My head throbbed, I sat up feeling very wobbly and got to my knees, I must have slipped somehow and hit my head on the stone sink as I fell. I had no idea how long I had been there, but I was nauseous and cold, it must have been a while. Getting to my feet I leant over the sink and wretched, not productively, but my head felt as if it were about to explode. My eyes were not focussing well, and the light was dim. Out of the corner of my vision I saw an old armchair, I staggered to it slumped and passed out again.

                  I’m not sure how long I was out, but blinking my eyes, the ache in my head had stopped throbbing, it was not just a solid pain. I passed my hands over my face and felt my skull, finding quite a deep impression in the back of my head, it felt soft, and when I pressed the pain shifted. It didn’t get better or worse, it just displaced. Christ, I needed a hospital badly. I wanted to get up, but my feet wouldn’t respond. I gazed around for help.

                  Then I saw her, she had dark hair, with flecks of red and purple, completely naked, pale skin, and perky breasts, a moment of pleasure passed through my head, followed in a moment by pain. She was sprawled on a dirty blood-stained mattress, judging by the slash across her throat I guessed completely dead. I followed the trail of dark red sticky blood across the floor to the drain under the sink. Then I realised this is where I slipped. I had no memory of how she got here or who she was, I wanted to look around to see if the killer was still with us in the cellar, but I struggled to move. I needed help. Then again, I slipped away from consciousness.

                  I came too, the girl on the mattress had gone, it must have been a bad dream.

                  “Hello Oliver, I’m glad to see you are back with us”

                  She was standing over the sink, her back to me, long blonde hair, down to the top of her short denim skirt. Her top was white with bright red tripes and tied up around her midriff, showing bare pale white flesh. My libido stirred a little. She wore white trainers, and I could see flecks of red paint on them.

                  “Remember me? Mandy” She asked.

                  I couldn’t, I am sure I wouldn’t have forgotten her, not with that figure.  She stepped backwards towards me slowly turning. My mind was in turmoil, was she the one who had assaulted me? Had she drugged me? I couldn’t move, and just sat there watching.

                  Mandy had two smiles, her mouth was dry and chapped, her skin pale and lined, she looked eighteen going on eighty, she wore another smile beneath her chin, a dark red one, with blood streaming down her top, it was a white top, the red was her blood as was the red on her trainers. She reached out and touched me, I screamed silently within, and then, I knew what had happened.

                  I had killed Mandy, and she was not the only one, now my mind was playing tricks, it was all too much, I passed out again. When I woke, it was like wakening from a bad dream, the pain had subsided, I felt kind of foggy in my sense of what was going on, but I remembered the events that lead me here.

                  The girl on the mattress now inexplicably not there, was Miriam, I had stalked her carefully for several weeks, she never new that, so when I bumped into her a few times in the coffee shop, she never suspected I knew her name, her home and where she worked. Standing behind her in the queue I took in her perfume, brushed against her “accidentally” and I decided I had to possess her. The abduction of Miriam was easy, I had discovered her habit of a late shop at the supermarket after work, she worked late a few nights, and it seemed those nights it was in for a quick and easy ready meal deal with a bottle of wine. All I had to do was pull my large van with the side opening door between her and the car, some chloroform and quickly bundle her into the back through the side door. It took minutes.

                  I had taken other young women over the years, never the same way, firstly it started in clubs, spiking drinks, sometimes walking alone from a railway station or bus stop. They never learned.

                  I kept her mildly sedated, and enjoyed chatting to her in my lounge, I chatted, she sat there her eyes glazed, I made her favourite mocha late coffee, but she didn’t drink it, the rohypnol, prevented her from interaction, I didn’t like that, but it did make her compliant. Eventually I got bored with the one-way conversation and pulled her down the stairs to the cellar. In the cellar she could make as much noise as she liked no one would hear, the fear excited me.

                  Throwing her onto the mattress, I took my box cutter and sliced off all her clothing, piece by piece, she was starting to come out of the drug now, still dazed but but beginning to comprehend. I zip tied her hands behind her back. Holding the box cutter against her throat, she screamed, I pressed it harder, and she became quieter. I undid my flies and forced myself into her. I don’t like to undress in front of them. A few short thrusts and I felt myself becoming overwhelmed by orgasm, she was crying out now and as I came, I slit her throat, and rolled off so as not get covered in blood. I lay there for a while recovering, deep breaths whilst the life ebbed away from her. So, it seems after the high of sex, I slipped one an accumulation of blood, and here I am.

                  I was feeling lighter now, I felt I could move a little more, I must be coming around. Rather than risk another stumble I decided I could wait a while longer, I ought to be cleaning myself up a little before calling an ambulance, maybe I could even make to A&E, that would be better, I really didn’t want emergency services in my house. I shifted around in the chair, testing my ability to move, turning towards the stairs, about to get up and what I saw startled me.

                  Mandy was in front, behind her Miriam, there were others, Karen, Bethany, Laura, Jenny, Chloe, and some whose names I had forgotten and could no longer recognise anyway, many seemed in a terrible state of decomposition. It baffled me, they should all have been behind the brick lining walls I had built around the inside of the basement. I knew it must be an hallucination.

                  Gingerly I rose up from the chair, and brushed past them, they had no form, no substance, as I pushed them aside, each of them fixed their hollow eyes on me

                  “Remember me Oliver, so happy to see you here” each said, it was a little like Stepford Wives, which of course they weren’t they were Oliver’s wives.

                  Slowly I ascended the stairs, feeling better now, the pain in my head had subsided, I reached for the doorknob, but I couldn’t grip it, I turned slowly, all the girls were gazing up at me. They began to melt away, evaporating into the air, as if released from their purgatory.  I looked past them; I saw myself still sprawled in the chair. Who would release me?