Wanting so very much to know what he’s doing back at home.
I’m not there, but he is. There’s something arousing about having this knowledge. His business is there. Home. Where she is. His latest. She probably still believes he’s the one. The one perfect for her, and that they’re about to share something intimate and personal.
Oh Victor. She’ll always know his name.
What he says and does are perfectly timed. It’s always the right thing. For her at least. Always for the one he has in mind at the time.
There’s something fragile about the scene he projects. He expends so much energy trying to make it happen, not showing how much of a fighter he is deep down, beyond the expensive clothing, the practiced gestures, and the beautiful, flirtatious things he says.
She’s saying, “I can’t believe this. You’re too good to be true.”
They aren’t like me. They’re the women of the world too oblivious to see past his projected image. He’s not your type. He is my type. And that’s why you can’t imagine what it is he’s doing to you. I’m telling you, I love every minute of it.
It’s like sex but he’s really killing her.
He’s telling the woman, “I love you.”
But what does that even mean?
He’s telling the woman, “You have beautiful eyes,” right as everything goes right for him and wrong for her. So quickly the scene can unfold without notice.
The smell of his expensive cologne counters the smell of her shitting herself. Thankfully he’s already making use of the cage. He localizes the mess to one corner where the slaughter can be flushed out with a simple turn of a nearby faucet. In this rainy city, a victim’s remains wash out the following day, long before the morning turns over to afternoon. And the neighbors below me are too afraid of what it all is. They wouldn’t care either way.
He’s excusing every sound as his own—“Pardon me,” and when her necklace breaks and drops to the floor, he’s saying, “Let me get that for you.”
He places it in the open palm of one of her hands. She’ll try but fail to close her hand. The sound of dripping isn’t just urine. Hear the blood dripping down into the drainpipe.
He addresses every victim as “Miss” or “Ma’am,” and I’m certain he continues to do and say the same things until there’s nothing left but the body. There won’t be a mess when I get back. There’ll only be him, the perfect gentleman. When he’s with me, he turns into pleasure, natural pleasure. And we’re talking about her, and her, and the other her, whoever his last one was, like we might be able to surpass one with the one that’ll inevitably come next.
I’m always thankful to see what he’s done to them when I return from class.
He cleans up the body after every bloodletting. “I’ll take care of that,” and “There you go, all better!” His kind regards make them all look like perfect, porcelain dolls. And the way he leaves them, they’re seldom any more than a fixture of his mounting legacy.
Like a true gentleman, when I return home dinner is ready.
And I’m hungry for everything.
And he’s willing to give.
Saying, “Pardon,” and “Allow me.”
When I arrive, he’s pulling off the gentleman disguise and he’s turning into someone I can no longer live without. That expensive suit is his disguise and that’s fine for her. But me, I’m craving the scene under his clothing, the scene he saves for me.
4.
Just in case she’s still conscious enough to see my face, I turn the knob three times. That’s the warning we’ve discussed. Unlike him, I’m not so open about letting her know anything about me, be it my face or my name.
Maybe she’s not going to last much longer, but I’m not comfortable with it, and so I give the warning, wanting to get the hell inside because it’s raining again—when is it not?—and I want to take off these wet clothes and warm up next to his body.
I unlock the door and slip through, the door never open any wider than a crack.
He’s already done with her, with the meal, and I catch him slipping out of his underwear.
I say, “Hi,” in as cute a voice as I can manage.
He’s not quite smiling, not quite nodding, “Hello.”
This is the killer inside. I get to see what goes on, behavior and otherwise.
Whenever I’m around, I take over, and he’s nothing but a man waiting to satisfy my every beckon and call. I tell him what to do.
“Sit down,” and he sits down.
I drop my purse next to the front door and, in five steps, I have all my clothes off. I stop at the thermostat and turn up the heat.
“Where is she?” I ask.
His head drops, staring blankly at the placemat in front of him.
I’m walking over to the cage and I’m poking my head through the windowless frame.
Not a mark remains, and I’m wearing an unsatisfied smirk as I sit down at the table. He’s standing back up to portion out the meal.
He made me curry, exactly what I wanted tonight.
I didn’t have to tell him that. He knows what I’ll want and when I’ll want it. It’s all part of our agreement.
He’s sitting back down and I’m telling him, “Explain to me your day,” because that’s also part of our agreement.
He isn’t protesting—why would he?—and he’s telling me about her, where he found her, how he kissed her. Told her the story about a bad breakup and how he toyed with calling her all day before finally doing so. All throughout the explanation, we take in mouthfuls of curry. It seems to lighten his mood a little, the more he talks about how he tended to her. A truly perfect gentleman, he’s telling me about how he made sure the blood didn’t settle on the floor for too long. If it had, the blood would stain. I’d have to get the linoleum replaced. It has happened before, and I told him to keep the cage really clean. I stressed how important it was to stick to protocol in order to keep the neighbors from smelling her, whoever she is and whenever she comes and finally goes, and he agreed. For the time being, he’s been great about it.
What isn’t so great, and what I’m finding myself more than a little annoyed, is how bad he is with explanations.
“I need details,” I’m saying.
He’s replying, “But I already told you. . .”
I’m all about forgiveness if its justified, but this is a big part of our agreement.
I support you financially. I give you a place to hide. I make sure you are never under suspicion of being what you really are, a cold-blooded psychotic killer (so hot), and in return you clue me into your process. You become mine.
You do what I say, when I say it.
You keep everything to the letter, clean and proficient, and I’ll always be your best friend, your best lover, your perfect and reasonable master.
Master and pet.
This isn’t something impossible to maintain. I’ve done it before and I’m willing to do it again, better than ever before. But he has to give me those details.
“I need every single aspect of it explained.” He’s looking a little doubtful and it’s enough to turn me off. Turn me away. Make me not want to walk around naked.
But he’s trying again, better this time, but it’s still not good enough.
Dinner is over.
He’s standing up, using the opportunity to gather all the details, but then I’m standing up too, walking into the kitchen, right at his side.
I’m grabbing and saying, “Don’t drop the plate. It will shatter all over you.”
It wasn’t supposed to be a threat, but it turns into one, and he’s going over every single word, every single thing I told him—the if/else statement—and he’s maybe already buckling under the weight of my own demands. But it’s my roof, my place, my support structure, and I’ve already made my investment, so I give him a chance.
I’m finding myself wanting him more because of all that he’s done prior to meeting me. He’s not inexperienced. He is a professional.
&nb
sp; I’m still remembering the loneliness and the searching, ceaseless searching, and I don’t have it in me to go right back to it again, so I’m telling him:
“I’ll figure something out.”
I give him a stroke or two, and it’s enough to calm him. He’s turning to me and touching me. The half-inch or less of space between us is warm and getting warmer. He’s placing the plate in the sink and we’re entering my bedroom and we’re getting hot, real hot.
His gentleman persona lends itself well to improvisation, and he’s quickly adapting to my every demand; everything I’m wanting he’s giving, and I’m enjoying the time we have together. It makes me totally forget about class, about all my responsibilities, and I’m indulging, we’re indulging, in the possibilities still to be posed.
When we’re finished, we’re touching ourselves where we’re raw. I’m touching my lip and there’s blood, but only a little. He’s using his saliva to wipe away what I did to his arm.
I’m pointing to the ceiling of my room, “Maybe a few there and there,” and he’s agreeing, and I’m adding, “Your room too. If you see me, I see you.”
And he can’t do anything but agree.
So I’m also thinking it’s necessary in the common area, right in the cage, so that he won’t have to tell me anything. I’ll see it for myself.
Every single second recorded on camera.
And we’re getting ready, getting warmer and warmer, after growing limp and cold, and we’re going for round two, saving ourselves for rounds three and four, because this is how our nights have unraveled before, and how they’ll continue to unravel for as long as I see fit.
I’m wanting him to say it, and say it again. One more time.
He’s hesitating, so I begin to pull him away, but then he’s buckling, “I’m yours! I’m yours!” And then I’m telling him, it’s all easy if you’re willing to do everything I say. As long as he lends every inch of himself, as well as every aspect of his work to me, everything will be taken care of. He’ll never be found and I’ll do all the finding for him.
No one will ever be the same.
Our beloved gentleman killer will cross all boundaries while the authorities look everywhere only to find nothing but what’s beautiful and bothersome by design.
I’m whispering to him, “They’ll remember you.”
Textbooks written about him and the impossibility of his escape.
The mystery will consume everyone and I’m the only one that’ll have known every inch and angle. I’ll have seen everything as it turned into common knowledge.
I’ll have been there, telling him what to clear and what to keep.
And I’ll be saying to him every line that no one else will hear.
Every line of that mystery.
Every line of you and me.
5.
The wide-open road aches for the next scene.
Getting closer to our destination. Sobbing but no longer screaming, she rests her head between her knees. Spot the syringe full of clear liquid.
By the time she notices, it’s already too late.
Soon after the injection comes the silence.
She falls back in the seat, eyes cloudy. Close up on her face.
A single stream of saliva drips down the side of her mouth.
Every pore on her face can be seen. Otherwise lifeless eyes are blinking—letting the audience know she’s still alive.
No clear shot on the driver keeps the audience curious and guessing.
The mystery feels it’s necessary for the wide shot.
The mystery presses down on the gas pedal. Watch as the car peels out, kicking up waves of filthy water as it speeds down the interstate and out of view.
Plenty of horsepower. Plenty of muscle. To-die-for.
The more observant audience members will have noticed the missing license plate. Add it to the mystery. How about a nice shot of a rain-drenched interstate?
Not a single light source down this particular highway. Spotting no headlights.
It rains in thick sheets making it hard to see into the distance. The mystery is meant for a destination somewhere down the interstate.
It isn’t time for new reveals.
Don’t choke on your popcorn.
The best part is yet to come.
There’s a serial killer living next door.
1.
This is what I want, and I won’t feel like myself until everything is exactly right.
Two cameras to a room. Both rooms, because I need him to have his own room whenever I don’t want him close to me.
I’m not saying that I ever would, but I want to know that I have the ability to choose. One camera on the bed, front and center, and the other scanning, searching for movement.
I need eyes on everything he does with doors closed and windows shut.
The same goes for my room, too. I have one right on me at all times. Watch me sleep; watch me as I toss and turn. Watch me when you feel alone.
Watch me when I want you to watch me.
Watch me when I don’t want you to. Watch me. . .
The second camera is aimed low on a seat I use for one thing and one thing only. As a reminder, I should say that I don’t need to speak if I don’t want to, but you must note that my room is just like his, except for what I won’t let him have. He should be thankful that I let him have what he has because he could continue on his own, never amounting to anything more than a short-lived stint followed by death row and an anticlimactic execution.
He wants more than that.
Like a gentleman, he wants it all, and that’s why I’m going to get everything I can out of him. And you have to assume that I chose him for a reason.
The tech guy looked at me weird when I told him I wanted four cameras installed in the cage. He refused to go into the cage alone; I had to be in there too. Somehow he figured that if I was in there too, nothing bad would happen. How little people know about shivers and sin. . .
The four cameras scan left and right, but never cross each other’s sight. Each corner is covered by a camera.
In addition to the cameras, I had the tech guy install all the necessary hardware and software so that my pet and I could constantly record every inch of the apartment, every single day. Never will there be a moment when nobody’s watching. Everything between us is open, intimate, and shared. But only I have admin status. Only I can analyze, edit, erase, and access his computer. Though he might have a window into the online world, I would be able to watch and communicate with him anytime I feel like it.
He wouldn’t dare cross me.
We’re in this together.
Oh, sweet gentleman.
The tech guy was paid handsomely not to question or care. The oddity of his objective, never, not even once, derived a need to understand how these cameras would be used. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to know, even if I was willing to tell him. He wouldn’t want to know that I paid him using the money procured from the pockets of a few missing, forgotten women, their names infamous only because they no longer exist. We were the last people to know of them, just before a gentleman let the red drip like a leak in the ceiling to wash the area around our feet a dark red, sticky the longer we let it stay.
The tech guy wouldn’t want me to tell him about that one time there was someone strapped into the chair he sat in. I forget how long. . . long enough to piss herself and leave a stain that, if seen with the right set of eyes, looked like the heart shape of a former obsession. He wouldn’t want me to tell him about all the forgotten that disappear not because they want to, not because they partied too hard, but because someone else was looking to find someone, and that someone happened to be them. The forgotten are the ones people fixate upon more than those near and dear.
The tech guy wouldn’t want me to tell him about how easy it is to disappear, to become the product of someone else’s delicate masterpiece. He wouldn’t want me to tell him about how easy it is to banish someone into the world of
victim and unmarked graves.
He wouldn’t want me to tell him. No, he wouldn’t want that.
He just wanted to get paid and leave. As soon as possible.
Fine, go ahead and leave.
Minuteman.
2.
When you’re a professional student, forever stuck between the successful completion of a class and the beginnings of another, switching roles between teacher and the one being taught, you have to waste your life away on the objects of language and theory.
You’re often forced to give a shit about the people that study with you.
It’s why tonight I’m telling him beforehand to stay in his room.
He’s never stayed in his room before.
“Watch us from above,” I’m saying to him when someone knocks on the front door. The first to arrive. He’s leaving me for his bedroom while I’m making sure the cage is closed off so that it’ll look like a third bedroom. I was smart enough to come up with it early enough, but not without first having a delivery boy and the superintendent both notice something wrong with the apartment. I’m learning like everyone else. Since those two separate mishaps, I’ve had a drop down panel designed to make it look like a wall with a door that, if tried, goes to nowhere.
When I open the door, they’re there, three of the five, energetic and anxious.
My peers, here for caffeine and a caustic cram session.
Tomorrow half the class will pass while the other half will fail out of the graduate program. I’m the only one that can’t be concerned about where I’ll be placed. But they all insisted on having a last-minute collaborative cram session.
The topic is modern crime.
The exam is an essay-based test.
Application of one’s mastery of modern theory. There’s no getting out of this with a simple relay of textbook facts.
I’m telling them we’ll study in my bedroom. “There’s more room there.”
“Yeah, your apartment is way too cramped.”
I am agreeing, “It is when you share the apartment with two other roommates.”
My Pet Serial Killer Page 4
