May, 1979



"What…did you take the fuckin' scenic route? I called your place an hour ago!"



Detective Donelly stepped carefully from the cab of his pickup truck and slammed the door, sending the rusty clunker rocking and squealing in tired protest.



"Ah, go fuck yourself, Kimble," he grumbled. "You wanna tell me what's so fuckin' important that I had to cancel a meeting with my fuckin' divorce lawyer?"



"It's the Italian," said Detective Kimble. "We got a suspect in custody."



Donelly stopped and shook his head.



"See, this is the shit I'm talkin' about. Why didn't you fuckin' tell me on the phone that we had the Italian? Jesus!"



Donelly didn't care much for his partner. Detective Kimble was young, athletic, good-looking and, worst of all, knew it. But the asshole couldn't handle a case like the Italian on his own. Donelly, who had just celebrated his retirement a week before the murders began, was sorely regretting ever answering the phone that night exactly one month ago. But he needed the money.



"Gimme the…gimme the report, I'll read it on the way… down," he huffed. His ex-wife had been right. He was out of shape. A simple jog across the small front parking lot shouldn't have winded him like this. He was barely fifty.



"You are not gonna believe the shit you're about to hear," Kimble laughed as the two men headed down the grungy, dimly-lit corridor to the interrogation rooms. "I mean, man."



"No shit," said Donelly. "We're talkin' mutilations, here. This guy ain't no fuckin' princess."



Kimble smirked in that arrogant way all cocky sons-of-bitches do.



"That's not how she tells it," he said as held open the door to room 22.



"She?" Donelly murmured, scratching his doubled chin.



She, the report read, was a petite young woman in her early twenties, busted for prostitution in a cheap motel. No ID was found, but she had rented the room under the name Brier Rose Dornröschen. Donelly lingered outside the room, scanning the report for any further details that caught his eye, but none of it matched up to their profile of the Italian – so named because victims were always found with their veins and strings of muscle tissue twirled up in neat piles on a Corelle china dinner plate. Like spaghetti fresh off a fork.



"Let me know when you're ready," said Kimble. "I've gotten all I can out of her, which is a lot of seriously weird shit, but nothing directly related to the murders. Maybe you can work that famous Bruno Donelly magic, eh?"



Donelly flipped through the pages of the report until a pair of Polaroids tumbled out.



"Gimme a minute," he said.



He stooped to pick up the fallen photographs. One, fuzzy from underexposure, showed what looked like an antique wooden spinning wheel, splattered with red. There was a note scrawled in black ink on the Polaroid's white base.



"Sent sample to lab," it read.



In the other picture was a long wooden spindle, bare except for similar crimson stains. It was lying on a china dinner plate, and the pattern was a familiar one.



"Holy shit, lookit that," Donelly murmured, fumbling in his shirt pocket for his glasses.



"You wanna hear the best part?" asked Kimble.



"Hmm," Donelly mumbled.



"Says she was born in seventy-six."



Donelly snorted.



"That would make her about three years old."



"No, not nineteen-seventy-six," said Kimble. "Fifteen-seventy-six."



Donelly ignored his partner's attempt to be clever and peeked inside the interrogation room.



"You seriously think that toothpick in there did all this? You gotta be kidding me."



"Huh-uh. Also says she's a Germanic princess."



"Ah boy," Donelly groaned. "Gonna be a long night."



"You think maybe we should get Barry in here?" asked Kimble



"Nah, he's on vacation. Repainting the house or some shit," said Donelly. "I never liked being in the same room with that guy, anyway. Something about 'im… I don't know. Gives me fuckin' creeps."



* * * *



She was beautiful - flawless porcelain skin, enormous blue eyes, and golden hair that must have been the pride and joy of every stylist who had ever put a brush to it. Sure, she was rough around the edges like all streetwalkers but definitely worth a second look. And it was a pity. Her beauty was natural but such a sharp contrast to the ugly, shameless uniform of her trade.



What puts a pretty girl like this on the streets? Donelly wondered. Weren't all the pretty ones supposed to marry nice guys, break their hearts, and then take all their money in divorce settlements?



"Ms. uh… Dornröschen," he began. "You know why you're here, don't you?"



The girl said nothing but fixed her cold eyes on his. An ash from her cigarette, still hot, made a faint singeing sound as it landed in the lap of her black, vinyl minidress.



"Have you heard of the serial killer we call 'the Italian'?" he asked.



The girl took a drag and blew out the smoke slowly, deliberately.



"Yes."



Donelly glanced at his partner, who was staring at the ceiling. These were questions Kimble had likely already asked.



He cleared his throat and continued.



"Yeah," he said. "Well, we have reason to believe you know quite a bit about those murders, Ms. Dornröschen. Maybe even more than we do."



The girl's eyes narrowed.



"Is that what you think?" she said softly with a distinctly German accent.



Kimble grew impatient.



"Why don't we start with the spinning wheel, Brier Rose? The one we found in your motel room, covered in blood?" he asked.



The girl kept her eyes locked on Donelly. Kimble leaned back in his chair and cursed under his breath.



"Ms. Dornröschen," said Donelly. "Would you tell me where you got that spinning wheel?"



The girl grinned.



"From Hell," she hissed, eyes wide.



"Oh, so now she's the princess of Hell!" Kimble laughed. "This shit gets more entertaining every minute."



"Detective Kimble," said Donelly, turning to his partner.



"What?"



"Get the fuck outside."



His partner glared for several awkward seconds before throwing up his hands and standing.



"Fine," Kimble spat as he stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him.



Donelly turned back to the girl, whose eyes, it seemed, had never wavered from his face. He felt a chill travel down his spine.



"Ms. ah… I'm just gonna call you Brier Rose, if that's all right," he said. "Brier Rose…"



Sigh of reluctance. Step one of "that old Bruno Donelly magic."



"Look, I don't think you're guilty. I don't know how that spinning wheel and the china plate factor into all this, but I know in my gut that you're innocent," he said.



Step two. Warm, understanding smile.



"But my partner, well. He's young. He's what we call a 'rookie.' Thinks every suspect he digs up is 'the one.'"



Step three. Camaraderie.



"But in order to help you," said Donelly. "I need you to be perfectly straight with me. Don't lie to me, I don't care how bad it looks. We got a deal?"



The girl was unfazed.



"You think you can fool me with your trickery," she laughed. "You think I'm some lost, unfortunate soul who yearns for kindness and understanding from anyone who will only take the time. Mr. Donelly, you have no idea who you are dealing with. No idea at all."



Donelly coughed.



"Why don't you tell me who I'm dealing with, then?" he asked.



He could have sworn he saw a fire spark in the girl's eyes.



"I have lived through more than you can imagine in your wildest nightmares," she seethed. "You cannot even begin to fathom the horrors to which I have been subjected by man and time itself. My age and experience alone are enough to demand your respect. So, Mr. Donelly, don't you dare try your poison on me."



Donelly swallowed audibly. The girl continued.



"You would have been a servant in my day, do you know that?" she said. "To speak of me by my Christian name within my hearing would have cost you the flesh upon your back."



She drew again from the waning cigarette.



Donelly blinked.



"Yeah…um," he faltered. "Excuse me."



Blotting beads of sweat from his forehead, Donelly stepped outside to where his partner waited.



"Nuts, isn't she?" said Kimble.



"Call Barry Leeds," said Donelly. "Tell him his vacation's over."



* * *



Dr. Barry Leeds had been a forensic psychiatrist for twenty-five years and had interviewed every manner of scum and victim alike. He had beady little eyes behind double-thick glasses, slicked-down brown hair that formed a wreath around his bald head, and an enormous nose which left little doubt he had once been the misfit of his class. Watching him from behind the one-way glass, Donelly noted that he looked a little like a mortician. Leeds never seemed affected by anything. Not the most heinous murder, not even an utterly devastated mother of a victim… nothing. Donelly never liked the man.



"Good afternoon, Brier Rose," Leeds greeted in a dull voice. "How did you sleep last night?"



The pretty blonde seated across the table toyed with a button on her new, state-issued blue jumper.



"Doktor Leeds," she said with a teasing grin. "Don't pretend to be friendly with me…unless you're going to be friendly with me. And if you're going to be friendly, well…I'm afraid I'll have to charge you my usual fee."



"Sounds like Her Highness got her beauty rest last night," said Kimble.



"Shut up and get me some coffee," Donelly snapped.



"Fuck you, man. Get your own."



On the other side of the glass, Leeds smiled politely.



"Can I get you some water?" he offered, pouring himself a glass.



The girl twirled a golden strand of hair around her finger.



"You can get me anything you like," she breathed.



Leeds paused a moment before jotting a quick note on his memo pad. As usual, he was unaffected. Even the way he poured a glass of water seemed astoundingly by-the-book. Meanwhile, the girl was watching him, studying him like a hungry cat.



"Let's start from the beginning," Leeds continued.



"The beginning of what?" asked the girl as she slumped back in her chair. "Your case? My life? My virgin years?"



She's testing him, Donelly noted. Fuckin' women.



"Brier Rose, do you understand the charges against you?" asked Leeds with a hint of irritation.



The girl cocked her head to one side.



"Ms. Dornröschen," Leeds persisted. "Do you understand—"



"I bet you like them young, don't you Doktor?" the girl interrupted. Her eyes brightened with mischievous delight.



Leeds dropped his pen.



"Excuse me?" he stammered.



"Old Barry's off his game today," Kimble snorted.



"Yeah," said Donelly with a chuckle. "I think that's the most reaction I ever seen anybody get out of that motherfucker."



Unless, he thought, this gal is just one of those sick minds who always knows what buttons to push.



"Never mind," the girl said with a quiet giggle. "And yes. I understand the charges. How much longer do you men intend to keep me here before my trial? "



Leeds cleared his throat and scribbled more notes.



"We'll get to that. Why don't you tell me about the uh… the spinning wheel found where you were staying? What do you know about that?" he asked.



"It's simple, really. I hate men," said the girl with a bored sigh. "And I hate sewing."



Behind the glass, Donelly and Kimble laughed.



"If you hate men, why are you selling yourself on the streets?" said Leeds. "And if you hate sewing, why the antique spinning wheel? Explain this. If you could."



The girl's smile faded and her eyes fell to her lap.



"Do you know the story of 'Sleeping Beauty'?" she asked without looking up.



"Yes," answered Leeds with hesitation. "It's my niece's favorite."



"How do you tell it to your niece?"



"I tell her the story we all know, of course."



The girl glared at her interviewer, her face twisting into a parade of emotions.



"No!" she cried, and she began to tremble. "Tell me the story you tell her."



Here we go, Donelly thought.



"Shit, this is gettin' good," said Kimble, mesmerized. "I'm gonna get some coffee, you want some coffee?"



Leeds froze.



"I'll tell it," said the girl with a twitching smile. "But it's not the fairy tale you remember."



"Once upon a time," she began in a low voice. "There was a king and a queen who couldn't have a child. The queen prayed. She prayed to God and received no answer. She prayed to The Holy Virgin…no answer. So she prayed to the Devil. Not long after, she found she was pregnant. She never told anyone what she had done…only the witch who helped her with her evil prayers knew, but the queen feared her sins would be discovered regardless. So she ordered the witch killed. Finally a daughter was born. Invitations for the christening were sent to every nobleman and woman in the country. It was a ridiculous event. But…after all the blessings and gifts were given, who should suddenly made an appearance before everyone in the court? The witch. Either the queen's henchmen had failed or the witch just couldn't die… Whatever the case, she was furious, and she cursed the baby. The witch prophesied that on the princess's 17th birthday, she would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die."



"You're talking about yourself," Leeds suggested. "Is this in..."



He flipped through his notes.



"…1567?"



She ignored him and continued.



"But there was another witch, one who only practiced good magic, and she was able to weaken the curse. She couldn't undo the evil completely. She wasn't powerful enough, but she changed it so that the princess would not die but fall into a deep sleep. Now, the king tried his best to destroy all the spinning wheels, but fate can't be fooled. The princess succumbed to the curse…pricked her finger on a spindle and collapsed immediately."



There was a long pause before she spoke again. Donelly felt cold and wondered if it was only his imagination.



The girl went on.



"The story you tell your niece, Mr. Leeds, says that the entire kingdom was put to sleep emwith/em the princess so that she wouldn't wake alone. The story you tell your niece says she only slept for a hundred years, but no, no…" she said. "That is where the truth becomes a tale… a tale they told so that no one would ever know what cowards they truly were. They locked the princess…."



"Take your time," said Leeds as the girl began to cry.



"They locked the princess in a tower," she said with a trembling voice. "With the cursed spinning wheel beside her bed, and they forgot her while the rest of them went on with their lives. The princess lay at the mercy of the world around her. Spiders built webs across her face. Servants – thieves, all of them – crept in and stole the jewels she wore. And the guards… The guards would use her body again and again and again! In more perverse ways that even you, Doktor, can imagine. No one cared because no one thought she was aware. They didn't know that only the princess's body was asleep. They didn't know that her mind was very much alive!"



"Jesus. Someone fucked this girl over bad," Donelly murmured.



Kimble was speechless for once.



"Go on," said Leeds, who remembered to take notes again.



The girl dried her eyes.



"For three hundred and eighty-one years, the princess's body lay frozen in time… immune to age and disease and all but man himself," she said. "Nearly four centuries! The curse would have been far more merciful had it been left at death. Don't you understand? She could hear, feel, smell, think… but she couldn't open her eyes to see what was coming. Couldn't raise her arms to defend herself! She survived wars and disasters and was passed like an artifact from land to land until at last she ended up in the collection of an eccentric underground art collector. There among his other prized and stolen possessions, he used her body just like everyone else. And then one day…"



She gazed into an imaginary distance, a smile playing upon her lips.



"I woke up."



"And what happened when you woke up?" asked Leeds.



The girl locked eyes with him and smiled widely.



"Four hundred years is a long time to be angry," she whispered. "A very long time."



She took a sip of water.



"I went to sleep with everything in the world and woke up with barely even my own self underneath the fat, sweating body of a thief with my skirt pulled up to my chin," she said. "And when I woke, I drove my knees into the bastard's teeth. And then I reached up, grabbed his drooling tongue, and used the broken fragments in his mouth to cut it from his head. This way, I couldn't hear him begging for mercy when I used my spindle - which the curse had kept bound to me all those years – and tore out his bowels."



"Holy shhhhhit," Kimble gasped.



Donelly covered his stomach with his hands.



"What happened to the art collector?" asked Leeds. "What did you do with the body?"



"I left him there. It wouldn't surprise me if he's still there, rotting, to this day," said the girl with a sickly-sweet smile.



Leeds cleared his throat.



"Where did you go from there?" he asked.



"I was homeless for a time, living off the charity of strangers," the girl answered, running her fingers through her hair. "Because I was pretty, there were people who took me in from time to time. Fed me… educated me. It was a wealthy couple who helped me with my fragmented English. They never asked about my past, and I reduced myself to voluntary servitude as thanks. But the wife threw me out when she found her husband with me. That was four years ago."



"Is this when you turned to prostitution?" asked Leeds.



"Of course. No one else wants you without those three little words," the girl said with a cynical chuckle. "Social Security Number. Besides, I'd had enough experience with perversion to keep a certain type of customer base very loyal."



"What do you mean by that?"



She twirled another strand of hair around her finger and gazed at him lazily.



"There are some services even a whore won't perform," she said softly. "But I will."



She leaned forward.



"Shall I demonstrate?"



"N-no, I'd rather you didn't," Leeds blurted. "I'd like to ask you about the spinning wheel again."



"Anything you like, Doktor."



"What do you do with it?"



"'I make sweaters out of people, doctor!'" Kimble joked, affecting a girlish voice.



"Shut up, Kimble," Donelly snapped. "I wanna fuckin' hear this."



The girl sat still for a long time, staring at Leeds… or through him. She smiled pleasantly.



"I want to hurt people," she said softly after a long while. "People left me in the dust and forgot me like a broken broom. People soiled and violated me for centuries. I wasn't even permitted the mercy of death. You sit there and make your educated notes while your men watch from behind that mirror, but none of you can possibly understand the evil I have suffered."



She rose slowly, tears trickling down her cheeks. Behind the mirror, the detectives tensed.



"What I have done is a service, not a crime," she declared. "Yes, I did it. Yes, I murdered all those men. Yes, oh yes, Doktor, I twisted their insides onto my wheel of wrath like the useless cloth I was taken for all those years. I did it slowly and watched them suffer for hours, and I laughed. Laughed as I left their insides on a plate to be fed upon just as my body was left to the insects. I despise mankind, Doktor, and their disgusting spawn. With the devil as my maker and my witness, I will destroy you all!"



Before anyone so much as blinked, the girl had toppled her water glass and shattered it. With one broken shard in her bleeding hand she lunged at the doctor and buried the glass in his stomach.



"Holy fuckin' shit!" Kimble shouted.



Donelly drew his gun and rushed with his partner to the melee.



"Brier Rose, get back!" he ordered. "Get back NOW!"



The girl was oblivious to the detectives and to the cops who joined them, weapons poised and ready.



"I'm paying for my mother's sins, Doktor!" she cackled to the struggling, bleeding man. "And you're paying for the sins of your sex!"



"I'm gonna shoot!" Donelly shouted.



"Go on, Detective, kill me!" the girl screamed with a maniacal laugh. "End my curse!"



"Your curse ended already, Brier Rose. I understand your hatred - God knows I'm bitter, too, but damn it! You're going to murder an innocent man! " Donelly yelled. "This is your last warning! Don't fuckin' do this!"



The girl screamed with laughter and twisted the glass. From Leed's stomach, a fountain of blood welled like scarlet oil.



Kimble shot first. Donelly and the backup officers followed. It took seventeen bullets to fell the girl, and when it finally ended, it was as if she had simply fallen asleep. She slid to the floor with a gasp and was dead, her golden hair matted with dark clots of her own blood.



"Get the paramedics! NOW!" Donelly barked over the bloodied bodies of the forensic psychiatrist and the girl.



Amid the shouts of orders and the scuffle of emergency workers, no one noticed until she lay in the morgue that the girl had died smiling.



****



Two days later.



Need to get a key ring, Donelly reminded himself as he felt blindly in his coat pocket for the familiar jigs and jags of his apartment door key. Ever since he had given his old house key to his ex-wife, he had never gotten around to putting the rest of his keys back together.



"Heya, Buddy," he said to the Jack Russell who waited, shirt tail fwapping vigorously from side to side, for his master to come in. "Bet you thought I was never coming home, huh?"



The dog whined in agreement.



"Mean old Mommy wanted to take you with her, but I saved you, didn't I? Yes I did! Yeeeees," Donelly cooed, scratching the dog's ears.



In the living room, the answering machine was blinking.



"Let's go see who called, ah?" said Donelly. Buddy chuffed.



"Bruno, it's Carrie. I talked to the lawyer today, and he says…"



Donelly grumbled and fast-forwarded through the machine tape.



"Bruno, it's Carrie again. I forgot to mention the lawn mower.."



Fast-forward.



"Hallo, Detective Donelly," began the next message. The caller sounded like an older woman. A European woman. A creepy, old European woman. "I'm sorry to have missed you. I wanted to call and congratulate you on catching the 'Italian', though I believe she was more of a seamstress, was she not? All the same, I feel the world is a much better place without the princess. You're doing God's work, you know. I shall call again soon. Perhaps. There's a story I would like to tell you. Until then... Good night."emClick/em.



Donelly felt a sudden chill before the questions began to flood his mind. Who was this woman and how did she get his home number? The details of the case hadn't been released yet. How did this woman know the suspect had claimed to be a...?



Either this woman was related to one of the victims or someone had been talking to the press, Donelly decided. He picked up the phone and began to dial.



"Maybe she's just a scary old witch, eh, Bud?" he said as he dialed. Buddy wagged his tail approvingly.



Scary old witch.



Donelly shivered and put down the phone.



Either the queen's henchmen had failed or the witch just couldn't die…



Just couldn't die…



The phone began to ring. Donelly didn't answer.