We’re young and we want to party. We’re searching for a party. How’s that for the typical sociological stereotype? Attractive female college students seeking an escape from their studies during the small break we’ve been afforded?
Sounds like a horror flick in the making.
A reality television show.
It’s not a coincidence. And the cameras are always rolling. I collect data via the constantly filmed interstate. If it’s not the road, it’s my assistants. If it’s not my assistants, it’s the possibilities of where we’ll go next.
I’m the one that does the driving, not them. Not unless I tell them to, and then they’ll do the driving. Only because I said so. Well understood. They seem to understand what’s about to happen.
We’re visiting incarcerated serial killers.
We’re trying to gather data on a culture of fear.
I’m trying my best to make my pet everything he can be. He’s on the verge, ready.
I’m seeing him in my rearview mirror, old brown coupe carrying his own cover story. His story is for him to play out, and so is mine. We have each other; we don’t need to dabble in victim and fantasies. Fantasies are perfect cover stories. No one thinks a fantasy is real.
Fantasies are imagined; they are a form of highway hypnosis.
He drives slower—according to plan.
I’m driving faster. I’ll get there first.
Exit 94 is a few miles ahead. The red convertible takes to the momentum like I’ve become taken with his ability to be exactly what I want him to be. He is my fantasy reborn true.
My assistants giggle.
“That’s not good enough,” I tell them.
It sounds fake.
They apologize.
“Try again,” I’m saying.
Second attempt isn’t any better than the first.
“Listen,” I’m already lecturing this early on.
Between giggles, I look at him in his coupe. Look in the rearview mirror, imagining.
Imagining everything that is going to happen versus everything that might give me some surprise. The possibilities turn me on. I giggle for real.
This is exactly how it’s meant to be.
They try, and it’s better.
“Good, but keep working on it,” I’m saying while changing lanes.
Cut off this one car going slower, get in front of another; the assistants grip onto their seats. Watch how they tense up. I’m telling them to relax.
“You both are participating in something important.”
What they deem important has nothing to do with me. They assume what maybe you assume, that the importance is in the study, when the real importance is in how him and I will get to know each other. With each expression I get more and more excited.
Soon we will have nothing but footage between the both of us examining every single inch, every single action. And I will watch the footage over and over again.
Data recorded of our love.
I’m starting to get excited so I force them to do something for the camera.
They are caught off-guard by it. I dangle the concept of prestige, a famous and controversial sociological study (which means instant career success for everyone involved), and it shuts them up.
“Act more like me,” I’m telling them.
So they do it.
And for the sake of the camera lens, I turn it away so that you only hear them.
Fantasy. Taste. Lick. Moan.
Meanwhile I watch him in the rearview mirror.
I’m changing lanes and he’s changing lanes. He is hunter and victim, love and killer, all rolled into one. Hearing them and seeing him gets me more excited.
I’m driving faster.
One car keeps up. A man, thirties, caught a glimpse of my assistants.
He caught a glimpse of me. Smile. And the camera captures him too. He looks, he doesn’t know what to expect so I fill in the blanks, just enough to show something. Just enough to get him even more interested before moving on.
The interstate is paved in fantasies.
I’m doing my part. As payment, we all get off on the touch and the feel of each fantasy.
They finish and I tell them, “You’ll get used to each other’s taste.”
This is recorded too.
One of them asks and I tell them, “Yes.”
It’ll all be added as data.
Blushing now, the brunette.
“We’ve all got personalities,” I’m saying, “so we need to show them off.”
Listen up, assistants. Listen well: “You didn’t think this was going to be anything you expected, did you?”
The answer is: Of course not.
I’m pressing down harder on the gas. They will learn; once they get a real glimpse, the fantasy will become real. And then they’ll become every bit a part of this as anyone else watching.
They use their real names.
I’m shouting to them, “Your name is Claire!”
I thought I told them this already, but apparently assistants cannot be bothered by the importance of uncut footage. Everything, everything, is caught on film.
I’m forced to say it again. I change lanes and say it a second time.
Claire.
Say it.
“Claire.”
Your name is Claire.
“My name is Claire.”
Blonde hesitates. Say it!
“My name is Claire.”
I’m eyeing him again. I’m telling them, “You’re supposed to act this way. I’m the only one that knows where this is going.”
It’s about now that I start telling them how we’ll be doing this. Process is 99% of it. Keeping to the process is the other 1%. How it’ll work, listen to me. Keep the camera on the road, on the subject—this is data. I tell them about who’s first.
Then I’m going on and on about ethics and other things that a social scientist is supposed to know. I’m their teacher, in effect, and as such they must be everything I am, but less.
Just enough to maintain the cover story.
Just enough to maintain my needs.
“Understand?”
Their answer is your answer. It’s the answer I want. People want what isn’t there; people imagine exactly what is implied, but made more their own if you let them. And I will let them. I do this by being as much on camera as the other two. The redhead needs to play victim too.
The redhead on camera is everything I’d expect you to see. And more.
I’m exiting via Exit 94. A service area for the tired, a place for me to touch him. I’m turning and he’s turning. I’m turned on and he’s all about doing what I need him to do to make this exactly what I want. And he’s perfect because he knows without having to be told. He parks away from my convertible. He wanders around with his camera, talking to it, playing naïve. He pretends he’s clueless as I wait for him in a bathroom stall. And with cameras turned to the assistants, to the rest of the Thomas Edison Service Area, we are two bodies crammed into a stall made for one.
Footage pans across the prototypical:
Think of it as stock footage. This is where the title would get its due, placed prominently on the pulled back shot of the interstate.
In the stall, we are. And you can only add it to the mystery. We’ll leave wearing scars that we won’t hide under any bandage. On camera, you can see them. If you look where I want you to look, you’ll see them. Get close enough you can taste it. I’m leaving with a tape; he’s leaving with one too.
In any mirror he is everything I’ve expected him to be. Soon, there’ll be nothing left of the mystery to hide. An important fact, so hot:
He’s never killed before.
I’m touching myself, and I can’t help it.
Fantasy has gotten the best of me as I pull the convertible into drive.
3.
No matter what his gimmick will be, a first kill is the sincerest of all possible expressions.
His first kill,
he’ll dedicate it to me.
Between you and me, I’ll go right out and say it. It’s my confession, and you, the audience, get to hear it. You wouldn’t tell him, would you?
I’m having trouble imagining that he’ll meet my expectations.
Can’t wrap my mind around how he’ll deal with the sodomy, with the knife and the orifices.
My ex is one of the most intense; he really tried to please me. He only got going the moment he met me. And then he took the name—The Demon—to heart. He idolized libertinism. He sought enough to meet his own expectations, which were compounded with my own.
He wanted me to accept him.
But he couldn’t be pet. Wouldn’t ever let me be the master I wanted to be.
I can’t wrap my mind around how he’ll be able to so effortlessly take The Demon’s life.
His first might be my worst.
The Demon tried to take my life. It was when I finally decided if they couldn’t then I wouldn’t hold back. I would stop trying. I’d let the data go; I’d let it swim the channels, ending up with the authorities.
The Demon was one of my first, and so too will it be for him.
But can I tell you, will you keep it a secret?
You will, right?
My expectation has made it so that I’m seeing the kill for what I want it to be; I’m setting myself up to be disappointed. How might he be able to kill a man that has killed nearly 120? A man who idolized the libertine lifestyle—a man that turned his sadism into the gimmick I created for him?
I see it the only way I can see it—in frame with missing details.
I don’t know how he’ll wield the knife. I don’t know how he’ll use what’s available to him.
I don’t know how much of a sadist he’ll be, but the way I see it, the way I want to see it caught on film, is the perfect form, the sodomy, the coprophagia; everything that the Demon used on his victims matched to the way he forces Demon to rest. I see it.
Here’s how he’d do it:
Waiting in the showers, waiting for the guard to bring The Demon to him, paid off and paid well, he has, at his disposal—close up shots on a knife, a second knife bladed (used for gouging), gloves, bleach, a plate, and a few bottles of miscellaneous liquids—everything he might need to make this possible.
Guard forces a shackled Demon into the showers.
Guard turns on the showers, not enough to cover future terror but at least something to dissuade. In my mind, the rest of the cellblock hears everything. They hear everything and they’re happy. Something that should have happened already. In my version, The Demon doesn’t interact well with the rest of the inmates. Given what he’s done to his victims, the only thing they’d want of him is to kill himself.
Once the showers are on, it’s action.
See, this is where I’m having trouble explaining it.
It’s perfectly on point: he forces the Demon to take off his wet clothes. Forces the Demon to kneel down.
Forces the Demon to open his mouth. Forces the demon to eat the knife.
Forces the knife deep into his throat, holds it a second, and then pulls out.
Blood in pools at Demon’s knees. I. . .
And then I. . .can see it, everything releases. The smell, it’s horrible.
He’s not stopping though. In my version he acts like this is his last kill rather than his first.
He picks up the excrement and forces Demon to eat it. Demon chokes and bleeds more.
The knife wouldn’t be cleaned; no time. He’d have to go at it with the gouging knife, just enough to keep him alive. And then, and then. . .
Does any of this make any sense?
I can barely put it into words. But my biggest worry is that when I see the tape, he will have merely gone through with the kill. It takes a practiced killer to withstand the complete humiliation of a victim.
It takes a killer that is willing to be a victim, to understand how it feels, to be humiliated, in order to be the better killer. I will show him; I know I will. He’s mine and he knows it.
But I want the best from him, and my confession is that I have begun to doubt it.
You all are more like me than you’re probably willing to admit. You probably can’t believe it.
Can’t believe he’d even begin to do away with it like this, but then we’re sort of seeing it with similar disdain.
No, we aren’t that different are we?
Well, keep my confession.
My pet has a whole lot to learn.
I hope his debut is worth stomaching.
We can’t hide what the camera sees.
4.
Cut to my first words. Not hello, but instead, “Long time, no see.”
Oh how informalities make it sound so much worse. Makes you feel good while it makes the situation awkward. For him, it’s worse. The Demon hasn’t aged well.
I recall his meekness being more believable. I’m remembering brown eyes bold enough to break a victim’s spirits. His eyes might as well be grey. In the fluorescent light of the room, I’m breaking what the Demon understood as my code.
I only visit them once.
No doubt he’s suspected me of more. I can’t be lonely forever; he didn’t think that I’d end up with nothing, did he?
There are better killers than you.
He’d deny it, but no one’s watching to see an old fling caught up on who’s doing better than who. I’ve already made it obvious: I’m doing just fine and according to the guard I spoke to and slipped a couple hundred for safekeeping, Demon’s due for the end in a month or less.
“About damn time,” I said with a wink.
Doesn’t take much to get them on your side when the victim’s a killer that got caught. Nothing remarkable about a killer that couldn’t keep the gimmick straight.
“How are you?” I’m holding back laughter.
Insert a shot of the Demon when they kicked down my apartment door. Dusting for fingerprints only resulted in more evidence stacked against him.
“Why are you here?”
“Well that’s not very imaginative, huh? We used to talk in code.”
I’m still talking in code but he doesn’t have the codex.
Silence isn’t awkward for anyone but him. By the way he moves his hands, I see how he’s grown used to the handcuffs. He watches me. I look into the camera, the camera he hadn’t noticed, until I made it clear that he was being filmed. He has no choice; like the others he will be filmed because in order for this to work, you need to see what I see.
The data must be analyzed.
The data must be recorded.
Skip over expected resistance; cut to where I’m getting right down to it, mostly because I don’t need to talk to them for any more than I need to get the questions out:
Number one, “How many fan letters have you received?”
He’s fumbling so I get one of the assistants to walk in and hold up cue cards.
He’ll read them. They’ll all read them.
He’s seeing double and now he’s stuttering, “Hu-hun-hundreds.”
“I need a number. Feel free to estimate.” I have blonde Claire hold the cue card up higher.
He says exactly what it says, “Lots of them are scholars mostly. They’re factoring me into their research on sadism and the libertines. Lots of long essays studying the result of my victims.”
He almost messes it up, looking down at his dirty palms, but finishes more or less how I’d like it to be, “Something like a thousand letters and calls, stuff like that.”
Good enough.
On to number two.
“Have you been able to accept what you’ve done?”
He’s saying yes but I’m getting the brunette Claire to make him take it back. She’s under the table, pulling at his ankle cuffs, cutting into his skin.
My assistants, they’ve been told that this will be different. Despite suspicion, they agreed based on the promise of the study. They view it all as potential
success.
If it means treating someone inhuman like scum, so be it. If it means becoming someone unrestrained for the camera, so be it. So be it.
Now answer.
He’s going to answer.
And when he does, I have her tighten the cuffs so that he can concentrate on nothing more than the pain. He’s going to say what I want him to say. He’s going to concentrate on me.
He says, “No,” and via the cue card, he delivers the line, “I think about what I could still be doing, if I could have finished what I started.”
That’s perfect for the audience.
Perfect for the camera. Perfect for me.
Number three, “What are you afraid of?”
The recycled answer, the one I want from every single one of my exes, is what he says to the camera; it’s what he says and it’ll be the line you get from every single one of them.
It’s what’s bleeped out, all part of the mystery. He says a name. A name like any other; it’s what I want to hear, what I need to hear, before it happens. Before my pet goes through with it.
And then I have the two assistants leave. I have the camera close up on his face; I make it so that he’s paying attention to me, the pain gone, the pressure freed.
I have one last question and I’m wanting him to look into my eyes as he answers truthfully, honestly; I’m giving him no cues.
Number four, “Why haven’t you tried to kill yourself yet?”
This is where “the Demon,” in all his cultural infamy, dies:
He says it, and I couldn’t have written it better myself.
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried but I can’t go through with it.”
Those are tears, what I’m seeing running down his face. What else can you say, watching what was once feared now shudder and cry? That’s what you call disappointment, a taboo crossed and filmed. Those are real. They signal the end of this interview.
It’s the end of my part but it’s only the beginning of the experience. The real experience, he’s up. And I can hardly wait to see what he might do.
The Demon will die as his victims died: defiled and completely alone.
My Pet Serial Killer Page 17