The Devil's Cinema

by Steve Lillebuen

  His eye was also drawn elsewhere, back to plentyoffish.com. He flicked on his software that blocked tracking of his Internet activity as he browsed the profiles of women in other cities. He sometimes looked for hours, scanning photo after photo of women seeking men.

  It was a profile for a young blonde that captured his attention. He thought she was beautiful, able to instill a lustful craving in most men. He saved three of her available photos. One showed her posing in sunglasses behind the wheel of a convertible, giving a tiny smile.

  Twitchell quickly created a new dating profile on the same site, using a new email address to open it. He then defined the particulars of the account holder: a woman, blond, seeking a man in Edmonton. He posted the three treasured photos he had just saved to his new account. He called it “Spiderwebzz” and gave the new woman the name “Sheena.” It was the name of his old roommate’s girlfriend.

  Then he sat back and waited for the men to respond.

  He couldn’t wait to write about it. He had learned long ago that there was no better release than writing. He turned to his computer again, fingers above the keyboard, and typed in high spirits: This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer …

  It was only the beginning. Over the coming days, the words would flow from his mind onto his computer screen in bursts of creative energy:

  At first I considered married men looking to cheat on their wives. In one way I’d be taking out the trash, doling out justice to those who on some level, deserved what they got. But the logic of the situation denies this possibility. After all, people who are expected home at a certain hour tend to get reported as missing and there’s other factors that would lead to an investigation I didn’t want. No, I had to choose people whose entire lives I could infiltrate and eliminate evidence of my existence from on all levels.

  He just needed a title.

  Twitchell remembered a quote attributed to Mark Twain that horror novelist Stephen King had used in his novel Salem’s Lot: “A novel was a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything.” Twitchell loved the quote nearly as much as he loved how Stephen King and serial killer began with the same letters.

  He had found the perfect phrase. Twitchell called his new masterpiece “S. K. Confessions.”

  MIKE YOUNG TWIRLED THE dial on the padlock on the back of the garage. It clicked open and he swung through the door. Inside, the garage was fairly clean. A few pop bottles and discarded coffee cups were littered about, the only signs of the weekend film shoot. Of course, he could not know how crucial this observation would soon prove to be for the police. At the time, he was solely focused on using the space as a workshop. Jay and Scott were coming over later. Together, they were about to build a tank for a pet snake.

  TWITCHELL AND JESS CONTINUED to fight, the distance growing between them, but a conversation one day pushed them even farther apart. Jess was still worried that his editor, Phil Porter, was a lie and her husband was cheating on her. And then he shocked her further with a startling admission that came with no warning.

  “I’m not sure I can feel empathy like other people,” he said.

  Jess stopped what she was doing. Shaken by what her husband had just revealed, Jess tried to engage him in a long conversation about empathy. He was acting like it was a foreign concept to him, and she had to define what it meant. She thought back to an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, when a woman had revealed how she had forgotten her baby in a car, only to have the child die of heat exhaustion. As a new mother, Jess felt a great deal of empathy for the woman’s tragedy. “That’s the kind of situation,” she said, “where I felt like, ‘Oh my God, what if that happened to me?’ “

  “Yeah, that’s sad that happened,” he replied, “but that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  Jess looked at her husband in confusion. She was amazed that something so serious was only bubbling to the surface at this stage of their relationship. Gone was his usual charm, replaced with a cold distance she did not understand. They had a daughter nearing eight months of age and just now she was being told her husband felt nothing?

  “That’s not normal,” she said in sadness. If he couldn’t feel empathy, she knew she couldn’t stay in this marriage. “You need help.”

  He agreed it would be for the best. A marriage counsellor was called and another to address his personal issues.

  Not long after the conversation, he told Jess he had a confirmed schedule with a therapist. He would be seeing a psychiatrist every Friday evening. In fact, he had wasted no time about it. He already had an appointment lined up for the upcoming Friday. A session was scheduled for October 3, 2008. He’d drive there straight after work.

  THE INVITATION

  WHAT A CATCH. SHEENA had straight blond hair, a curled cute smile, and her sparkling eyes flickered in a digital snapshot on Gilles Tetreault’s computer screen like a flirty text message.

  Online dating had made single life so much easier. And Sheena was a forward girl too. Here it was four days since their first connection on plentyoffish.com and she was already finalizing plans for their first date that weekend. Gilles didn’t even have her phone number yet, but he was set to pick her up at seven o’clock on Friday for a dinner and a movie.

  At thirty-three, Gilles was a new arrival to the city from a francophone prairie town so small it only had five streets, seven avenues, and one thousand residents. He had black, neatly trimmed hair and spoke in a country accent. He was quite short and terribly thin. Working at a casino, he was enjoying life during the latest oil boom, living alone and in search of city romance.

  Gilles was thrilled that Sheena seemed to be so interested in him. The only thing that bothered him were the confusing directions she had given. He had told her online where he lived, but her directions seemed to assume he was coming from the other side of town. And she wanted him to drive down a back alley and park outside her detached double-door garage. She would leave one of the garage doors open a touch so he could enter through the garage and cross the yard to the back door of the house.

  She then explained how there was no parking in front because of a bus stop, and the landlord padlocked the back gate. “Pull in to the only driveway on your left that isn’t paved,” Sheena had written in her directions, explaining the mess he’d soon see piled up near her fence. “Seriously, who ever heard of a driveway that looks like the Amazon? It won’t swallow your car, I promise.”

  She didn’t provide a street address.

  Gilles could understand the girl not wanting to give out her phone number just yet – there were stalkers on the Internet, after all – but these directions struck him as a bit odd.

  Having experienced little luck with online dating thus far, however, Gilles brushed it off and looked forward to his date, a bit tickled that he had charmed such a beautiful blonde so very quickly.

  LITTLE CIRCLES

  TWITCHELL FOUND HAVING ACCESS to Renee’s dark mind was impossibly riveting. Never before had he shared such thoughts with such vigor, as if gorging himself on the darkest of chocolates. As the first few days of October passed by, he could barely resist spilling his own gruesome fantasies in return, but he maintained composure, at least for now, as if afraid of frightening his newest admirer.

  Twitchell thought it best to begin with a Dexter analogy, a passion he knew she already shared, and then blend the words with his life experience. Messaging Renee through his Dexter Morgan Facebook account, he went back to his rejection at the U.S. border and told her of his reaction when the customs officer delivered the bad news. “I fantasized about wrapping her to the table, collecting the blood slide and then dismembering her so vigorously,” he wrote, before adding an “lol” or “laughing out loud” as a light punctuation at the very thought of what he had just stated.

  Renee bathed in this dark passage, soaking in each sinister word as she contemplated what she should share to top it. She didn’t hold back. She unveiled one of her most violent fantasies,
one that was deeply personal, full of visceral venom and rage:

  I relate totally to the dark fantasies of wrapping that bitch up and cutting her into pieces … I have many a dark thought about my ex-husband’s current wife. That fucker couldn’t wait four months for our divorce papers to dry (not even a whole year since we split) before he got married to a nasty, skeleton skank with a rod in her spine! … All I wanted, well, still want to do, is cut her up and draw little circles with her blood. Little circles on her face, on a window, on the knife. Just little blood circles. Like finger painting, but with only one colour. Slowly, watching the blood drip a bit. Watching the lines dry on the window. Waiting for the knife to dip in again and create more paint. Little tiny circles. Pretty much like that.

  The vivid imagery of her story struck deeply. Twitchell viewed her prose as smooth and romantic, like a piece of Gothic literature – full of torment, lost love, and gore. He sat on her story for five hours. Then, late in the evening of Thursday, October 2, thoughts turning to the day ahead, he finally touched his keyboard. Swept up in the moment, he descended into darker territory, exposing his elaborate insights on how to commit the perfect murder. He warned Renee that she was “too close” to her victim and could easily be caught. She needed a far stronger plan to dispose of her ex-husband’s new wife.

  If you really want to make this happen and get away with it, prepare a kill room the same way Dex does, wall-to-wall plastic sheeting. Kidnap said anorexic girl, sounds fairly simple and easy considering her small carriage, and get her to the room. In the US, stun guns are a cost-effective approach, followed by a sleeper hold. This tactic leaves no forensic evidence behind and renders your target unconscious quickly and silently.

  The method for securing the body on TV is theatrical, but impractical to say the least. Tethering is useless. Tie the body up in duct tape completely, feet together, arms to body, hands wrapped. Then tether to prevent twisting.

  Make sure you are head to toe in a disposable rain suit and that you have plenty of hefties for the pieces and the plastic sheeting when finished. Pulverize the jaw bones and remove the teeth to avoid dental ID. Also remove the finger tips and incinerate them.

  Ideally you would want to incinerate the entire body, but this requires exhaustive location planning and a suitable container as well as fuel. Otherwise you can just dump the bags loaded with rocks Dexter style into a large body of water. Isn’t Ohio fairly close to the great lakes?

  Hmm.

  Finished with passing on his detailed suggestions, he called it a night and settled into bed.

  PREPARING

  GILLES TETREAULT HAD BUTTERFLIES in his stomach as his first date with Sheena drew nearer. He still wasn’t entirely sure how to get there and had to ask Sheena for clarification. Her response, however, made it all quite clear: “There’s certainly no other driveways along our alley like this one, and the half-open car door is a dead giveaway.”

  He printed off her directions in case he needed them. After work on Friday, he knew he would have to rush home to slip on his best shirt and a jacket, a thin black one from Old Navy, in order to make it to her house on time.

  He didn’t want to be late.

  ACROSS TOWN, TWITCHELL WAS preparing. He was spending Friday morning buying more duct tape, a new padlock, and two disposable coveralls. The possibilities that the evening would bring seemed impossibly appealing. The afternoon passed quickly. He stopped to pay the rent on his garage film studio, a courtesy he did not extend to his own home loan holder. The mortgage on his St. Albert bungalow had gone unpaid since the signing of the deed.

  LYNDA WARREN HAD A curiosity about her next-door neighbour. On the weekend, she had spotted a crew making a movie in the garage. Several men she had never seen before had been joined by a man in a maroon car who had stopped by more frequently.

  Their activities were unusual but explainable. Her suspicions had only been raised earlier, when a large table was dragged out of the garage and into the sunlight. The metal surface had been polished vigorously. She had seen such a table only once before, deep inside a medical examiner’s office, where autopsies were performed.

  TWITCHELL SLIPPED INTO THE garage undetected.

  The walls deadened the sounds of his labourious work, his Friday preparations stretching on for hours with a staple gun and scissors in hand.

  Tape was ripped. Plastic sheeting laid out. Inch by inch, the ceiling was covered, staples holding the sheeting in place. Walls were draped. The cement floor blanketed. Even the table was prepared, sheeting falling overtop. A thin green bed sheet was tacked up too, separating the two sides of the garage. He had made a dark sanctuary of which even Dexter would be proud.

  The painted hockey mask sat nearby, close to the stun gun baton. A pair of handcuffs was at the ready. Joining the armoury was a firearm. Twitchell tucked the handgun in close, making sure it was never far from his reach.

  With time to spare, he flipped open his laptop and checked his Dexter Morgan profile. His fans had no idea what he was really up to, which likely heightened the thrill of it all. A status update was entered: “Dexter is patiently waiting for his next victi … uh, play date buddy.”

  His message triggered a response. “Do this well, Dex,” one fan wrote, “and it could be really really cool.”

  Twitchell closed the laptop, slipped on his hoodie, and lay in wait.

  Time passed in silence.

  A breeze rattled the partially opened bay door, but soon settled. The sky bruised purple. He finally heard a vehicle rumble down the alley, then the sharp sounds of wheels on gravel. Headlights beamed onto the garage bay doors, vanished, and the engine shuddered cold.

  Fingers were clenched tight, gripping the stun gun baton.

  Outside, shoes pressed into soil. A man was entering the property.

  A pause, as if to enjoy this brief moment of calm, and then Twitchell rushed forward, racing across the kill room under a cloak of darkness. He approached his foolish arrival in full flight, drifting ever closer like the harbinger of terror.

  THE DATE

  GILLES HAD BEEN DRIVING fast, but when he pulled into the alley, parked his truck, and checked the time – fifteen minutes after 7:00 p.m. – he knew rushing hadn’t helped enough. Sheena had told him not to be late and he already was, losing that good first impression.

  Yellow leaves crunched beneath his shoes as he jumped out of his truck and ducked under one of the garage bay doors, left open a bit just like she said. His tardiness on his mind, Gilles tried to hurry through the darkened garage as he headed straight toward the faint outline of the back door ahead of him.

  As he reached for the door handle, Gilles was suddenly embraced from behind. He thought Sheena was playing a joke on him. But then something caught his eye.

  He saw an arm reach around with what looked like a cattle prod. An arc of electricity crackled and echoed against his chest. Again and again.

  “What the hell is going on?” Gilles called out in pain. “What the fuck?” He spun around.

  He was terrified to see a tall man standing behind him, his face obscured by a black and gold hockey mask. The jaw had been cut away, revealing the stranger’s mouth and tightened lips.

  This was no date. The masked attacker was holding the glowing shock device in his right hand. The blue arc of his weapon glowed in the darkness.

  But the electrical pulse was more annoying than crippling. It felt like an electronic bug zapper. Gilles finally grabbed the man’s arm and pushed it to the side, away from his own body, until the stranger stopped pressing the trigger and holstered the weapon.

  Gilles started to run, but the attacker cut him off as he pulled out a gun.

  “Get down on the ground! Put your head down!” The attacker roared, gesturing with the handgun.

  Gilles thought he was going to die.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” the stranger’s deep voice ordered, “and don’t move.”

  He fell to the floor and tried to look up,
but the stranger yelled at him repeatedly to keep his head down.

  The next thing he knew he had duct tape over his eyes. Gilles was blind, lying on the cold concrete, feeling totally helpless, panicking. “Take whatever you want,” he pleaded. “Take my wallet. Anything. Just let me go,” he begged tearfully.

  “If you cooperate, this will only be a standard robbery.”

  Gilles didn’t dare move. All he could hear was a jingling sound. Horrible thoughts came in flashes of terror behind his taped-up eyes. No one knows where I am. This man is going to rob me, abduct me, kill me. The jingling continued. Oh God. He’s going to rape me!

  Gilles made a split-second decision. In desperation, he decided to fight back.

  I’d rather die my way than his way.

  He ripped off the duct tape and jumped to his feet. “I can’t go down like this!”

  It startled the stranger. “Get back down on the ground! Get back down on the ground!” He swung the handgun toward him.

  Gilles waited for the bullet. No time to react. His mind was racing.

  Grab the barrel of the gun. You can do this.

  In that instant, in a space occupying no more than a half-second of time – although it felt so much longer – he saw the stranger’s outstretched hand grasping the firearm, moving it closer to his head. Aiming.

  Gilles lunged, palm toward the enemy.

  His fingers touched the barrel. His eyes fluttered open in surprise.

  Gilles realized the gun was a fake.

  He felt the hard plastic in his hand, realizing with exhilaration the weapon weighed just half the weight of a real gun. It gave him a newfound hope. He wasn’t afraid of the gun anymore. And his confidence suddenly exploded in rage, adrenaline fuelling a wild bout of courage: he could fight off this weaponless fraud.