by Lana Hartley
Jeremy
“Please, I have money!” Lorenzo Sirvio whines, the desperation making his voice shrill.
I have money. I live off an inheritance, the interest more than enough to keep me doing what I do best: killing the sickest of the sick. One could argue that I’m included in the “sickest of the sick,” and I can’t say I’d disagree.
Unlike my victims, however, there’s no one to pick me off.
I look into Lorenzo’s eyes. I see nothing. The cloudiness of fear, the gloss around his eyes from tears. But I don’t see a single thing that moves me to emotion.
I look out the window of this tower, this empire that he’s built. I know he lives off the pain of others, and the crimes he’s committed that have a paper trail are nothing compared to the ones known only to their victims, suffering in silence. I’m no hero, but I was happy to loosen the bolt on the door where he kept the six orphan children in an old warehouse. I watched from afar as those children scattered out, out in the world, no longer in his hands. If I were a hero, I’d be ushering them to safety. I’m not truly here to punish. I have a compulsion to kill that I justify by killing criminals.
If I’m going to kill anyway, why not kill those who don’t deserve to live?
You may not like murder, but if I told you more about the things that Lorenzo Sirvio has done, or the worse things my victims have done? Well, you’d be mostly fine with it, no matter how uncomfortable it would be. They violate justice. I bring out a perverted sense of that justice being exacted.
“Can you hear me?” Lorenzo whimpers.
I had looked at him, then looked past him. I have a gun, because guns scare the shit out of people. He doesn’t get to know that my weapon of choice is a knife. He gets to take the quick way out of the building.
I knew that his windows were scheduled to be cleaned, and I made sure the panel was removed when he’d be alone in his office. Normally Lorenzo would masturbate before he left to enact his worse fantasies. The stalking of each victim challenges my ability to not feel anything. Well, that’s perhaps worrisome thing. It generally doesn’t challenge my sociopathy. I didn’t feel anything. I was gathering information, figuring out my best moves, keeping track.
I was going to go for something different last night when I followed Lorenzo to the hotel bar, where he liked to pick up high-value escorts and beat the shit out of them. He pays the hotel for its silence, and the escorts have no recourse. The cut they give the hotel isn’t as high as what Lorenzo Sirvio offers. Sirvio has the kind of money I have.
If I cared about money, if I was stupid enough to allow him to try and bribe me, I could manage to double my own money. But I don’t care about money.
I don’t care about the dreadful things these despicable victims I chose do.
I’ve only come close to caring about one other thing before…well, before my parents. Undoubtedly, a psychologist could have quite a time dissecting why I cared for my parents and, after witnessing their murder/suicide, I now care about so little and commit murders I generally make look like suicides. I have no interest in the psychology. I only know that my compulsion to kill creates a sort of brotherly bond with Carter Luwein. His stepmother raised him to kill, and he’s got his own trauma. Carter actually cares about people, about heinous acts, though he was raised to kill. Ultimately, Carter cares more about killing than anything else.
Now, Carrie Winters — a girl that my initial searching reveals barely exists on the internet, and I’m excited to do more in-person reconnaissance on her — is the closest thing I’ve ever felt about someone. I don’t want to kill her. I want to kill for her.
I’ve only ever wanted to kill. And that? I always do that for me. Because that’s my compulsion.
The instant I saw her, I needed her more than I needed to slice flesh with my blade. To watch that look on someone’s face when they knew they were going to die.
It took a while, but Lorenzo’s making that face now. Being as wealthy as he is, Lorenzo thought he would get out of this somehow.
“You’re going to walk out that window,” I say. I don’t bother concealing the boredom in my voice. Looking to his eyes that look where he’s lost all hope — it isn’t giving me the thrill that it once did.
I do have the aftershock of arousal when the lights dim on his soul. I do love that loss of hope, in that moment where I’m a god in absolute control. I’ve laid down my holy judgment, calling for his death. And yet today I still don’t care. I don’t care about his crimes. I hardly care about his death.
Lorenzo takes a shuddering step forward. I hold the gun up to ensure he’ll do as he’s told.
Stupid, really, that a gun threatens him when I’m making him walk out an open window, forty-two stories up in a high-rise office building. Still, it has worked before and it works today. These billionaire types fear pain, and they fear a loss of control. Walking out of a building is such an elegant way for them to feel like they’re in control, when really if they refused and I had to shove them or shoot them, I could be at real risk of getting caught.
Lorenzo plummets to his death, his undignified screeching barely penetrating my thoughts.
A surge of power courses through me.
Normally after a kill, I’d go fuck some stranger in a bar.
Yes, if you’ve had a one night stand with a charming, wealthy bachelor in this city or several others I like to visit, you’ve probably fucked me. A serial killer doesn’t wear a sign around his neck that says “I’m fucking you because I’m horny after committing a murder.” The only sign I have is the throbbing erection that tents my trousers after I’m finished.
Still, I already know that despite my cock’s insistence, I won’t be charming and bedding any random stranger tonight.
I sigh. Another billionaire “suicide” I’ve facilitated. It will make the headlines, but no one will be bothered to truly care that this asshole is dead.
I can’t complete the next step of my post-kill ritual. All I can think about is how I want to fuck the innocent beauty, Carrie Winters. I want to consume her. Not kill her, but have her… and that’s going to require a long game approach versus a simple seduction over cocktails.
She gives me another set of kills to complete.
Carrie
The gaudy gold stripes on my bedroom wall feel like bars on a cage. I despise this wallpaper, the over-the-top crown moulding and everything else my mother insisted on. At least white was in this season, because the delicate and feminine end tables are the one stylistic refuge in this tacky bedroom. I keep all my valuables — my journal, the book I’m currently reading — on the table, trapped in this world as much as I am.
I look to the TV for some further refuge. I want to be anywhere but here. I flick on the morning news to distract me.
I touch the simple white gown I’m wearing for graduation today. I want look pretty, but the more I rehearse my lines for my valedictorian speech, the more Mother’s disappointed look presses back into my memory.
“We are all starting new steps toward our future.” I pause. How can I get my own words wrong? “We are all taking new steps toward our future today.” I start again and then I just sigh. All my peers care about is getting to the bonfire party on the beach tonight, and all my mother cares about is that I’m not going to look like her idea of pretty.
I hear Mother’s heels clicking down the hallway and she bursts in the door.
“That can’t possibly be your makeup!” she shrieks. “You have to do something else with your hair, that’s so boring.” I can tell that’s trying to make me feel sorry for her with her pouty face.
No, of course my high school graduation and my valedictorian speech, they aren’t about me.
“What would you like, Mother?” I ask, making my tone even despite the fact that I don’t care what she wants. Why should I care? I could burst into and she’d bitch about how my eyes were getting puffy. When I picked out this dress, I liked how simple it was. White, elegant even. I felt like I
was taking a step toward my future when I tried it on, just like my cheesy speech today. I felt like I got to have one thing that was me.
My mother pulls out a trunk of makeup and hair products and widens her eyes at me like I’m exhausting her. She comes at me with makeup brush after makeup brush, sprays at least three different things in my hair, and I sit there, tuning out the headlines mostly.
I hear something about a billionaire committing suicide. “…In a rising trend of wealthy men who, despite having everything, chose to give it all up…”
I’d say that you can have it all and still not be happy, which is stale and tacky, but mostly I see how my parents clamor for fame and treat money as their god, and I wonder… what else is there? What do I want? Why must the first steps I take toward my future be about what dress to wear? I’m an adult now. I did well in school, I’ve been accepted to several colleges and yet I feel devoid of anything to care about. But you can’t get far by only deciding what you don’t want. Getting anywhere in life has got to involve going after what do you do want, and I still don’t know what that is.
“Turn that off, the news is so depressing,” Mother says.
Something we actually agree on. I turn off the TV.
“Don’t move your face. I’m contouring here, you want your face to have cheekbones, not be a round blob, right?” Mother asks.
I try not to laugh. How did women deal with having faces before they drew lines all over them? It must have been so terrible. But I do actually like the way my face looks when she blends the shades. “That looks great, Mother. Thank you,” I say, moving my face as little as possible.
“I’ve tried to teach you this. You could do it yourself if you pay attention to the things I try to teach you.”
Mother’s eyes narrow when she looks at my speech. She’s not proud I’m valedictorian. “At least you can go to that party tonight and try to make some friends. You need to build a network of important people, you can’t keep your nose in a book. Get a boyfriend. Get girlfriends. Make your life matter!” Mother starts to attack me with a very large makeup brush with white powder all over its tips. I try not to cough at the dust clouding the air around us. “Give me that,” she says, and she crumbles up my speech and tosses it across the room. “No one cares about your speech.”
Mother is probably right. Even I don’t care much about it.
“These shoes have to go. Heels, why is it so difficult to get you to wear heels. Wear flats when you’re sixty, don’t waste a tight young ass.”
I bend and remove my shoes.
Mother produces some incredibly high heels from the pile of things she’d tossed on my bed. “These,” she says, thrusting them forward.
I take them and try not to tremble, standing into them. I feel so small, wearing these towering shoes.
“You don’t have to look like a social failure,” Mother says. I’m pretty sure those words are meant to be uplifting. “Join us in the car.”
I follow her. My father is on the phone and doesn’t acknowledge my presence at all. That’s typical of our interactions, they’re non-existent. I won’t have to be around my parents when I go to college, though. I’ll be glad to be away from them both. I doubt they will miss me, and I know I won’t miss them.
Jeremy
I’m going to kill again, but all I think about is Carrie.
No one has ever stirred me the way she does. I barely saw her, barely talked to her, but I want her more than I’ve wanted anything. Crave her more than any kill.
I plan to kill Carrie’s classmates. Part of it for me is about the kill.
But more than that? This is about Carrie. I don’t want these girls to tease her, mock her, treat her like she’s inferior.
Even a cursory glance into that graduating class revealed just how little these brats will be missed. My private investigator, Firmin, hands me large manila packets holding all the criminal activity they’ve done without being formally charged, or those charges sticking. “Privileged brats with possible DUIs swept under the rug because of who their parents are and the balance in their bank accounts.” He drops another file stack and opens them to various pages, pointing out the similarities. “Assault charges never filed, or the charges were dropped and settled with large sums of money.” Firmin rings out his hands, and his tension permeates the air. I know he despises seeing the sort of activities that privileged individuals are able to get away with and I know that’s why he went into private investigation. He doesn’t punish like I do. Firmin doesn’t even ask questions about what I do.
“Excellent work. Thank you, Firmin.” I wave my hand at the whiskey decanter. “A drink?” I ask. Rarely does he partake, but I always offer. Firmin and I rarely share more than files, much less conversation. But his weighted tension in the air has not evaporated.
“I think I’d like that drink, yes. Double, neat,” Firmin says, sitting in one of my leather high-back chairs like he’s resting the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I don’t fumble, despite this odd moment where I’m feeling off balance. I don’t enjoy the company of many people, but I do actually like Firmin. I don’t completely understand his emotions. The Lorenzo Sirvio discoveries disgusted him; most people find acts against children particularly heinous. But he’s not my conscience. I’m not certain I have one, at least not more than Carter. I think ultimately, it’s Firmin’s professionalism that I appreciate. He’s not broaching any gentlemanly protocol by accepting offered whiskey, and I make us both a drink. I had him his highball, and sit down in the chair facing his.
“You seem… distracted,” Firmin says, treading lightly. Firmin must have a strong idea of what I do. He never asks. I don’t suppose that he wants to know, but I can tell that he wants to say something. “I don’t suppose that with this many files, that your procurement could be a team effort? Is that what is distracting you?” Firmin takes a longer swig of his whiskey. He wonders if he’s crossed a line, asked too much with that word ‘procurement' when he means that I murder.
I find it enchanting. My affections for Carrie have distracted me so much that my stoic private investigator seems almost concerned. I grant him a smile, and while I know I am charming, I wonder if he sees this as genuine.
I’ll let him suffer. I like Firmin, but I’m not exactly a congenial man and I take more pleasure out of his minute pain than a thousand professional or even friendly interactions I might have with him.
“I am distracted, yes. But not so much that I won’t be able to complete my work.” I take a lingering sip of my drink. “The procurement, and this operation, will be alone.” Maybe I should bring Carter in on such a big plan. There’s a lot of students to kill at this bonfire party, but I don’t want to share Carrie just yet, don’t want to share this plan. It is my gift to her. My method of acquiring her. I will separate her from anything, anyone that prevents her from being mine.
Carrie isn’t ready to understand why she’ll like my present, but I’m preparing myself to help her understand. My hands are shaking just thinking about it, about her. The soft curls in her hair, the gentle ivory of her skin, and those eyes. Her eyes that are haunting in their purity and the mystery that lies beneath.
I retrace my conversation and look to Firmin polishing off his drink. “I see,” he says, gripping the highball glass a little too tightly. “Apologies for my intrusion—”
“Nonsense, Firmin, I enjoy your lively company.” A wicked grin spreads across my face. My smirk is cruel, and I decide to assuage his fears further when he trembles at putting his glass down. I press my hand to his shoulder, letting him know that this is not a domineering touch but a kind one. “I would never harm you, Firmin. Your invaluable services and your professionalism make your company quite enjoyable.” It feels strange to compliment someone with so little ulterior motives. I only want him to feel comfortable, and not in the way I would with a victim before I slice into their side and watch them gasp.
Hmm.
“Good evening,�
�� I say to him, removing my hand from him.
He gathers his coat and briefcase, nodding and leaving my study.
I don’t follow him out. I see the wheels in his mind turning. Is it good to be liked by someone like me? He’s asking himself.
There are certain advantages to the working relationship Firmin and I have.
What about Carrie and her perhaps perilous attraction to me, and my possibly fatal affections for her?
My throat tightens at the thought. I have stronger emotions toward her than I’ve ever had for someone. Even stronger than the urges to kill. I know I would never harm her – an odd declaration for a person that so enjoys harming others.
But I don’t want to hurt Carrie.
I want to have her.
Carrie
Ashley almost trips over a branch. Her free hand reaches out for mine, her beer sloshing. “Shit, sorry!” she says, and then she sees me. I used to think Ashley was not as terrible as the rest of the Westwick Prep graduates, until I saw her making a foreign exchange student her slave last year. I don’t feel bad bristling at her pink claws against my skin. I almost pull back and let her fall over, but I don’t want to be as cold as these people.
“Watch your step,” I say matter-of-factly.
Ashley rolls her eyes and takes a big gulp of her drink. “Why are you even here? I mean, you can’t be having fun.”
“No, I absolutely hate this party and everything like it.” I shake my head and start to walk away.
“Take a beer, damn. If you’re gonna be here, you don’t have to be a buzzkill.” Ashley waves over someone who’s carrying two cans.
I don’t really have a reason not to drink the beer. I’ve tried alcohol before. My parents offer me wine with just about every meal. I smile when I see it, Pabst Blue Ribbon. I assume this means we’re drinking the cheap stuff, ironically, and I can’t decide if that’s amusing or not. I pop open the tab.
“Thanks.” I nod to Ashley and the guy. Perry, I think his name is? I mean, in their own backhanded way, they’re trying to involve me. Even if I’m just a buzzkill. I take a big swig of the beer.
