by Mark Lukens
Why won’t they just let me go? Why won’t they just let me die?
Don’t they even know what dying is?
This is another one of my older stories, and it was originally published in Black Petals Magazine. But I’ve done some major rewriting from the original story that appeared in that magazine. The basic plot of the story is still the same, but I think this version is a little darker now.
I recall years ago hearing something about a billionaire who wanted to launch himself out into space when he died, and then I thought: What if he came across alien life out there? Lifeforms that are much more advanced than we are. What would they do to him? Would they bring him back from death? And then the story began to form in my mind. I’ve always wondered how we would ever communicate with a far superior lifeform. It would be like us trying to communicate with a group of insects scurrying around on the ground. Would these aliens be so much more advanced than us that there’d be no hope of us ever understanding them and their motives?
KILLING TAMMY
Jordan Lee Harvin was a serial killer, and he was going to kill Tammy tonight. He had killed thirteen people in the last four years. For the last three weeks he’d been stalking Tammy, soon to be his fourteenth victim. Of those thirteen murders, twelve had been women. The lone male was unexpected. Jordan usually did a very thorough job of watching his victims before he killed them; he cased their homes, studied their habits, collected details about their lives. But one night, almost three years ago, he’d been surprised by a man in the house, a sleepover guest of his victim’s. He had shot the man immediately, killing him instantly, then he’d been forced to hurry through with the killing of the woman. It had been rushed and not as satisfying to him as it could have been, but he had learned a painful lesson that night: he needed to be more careful.
And with experience came skill. He had been careful as he watched his latest victim. Tammy was twenty-four years old, a waitress at some kind of buffalo wing house/bar and just rebounding from a breakup with her boyfriend. She’d had some of her friends over a few times, but a lot of nights she was home alone.
Like tonight.
Tonight was the night.
Jordan had waited outside Tammy’s house for two hours. He had parked his pickup truck in an empty lot next to a 7-Eleven and walked the five blocks to Tammy’s house. He was dressed in a dark hoodie and knit cap with a backpack slung over his shoulders. At a distance he looked like a scrawny teenager who fit into the neighborhood. In his backpack he carried an extra change of clothes, several lengths of strong but thin rope, a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, extra gloves, and a few construction trash bags. He had a .45 handgun stuck into the waistband of his pants. The gun was only for emergencies and for intimidation—he didn’t like to use it unless it was an emergency. He liked to strangle his victims with the rope, watching the expression on their faces as their life slipped away from them.
He waited in the shrubs behind Tammy’s house. From this vantage point he had both a view of the back and side of her home, and he could still see a small part of the street. He’d already made a copy of the key to her back door by sticking a gum-like material into the lock a few days ago, using that as a mold to fashion a metal lock pick to turn the tumblers. If the pick didn’t work (but it would—it always had before), he had his eye on one of the back windows. Among his other supplies in his backpack, he carried what he called his burglary kit: a glass cutter, small hammer, a pry bar, an alarm code jammer, a cell phone jammer, and a small flashlight with a powerful strobe that could disorient a person. If a cop ever stopped him and wanted to search his backpack, then it was going to have to be that cop’s last day on Earth. He didn’t want to kill a cop, or anyone else—it wasn’t as satisfying as killing the targets that he stalked—but he would if he had to.
Stalking was half the fun. Sometimes he would spend weeks, even months stalking a person. He would find out everything he could about that person. He would watch them at home, at their work, haunt their social media pages. It was amazing how much personal information a person would willingly provide online.
Jordan was an expert with computers as well as alarm systems. He was a black belt in karate. His whole life had been training for this passion of his. He’d known at a young age what he wanted to do, what his urges were, and he’d plotted his course in life, training his body, mind, and spirit in every skill he would need.
Tonight it was finally going to pay off. He loved the feeling right before he entered the home of his victim, that thrill and even the nervousness he still felt after all of these years. But once he was inside, a calmness washed over him, and he became like a machine, doing his job—something like the Terminator, unstoppable on his mission. Yet even though he was machine-like in the execution of his tasks, he still allowed himself to feel everything, lock it all away for future rumination.
He didn’t wear a mask; he wanted his victims to see his face before they died. He had an attractive face, he knew that. Some women even said he had a trusting face and kind eyes . . . if they only knew. He loved how the victims watched his face as he strangled them, staring up at his romance-cover-good looks, wondering how someone who looked like him could do what he did.
These urges had nothing to do with sex. He liked sex with women, loved it actually. It was easy for him to find partners—he had no problem with that. He didn’t rape his victims before or after their demise. He didn’t steal their panties or a lock of their hair or take any other kind of souvenir. He just liked to watch their faces as their lives slipped away. He loved the power of someone’s life in his hands, the intimacy of being the last person that his victim spent this most important moment of their lives with. He wanted to share that important moment with them, to be a witness to their passing from this world into the next. Sometimes he tied their hands behind their backs, promising them that he wasn’t going to hurt them, that all he wanted to do was to take some stuff from their houses. He used the rope to tie their hands—the handcuffs were only for emergencies. The one time he’d used handcuffs on a woman, she had freaked out. What kind of burglar walked around with a pair of handcuffs? Rope seemed more spontaneous. Rope seemed more along the lines of what a typical burglar would have on him.
But he hadn’t even tied the last two victims up; he’d been on top of them before they’d even become fully awake. They had struggled; but he’d actually liked the struggle, the challenge.
It had been long enough now. All the lights had been shut off inside Tammy’s house for over an hour. Jordan crept from the bushes to the back door and picked the lock, getting inside within three minutes. He’d found an old listing of the home on Zillow to get a layout of the home, and he’d peeked in the windows a few days ago, so he had the interior of the home mapped out in his mind.
He moved slowly through the darkness, setting his backpack down on the kitchen table. He had two lengths of rope in one gloved hand and his gun was a reassuring weight against the small of his back. His black sneakers didn’t make a sound as he walked. The air conditioner was on, and it was cool inside the house. Tammy didn’t have any pets so he didn’t have to worry about that.
Jordan moved down the hall towards Tammy’s bedroom. Moments later he pushed the door open, hoping that it wouldn’t creak. It didn’t. Tammy was covered up with a sheet, the blanket bunched up at the end of the bed. Her dark hair was splayed out on the pillow. She was sleeping soundly—he couldn’t even hear her breathing.
For a moment he watched her, listening for any sounds. And then he was on her in a flash, tearing the sheet away from her body.
He froze.
It wasn’t Tammy—it was some kind of mannequin or lifelike doll.
He’d been set up.
The bedroom exploded with beams of lights and people yelling at him. “Down on your knees! Hands up!”
Jordan complied. There was nothing he could do. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all dressed in some kind of dark tactical gear with helmet
s and face shields. They all had weapons and flashlight beams pointed at him.
He’d known this day was coming, the day he got caught. Some serial killers might never be caught, but a lot of them were eventually caught. Jordan believed those who were caught wanted to be caught. They wanted to go down in history, to be remembered forever as a monster, an immortal bogeyman to be studied.
He felt handcuffs snapped on one wrist, and then his other arm was wrenched behind his back, his wrists shackled together. He was forced to his feet. He finally got a better look at the two men and the one woman who had captured him. He thought they would’ve been wearing city police uniforms or sheriff’s uniforms, or even possibly the FBI, but he didn’t see any kind of identification at all on any of them.
His stomach sank, his heart stopping for a moment. Even through her clear facemask, Jordan could see that the woman was Tammy.
He was pushed forward by one of the men, flashlight beams lighting their way—none of the house’s lights had been turned on yet. None of the three were talking to each other, or to Jordan, or calling this arrest in to some dispatcher. Everything was silent. Jordan was beginning to get a bad feeling that something was wrong here.
“You guys aren’t cops, are you?” Jordan asked as he was pushed forward through the house. The hand on the back of his neck felt like an iron clamp.
“Shut up,” the man behind him said without much force.
Jordan saw that he was being pushed towards a door in the kitchen that led out to the garage. If these three weren’t cops, then who were they? Were they family members of one of his victims? Were they some kind of vigilante group that had caught on to his crimes? Had he been stalked the entire time he thought he was stalking Tammy?
“Who are you?” Jordan demanded. “Where are you taking me?”
“I said shut up,” the man behind Jordan said as he forced him forward through the large garage towards the rear end of a black SUV, its rear hatch already open.
Jordan felt the pinch of something sharp on the side of his neck, then a slight burning underneath his skin as a liquid entered his veins.
“Get in,” the man behind him said, and already his voice sounded so far away.
Jordan wanted to resist, but his legs were beginning to feel a little rubbery, his mind drifting to strange and random thoughts like he was on the edge of sleep.
That was the last thing he remembered.
Jordan woke up sitting in a wooden chair in a fifteen by twenty foot room. The walls were constructed from block, painted a dull gray. There was nothing on the walls except a flat screen TV at the far end and a large mirror to Jordan’s left that was obviously a two-way mirror. There was only one metal door in or out of this room. In front of Jordan was a sturdy table with a thick metal ring on it that the chain connected to his handcuffs was attached to. At the other end of the table was an empty chair.
He felt groggy, but he was waking up quickly. He tested his bonds, but everything looked new and everything was strong. The table and chair seemed to be bolted to the concrete floor. At least the chain threaded through the metal ring had enough slack to let him wipe at his eyes and the dried drool at the corners of his mouth. He was so thirsty.
Where was he? This place looked like an interrogation room to him. Maybe those three were cops. He felt somewhat relieved to finally be caught. He’d always wondered what this day would be like. He would begin his journey into notoriety. He would give interview after interview to the police, only feeding them bits and pieces, enough to keep them strung along. He would write a book and get an agent. A film agent, too.
But then he wondered what kind of cops drugged their detainee. He couldn’t remember having had his rights read to him. The thought of vigilantes came back to him now.
The door opened, and a man in a dark suit and tie entered. Someone outside closed the metal door and Jordan heard the sound of heavy locks clicking into place. The man in the dark suit was tall and lean. He walked with a purpose, a man of action, a man who commanded respect and attention, a man of extreme focus. He carried a folder and what looked like some kind of remote control (for the flat screen TV, Jordan assumed). He sat down in the chair at the other end of the table. His hair was short, but not military short. He wasn’t extremely handsome but definitely not ugly. His light blue eyes were focused right on Jordan, and he stared at him for a full sixty seconds without saying anything.
“Can I get something to drink?” Jordan finally asked.
The man didn’t answer; he just glanced at the two-way mirror.
A moment later another man dressed in a dark suit and tie entered the room with a bottle of water. He left the water on the table within reach of Jordan and left without a word.
Jordan grabbed the bottle of water and made sure the cap was sealed before he opened it—he didn’t want to take another blackout trip. The cap was sealed, but he thought he was going to drink it whether the cap was sealed or not because he was so thirsty. After drinking down half the bottle of water, Jordan set it down carefully and then looked at the man seated across the table from him. “I’m not saying anything without a lawyer.”
The man nodded slightly and opened the folder on the table, glancing down at the papers inside. “You’re not under arrest,” he said.
Jordan lifted up his shackled wrists. “Coulda fooled me.”
“We have you,” the man said. “We took you, but we’re not cops.”
Jordan had that sinking feeling back in his stomach again. “What the hell are you talking about?” The thought of some victim’s family abducting him for revenge came back to him.
The man looked back down at the open folder in front of him, ignoring Jordan. “Jordan Lee Harvin,” he said, reading a paper inside the folder. “Thirty-two years old. Male. Caucasian. Above average I.Q. but no college education. Heterosexual.” Then he finally looked at Jordan. “Serial killer.”
Jordan didn’t reply.
“You’ve killed thirteen people,” the man said. “Twelve women and one man.”
That sinking feeling in his stomach was worse than ever now, and his balls were crawling. “How do you know that?” he whispered.
The man closed the folder. “We know a lot about you, Jordan.”
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Mr. Vance. I work with the government, and I’m here to make you an offer.”
“An offer?”
“Yes.”
“Government?” Jordan wondered if he was still knocked out and trapped inside some kind of dream.
“We need people like you,” Mr. Vance said, ignoring Jordan’s shock. “We need someone with your particular set of skills.”
“My skills? You need me to . . . what? Kill people?”
“Exactly. We’ll give you a new identity, put you up in a new place . . . relocate you. Think of it kind of like the witness relocation program.”
“And?”
“And when we need you to . . . to dispose of someone for us, then we’ll notify you.”
Jordan was still having trouble believing this was happening.
“It’s a good deal,” Mr. Vance said as he stood up. “It’s your only deal.”
“Because if I don’t take the deal then I’ll be going to jail?”
Mr. Vance chuckled. “No, not jail.” He aimed his remote control at the TV, turning it on.
Jordan stared at the TV. There was a still photo of a long wooden box on the screen.
“That’s a coffin,” Mr. Vance said. “It’s ready to go into the incinerator.” He turned back towards Jordan, staring at him. “If you decline our offer, then you’ll get another injection in your neck. A few hours from now you’ll wake up inside a box like that. You’ll probably be in that box for a few hours before the conveyer belt takes you into the incinerator.”
“You . . . you can’t do this. You have to give me a lawyer. I’ve got . . . got . . .”
“Rights?” Mr. Vance asked. “You’ve killed thirteen people. And
now you want your rights? What about their rights?”
Jordan didn’t say anything. He grabbed his water bottle with trembling hands and drank down the rest of the cool water.
“I’m not going to give you a lot of time to think this offer over. We would love to have someone with your talents, but if you refuse, we understand. There are others we can contact.”
“You have other people doing this?”
Mr. Vance didn’t answer.
Jordan felt time slipping by quickly, and he wanted to slow things down. “Who would I be killing?”
“Whoever we tell you to. And no one else,” he added firmly. He sat back down, relaxing, suddenly charming. “Look, I know you’ve got these . . . these urges. I understand that. This is a job where you can satisfy those urges. But you can only kill the people we tell you to and only in the way we tell you to.”
“But why me?”
“Because you’re pretty good at what you do.”
“Not good enough, apparently.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about that. We’ve been watching you for a while. Hell, we watch everybody. We noticed that you’re efficient at what you do. You’re not a pervert, you just like to kill. And that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
Mr. Vance stood back up. He looked like he was ready to walk to the door now, the conversation over. “Your choice, Jordan. You can take the offer or you can be reduced to ash. No one knows you’re here. You’ll just disappear—one of so many who disappear every day. You’ll never be remembered. You can choose that, or you can go on living and doing what you do best. What you were born to do.”
Jordan didn’t answer.
Mr. Vance started walking towards the door. “You’ve got ten minutes to decide.”
“Ten minutes?”
Mr. Vance didn’t respond.
Jordan looked back at the TV that Mr. Vance had left on. The pine box was now moving down a conveyer belt towards the incinerator, the metal door opening, the fires of hell burning inside.
