Story by Arnold Palmer

Ben had been drinking and dancing with some friends late into a Friday night, celebrating the end of the semester, when he took a break in the bathroom for a fateful selfie. At that moment, Eric was emerging from a stall and had begun washing his hands down the line of sinks from where Ben shot a few photos.
The two exchanged glances; there was a hint of recognition in Ben’s eyes before he quickly turned back to his phone. He was clearly aware of Eric but unable to get out a hello — he was never one to make the first move, preferring to be pursued. On the other hand, maybe he just didn’t recognize Eric.
In fact, Eric knew just who Ben was; the two had matched on Tinder a number of times — an absurd amount of times, really. Eric figured Ben must have been remaking his profile, constantly seeking out attention when matches dried up.

Ben wasn’t the absolute hottest guy Eric had matched with — he had a particular grunge style and an interesting face with a solid-enough bone structure to accrue a minor internet fan base — but there was something about the 21 year old college boy that got under Eric’s skin, a feeling that only intensified once Eric began following him on Instagram. It may have been the self-seriousness that Ben exuded. His profile was littered with selfies, all of which showcased a smug stare; rarely ever a smile. There was a kind of unwarranted self-confidence on display. An aspiring creative, Ben thought he was very smart and very cool, and everything he did was manufactured to put out that aura. He played directly and purposely into the tortured artist stereotype.
Eric generally put it out of his mind; Ben was in school in Philly and didn’t come to New York all that often. But Ben’s latest instagram post, a selfie replete with an obnoxiously verbose caption documenting all the boy’s struggles and accomplishments for the year and ending with a broadcast of plans to go to a Philly gay bar called icandy, had inspired Eric to go hunting that night 80 miles south of home.

Back on the dance floor, Eric saw his opportunity to make a move. Ben’s friends had just left, but Ben had decided to stay back. Eric approached and began dancing alongside of and in front of the boy he was deeming cuter by the minute. Something about Ben’s standoffishness delighted him.
“Hey,” he nodded.
Ben looked him up and down and smiled a little, quickly looking off in another direction. Eric decided to be persistent, and went the route of flattery.
“You’re hot,” he shouted over the music into Ben’s ear. This got Ben to flash a quick smile and blush.
“You wanna dance?” Eric asked.
Ben obliged. “Sure,” he said. The two began to mingle, Eric putting his hands on Ben’s waist, Ben feeling up Eric’s muscled arms. In a few moments, they were grinding on each other, each with a hard-on, and just a few moments after that, they were making out. Even if Ben wasn’t exactly the hottest guy in the club, he did have fantastic lips, the kind that give you something to bite on to.

“I’ve got a hotel room for the night,” Eric shouted over the music. “Wanna come back with me?”
Ben hesitated for a moment, but ultimately agreed to the proposal. “I’ll be right back and then let’s go,” he shouted back. At that, he went to the bathroom once more to take a selfie, posting it with the caption, “Got asked out by the hottest guy in the club. Said I had better things to do.”

Eric had known to expect a selfie at that point from Ben, and when he checked his phone and saw the caption, he laughed. He was going to enjoy snuffing out this arrogant prick.
“Are you a top?” Ben asked as the two were leaving.
“I can be whatever you want,” Eric responded.

Fast-forward thirty minutes. Eric was railing Ben, pulling his hair from behind as Ben shouted in a mix of pleasure and pain. Eric’s muscled body was a fantasy for Ben, and as a result he was willing to let Eric abuse him. Eric loved it, giving the cocky, self-centered artist a good hate-fuck. Ben was thin but with a solid bone structure and a sexy, hairy chest with a thick happy trail. Shame, Eric thought off hand, that he wouldn’t be able to bulk up that frame. The two came twice in the span of an hour and a half of continuous fucking.
“Jesus Christ, I need a break,” Ben said at the end of it, winded, falling back on the bed. He smiled to himself, “Man, you’re so hot.”
“You too, Ben,” Eric winked. “Nice to see you smile.”
“Hah. It happens on occasion.”
“Glad to have given you the occasion.” Eric said.
Ben was beginning to feel a little vulnerable. He was already falling for Eric, and this made him look to exit. “Mind if I use the bathroom?” he asked.
“Not at all, go ahead.”
At that, Ben collected his clothes and went to clean himself off and get dressed to head out. He couldn’t wait to post about his escapades online and made sure to take a quick half-naked selfie for his next Instagram post.

“Shit,” he said, realizing he had left his jeans in the room.
Ben returned to a seemingly empty hotel room. Mildly confused, he called out, “Hello?”
No one answered.
“Eric?” he called out again.
What the fuck? he thought. Where would he go and why would he leave without saying anything? Did he not like it? Questions and doubts swirled around in Ben’s anxious, young twenty-something mind.
A little weirded out, he went to grab his wallet and keys and was halfway through getting his jeans on when Eric snuck out from behind the open bathroom door. Yes, it was a little lame, hiding just to be able to sneak up on someone who already knew you were around, but something about the simulated ambush felt so thrilling. Like a panther, he silently approached Ben, and when just behind him, Eric clamped his hands around the boy’s neck with the speed of a praying mantis grabbing its prey.
“What the fuck— aaaaggggrrkk!” Ben gagged, twisting and flailing to get himself free. “Get off m-gggghhhfff!” Almost 4 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier, Eric would normally have had firm control over the situation, to the effect that he figured he didn’t even need to bother with the drugs he had given to Augusta. But the combo of his black socks, which had allowed him to approach silently, and the polished granite floor, was not something he had thought through. Thrown off balance by the lack of friction and the wild bucking of a gasping Ben, Eric fell backward and hit his head on the granite. Stunned, he momentarily let his grip go, and Ben flew at the chance to escape, coughing all the while, his neck already bruising. He reached the door.
“FUCK!” Ben shouted; the handle was stiff, as if it had been locked from the outside. In fact, it had been. Eric knew the owner of this hotel and had asked for that favor, along with the favor of having the security footage played over so it would appear as if neither Eric nor Ben had ever been there.
Within a few moments, a less-stunned Eric had crawled close enough to get a grasp of Ben’s ankle and yanked the boy to the ground where he was able to wrestle the skinny kid back into his grip.
Eric was now directly on top of Ben, bearing all his weight down, hands completely wrapped around the circumference on the boy’s neck.
“You should have stayed true to your instagram post and said no to me in the first place,” he said.
Ben could barely even gasp, the pressure was so great. His legs flailed, his hands jumped from squeezing Eric’s wrists to batting at Eric’s face, trying to push the attacker away, to pure, useless, panicked twitching at the boy’s side, before moving back again to Eric’s wrists. His face grew redder and redder, and the pure dread in his eyes turned Eric on even more.

Eric decided to up the ante. “Can’t wait to cut your head off,” he said, shooting a little more fight into Ben’s body. More inspiration hit: “I’ve always wanted to snuff a talented artist boy. Maybe I’ll use your skull for a still life,” he laughed.
“Unnffg,” Ben gurgled in high pitch fear. Soon he could barely get vowels out, the sounds becoming more and more guttural. Eric lifted his throat off the ground now, brought him closer to his face, licked up the bridge of his nose. “You’ve been fun to kill,” he said, before slamming Ben’s head down into the floor with a sickening crack. Ben’s eyes rolled back into his skull as he blacked out for a moment, then came back to as Eric shook him. Eric smiled down at him. Ben’s time was running short, and he knew it. The gasps were slowing down, his ams losing their grip on Eric’s wrists. Eric gave one brutally intense squeeze, pushing Ben’s neck down into the floor, cracking his windpipe. Ben’s whole body seized and twitched, his arms falling to his side, then jittering out a few times until they were about a foot spread from his body.
Eric grew impatient with the death tremors and cracked Ben’s head twice more on the hard floor. Ben was completely still.
Eric enjoyed the limpness of his body. He lifted Ben by his full head of hair with his left hand — always a pleasure when the boys had something to grab on to — then gripped the boy’s throat with his right hand. He could get his whole hand almost two thirds of the way around, he realized. He had really crushed the life out of this one.

He stayed on the floor with Ben for a while before stripping him naked and lifting him up into the air with a yank to the boy’s arm, then catching him around the neck, occasionally giving Ben a twist from one side or the other, enjoying the subsequent movement that jolted through his body. After a couple minutes of that, he threw the dead college boy onto the hotel bed, where he continued to massage his neck and admire the death stare. Swollen tongue protruding from a slack-jaw open mouth, half-rolled back eyes, reddened face, purple bruised neck. Like the others, Eric relished in rocking Ben’s head from side to side, keeping his grip tight around the college boy’s throat, once in a while giving a vicious jolting shake, Ben’s thick dick and balls flopping around. Within a few minutes, he was fucking the dead college boy once again, watching Ben staring up at the ceiling, jolting under his thrusts.
Once he had come, Eric wasted little time breaking out the cleaver from a carving set he had packed. Luckily, he didn’t need to carve up the whole boy — his friend at the hotel would attend to it for him and make sure everything in the room was bleached or incinerated, including the rest of Ben’s body. The man owed Eric quite a lot for a drastic favor some years back, and this was their agreement. Whenever Eric wanted the room for a kill, the hotel owner would give him cover.
Eric did want to take Ben’s head as a memento. Pushing the boy off the bed, then lifting his limp body up again by his hair at arm’s length, Eric hacked away at Ben’s neck. Each barrage of the cleaver cut deeper through tendons and muscle, widening the gaping, red hole until after the fourth chop cut clean through the last bit of elastic skin, letting Ben’s decapitated body flop back onto the floor.

Blood was everywhere, so Eric brought Ben’s head into the shower and the two cleaned off. Rock hard, Eric brought Ben’s mouth to his dick and skull fucked the boy vigorously. After a couple minutes, though, he gave up; he had already come three times that night. A fourth was a little much to ask.
Thankfully, he thought, there was room enough in his suitcase to bring Ben’s cute mouth, and the rest of his head, home with him. He’d be getting free blow jobs for days.