SKA: Serial Killers Anonymous

by William Schlichter

  “But they were dying,” Lindsey floated into confusion.

  “They were. I ended their pain. In the end they thanked me, but too many died, and someone questioned why it was on my shift.”

  “You wouldn’t never kill anyone, Miss Jane.”

  I thumped her arm, searching for a useable vein. I didn’t want to use her thighs. She reeked of jizz.

  “My selections, at first, were simple and easy.” I inserted the needle. “I tired so of wasting resources on those no longer productive in society. Do you know how many millions are tossed away on people who will never wake from comas?”

  “I’m not in a coma?”

  “No, but you’ve proven you aren’t willing to be productive. I’ve no use for those who don’t contribute.” I depressed the plunger. To cement it was her doing I left the needle in her arm.

  She would overdose and die in bliss, better than many of those in the hospital. They died still in pain.

  I had reached the door when Tree-dog returned. I hated to spend one of the two weapons I had taken days before, but I was left with little option. Three in the chest caused him to stumble back and tumble down the front stairs backward right into public. I dropped the gun and just strolled down the street. This time I did hear sirens.

  X

  “HOW MANY HAVE you killed?” Jesse asks.

  “They would have all died.” Robert, smug in his assumption.

  “You played God,” the older man says.

  “Don’t we all?” Jane asks.

  “You told the story as your avatar?” Al inquires.

  “Yes. I choose Jane Toppan,” she explains, “I play two roles here. One as mediator, the other as attendee. I want help, but I want to help.”

  “She was a nurse,” Jesse says.

  “She experimented on her patients during her training. She would bring her patients to near death states and revive them before killing them.”

  “You ended lives.”

  “I didn’t take a sexual thrill in it, or get off on being the only person who knew how to save a patient’s life at the last second. Because I secretly poisoned them, like most Angels of Death. I just eased them to the other side. Families are so selfish. They watch their mother live in pain just so she would be there for them because they can’t let go. I did what was right and what benefits society. I had no sexual drive during what I did.”

  “Then why start this group? Why end what you are doing? If it is beautiful?” The older man questions.

  “My last few killings did stir a strong sexual awakening. It never happened before. It’s not right. I was never about pleasure. It was time to stop when murder left me wet,” she admits.

  “We all agree with you or we wouldn’t be here. We would not risk the exposure attending such a meeting and admitting what we did, but stopping won’t be easy.”

  “No, not even for me,” the older man admits.

  “Then you should go next,” Jane says.

  “Our other member has spoken nary a word. I want to know about him, what brought him here,” the older man says.

  The quiet man steps into the light enough to expose flaming red hair, “I’ve been contemplating how best to cook all your hearts.”

  XI

  EVERY TOWN HAS its sex workers though regular people don’t like to admit it. You don’t even have to spend much time to find one. Even the family-oriented travel truck stops naturally have lot lizards, but a local bar will have some women willing to blow you for a few Jacksons.

  Over my seventeen years as an over the road truck driver I have crisscrossed the country a few thousand times. No one cares for these women. I never tried a man, but they can be found too. Cops never check into druggy whores and barely do so if they have a family. Most bodies are Jane Does. Before the Internet linked many police databases, I would take one into the next county or a few counties over and with police always arguing over their jurisdictions. I mean short of them whipping out their dick to mark their territory with piss, they cared more about who was to take the hit on the unsolved murder than who killed the poor girl.

  I got more pleasure from dumping the dead girl to screw with certain areas’ murder rate numbers.

  I fuck’n hate cops.

  My first time I had been away from the wife for a few weeks hauling a load across country and back. Truck stop bathrooms were never clean enough to pump one out and I hated standing when I did, so the showers were out. I wanted to relax. I thought I’d get one of these honeys hanging around to blow me. It was safer than sex with one and getting head isn’t cheating on your wife. Hell. If she won’t suck it how can it be wrong to let someone else do it?

  I brought one into my cab, squeezed a little boob through her sleazy dress and undid my pants.

  She sucked really good. I came fast.

  It was worth the money, but I wish I had lasted longer.

  “My turn,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I was confused. I mean, I’d pay her. Might pay her to hang around so she could do it again.

  But instead she hikes up her skirt and whips out a dick tucked between her legs.

  “What the fuck? You’re a dude!” Those budding tits felt real.

  “I take hormones, makes them grow.” She juggled them in each hand. “But I know what you truckers like.”

  The hell I do. Pussy only for me. Never even thought about a dude.

  “You’re away from the wife,” he pointed to my ring finger, “and like a little tube steak.” She tugged at her foreskin stretching the straw to a length of three inches.

  It was little, but it didn’t matter. My dander was up. I was humiliated. Fucker. I ain’t no fag.

  “You want to suck it or just play with it when you slide it in from behind, Big Daddy?”

  When the shock wore off I busted him in the face.

  “Daddy likes it rough.” He/she/it touched the blood dripping from its lip.

  “Be rough. I like rough, but not the face, okay?” She touched my bicep. “Is this your first time?”

  It was difficult to maneuver with my pants undone, but my anger moved me.

  I punched and hit the fucker. She/he clawed at me. I’d have to take another load across country giving the cuts a chance to heal before I went home to my wife. I doubted I’d be able to explain them to her. She was a money whore anyway, loved not working and the extra cash I brought in.

  I pounded the fucker.

  My dick got hard.

  I hit him more.

  Real hard.

  The cab rocked from the struggle, but any trucker strolling by would figure it was sex.

  I don’t think I’d ever been so stiff and standing straight up as I turned this dude’s face into mush.

  He was dead. I was left to fend for myself so I did. I stroked for an hour. Man, I had no idea the rush. It was better than the coke I snorted sometimes to stay awake.

  If it hadn’t been a man I might of—well—the bottom hole was still good.

  I left the truck stop after I cleaned myself up. I dumped the body in a roadside rest stop. DNA wasn’t as big a deal then. I cleaned the cab. Not as well as I would later when DNA became a thing.

  It was a thrill. Man, I wished I had a woman to pump after I beat that Fag. I might have lasted for days.

  XII

  “I JUST WANTED to get your attention. I don’t eat people. But I will be called Ed.”

  “Gein?” Jesse asks.

  “He inspired more movies about serial killers than any other, except maybe Jack,” adds the trucker.

  “Ed is acceptable,” Jane says.

  “He did eat people,” Jesse points out.

  “Well, I never fucking ate anyone beyond licking pussy.” Ed raises his voice, “You’re such a shit, kid.”

  “I’m not a homophobe,” Jesse says.

  “It ain’t homo-what’s-it if I don’t want a fucking dude to grope me. I don’t know we must accept those people. It’s not normal. If you’re born with a dick,
then you are a man. If anything, I should be chastised because I beat to death the mentally ill.”

  “That’s the pot calling the kettle black. We are all mentally ill or we wouldn’t enjoy killing people,” Kenneth says.

  “I’m just saying if you cut on yourself with a razor blade or a compact disk they lock you in a mental ward. Pump up the Thorazine. But you go to a doctor and ask for your pecker to be lopped off and they go oh that’s fucking normal.”

  “Enjoying it is why I’m here,” The old man shifts the conversation. “When I found I enjoyed it, it was time to stop.”

  “We’ll get to you, old man,” Ed says.

  “Stop a minute. What do you mean mentally ill?” Al asks.

  “I know everyone sees a dumb redneck truck driver, and you all figure I’m a bigot. Hell no. Some of the best blow jobs I’ve gotten are from black women. Hell, I’ll kill a black girl, white girl, Hispanic, all the same to me.”

  “Asians?”

  “Not many of those in the parts I drive. And they become coveted. Like a cupid doll from the ring toss at the county fair. Many a trucker would like to brag they nailed a dog-eater. Someone might miss a rice-cooker since they are so rare. But I wouldn’t mind bagging and tagging one. It would make me rather worldly. Get me one of those Antarctica women and I’ll have about got one from every continent.”

  Jesse opens his mouth and Jane waves him to shut it.

  “I figure it’s like this. Sure, those people are born gay cause they are mentally ill. You must treat them. Cure them. You are born with a wang then you are designed to like pussy. It’s how we propagate the species. Cause if they are born a woman in a man’s body then why is what we do wrong? I was born to enjoy killing. If they were men born to want to suck dick, it’s the same damn thing. Nothing wrong with me.”

  “You want us to buy being born gay is the same as being born a serial killer?” Kenneth asks.

  “Damn right. We were born to hunt our food. With the need to track and capture our prey removed we must compensate for it. I am never more at peace than when I hunt. A thinking person makes it a challenge,” Robert says.

  “More research needs to be funneled into human mental health, but being man and liking men is not a threat to society—not like what we do,” Al says.

  “There are scientific theories, most border on the conspiracy line, but humans were originally genetically designed for certain tasks. I’ve read about the warrior gene idea,” Jesse says.

  “I’d bet we all have it. And without a war to contain our urges we lose control.”

  “I would too, and perhaps because we are not in a warrior cast and being warriors, we’re left to proceed the only way possible, by acts of murder,” Jesse says.

  “So we do need mental help?” Kenneth ponders, “or gene therapy?”

  “Your saying it’s aliens that made us like killing people?” Robert laughs.

  “Whoever, but we may be predisposed to be killers and have never been trained on how to properly deal with it,” Jesse says.

  “The kid’s smart, but I was never a warrior. Not until the accident,” the old man says.

  “Are you going to tell us about it?”

  “Once our non-bigoted truck driving friend confirms his name choice. Or do you have more to your first killing to share?”

  “Nope, call me Ed. Even if I never ate someone I admire his gumption. He, like me, was just a good ole boy. Never meant no harm.”

  “We all mean harm. I started down this path with nothing but reasons to harm,” the old man says. “Call me Jack.”

  XIII

  MORE TUBES ARE connected to Nina’s little body than I thought a living person could possibly accept. Did it make me a horrible person thinking her surviving the car accident wasn’t the miracle everyone else bestowed upon the comatose child? Thirteen—possibly brain dead, lacks the finality the rest of my family has now. To bury them…

  I’ve cried enough. Grieve too long and no healing occurs.

  “Jack,” the nurse startled me, as she touched my shoulder. “You’ve been here five straight days. You should go home, shower, eat some food besides the garbage they serve in the cafeteria. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

  “Would you go home if your only surviving grandchild was in a coma?” I asked.

  “I doubt I would leave her side. But I also know you do her no good if we must put you in a bed down the hall because you don’t take care of yourself. It would be just for a few hours. A shower will rejuvenate you. You have to stay healthy for her,” she lied next.

  “When she wakes, she’s going to need you. When people come out of a coma after this long they don’t remember and sometimes their bodies don’t operate like they should. You may have to reteach her to tie her shoes.”

  Wouldn’t it be nice…nice if that was all I had to do if she came back? But I knew. The doctors still offered hope, the worst thing ever, Pandora’s curse. Myth says she saved hope for humanity, but hope is a vagrant—a tease. Hope is worse than all the other evils released.

  Reluctant, I gave up my vigilance to just go home and shower. Throw out all the food people dropped off after the funeral. Nothing wrong with its quality other than it sat on the counter too long. I kissed my granddaughter on the only patch of flesh on her face not bandaged, promising I’d return quickly.

  While scribbling down my cell number at the nurse’s station I noticed a woman too old to have green hair, but too young in her appearance to have a child approaching puberty. The little girl could be my Nina. Only Nina had yet to blossom into womanhood. This poor girl was too young to…She was too young to have the body of a woman.

  Two female officers, one in a uniform the other in plain clothes, interviewed the green-haired woman and the young girl. Too far away to understand their words, I knew enough to recognize the little girl’s trauma. I feared how she was distressed. I would bet a million-forthcoming social security checks the mother allowed it to happen. Her left arm had track marks even I spotted them from down the corridor.

  My grandchild was fighting for her life and this woman threw her life away along with a daughter who never stood a chance of a normal life. The officers were too preoccupied with their interrogation to notice how close I got to be within earshot.

  “No. Nobody has touched her,” the green-haired mother protested, her glassy eyes never focusing on the officers.

  “We need you to allow the doctor to check her out,” the uniformed woman said.

  The plain clothed officer attempted mild threats. She worked an angle to be the heavy of the situation. “If we must get child services involved—” I guess officers do play good-cop, bad-cop.

  It didn’t take me long to decipher what transpired with the little girl. It angered me. I exercised every ounce of self-control. I want to fly in there and pound on the green-haired woman. I’m sure I was projecting my grief. My wife, daughter, son-in-law and new grandbaby were just killed in a car crash. They were on the way to set up a surprise birthday party for me. I blamed myself, but mostly, I blamed the inebriated punk who had nothing more than scratches from the accident. As much as I contemplated how to kill him it did my granddaughter no good if she woke up and I was in jail. I mustered a calming presence forcing me, preventing me from not placing the green-haired mother in a coma.

  I don’t know what drug this woman chose to self-medicate with. But drugs were the reasons for both of us being in this hospital.

  Since I’d left my granddaughter’s room the nurse assumed I drove home. The nurses returned to their station doing whatever nurses do at their fortress of counters and desks.

  I was going to rescue this little girl. The cops didn’t seem to have the evidence to hold the woman, but I didn’t need the rules of law. I had the rules of what was right. Now to learn what I needed required a distraction.

  I slipped into a room where an older lady slept. Tugging at the monitor cord until gravity took over, I had seconds to escape.

  The nurse
s scrambled to assist the woman they thought had coded. I used those seconds to reach the nurse’s station and memorize the address on the med form of the drug addled mother before I left the hospital. By the time they fixed the old woman and returned to check on my granddaughter, the nurse would assume I was long gone home to shower.

  People who say they crossed to the wrong side of the tracks must have been in this neighborhood. I won’t pass judgment on the people who lived there because the housing was income based. I saw no chance for any of them to escape. It was a Norman Rockwell scene if he were to paint crack neighborhoods. My two-year-old Nissan Rogue, still with original luster, didn’t blend with homes ready to be condemned.

  I drove past the address. Someone had converted it into a downstairs and upstairs two-family dwelling. The regulation iron fire escape explained as much. I sped away before my tires were stolen while I was driving.

  I was forced to leave the hospital again to arrange the funeral of my wife—my daughter, her husband and the baby. My whole world was going in the ground. Nina being alive kept any heart palpitations in check. No father, grandfather, should ever have to do this—all alone. Nothing to do but ball up my sadness and push it down inside. After the funeral, I made a second pass by the little girl’s house.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do. What could I do? I had one speeding ticket my whole life. I wanted to inflict agony on those causing my pain. I’d never get near the boy who stole my family.

  I was not a gun person, but I sat all night holding the 9mm my son-in-law owned. If not for a comatose little girl, my Nina, I might have joined them.

  I ignored my anguish, driving it deep down inside of me. Someone would pay. I would allow the courts to deal with the man. Going after him might place me high on the suspect list, but there was a grander problem I might address. I would start with the other little girl I saw in the hospital.