My pet, my petty subject, hadn’t a clue I was close by.
I wouldn’t let him.
Everything I gave him he failed to appreciate.
Everything he gets, from this point on, he’ll have to earn.
Be my pet. My perfect, perfect pet.
Does this sound like someone you might know?
1.
There is no precision in what you do.
I watch from a twin monitor setup lent to me by the department.
Room 201 is approximately two miles down the road from where he sits staring into the cage.
The cage is filthy, containing a decomposing body, because I’m not there to clean it up.
No. Not this time. And that’s the least of his problems.
I can switch to recorded video, but I know what I’ll find.
Him, sitting and staring through her, whoever she is (does it even matter?), and for a killer he isn’t killing her right. He isn’t killing her at all. She won’t stop screaming.
I mute the live feed. I’m wishing these cameras could zoom in, but they are stationary, stagnant, just like him.
He’s sitting, depleted.
She’s in pain.
He hasn’t so much as tasted her.
I know her as Laura, but only because I’ve decided to call her that.
I wish I could speak to him.
I watch the degradation of a killer without his master.
The fight dribbles out the side of his mouth, saliva pooling into his sleeve, getting damper, until I’m noticing him standing and I’m saying, “Finally.”
He’s walking inside the cage.
I don’t switch to the camera in the cage.
I unmute the video feed.
I listen.
Her screams.
Laura’s precious, escaping cries.
And then silence.
I imagine the pool of blood collecting.
I imagine the killer inside failing to come out.
Where’s the fight?
I don’t switch cameras.
There’s nothing worth seeing.
The killer should do everything right. The killer should leave in the night, the remains of his most recent in a black overnight bag. With his return, he has neither bag nor remains. The killer is based in efficiency and routine. The killer mustn’t rely on anyone but himself. All of these things are necessities. This is everything a Gentleman Killer lacks.
I’m whispering, “You lack everything.”
I’m writing something down, “What happens to a killer without any fight left?”
I’m also adding, “What did I see in you? And where did it go?”
A thought, “Might it be my fault?”
This can’t be the precursor to a breakup.
This can’t be the beginnings of the end.
This isn’t that.
And I’m not enjoying the distance apart.
Not at all.
2.
Might be wondering how there can be a battle without any bloodshed, but it’s fairly obvious most of this is happening within a certain frame-of-mind. My frame-of-mind sees people as fighters based on the verve or value hidden within. Once you see behind their frontline defenses, those dreaded sociable exteriors worn and worn well, you see who they really are, whether they’re alive or dead. You don’t have to be six feet under to be dead. The majority of the dead keep to a routine. They stay active. They’re losers out of battle, out of touch. The battle is a game of mental wits, clashing conceptual angles to see which couple has enough fortitude to consume the other. This is how I really see people.
With or without any real fight, you’re only alive if you’re willing to explore.
I take the motel.
He takes the apartment.
My apartment.
Part of me thinks about who got the better end of this. He gets his bed. He gets her. I’m watching a roach skitter across the room, disappearing into the darkened and lifeless bathroom.
I’m next door when I want more of him. When I want to watch, I have the video feed, but I still don’t have my pet to talk to. I have to take a peek through the hole, the hole that the neighbor once claimed to have been a glory hole installed in hopes of the previous tenants of my apartment to fellate him after a month of what he perceived to be intense flirting.
This shared wall is all that separates us, me and my pet.
But I can’t let my pet see me.
He is being punished.
I want him back and I can’t have him if I let him get what he wants. If I reenter his life.
I must train him to kill on his own.
My beloved little pet, “Gentleman Killer,” what have you done to yourself?
No, it is not yet time.
I watch him continue to pick them up, yet fail to finish them off.
A series of five girls teeter towards utter demise while he avoids the cage altogether.
The smell must be unbearable.
He busies himself with food preparation, watching people come and go from their apartments via the peephole.
I have taken to leaving via the fire escape or showing up after he leaves for yet another dominance-display at a nearby club or party.
I was the one that taught him the difference between club and party.
“The club is where you go to compete and look at those with fighting potential. The party is where you go for scraps, easy padding, but just be careful of dead weight. There’s typically nothing but duds at parties. People without even the capability of killing a stray cat much less a person. Get it good, club. Get it quick, party.”
I taught him everything.
My instruction.
Back when he had a mere twenty kills, I showed him the way.
I’m wondering if he remembers or if what he’s really doing is trying to find me.
He misses me, for sure. I wonder what about me he’s missing.
Me, or my support?
I sniff the air passing through the hole in the wall.
I whisper to nobody in particular, “You’ve ruined my apartment.”
I tell myself during times of weakness, “This has everything to do with intervention.”
3.
Conversation from the cutting room floor.
Everyone’s out for the scent.
They sell victims. They sell friends. They’re selling victims drugged up and ready to be fed to your pet serial killer.
They provide a service. These stores help pet owners keep their serial killers healthy.
Ticket to a serial killer’s health is to keep them creative.
My serial killer welcomes me home with a ten-minute hunt in the shadows.
My serial killer likes to play American Dream.
I can have whatever I want.
A serial killer is something best kept a secret.
I have a secret that no one will ever know.
You’re a mystery.
I am the mystery.
What can I do for you tonight?
What they sell are products that’ll feed the mystery.
The woman is here to buy a week’s worth of victims.
My serial killer likes women more than men.
I’m a woman.
You’re a mystery.
I’d be a good friend.
You’d be a good killer.
That’s everyone’s role.
It’s possible to switch and share roles.
Who are you talking to?
What are you looking for?
You’re losing sight of reality.
The woman is here to buy a replacement pet.
The man is searching for a new master.
It’s hard to find friends.
But it’s easy to find killers.
A handful of voices, none of them hers.
She found you first… never forget it.
1.
I haven’t even begun; that’s what tonight is for.
I’m home.
My place.
A little foreplay—wearing latex gloves, I walk through the apartment.
I begin working on his computer.
I wear a mask. The mask smells of somewhere else.
It smells of him.
He altered his laptop to be password protected.
I know the password.
I know all his passwords.
I’ve made my decision.
Even with the past we’ve shared, I am free to do as I please.
And what I find pleasing is keeping him paranoid, on his feet, alert every step of the way.
I need to do something about those bodies.
Some of them are dead.
I want to say he’s met the fifty mark, but when all I see is a tossed out body with little to identify with, I get the feeling that he’s ruining it.
I’ve kept up with the news. Missing Persons reports have become linked to Gentleman Killer. He is as interesting as he was prior to my enforced banishment.
The key to power—by that I mean any kind of power—is in how the media handles the mystery. So far he’s been lucky. He’s been lucky every step of the way.
But not tonight. Not anymore.
I will teach him a lesson and use his reaction as data.
I play with myself while playing with his computer.
I find his phone on the kitchen counter.
I add a few phone numbers.
Every phone number is someone I’ve never met.
Each phone number comes from one of my classes, people I’ve never cared for, people with which affability comes easy.
I toy around with security software.
I alter the past so that it looks like I have yet to return to the apartment.
I make it look like his computer hasn’t been accessed.
I momentarily consider taking the bodies.
Just to make sure, I leave for next door around the time he typically returns with his newfound lays, but he doesn’t come back, so I get right back to work.
When was the last time I’ve been aroused?
I can’t be sure.
I play with myself but I won’t be getting off.
I can’t.
I’m naked to keep my outfit from smelling and being stained.
I walk from room to room, a finger where it feels good.
Occasionally I wipe my wet finger across random surfaces—coffee table, couch, carpet, keyboard—noting what I had touched. The cameras are recording. The cameras are recording. . .
I tend to the bodies.
What a waste. He could have at least tasted her.
The bodies go where they need to go to disappear.
But nothing’s ever completely erased.
I make note of how many—eight—and I don’t bother cleaning up the body fluids crusted and coated throughout the entire cage.
I take out some perfume and spray the surfaces my finger touched.
I return to my room when I’ve left the smells and cleaned out the bodies.
Check the footage.
I decide to keep and alter the footage rather than it being erased.
I hide my face in every shot.
I make sure that whatever he does see is undoubtedly me.
Check her form.
Check her breast size.
Check her nice long legs.
She looks a lot like your type, huh?
Don’t like blondes? That’s okay, because she’s a brunette too.
What he’ll see is a lot of what he’s already seen in private display.
We used to talk to each other, record every touch, the camera catching our true forms, letting us fuck each other with our own hands.
What am I?
I am his type.
She is his type.
She is your type.
I edit the footage and leave it as-is, knowing well that he’ll be back to check.
The scraps are forever erased.
I leave no trace.
I sign into an anonymous email account, a name made up and an email most unfamiliar, and I title it, “SORRY TO HAVE MISSED YOU.”
In the body of the email I write:
“They all look the same once you’ve let them retire.”
I am adding to the mystery.
“Where do they go, if they’ve got no fight left in them? I see vermin but they look a lot like the girl on the 6-o-clock news. Don’t worry. They might not spread your secret around. . .”
I sign it with XOXO and then, post script, I add:
“Say hello. Wave to me.”
I want him to remember who found who first.
I picked you up, not the other way around.
Remember? Hearts and kisses!
2.
THIS:
What happens?
THAT:
What happened?
Where it’s believed to be that “Nothing Ever Happens,” there’s a lot going on wherever people aren’t paying attention.
But who’s believing who?
Cryptic mysteries are seldom easy to explain.
Well, try this:
3.
A scene from the past. Not just any kid’s room—the woman’s childhood bedroom. Panning shot around the room shows the same walls covered in watercolors and other artistic treasures. The bed is covered with teddy bear sheets and on the windowsill the same telescope she used every night to glimpse a world that was never hers to understand.
There’s a child guarding this room. The only person th child lets in is the woman. The woman belongs here. The reason why isn’t a mystery.
The real mystery is why the child hasn’t aged.
The room seems to shrink and shake to the sounds of footsteps outside.
The audience watches the room buckle and bend.
Mom and Dad are angry. You missed curfew.
Mom and Dad will punish you.
Easy for you, you’re the favorite.
It’s not my fault. It’s important to be confident.
Mom and Dad want a sensible daughter.
Mom and dad want me, not you.
Hear that? It’s Dad. He’s here to do it again.
He won’t, not again. Not after all this time.
He’ll keep doing it until you learn.
Why don’t you help me stop him instead of hiding under the bed?
Nothing I do matters. I’ve got the bravery, the looks, and the brains to do anything, but I lack one thing, one important element.
And what’s that?
I can only live through you.
The child’s words are the woman’s and the woman’s are the child’s.
Of course, the audience knows this.
The room coils around the woman as if meant to protect her from what bangs on the door. The audience standing in unison, hairs on their neck standing as they stand, the tension built up so obscurely it has left the audience a wreck, a loss for words while searching for an understanding. Bang—someone’s at the door.
Who is it?
Don’t bother. We already know.
Don’t let him pull me out of the room.
I won’t.
I need to stay in the room.
As long as you’re in this room, you’ll be safe.
The room has always protected you.
I can protect you too.
Bang—the door’s not going to hold.
The woman takes a step back. The room reconfigures to hide everything but her face.
Zoom in on the woman’s face. The audience can see everything.
Mug shot—see the source of the woman’s fear, anxiety, and inadequacy.
Jump shot to the door splintering into pieces. Perfectly centered in the door frame, the light coming from the hallway darkening his shape: A man.
That isn’t Dad.
I know who it is.
What’s he doing here?
He’s here to take back his secret. . .but I’m not going to let him do that.
Though the ma
n tries, he can’t step one foot into the room.
“You aren’t welcome here!”
The woman is spoken for.
The man doesn’t say a word. He isn’t here for her; he’s here for the mystery.
It’s his and he’s taking it back.
He’s not going to leave.
He’ll have to leave sometime.
No, you don’t get it. He isn’t leaving.
I’m not giving it back.
Give it back.
No.
Give the mystery back to the man. It’s his, not yours, Claire.
I won’t give it back.
Have I ever been wrong?
You’re stubborn. Always was a stubborn bitch. You’ll start a war.
Then let’s start the war.
You’re willing to go to war with your pet?
He’s been a bad pet. He’s turning on his master.
The man patiently waits at the door while the woman walks forward. Close up shot of her face, then his; the first time the audience sees his face.
They were meant to reveal more of themselves. Bit by bit, until each seeks the destruction of the other. This is the only way the mystery will be solved.
With a war.
You’ll regret it, Claire.
No I won’t.
Then what the fuck do you want, Claire?
I want control. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Complete control over an entire person.
You don’t get it. This is for me.
Claire. . .
I’m breaking down the walls.
Stop talking like you’re me.
1.
I was there watching as it all fell into place.
I recorded each item as data.
I had enough data to corroborate what I had hypothesized.
There was only one thing I hadn’t expected.
2.
The killer returns home in the morning.
The killer has someone with him.
Drugged, she’s failing.
She tries to kiss him.
The killer kisses her back.
When he pulls back, his mouth is bloody.
The killer spits it out into the kitchen sink.
Watches as she falls.
The killer drags her into the cage.
It is then that he first notices another change.
My Pet Serial Killer Page 11