lasted for those few, precious seconds and then... nothing. Back to living in boredom and annoyance at the inconvenience of living around people.

He had never met another being quite like him. His family had long since paid the price of trying to paint their handsome son as normal to the outside world. Norman supposed carving out the intestines of their precious pets growing up was outside the realm of "normal."

However, being incredibly handsome did help with much of his masking. Pretty people seem to have an easier time getting what they wanted and Norman almost always got what he wanted. Which could be tiresome from time to time as Norman did like a challenge.

Speaking of a challenge, Norman's thoughts moved to the only news that had kept his mind consistently occupied since his last kill.

She was coming.

Norman has met many lunatics in his day, after being stuffed into an asylum when he was young around 10 years of age. He hasn't spoken to his mother and father since his release, not that they mind.

But she... she found him in a chat forum for Serial Killer fanatics. She seemed to understand what it meant to live with many masks.

And here she was.

"Are you Norman?" The mousy brunette asked in a clipped tone with her wool skirt and button up white shirt. She looked straight out of a library from the 50s.

"Yes, and you are...?" He had to be sure she was the right person.

Her eyes seemed to narrow and a spark filled her hazel eyes. The ones that looked full of boredom just moments before.

Interesting...

"Now, Norman, don't play coy with me. You know who I am."

"Ah, well Cassandra, I suppose I didn't expect such a beautiful woman such as yourself to meet with me in this drab diner."

"Tsk tsk Norman darling, you're trying too hard. You know what this little costume is really for. An unassuming woman asks for help with her groceries. Or helps a young lady find the right bar late at night when all the other men leer at her...Surely you must know..." She trails off and as she does she seems to lean in closer finally falling into the booth across from him.

It was a test. She was playing the part and gauging all of his expressions. Her eyes seemed to miss nothing.

To be fair, Norman was testing her too.

"I suppose, your real face will come out to play soon enough. In the forum, you were pretty quiet until I made comments on the "theoretical" ways to kill a man. Then out comes a young woman, with full knowledge comparable to a surgeon who happens to work at an insurance company."

"Hmmm," she draws out the 'hmm' almost seductively as she trailed her slender fingers along the silver chain necklace skimming her lovely collar bones, "you know how to get a woman worked up with such talk. Come now, you must have got the inkling of WHY I knew so much about... well." She trails off.

This felt like foreplay. A kind of foreplay Norman had never experienced with an actual living, breathing woman. Usually they were all but dead when he finally felt excited. Always a shame really.

Norman leaned closer, coffee had seemed to magically appear in their mugs. They had missed the waitress completely during their exchange.

This was a first for Norman as he usually missed nothing, one of his great traits especially when grooming a subject he had decided would be his next target.

Cassandra sighed in mock irritation, "If we keep testing each other like this we will never get to talk about the 'good stuff'".

"The 'good stuff'? Cassandra, whatever do you mean?" Norman said drawing out each word like linen on a clothesline, while drumming his fingers on the table until her cheeks seemed to flush from excitement. "How do I know you actually know anything about the art of hunting? I mean, how do I know you aren't just all talk?"

This seemed to invigorate and infuriate Cassandra all at once.

"How about I tell you a little story hmm?"

The waitress came back and asked for their orders, both gave them in blank, bored tones having glanced at the menu once. It seemed they both had the gift of a photographic memory.

"By all means..."

"Well, all fiction of course." She winks and dabs her mouth with her napkin daintily.

"Of course."

Cassandra dove into a story about what must've been about her younger self. Drawing out the theatrics of the study up on what kind of "hunter" she wanted to be and the fascination with human anatomy growing up. How excited she always felt when she saw a pool of blood leaking out of a dead body, when studying cadavers in her med school classes. How she never had met any other human being like her and how even after completing Med school she didn't pursue medicine because, as she puts it, she really wasn't in the business of "saving lives" as she was in "taking them".

Norman had never seen anything as beautiful as Cassandra talk about her first kills. He had never experienced such a kindred romance with another living being. Ever.

If Norman was capable of loving, he was sure that this would be it. They seemed to stare at each other for a long moment after she finished her "story".

"So," she paused looking at Normal expectantly, "real enough for you?"

Norman shook his head, while she frowned, he answered, "That was the most truth anyone has ever spoken to me. How about you and me go for a hunt?"

Norman, although not normal, was still good at masking as a gentleman and in this case, with a kindred spirit like Cassandra, it wasn't really a mask anymore. He paid the check and took her hand. They walked out of the diner smiling real smiles for the first time, possibly ever in their lives.

And if you must know what became of them...

the rest,

sadly,

is history.