The Hunter

My heart raced as I knocked on the dark blue door of apartment 301. It was 2:45 in the afternoon and I had 45 minutes before the roommate came home from her last class. Even though I'd completed many other successful hunts, even though I'd planned everything down to the smallest detail, there was always that nervous excitement that came with the execution of a new hunt.

All of my senses were heightened and I heard soft footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. The peephole went dark as someone peeked out.

"Hello?" I heard a soft, feminine voice say.

"Hi," I responded cheerfully, overcoming a catch in my throat. "I'm the plumber working downstairs on some noisy pipes in apartment 201, the apartment below yours. I need to come in to bleed the air from the pipes up here. Your landlady, Mrs. Gaul, said you'd be home."

Maybe it was my blue coveralls with the "Ace Plumbing" patch sown on the left breast. Maybe it was the baseball cap with the matching patch. Maybe it was the large toolbox in my left hand. Maybe it was my winning smile or maybe it was hearing her landlady's name. It was probably all of them put together -- I'm a stickler for details. In any case, I heard the deadbolt slide back and the door swung open to put me face to face with my prey.

She was prettier up close than through the binoculars that I'd been using to track her movements. Asian, short and petite, with long shiny black hair that stretched down to her lower back. Her dark brown eyes were tastefully lined and her pink lips shimmered with a faint pearly sheen. Small gold hoops decorated her earlobes. A red cotton knit camisole hugged her body from the soft curves of her bosom down to her narrow waist, ending a couple of inches above the top of a pair of jeans that rode low on her hips. Red toenails accented her bare feet.

"Sorry to bother you," I said apologetically. The fake moustache tickled slightly as I flash her another warm yet sheepish smile.

"It's OK, come on in." She smiled back and stepped aside.

Walking pass her into the small foyer, I scanned the living room straight ahead; as I expected, no one there. She turned to shut the door and deadbolt it. I quickly bent down to place my toolbox on the floor and smoothly rotated back towards her while withdrawing my right hand from the pocket of my coveralls. That hand held a Talon T-250C, a 250,000-volt stun gun that's very capable of incapacitating a large man for several minutes. As my prey turned towards me, I pinned her back against the door with my left forearm and stuck the contacts into the soft skin of her bare midriff. A squeeze of the trigger and I zapped her for a few brief seconds. I caught her as she became dead weight, her limbs twitching asynchronously.

I slipped the stun gun back into my pocket and eased the petite girl down onto the linoleum, working quickly before she could regain the use of her muscles. A stain began darkening the crotch of her jeans as she lost control of her bladder. I opened the toolbox and pulled out an eye mask. You know, one of those things that people put over their eyes to block out the light when they're trying to sleep? I positioned the mask over her eyes and secured it by pulling the thin elastic strap around the back of her head. The "Hello Kitty" design seemed somehow appropriate.

She gurgled slack-mouthed as she lay twitching on the floor. I peeled off a strip of duct tape that was stuck underneath the lid of the toolbox, leaving another one there for later use on her roommate. Sealing the Asian girl's mouth shut, I made sure she had enough space under her nose to breath. I pulled out a pair of soft ballistic nylon cuffs that I tightly wrapped and strapped around her wrists, and clipped the cuffs together behind her back. Next, I bound her ankles together using an identical pair of cuffs. After I had finished, I grabbed her under her armpits and dragged her to the middle of the living room floor, where she wouldn't be able to make a lot of noise kicking around.

****************

It's funny how I'd come to regard these adventures as hunts. I grew up outside a small town in Montana. My father spent a lot of time working the family cattle ranch, so I mostly hung around my grandfather, who taught me, among other things, how to track & hunt. I got good at it -- if it moved, I could track it, kill it and skin it. In fact, I made quite a bit of money in my teen years trapping and hunting, enough to buy myself a brand new Jeep Wrangler in high school.

Later on, after graduating from Montana State, I moved to Houston, taking a job with a mid-size consulting firm. I quickly rose through the ranks and established myself as an ERP expert. Being a consultant, I can spend anywhere from a few months to a year and a half at different companies, different cities, across the country. I manage to keep myself fit, even on the road, making sure the hotel where I'm staying had a workout room or at least a 24 Hour Fitness nearby.

The concept of hunting people, specifically young women, developed slowly as a way of transferring my skills from the wilderness to the urban jungle. It's hard to describe the rush I feel during a hunt. Weeks of planning and preparation, of stalking your prey so that you feel as if you've known her for years, culminating in an intense sexual release combined with the feeling of complete power over another individual; it is as strong an aphrodisiac as you will ever know.

My hunting grounds are the colleges and universities that are somewhat close to the city where my consulting engagements happen to be located. Fridays are usually travel days for consultants; most fly back to their home town to spend the weekend with their families. Not for me. Fridays are my hunting days. Early in my engagement, I'll drive out to a residential area close to the campus I've targeted, looking for apartment buildings that cater to students. A vacancy sign is an easy opportunity to meet the manager and get his or her name; throwing out the manager's name to your quarry is a very effective way of opening doors.

I'll stake out a couple of buildings over the next few Fridays, scouting for potential prey. I'll look for young ladies who are returning to their apartment early in the afternoon, during a time when most other students are still at class. If I find someone with potential, I'll get her schedule down over the next several weeks, making sure she has a regular Friday routine. Many times, there will also be a roommate to consider, so working out the timing is a little more complex. Bagging two birds in one hunt, however, is often rewarding enough to be worth the extra planning.

Sometimes I'll spend the rest of the weekend hanging out in the same area. I'll check out as much of the landscape as possible, mapping the layout of the apartment building, marking the exact location of her apartment, and deciding on escape routes and parking spots. As a consultant, I can make good use of my analytical skills to develop a strategy that would maximize my chances for success while minimizing my risks. Geez, that sounds like some piece of BS straight from one of my company's glossy marketing brochures.

Outside of my preparatory activities (or should that be predatory activities?), I'll make a side trip to the campus, just to take in the ambience of the school or even to buy a souvenir T-shirt. Go Dawgs and all that stuff. Or I'll spend a few evenings checking out some of the local watering holes. I love hanging out in college towns. There's a certain energy that keeps me young, that keeps me fresh, that I miss from my college years.

This particular consulting engagement, scheduled to last 18 months, was in San Diego, a city on the Pacific coast just north of the Mexican border. Southern California is blessed with a relatively high density of colleges and universities, and the California lifestyle suits my tastes in women. I had decided the Los Angeles area, about a hundred and twenty miles up the coast, would be ideal hunting grounds for this particular engagement -- close enough where the commute wouldn't be taxing, far enough away to be safe.

Last semester, I hunted at USC. When I was at Montana State, one image that had always stuck with me while watching USC football games on TV was that of the USC cheerleaders in their form-hugging sweaters, which always seemed to creep up to reveal their smooth tummies every time they thrust their pompoms high into the air. That alone was enough to stimulate the salivary glands of every red blooded American male, so I was eager to make USC one of my first hunts in southern California. It was tough finding a good hunting situation there, however. The neighborhood around the campus was pretty scary, even for a long-time hunter like me. The hunt turned out extremely well, though, even if I didn't luck onto any cheerleaders.

I never hunt the same campus twice in the same school year -- too risky. So my next hunt, my current hunt, took me to Westwood, which is the area surrounding UCLA. The University of California Los Angeles is only ten or so miles down the Santa Monica freeway from USC, but the two environments are worlds apart. The Westwood neighborhood is more upscale and considerably safer; coeds aren't as afraid of walking back to their apartments by themselves.

Another plus for me was the high Asian student population at UCLA. I did some quick research on the web and found a racial makeup of almost 40% Asian. In fact, while I was hanging around the USC campus one weekend, I overheard a student disparagingly refer to their rival school as the University of Caucasians Lost among Asians.

What is it about Asian girls that make them so attractive? Their exotic look? Their ultra smooth skin? Maybe it's that geisha girl mystique that guys fantasize about. In any case, it was going to be a lot easier here in southern California to find my preferred prey. Do you know how few Asians there are in, by comparison, Minnesota? Not that I don't appreciate the blonde Norse goddesses that are readily found in the Twin Cities area, but nothing, to me, blows my mind as well as a cute Asian.

I'd been tracking my prey for the past four weeks. She lived a few blocks from the UCLA campus, sharing her apartment with another girl who's somewhat average in appearance. On Fridays, the Asian regularly returned to her apartment at 2:30 while her roommate always got back an hour later at 3:30. Usually I liked to spend a couple more weeks to firmly establish the routine, but UCLA was on the quarter system, meaning I had less time to plan and execute this hunt than normal. I found a place over on Pico Boulevard to rent a plain white cargo van -- I didn't want my rental Sebring to be seen around my quarry's building -- and I'd already packed away some stolen license plates that I could use for the day.

****************

It was time to have a quick look around the rest of the apartment. "I'll be right back," I whispered to my captive. "Don't try to move around or I'll have to shock you again." I was reasonably sure she wouldn't fully recover in the next few minutes. Besides, my victims were so fearful of being stunned they always did what I told them. After slipping on a pair of disposable nitrile gloves, I pulled up my right pant leg to the knee and extracted an Antoni Stiletto diving knife from a sheath strapped to my shin.

I scanned the apartment as I knelt in the middle of the living room. The furnishings were sparse in typical college student fashion. A beige leather couch rested against the wall to my left, facing a small television on top of a TV stand to my right. Over the TV hung a framed Georgia O'Keefe poster of a yellow orchid.

Straight in front of me was a small dining area, beyond which was a window that looked across the way onto the flat roof of the two story apartment building next door. To the right of the dining area was a small kitchen with a phone on the counter. Behind me were the foyer and the front door. Avocado-green shag carpet covered the living room floor and ran down a small hallway on the right. I got up and disconnected the phone in the kitchen, removing the cord from both the wall jack and the phone itself. I took one more look at my captive to make sure she was secure and headed down the hall, knife at the ready.

Halfway down the short hallway was a small, windowless bathroom that I confirmed to be empty. Continuing to the end of the hall, I entered a tidy bedroom. Sunlight filtered in through a window on the far wall, a small breeze slightly billowing the yellow fabric curtains. One bed was in the corner diagonally opposite me, the other more towards the middle of the room separated from its mate by a nightstand. The walls were bare except for another O'Keefe print hanging on the wall above the second bed, the purple petals of an iris curving sensually. A tall dresser was against the wall to my left, opposite the beds. On the other side of the dresser was a door, presumably to a closet. A couple of desks and chairs were against the wall to my right. On one of the desks was a softball mitt, and draped over the back of its chair was a bright blue jersey with "Ucla" and the number 14 in gold script. A dusty canvas equipment bag rested on the carpet nearby.

I walked over to the aluminum framed window and the latch clicked as I slid it shut. I then opened the closet door to make sure no one was hiding inside. It was a small walk-in, with clothes rods running around the perimeter. Turning on the closet light, I spotted a wicker hamper just inside the door. I rummaged through the hamper looking for trophies. I found what I wanted, a well-worn pair of white cotton panties. Bringing the padded crotch up to my nose, I took a deep sniff. I breathed in a sharp smell of sex mixed in with a light perfume fragrance. I looked at the label -- size large. Must have been the roommate's. I pulled an empty gallon-size Ziploc bag out of my coverall pocket and sealed the panties inside. I found a couple more pairs, neither of them as heavily scented as the first, and carryed them with me to the beds, where I deposited them on top of the nightstand along with the Ziploc bag.

A backpack lay on one of the beds and I rifled through it, finding a wallet. Inside the wallet was the Asian girl's driver's license. Elaine Kawakami, born June 6, 1984, with an address in Visalia, California. Her picture showed a cheery smiling face. I was willing to bet that after today, she wasn't going to feel like smiling for a while.

I also found her cell phone and I removed the battery, returning it and the phone back into the backpack but in separate compartments. I moved the backpack out of the way onto of one of the desks and, on impulse, decided to toss the canvas equipment bag into the closet. No sense in having an aluminum bat around where someone might try to make a grab for it.

On top of the nightstand were a lamp, a box of Kleenex and a clock radio. The bottom one held a pliable purple vibrator hidden behind some books. You never know what you'll find when you go through other people's stuff, but after searching so many different places, you begin realizing that a lot more people than you would have thought have some sort of sexual secret.

I twisted the switch on the back end of the dildo and it started vibrating. I turned it off and returned it to its hiding place. I pulled a couple of condoms out of a pocket in my coveralls and left them on top of the nightstand, along with another empty Ziploc bag that I'll use later to collect my trash.

I returned to the bathroom, leaving the door open. I set the knife on the bathroom counter then started to undress. First the cap, wig, glasses, work boots, socks, and finally the coveralls, until the only things I was wearing were a jockstrap, the gloves covering my hands, the sheath strapped to my right shin and my watch. I left the fake moustache alone -- it would have been too hard to glue back on when I was ready to leave -- as well as the colored contacts that changed my eyes from their natural blue to a dark brown.

**************

Except for my eyebrows, my body was completely shaved of hair. Call me paranoid, but I've watched too many CSI-type stories on TV where they're able to identify someone using a single hair, and I always want to leave as little trace of myself as possible. In fact, the way technology seems to rapidly advance, I will bet that within thirty years everyone's DNA sequence will be on some sort of database that can, and probably will, be used to hunt down criminal suspects. And this whole Homeland Security business will just accelerate that process.

As part of my pre-hunt ritual, I shave my entire body the night before. Since I turned prematurely bald in my early twenties, I'd been keeping my head totally shaved, so head hair hasn't been a problem. During my pre-hunt ritual, however, I also shave my legs, armpits, a little bit of hair on my chest that's concentrated around my nipples (now what selective pressure decided that it was evolutionarily advantageous to have hair around one's nipples?) and especially my pubic area.

I'll shave in the bathtub with a lot of hot, soapy water into which I mix some lavender bath oil that I had swiped from one of my first victims; I like a luxurious bath just as much as anyone. While I'm shaving, I'll watch an MPG of one of my previous conquests playing on a laptop perched on the bathroom counter. The MPG helps me get the mood started, not to mention giving me the erection I need to make shaving easier. After my shaving is complete, I'll masturbate to a particularly intense scene. Jacking off in the tub becomes a complete sensory indulgence -- imagining the lavender fragrance is the scent of my prey, feeling the new smoothness of my skin, watching my prey being victimized again on screen, and hearing the terrified sounds of rape echoing off the bathroom walls -- until my cum shoots from my cock to form white stringy shapes floating lazily in the bath water.

**************

I put all my clothes into the bathtub, hiding them from view. Grabbing the stiletto, I headed back to the living room. Elaine was lying exactly as I'd left her. I slid the knife back into its sheath. The Antoni Stiletto is a wicked looking number, thin but of good quality steel -- Antoni makes good diving knives.

I took out a hunting mask and pulled it over my head. It was a Primos full hood ninja mask that completely covered my head and neck. The generous eye holes gave me plenty of peripheral vision and the mouth opening gave me the ability to, well, use my mouth. Plus, the cammo design was pretty cool and, I imagine, somewhat intimidating to my captives.

I latched up my toolbox and lugged it into the bathroom, putting it into the tub atop the stack of clothes. Opening it again, I pulled out the additional pairs of cuffs I would need for the roommate, arranging them neatly in the tub. A strip of duct tape was lightly attached to the edge of the bathroom counter. Lastly, I pulled a digital camcorder out from the tool kit and carried it to the bedroom.

I put the camcorder down on the nightstand between the two beds. It was a Sharp viewcam with a double battery pack so I could record up to 3 hours -- not that I would ever need that much time. The lens housing swivels from the side of the camcorder's body such that it can be rotated up and down; I don't have to worry about bringing a tripod in order to point the viewcam accurately. That's one aspect of my conquests that I really love: capturing the sights and sounds and replaying them on my laptop after converting them to MPG files. I store the MPGs in an encrypted archive file, which I then burn to a CD and lock away -- no sense in leaving any incriminating evidence on my hard drive.

I returned to the living room for Elaine, bending my knees, sliding my arm under her narrow waist and hoisting her up. She whimpered as I shifted her body onto my shoulder. She wasn't twitching anymore, though her breathing was a little rapid. The slightly acrid smell of her pee-soaked jeans reached my nose as I carried her back to the bedroom. When I deposited her onto the far bed, her whimpering increased, as if fearing what was about to happen. She laid on her left side, facing me, legs bent slightly, hands bound behind her back, blindfold covering her eyes and her mouth taped shut. I checked my watch -- about 20 minutes before her roommate showed up.