It was late when Tracy Johnson got off the bus. She walked two blocks along the main road, then turned onto the side street that led to her townhouse. There was only a half-moon, and only a sliver of that showed over the roof of the building next to her. Barely enough light to see where she was walking. I wish the city would fix that burned-out streetlight, she thought. She was about halfway to her complex, nearly home, when suddenly there was something around her neck, choking her, and a large, heavy body pressed up against hers from behind.
Tracy struggled desperately for about 10 seconds, then the pressure eased a little. She strained her lungs and managed to get a little air.
"Don't scream," a soft, male voice said.
"I won't," the ratgirl whispered, her voice raspy in her ears.
The pressure eased a little more. "I would like to strangle you to death. May I?"
"What? Are you crazy? No. No way in Hell!"
"Then drop your purse on the ground."
Tracy did as he ordered.
"I see you're wearing a wristwatch. Does it tell seconds?"
"Yes."
"I want you to walk away from me, the direction you're facing. Count a hundred steps, then stop. Look at your watch and wait one full minute. Then you can come back and pick up your purse. Will you do that?"
"Why should I?"
"Because I said so." The voice sounded annoyed. "And if you do that, you get to keep your purse and everything in it. If you scream or turn around early, I'll take your purse with me. I'll destroy everything: your IDs, your credit cards, whatever personal stuff you carry around. Do you understand?
Tracy thought about this. What kind of a nutcase? Well, I do want my purse. "Ye-Yes," Tracy stammered.
"Go.
Tracy started walking. She got about twenty steps away, then stopped. He must be the East Valley Strangler. If I can get him to talk... What a story!. But what can I offer him? Money? I only have a few thou, probably not enough to tempt him. Sex? For a scoop like this, I'd be willing to trade sex for an interview.
His voice came out of the dark. "You've stopped walking. Why? Don't you want your purse?"
"How about a trade?"
"What kind of a trade?"
"You give me an interview, I'll give you a blowjob. Or let you fuck me, whichever you like."
He hesitated a moment, then answered. "Nice of you to offer, but I can't."
"You can't?"
"No. Strangling femmes is the only way I can cum."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
Tracy remembered what it felt like when he was strangling her, and became aware of a sensation between her thighs. I'm horny. Why?... Because of the strangling? Tracy remembered back when she was in college, there was a website that had photos of femmefurs with nooses around their necks. Some of them had turned her on. A lot. Then she'd started having sex and forgot about it -- at least partly. What was the name of that artist...Dolcett? And... Shooter45? Yeah. And, oh, yeah, Footie.
"Well, do you want your purse or don't you?"
" Maybe we can still work out a deal. Give me a minute to think, okay."
"One minute."
If I let him strangle me... My cunny wants it, it's all tingly. But... I'll be dead. All the rest of my life for one really good orgasm? But... Thoughts whirled in the ratgirl's head. She pulled one out to try to untangle them all. If I go home alone, I'll be writing about fashion for the rest of my life. Who wore what to which party. How the "beautiful people" were dressed outside the Dolby Theatre on Oscar night. If I work really hard, I'll get promoted to run the Society Desk and assign events to other reporters. And instead of writing Society stories, I'll be rewriting them!
"Well...?"
"Just a little longer. Please? This is maybe my life we're talking about."
"Okay. For that, I'll gladly wait."
I can give him what he wants. And if I do it right, this will get me a Pulitzer. I'll be dead, but I'll be famous! And... Damn, my pussy is being demanding about this! Well...
"If you'll give me an interview, I'll let you strangle me. How's that?" Tracy had spoken before she even realized that she'd made the decision.
"What good is an interview going to do you?"
"An interview with the East Valley Strangler'? A posthumous Pulitzer Prize. That's more than I'll ever accomplish as a Society reporter."
"I can't let my voice be recorded, they could match the voiceprint."
"I've got a laptop and I can type over eighty words a minute. That's almost enough to keep up with speech, and I'll catch up whenever you stop to think. When we're finished, I'll put the file onto a flash drive . Then you get to strangle me and I'll cooperate. Afterward, you can drop it in a street mailbox."
There was silence; a long time, almost a minute. Then, "Okay, it's a deal. You can come back."
"Let's do this in my townhouse. We can sit in comfort and drink coffee." She led him to her townhouse, unlocked the door, and followed him in. "C'mon, take a chair."
The Strangler -- a weasel -- sat down at her kitchen table.
Tracy turned on Mr. Coffee, then pulled her desk chair over to the kitchen table and opened up her laptop. The rat started a new document and typed in the title.
"Let's start, okay?"
"Sure."
"You are known as the 'East Valley Strangler', are you not?"
"Some people call me that. I prefer the 'Courteous Strangler'."
The interview took nearly half an hour, including several follow-up questions. She did a rough edit, then saved the file. She printed the last page and offered it to the Strangler. "This is for you. Call this number; it's a panthress I know in the extreme end of the BDSM scene. She may be able to help you find furs to strangle without having to go around scaring the ones who don't want it."
"And the bodies?"
"I don't know. Maybe she can arrange something. She's pretty resourceful."
"Okay."
Tracy copied the file onto a thumb drive, slipped it into a padded envelope, sealed it, addressed it to the City Editor, and put it on the table. "You'll mail this afterward?"
"I promise."
She stood up. "Time to fulfill my side of the deal." She paused. "Would you like me naked?"
The Strangler looked surprised, then smiled. "I'd appreciate that very much."
Tracy unbuttoned her jacket, slipped it off, and dropped it on her chair. She undid her bra, slipped it off, and dropped that on top of the jacket. She put her hands on her hips and stood for a few seconds, her firm breasts pointing straight at the Strangler. He noticed that her nipples were already erect.
"Wanna play with them?"
Without thinking about it, he reached out and cupped her full breasts in his hands. He leaned down to kiss one nipple, then the other. "You're so beautiful," he said. "I can't believe my luck, finding you."
Tracy stepped out of her shoes. She unzipped her pants, slid them down, and kicked them into a corner of the room. She sat in the chair and pulled off one stocking, then the other, while the Strangler stared at the spot between her legs. She stood up for a moment and slid the panties down, then sat down and pulled them down her legs and off her feet, leaving them on the floor next to her. She spread her legs wide, giving the Strangler a good look at her snatch. "Like it? I keep it close-trimmed -- males seem to like it better that way."
"Oh, yeah! I like it a lot."
"Just a sec." Tracy went into the bathroom, came back with a damp washcloth, and sponged off her nipples and chestfur. "Okay. How do we do this?"
"Stand up facing the wall; that'll make it easy for me to rub myself on you while..." he paused.
"While you strangle me. Don't be afraid to say it." She spread her legs again. "See how wet that makes me?"
The Strangler nodded, afraid to trust his voice.
"Most of the time I'm in favor of DNA evidence," the rat said. "It protects the innocent and helps convict the guilty. But this time I really hate it... Because what I really want is to drag you into the bedroom, rip your clothes off, and give you a blowjob that will leave you so drained you can barely get enough energy to stand up. And then I would get to feel that scarf tight around my neck, with my mouth full of your cum."
"Yeah," he sighed. "Me too. That would be nice. But..."
"Well, I prefer to face you. That way I can rub myself on you while you're frotting on me." Tracy walked over to the wall and pressed her back against it. The Strangler picked up his scarf, wound it twice around her neck, and pulled it taut.
Tracy looked him in the eyes. "I'm so horny I can hardly stand it. Do it!"
He started pulling on the scarf. "Talk to me. Tell me how you feel."
"Uncomfortable. A little frightened, knowing I'm going to die. And also excited." The rat reached down to finger her clit. The Strangler pulled a little harder. Tracy gasped. "More frightened and more excited... I'm starting to drip."
The tension increased. All that came out was a choked whisper: "So... good..." The weasel took a good grip on the scarf and pulled it tight.
Tracy tried to breathe, but her air was completely cut off. This was it! She remembered about the goatgirl pressing herself against the Strangler to increase his pleasure. Me, too, she thought, and started rubbing her mons against the hard spot in his pants.
"Mmmm.... the Strangler moaned as he felt the ratgirl rubbing against him.
Tracy kept sliding herself on the Strangler's erection as long as she could, but soon her need for air was overwhelming. I'm in a race against time, and I don't have much left. She tried to pull away to escape the scarf that was strangling her.
Instead, the Strangler raised his hands and pulled harder, lifting her up on her toes.. He rubbed his bulge against her clit, while imagining her mouth -- her hot, wet mouth -- sliding up and down his erection.
Seconds left... I gotta... She slid herself back and forth, as hard and fast as she could. For the first time since bringing the Strangler home, she was really afraid. I'm not going to make it. I need it so... ... The orgasm took her without warning. YESSSSSS! Tracy went rigid as she came.
The Strangler noticed and rubbed faster. Yes, suck me good, make me cum in your ... Then he was pushing hard against her, semen pumping into the absorbent cloth he'd stuffed into his briefs before going out hunting.
Tracy felt him speed up. Yes, fill my mouth with your cum. Strangle me while the semen drips from one corner of my mouth. She lost consciousness a few seconds later, still coming from the asphyxia and shared fantasy. The Strangler counted slowly to 300, then let go of the scarf long enough to check her pulse. Nothing.
The Strangler pulled out his cell phone and took a few pictures. He stayed around another 20 minutes, just in case, but there was no motion or sign of her breathing. He tucked the printed page in one pocket, the padded envelope with the flash drive in another, then let himself out.
The Linville Beacon's banner the next evening read:
Beacon Reporter Tracy Johnson became the East Valley Strangler's latest victim. Her body was found after the Beacon's City Editor phoned police about an interview we received in the morning's mail. She is the Strangler's 34th victim, according to police. She was found naked, crumpled against a wall of her townhouse.
Police Captain Hiram Warrick told the Beacon: "We have a forensics team going over Ms. Johnson's townhouse. If there's any evidence there, we'll find it. But the East Valley Strangler never left us much in the way of clues. He works areas where the lighting is very dim, and he attacks femmes from behind, so they never get a good look at him. But we're going to keep working these cases until we catch him.
[see Strangler on page A5]
[Strangler, from page A1]
"The odd thing about the Strangler is that most of the time he lets the victims go. He's killed nearly 20 femmes, but we've had over 300 reports from femmes whom he accosted, strangled for a few seconds, asked for permission to kill them, then let them go when they refused. We've never seen a modus operandi like that before."
The Coroner's office told the Beacon that the previous victims had been strangled to death with a silk cloth of some sort, most likely a scarf. The fibers found embedded in the victim's necks, were of different colors and dye patterns.
Linville Police told us that almost all the victims had probably derived some sexual pleasure during their encounter with the Strangler, but there was no sign of penetration, no semen or other DNA evidence to be found at the crime scenes.
Unlike Ms. Johnson, all the Strangler's previous victims were found in an alley or dumpster, fully clothed. This suggests that she had invited the Strangler into her home. Like the other victims, she bore no signs of violence except for the ligature mark, and she had a satiated smile on her face.
Ms. Johnson was able to obtain an interview with the Strangler, apparently paying for it with her life.
Thanks to Ms Johnson's exceptional courage, the Beacon is now able to explain much of the mystery around the Eastside Strangler. Or, as we have learned he prefers, "The Courteous Strangler."
[see Interview, page A8]
page A8
Tracy Johnson's Interview With The "Courteous Strangler"
[Editor's note: some of the Strangler's answers are not suitable for publication in a daily newspaper. The online version of this article contains links to those answers at our sister publication's website, Linville By Night, which deals with adult-oriented entertainment in and around Linville: linevillebynight.com.]
TJ: You are known as the "East Valley Strangler", are you not?
EVS: Some people call me that. I prefer the "Courteous Strangler".
TJ: Why the "Courteous Strangler"?
EVS: Because I always ask permission, and I never kill a femme who doesn't consent.
TJ: Never?
EVS: Never.
TJ: Then why do you keep doing this.
EVS: Because for me, strangling femmes is sex. I can't come without that. Would you be willing to live your entire life without sex? Just a vibrator and whatever fantasies or videos help you get off?
TJ: Umm... no. Not really. But if strangling someone is sex for you, why do you let them go if they say no?
EVS: "If a male propositions a femme and she says no, he's supposed to leave her alone, not rape her, right?
TJ: Yes, but that's for non-violent sex.
EVS: And for rough sex, too. If he wants a fantasy where she pretends to resist, a decent male will stop if she says the safeword, or whatever they've agreed to means she really doesn't want to.
TJ: Yes, but for murder?
EVS: (shrugs) The law says it's murder. For me, it's consensual sex. I wouldn't want to kill a femme who really wants to live. That would be tragic... and immoral. What I do, we both get pleasure from it.
TJ: How did this obsession start?
EVS: It started with a pirate movie I saw shortly after I hit puberty -- twelve or thirteen, I think. The pirates had captured a beautiful young femme. The captain had her tied in a chair with a rope around her neck, and he was torturing her by strangling her, then letting her get a couple of breaths, then strangling her again. I had such a hard-on! I really wanted to be there, strangling her, except I wanted to watch her struggle and die in that chair.
TJ: She was an unwilling victim, but now you only want femmes who are willing to be strangled?
EVS: She was pleading for her life. I didn't like that even then. What I really wanted was for her to be defiant, "Go ahead, strangle me to death, my ghost will haunt you into an early grave." Also, my personal ethics matured over the next few years. I grew to understand about rape and why it was bad, and strangling an unwilling victim would feel like rape. So my fantasies gradually changed. Femmes who wanted, needed to be strangled to death. The flip side of my own fetish: femmes who could enjoy sex most if it ended in their own death.
TJ: Wow! What about the ones who don't consent?
EVS: Same thing as happened earlier. You said no and I let you go.
TJ: When was the first time you killed a femme?
EVS: There was a professional submissive, a guinea pig, that I saw a couple of times a month. Danielle really liked being submissive, she liked being strangled. She charged a lot, but I had a good job. I'd go to her place, we'd play around for a couple of hours. I'd strangle her while we had sex, using a 30-second timer to be safe. Then she decided a minute would be okay.
We went on like that for about 4 months, then one night Danielle told me she wanted to be strangled to death.
[Ed: Full answer at linevillebynight.com]
TJ: How many femmes do you accost -- or proposition -- in a night?
EVS: Sometimes I get lucky and the first one says yes. Like tonight. But mostly I'll hit on three or four and all of them will turn me down.
EVS: Of the nights I go out looking for somebody to strangle, I only score about one night in six.
TJ: That often?
EVS: (smiling) Yes. The asphyxia-snuff fetish is more common than you'd guess.
TJ: What do you do on nights you can't find a willing victim?
EVS: I've got a bunch of videos of femmes being strangled. Faked, of course, but it's enough.
TJ: If you can get off watching videos, why do you go out and kill femmes?
EVS: Do you masturbate when you don't have a partner?
TJ: Of course.
EVS: Is it as good as sex with a male?
TJ: No way. Nowhere near as good.
EVS: That's why. Because jacking off to a video that I know is faked is nowhere near as good as feeling a femme struggling for air, rubbing against her while the scarf slowly strangles the life out of her. As long as I can find femmes willing to do that for me, I'll keep doing it.
TJ: Is there one victim that really stands out in your memory?
EVS: A few years back I was sneaking up on a goatgirl. I was almost close enough to drop the scarf over her head when she stopped and said, "Wait!"
I was startled. Without turning her head, she said, "I've been out walking almost every night, hoping you'd show up and strangle me."
What the? "Umm... you want me to strangle you?"
[Full answer at linevillebynight.com]
TJ: Do you really think you can get away with this forever?
EVS: No. Of course not. In spite of my efforts to make myself unpredictable, sooner or later random chance will catch up with me and I'll go after an undercover cop.
A couple of months later, a short article on an inside page noted that the "Courteous Strangler" seemed to have vanished. There had been no more victims, no more complaints from femmes whom he had accosted. Nobody could figure out what had happened....
Except the members of an exclusive and very private BDSM club a couple of miles from the Beacon's downtown office.
[Answer at linevillebynight.com]
TJ: When was the first time you killed a femme?
EVS: There was a professional submissive, a guinea pig, that I saw a couple of times a month. Danielle really liked being submissive, she liked being strangled. She charged a lot, but I had a good job. I'd go to her place, we'd play around for a couple of hours. I'd strangle her while we had sex, using a 30-second timer to be safe. Then she decided a minute would be okay.
Then one night Danielle told me she wanted to be strangled to death. I was startled; I wasn't ready to go that far back then. But I strangled her and came inside her while she was unconscious. That was really good.
When Danielle came to, she was disappointed. She wanted to "go all the way," as she put it. I suggested that we just pretend I was going to kill her -- that she'd already had the whole experience, and what happened after she lost consciousness couldn't possibly make it any better for her. But she rejected that. She wanted to know that I was not going to let go, that I would keep strangling her until she was dead.
We discussed it a while, and I eventually gave in to her and to my own needs. She knelt in front of me, naked, and took me in her mouth. I half-strangled her while she gave me a slow, senuous blowjob. She liked to swallow my semen, so I let her. Then I pulled the scarf tight. She stayed there, on her knees, letting me strangle her. After a while she started to writhe as her need for air became acute, but she still didn't fight me or anything. I held on until I was sure she was dead, then checked her pulse. She had this lovely expression on her face, but she was just a bunch of still-warm meat covered by fur.
I'd thought strangling Danielle unconscious was good. But actually killing her, watching her body go limp while I strangled her... What I'd experienced before paled in comparison. It was the mostest.
That did it for me. From then on I needed to kill to get full satisfaction. I could watch faked movie clips and get off, but only the real thing was real.
She'd made some arrangement with friends who understood her needs. They took care of things. I don't know how, but her body was never found and there wasn't any police investigation. Or at least none that I ever heard or read about. the web.
[Answer at linevillebynight.com]
TJ: Is there one victim that really stands out in your memory?
EVS: A few years back I was sneaking up on a nanny goat. I was almost close enough to drop the scarf over her head when she stopped, put her hands on her cheeks, and said, "Wait!"
I was startled. She told me that she'd been out walking almost every night, looking for me. I asked if she realized who I was. She laughed and said I was the East Valley Strangler. Every time the Beacon reported on one of my victims, she would use a vibrator and give herself multiple orgasms.
"Just give me a second to get my hand inside my panties. I can only do this once, so I want it to be really good. Okay, go ahead."
I had to ask her. It was a formality, but it was necessary for me. She said yes, she grabbed my scarf and wrapped it twice around her neck, then turned around, leaving the ends dangling.
I took a good grip on the scarf and pulled hard. She let me pull her up against me, then started rubbing her ass against my pants. It was an incredible thrill: even knowing I was going to kill her, she was helping me find pleasure. I can't describe what that was like.
The rest of the encounter went pretty much as usual, but even better than the best I'd known thus far. After a while she started struggling. I ground my cock against her tail. And eventually she sagged against me and I knew the end was near. I came in my pants, then gradually lowered her to the ground, still holding the scarf tight in my hands. When my own breathing had returned to normal, I checked her pulse. She was dead.
I didn't even know the goatgirl's name until I saw the story about her in the Beacon. Garnett. My second-best sex partner, after Danielle. I'll remember her. If they catch me, my last words before they inject the drugs will be "I love you, Danielle, Garnett, I'll be joining you in a few minutes."