The Eighth Man

    Emma Lou stood by the bed, watching David sleep. Half a sleeping pill in the bottle of ale had knocked him out sooner than she expected. 
    Maybe it’s for the best, she thought. I can finish here and be out of the state earlier.

    On-line dating had been Emma Lou’s hobby for several years. She knew she was lying to the men she met through dating sites as much as they were lying to her. She had worked at keeping in shape, so it didn’t take much to convince these over-confident men that she was their equivalent of Raquel Welch at twenty-five. 
    Over-confident losers, she mused. The closet cross-dresser. The “I’m so hot I can barely stand myself” narcissist. The former jock who thought a beer gut at forty-seven made him as sexy as his toned physique had made him at sixteen. 
    There were others. Most of whom she had managed to forget.

    David was different. He hadn’t pretended to be anything he wasn’t. He was an average guy, with a decent job and no obvious bad habits. Emma Lou figured a long weekend together would expose any irritating personality traits. 
    It was early Sunday evening and David had been sweet and attentive for three days. They had had lengthy conversations about nothing, long drives down country roads, and David had even held her hand while they were walking through a roadside park. When she had suggested picnicking in this abandoned farmhouse surrounded by woodland he had laughed and said it sounded like a good way to finish the weekend.

    After a nice picnic in the living room, they moved to the bedroom where an antique sleigh bed in near-perfect shape was still residing. A quilt Emma Lou brought along served nicely as a clean surface over the old mattress and they had spent a sweet afternoon enjoying each other’s bodies.

    But now Emma Lou realized she had fallen in love with David, a complication she had neither expected nor wanted. She had searched many on-line dating sites looking for the man who had stolen from her with his lies and sweet promises. So far her search for him had been futile, but she had prevented some troublesome males from making victims of unsuspecting women like she had been. Love had not been considered while she was making her plans.

    She ran her fingers through David’s wavy brown hair. It was soft and curled around her fingers as she gently turned her hand. It was long enough to curl over his shirt collar and across his forehead. Perhaps she could keep a curl.
    No souvenirs, she reminded herself, and pulled her hand away. She looked at the straight razor in her other hand, then shoved it into a back pocket.

    The eighth grave would remain empty.