My Pet Serial Killer

by Michael J Seidlinger

  Maybe I am.

  I know what you are: You are a black hole.

  I am Claire Wilkinson.

  I know what I want and I know what I am. I have no need of explaining it. People turn to me because they’re turned on by the mystery that surrounds—

  Don’t interrupt me.

  Look at the walls, they’re weeping.

  Look at the ceilings, they’re gone. I can see them watching us.

  This has been nothing more than a big production.

  Is this your idea of a sick joke?

  There’s a man and there’s a woman.

  Isn’t every story about a man and a woman?

  Most of the time.

  You think you know someone, but no one ever really knew you.

  You’re a trick, a gimmick, something to wear until the flair wears out.

  No need to break down the door, it wilts on its own.

  Yeah, you get bored. The killer never satisfies you and so you look for someone else.

  And what’s wrong with that? Aren’t we all looking for someone to get along with?

  Most of us play for keeps.

  I don’t see your point. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m looking for my type, the kind of guy in touch with his instincts and his emotions.

  But I’m left somewhere between wanting to be forgotten and wanting to be found.

  Well with Victor, he didn’t have a chance.

  He didn’t know what he was getting into when he first agreed.

  Have any of your exes?

  I’d like to say my breakups are always mutual.

  On a scale of 1 to 10 stars, 10 being the best, how would you rate me?

  1.

  When I walk through the front door, he resists.

  Master is home. He should be catering to my every need—take off my shoes, rub my feet, draw a bath, massage my back—but he’s not and maybe it’s because he can’t stand the sight of me. If that’s the case, then everything’s right on schedule.

  I’m instructing him before I even see him, back still turned, taking off my raincoat. I take off all my clothes. “The pet treats the master with a nice warm meal and bath when returning home from a day in the rain.”

  Naked, his resistance crumbles.

  He’s torn between dinner and the bath. What to do, what to do?

  I’m supposed to tell him what to do. Instead I sit him down at the kitchen table.

  I bring him his laptop.

  I open mine.

  We face each other via webcam.

  There’s nothing more intimate than this.

  It’s here that I tell him the truth.

  Everything he isn’t. Everything he lacks as a killer.

  I can see his face coiling, redder and redder, eyes bloodshot, the pain so unbearable, rooted in mental harm.

  He needs to hear this.

  He needs to break to pieces.

  Sometimes words aren’t enough. I’m telling him to stand up.

  I’m telling him to put on some clothes.

  He doesn’t have any clean clothes so I’m lending him a dress. Even better. He closes his eyes as I force the dress over his head and tell him to remain in place.

  I ask him, “What exactly are you trying to do?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I ask him again, “What have you done with yourself?”

  He lacks the confidence to speak about himself honestly and with poise.

  “Did you ever wonder where the bodies might be going?

  “Why did you agree to be with me if you had absolutely no feelings for me?”

  “You obviously lack the ability to commit. Why didn’t you tell me beforehand that you’re better off dead? That you’re already dead?”

  “Hmm?”

  I tell him not to look at me. He doesn’t deserve to see me.

  I sit back down at the table while he remains standing.

  “Gentleman Killer—now that’s something from last month!”

  He’s trying to speak but it’s simply a mixture of stutters.

  I’m rolling my eyes and telling him he smells.

  It’s not his usual smell.

  He smells different. I don’t like the smell.

  I stand up and shove his nose under my armpit while saying, “This is how a woman smells.” I shove his face between my legs, “This is what a woman tastes like. We’re not candy. We’re far better than fifty-one flavors.”

  I take him in both hands and I try to get him hard but he can’t and I point and laugh.

  He’s not taking this well and, of course, it’s meant to leave him as less.

  Much less.

  I push him to the kitchen floor, forcing him to lick the linoleum.

  “You are my pet, remember that.”

  I see it in the way he can’t move.

  I see it in how the vein in his neck throbs. I see it in his flaccid state.

  He loathes me.

  And with that, the lesson is complete. We’re finished.

  I tell him to clean everything up while I go into my bedroom and sleep.

  I warn him, “Fall asleep and you’ll wish you were dead.”

  I enter my room and lock the door. I crawl through an area of space joining my apartment and the neighbor’s; it’s where I’ll be, watching, as he breaks down for the final time.

  I’ll be watching and recording.

  It’s time to watch and learn something new.

  2.

  When he starts talking about me, I hit record.

  He doesn’t know my name, so he can only call me master. As master, I sound like a dictator unkind to his solitary citizen, a poor killer no longer capable of serializing his suffering.

  It’s perfect, really. He’s pacing back and forth, while shouting to himself, frantic nonsense, a series of threats. These threats are directed at me.

  “She’s a killer of killers!”

  But that’s not true.

  I haven’t killed anyone.

  My pets do all the killing. They use while I preserve the fight within.

  It’s better that way. I’m always wanting more and more and more and the fight within seems to gain strength. I’m not against the thought of killing though. People that have it in them to let out the fight turns me on, turns me sideways, horizontal, ready for everything.

  He’s calling me all kinds of things.

  I don’t mind.

  Some of it is true.

  A lot of it is misplaced, the lingering trace of fight escaping. It’s the leftovers.

  This and that.

  This and that.

  It’s hot in there.

  Must be. Look at him sweat.

  I’m thinking this is going to end perfectly. I’ve never done this before—the perfect ending thing. Maybe not perfect for others but it’s perfect for me.

  I stop recording.

  He’s trying to find me.

  My name. He’s in my room. He’s getting close. I quiet down, just to make sure he doesn’t hear me on the other side of the wall.

  He won’t.

  He doesn’t.

  He’s on one of the laptops.

  The laptop I left there purposefully because I bugged it.

  Rigged to record.

  I open up the remote-access software and record from within his feed.

  His cursor drags all over the place. He’s looking for something.

  I let him find my name.

  He’s saying it, “Jessie McAndrews.”

  You and I both know it’s not my name. It’s simply one of the names attached to one of the phone numbers I used once and it’s the name and number he’s calling next.

  I have the number set to call a program on my laptop.

  I quickly mute my laptop before any sound can escape it.

  He’s on the other side of the wall. Really close, sitting on a chair of sex, the one I had used so many times before. He must smell my smell.

  It must be overpowering.

/>   Let it ring.

  Let it go to voicemail.

  I let him record a message that, as planned, works in both tone and message.

  Oh, the desperation.

  It’s a message that’ll be used as evidence like the rest of what I’ve edited and recorded.

  He moves on to porn websites, indulging in the free samples, the pictures both tame and fetishized, but he can’t seem to get hard enough. He keeps trying and I’m watching and waiting; he has to be on my laptop for more than my name and porn.

  After he realizes porn won’t arouse him fully, he moves on. I record his email address and password—good to know—and he’s continuing, or at least trying to continue, what he already started.

  Amusing to think he can get away with this.

  His email address with his name attached.

  Where’s the benefit? Think about it for a second –

  Let’s say Victor Hent is an innocent man, shy, not as much as a single spark of fight inside. He’s come across (somehow) information/evidence pertaining to the Gentleman Killer case. Why would he put himself in danger by going to the media?

  Why would the media believe him?

  He lacks the kind of material and evidence required to hook them in.

  But he’s not thinking straight—this much is obvious—and I’m going to let him finish writing that email.

  Let it be known that he’ll never receive any response.

  Not even an auto-response.

  He begins surfing around the various local club websites and university forums for information on tonight’s events. Nothing to see here:

  Just a killer without a spine returning to the only thing he knows how to do—

  Play the pickup game.

  No matter how demeaned and demoralized, he’s still able to be that eligible player, effortlessly picking women up with overt tactics and unrelenting charm. So much for that.

  Under the surface he’s a killer with nothing left, not even a personal reason, for doing the things that he still thinks he’s doing.

  But I have him and everything that I need. What’s missing is how I’ll phrase it and what I’ll do with myself later.

  No time to think about that.

  There’s work to be done.

  Everything went as planned.

  Now I’m going for the perfect finish.

  3.

  He’s going to think it’s a gesture of forgiveness, and that maybe, just maybe, we’ll be alright—he’ll still have me and I’ll have him—but these four women, effectively four, that I picked up under the pretenses of having access to recreational drugs and the willingness to explore bisexuality, they are already fading well when I return with them to the apartment.

  The first thing they see is too much for them to bear.

  They see him, nude, partly-erect, a shell of a killer with nothing else to do but attempt to masturbate. One or two laugh while the others gasp.

  One walks closer, intrigued by the concept of an orgy.

  I remain at the door.

  I take off all my clothes.

  The four women act drunk when in fact they’re drowsy from the drugs.

  I toy with them in the minutes before falling to the floor.

  Seeing me naked, they want to get naked too. He’s still gripping himself in disbelief, but more than willing to make do with being “made up,” everything fitting back into place.

  We trade smiles.

  That’s my way of saying, We’re okay, you and I. Master and pet.

  And he’s getting hard, standing right up.

  He treats the four women as a marathon meal.

  One’s naked and the other three are close when they seem to succumb to the drugs.

  We both take turns dragging the bodies into the cage.

  I strip all but one naked, leaving him one as a gesture of respect.

  I grab him, pulling him, and I can feel it twitch in my hand. I bring him close, an inch from our lips touching, and I say, “Do what you do best.”

  He’s excited. He enters the cage.

  I walk into my room, shouting back, “We’ve got to catch up!”

  I hit record before missing anything of value.

  He’s tasting their bodies, one after the other.

  He calls out to me. I hit stop, crawl back, and meet him in the cage.

  “She tastes like cinnamon!”

  He’s stroking himself.

  I’m replying, “I didn’t think this was about sex.”

  He’s smiling and for a moment he’s the spitting image of that beloved gentleman I once met. He says, “Everything’s about sex and everything’s about violence.”

  He offers her to me.

  I know what I taste like but I’ve never really thought about anyone else’s.

  I shrug, “Why not?”

  I lean in for a taste.

  I feel pressure on the back of my head. He’s holding me there, “Eat it. Eat it!”

  I bite down and taste copper more than cinnamon.

  Her blood, I suck it in and keep it in my mouth. Breaking free, I spit in his eyes.

  I’m scolding him, “What the hell was that?”

  “That’s how it’s done.”

  The killer’s way of showing me how it’s done.

  Some fight left in him, but I know better.

  I’m nodding and he’s tasting the second and third, “Cherry!” and “Chocolate,” but I’m crawling back into the other room muttering to myself, “All women taste more or less the same.”

  Hitting record, he’s beginning with the cutting but then stops and calls over to me. I stop recording and, tired of crawling back and forth, I shout, “What?!”

  He’s trying to flatter me, “You really know how to pick ‘em!”

  “Yeah!”

  And then I’m immediately adding, “Master knows best!”

  On camera he doesn’t seem to notice or suspect why I’m in my room rather than in the cage with him and the four of them. He doesn’t because he’s too busy indulging.

  His actions are those of a new killer, one with no real understanding or reason from which he needs to taste, and cut, and prod, and tear, and feel.

  He just does.

  And in the process he expels the craving without considering the purpose.

  I’m shocked to find that I care about his feelings.

  I want him to enjoy them. I enjoy watching him enjoy their mutilation and chemical bath. Truly it’s like he’s never done this before. . .

  This is why I’m finding it so arousing.

  I start up my webcam but there’s no one to broadcast to. I broadcast to myself.

  I let the cameras record and capture his method.

  When he’s done, I’ll get into my car with the dead bodies and I’ll find beds for them. Just like I used to do. This is a night of nostalgia.

  This is a night where my arousal is almost what it used to be.

  He is satiated.

  And so am I.

  If everything ended with this night, this might be a happy ending.

  Happy.

  Where’s the mystery in that?

  4.

  It all started with a little bloodletting.

  Blood, saliva, and other bodily fluids are just that, fluids. It’s because of what I know. What I know is that the liquid, that fluid, isn’t yours. It isn’t theirs. It’s mine. It came from me. We leave smells, trails, and splatter wherever we go but here I am, telling a story with every moan. A moan, like a scream, tells so much more than simple words.

  The blood that is mine binds to every surface. The floor at my feet I let collect small drying pools. I bring my foot up, dripping in it, and you ask me to suck my toe.

  Does it feel right? Does it feel good?

  Are you ready to commit to me?

  Are you ready now?

  I do things for you that no one else would. And you know what, it’s because you’re mine and I know more about your urges than you do.

&n
bsp; Mark this as method.

  Look at me from any angle.

  Play with you.

  I play with you.

  It’s what you and I do.

  It’s what we all do.

  Some play harder than others.

  The knife? It could always be sharper.

  It doesn’t matter that this is all imagined, speared by the digital data transfer.

  What is your mystery?

  I know you.

  Like you claim you know me.

  Do you like to party?

  Do you play pet or master?

  And who am I?

  I hope you’ll remember me and what I did for you.

  I feel like we’ve done this before.

  With a fleeting kiss, I bid you goodbye.

  Their mystery is a cliffhanger ending.

  1.

  If there’s an attraction, burn it to disc.

  If there’s a correlation, be sure to bring that disc with you.

  I definitely did.

  The day was a highlight because the rain didn’t come down as hard as it usually did, as if giving me a three-hour window to make it on campus and inside the department building before it started up again.

  One of the professors joking about the nonexistence of reality, “Whoever’s controlling the rain must hate his job.”

  Another professor replies, “What makes you think it’s a guy?”

  Five of them and me. Six of us in total.

  Today is the day.

  I’m ready to defend my thesis.

  I walk up to the front of the room and to the computer equipped with all the necessary lecture tools like projector and dimmer switches. I take out the disc and load up a video edited to play continuously, cast against the wall behind me, as I discuss my thesis, my hypothesis, and my results. There’s only one starring character in this show and it’s not me.

  It’s him.

  And ten minutes into the fifteen-minute presentation all five are leaning forward, captivated, smiling widely.

  At one point a professor exchanges an enthusiastic nod with the department head.

  It does nothing to slow me down from delivering my presentation as I had intended.

  I gain my applause and a round of acclaim.

  But I feel nothing.

  Not until I’m certain everything will fit together.