Are the Lambs Still Screaming Clarice?
March 21, 2011
I think my friend is dating a serial killer. In fact I’m certain of it. Millicent is a very attractive woman: early 40’s, good job, great sense of humour, and newly single…a veritable catch for any man. I’m not trying to convince anyone here, although I do have a listing on EBay if you’re interested; I’m looking for triple figures but I suspect if you shell out for a bag of chips and café latte she’ll be yours.
I digress.
Millicent was recently most surprised when her water softener man, hereafter known as Mr Salty, asked her out to dinner. Should I go? She asked, what do you think? There was no real physical attraction she admitted but, not yet being in possession of all the facts, I suggested she went for it. What was there to lose? Throw caution to the wind and go to dinner with Mr Salty I urged. So she did.
Our conversation after this point was confined to texting and the odd email. Both parties reside in a very small village; the kind that has 3 houses, 10 pubs and a very shallow gene pool. My understanding at this stage was that he was a gentleman farmer with his own teeth and huge tracts of land and I figured that alone was at least worth a quick fumble in the back of her Porsche.
Yet still she seemed ambivalent about the whole thing. I knew they were planning to go out again and in my last email I asked if Mr Salty was still in picture to which the reply was basically: he’s hard work and got to go.
This morning we had breakfast and I learned the full story. First I learned of the dull day out in the country followed by a disastrous dinner date. I was not worried. My last date fancied Katie Price and thought that Victor Hugo was ‘that bloke that bought the razor company’. These evenings of despair and boredom are par for the course in the wide ocean of dating.
But then I established a few key points regarding Mr Salty and the alarm bells starting ringing.
1. He still lives with his parents. Father seems pleasant, mother is a curtain twitcher.
2. Lives on farm in remote rural area…with cows. And probably sheep.
3. Wears Christmas jumpers his mother clearly bought him…in March.
Clearly Mater and Pater had sent their son (who has never married and, I strongly believe, never touched a real woman. Or a live one at any rate) out into the world to find a good breeding filly and stud her. I suspect they were starting to get concerned about the noises coming from the cowshed in the wee hours.
Now if this isn’t enough to get you thinking about the likes of Ed Kemper or Ed Gein, I would offer up two further pieces of evidence for your consideration:
A text message after Shrove Tuesday:
Hi.
It’s me.
How were your pancakes?
My pancakes were nice.
I like fava beans.
And a nice Chianti.
And voice message received just the other day:
Hi.
It’s Mr Salty.
You’ve been away for the weekend.
I’ve been away for the weekend too.
First it puts the lotion on its skin.
Or else it gets the hose again.
This is clearly a man who has been abducting newspaper delivery boys for years and stashing the bodies under the farmhouse porch. Any day now father will run off with the local barmaid and mother will become a mummified husk sat in a rocking chair in the attic, whilst Mr Salty turns his dates into lamp shades and waistcoats with breasts.
What is a girl to do? Spurn him and you run the risk of neighbourhood pets mysteriously vanishing and of being woken at four a.m. by the sound of screaming lambs. Continue with the charade of sexless, joyless, conversationless dating and you put yourself in danger of being turned into his next set of leather antimacassars and bone cruet set.
This is why I stay single people.
I’m starting to wonder if I might have criminal potential as a serial arsonist. I’m quite fond of the US television show, Criminal Minds, which for those of you not in the know if about the Behavioural Analysis unit of the Eff Bee Eye. One of things the things seem to look for, when checking the histories of potential serial arsonist/serial killer profiles, are series of small unexplained fires occurring around the alleged offender, and recently I seem to have been at the scene of several.
There was the candle on the sideboard, which somehow inadvertently shifted position and ended up directly underneath the wooden blind, which of course began to heat up and smoke. Thanks to a swift intervention disaster was averted.
Which also leads to wonder if I have a hero complex well…
Then there was the car…’hmm this engine smells hot…’
‘hmm there’s a warning light on the dashboard…’
‘hmm there’s smoke from coming under the bonnet…’
‘argh! Flames!’
That didn’t end well, hence why I no longer drive a Toyota.
And then there was the shower incident.
‘Gosh’ I thought, ‘This shower is getting very steamy’ as I lathered my hair, and then turned around to be greeted by smoke and melting plastic emanating from my electric shower.
A ruined shower was by no means the worst that that day had to throw at me. In order to finish my ablutions, I drew a bath and tried to lower myself gently into it.
It was like trying to stuff a haggis into a loaf tin. It was never going to end well. A tsunami swelled at both ends of the tub and cascaded over the sides.
Still, I rinsed my hair and threw down a few towels.
I then dried my hair, pulled on a shirt and headed downstairs. Yeah, funny thing about water how it can trickle downwards and all that.
I hit the third step from the bottom, which was wet, and did a dramatic somersault and landed face down in a puddle with my left ar twisted out at a mosst unusual angle whilst chunks of artex from the ceiling landed on my head.
Fires, floods…I’m just waiting for plagues and famines next…
