SKA: Serial Killers Anonymous

by William Schlichter

  I slid out from under her. I disposed of the cheap seat covers and vacuumed out my car. It would eliminate most of her DNA. I should’ve toss the handcuffs, but buying too many pairs may have sparked notice.

  Cinder blocks would weigh her body down in the river, and since she was homeless, I doubted I’ll be connected to her.

  I must make sure when I selected my next project I had no direct connection to her, either.

  II

  WITH HIS STORY complete, the speaker glances at the six faces hidden by the dark—judging. Not just him, but each other in the circle. None of them should be here. Not just in an abandoned boiler room, but gathering in a group. Everyone joining a support group for the first time, or the fifth, finds they doubt belonging. Being here marks the first step in admitting a problem, admitting everything they have done in their life has been wrong. Who is to say what is wrong? Why does doing what feels good to a person, makes them complete, must be labeled as wrong?

  Most drug addicts would say it’s not. If they stay home and draw their coke lines, they harm no one but themselves, so why is it a crime?

  Addiction harms everyone around you.

  Addiction is uncontrollable.

  Addiction makes a person do uncontrollable acts against others.

  Maybe it is an addiction. Addictions have cures.

  How does anyone ask for help with this?

  Who would even help such people?

  All these question race through each of the seven’s minds.

  “You’re the Dog Collar Killer!” The excited voice in the dark celebrates his own revelation.

  “This is a safe place. We must follow our ground rules,” the woman’s voice breaks the cold. Warm, not motherly—not auntie—more like the kind nurse before she jabs the needle in the meaty part of the ass voice. “Your outburst is unnecessary...and not acceptable.”

  “The papers have labeled some of my killings as such. A bit pedantic. It’s not what I do.”

  “None of what the newspapers describe is who we are,” the woman assures him. “We did decide to choose pseudonyms as part of our protection. What moniker will you choose to be referred by?”

  “Albert will suffice.”

  Excited, the young man pipes up, “DeSalvo!? You chose the name of the Boston Strangler, because you too strangle women.”

  “We’re not here to judge, kid. We are here to help one another. In what we’ve done certain anonymity must be maintained. What we share, we do so under a blanket of trust. If you lack such abilities, we will end the circle with nothing more than a scary campfire story to go home with.”

  “I, for one, am here to prevent what I do. So, shut up, kid. I deal enough with stupid teens; I don’t want your crap.” One of the dark figures scolds.

  “I’m twenty-two.”

  “I’ve never been to an AA meeting, but I’m sure they don’t sit in the dark with a single light suspended over the podium,” another figure says.

  She snaps her neck with a dark gaze toward the voice. “If this is to work we at least have to make the attempt.”

  “But follow the rules—our rules.”

  “Are those rules enough?”

  The voices bombard her from the gloom.

  “AA is about building a support network, and our group needs support.”

  “Our group needs to be locked away.”

  The remark brings a chuckle from the assembly.

  “Levity might do us some good. The major focus of group therapy is to share, to discuss and work out our shared problem, to explore and overcome our urges. We’re here to stop killing. Who would like to tell their story next?” She asks.

  The self-appointed hostess faces the man who stifled the kid. “You said you worked with teens. Would you like to go?”

  “No one even knows I’m a killer. The victims are all taken by a ghost. People actually believe my victims are the product of a spirit from beyond. What do you have to say to that, kid?”

  The young man keeps quiet, hearing the entire story before passing judgment on the meek man now speaking.

  “My tale begins before I was born. Cliché as it sounds, the location is key to the events I perpetuate.”

  “Wherever the starting line is, we need to have an understanding of who you are,” the woman says.

  “Where I live, the American Civil War was just a chapter in history class. We were too far North for redneck southern pride, except among those few pickup drivers too stupid to even understand the flags they put on their bumper stickers. We were too far West to have much of a minority population, but what we did have was an impressive home lost in the woods at the edge of town. The dream house of a southern lady built for her by a gentleman.”

  “The house was grand and out of place. Despite ample farmland, it was more cattle than cotton. A home with Grecian pillars and a mint julep-sipping porch was an oddity among an original settlement of log cabins. The best version of the story was the gentleman who inherited the family property while prospecting for gold in California. He used his stake to build the dream house of the woman he loved. Despite all this she still spurned him returning to her family in Georgia.

  “Only she never made it home. Her body was found in the cellar. Her lover had shot himself as she swung from her neck.”

  “We are not here for grand fairy tales.”

  “It’s more than a fairy tale, and even if it is, it’s part of who I’ve become.”

  “Continue. We all must learn to respect the sharing process,” she says.

  “With all my research, I’ve been unable to turn up the original family to confirm the story or who even owns the property, but no one wanted the home after the grisly deaths. The story persists how during several Civil War battles the home was commandeered and used as a field hospital. Confederate and Yankee soldiers alike died there. The lovers’ deaths and so many wounded—dying—the home was considered cursed—haunted. No one wanted to live in such a place. And it remained vacant.”

  “You’ve set the stage for a nice twisted horror tale where the dumb blonde with big tits dies first. Is that what you do? Kill blondes with big tits?”

  “I told you knowing the background of the house was important.” The speaker spins his tale while Al and the other five attendees listen.

  III

  “RUN!”

  “Run, you little shit! I’m going to cut off one of your tiny balls when I catch you.” Allen stops. The bulky crop-top teen pounds his right fist into the meaty palm of his left hand.

  Freshly cut grass butts against overgrown dead weed stalks, signaling the edge of a property line.

  “Why only one ball?” the jocular Scott ponders.

  “Give me something to cut off later.”

  “Call him one-ball Magee.”

  “Little fucker ran onto the Carson property,” Scott says.

  “I thought the city owned it?” George asks.

  “Who gives a fuck who owns it. We got to get him,” Allen says.

  “Go across the property line?” Scott asks.

  “You telling me that fuck tart is braver than your pansy ass? I knew you wanted to lick my balls in the shower after the game, you pussy mouth,” Allen says.

  “I ain’t no pussy,” Scott says.

  “The runt’s got more balls than you, even after I cut one of them off.” Allen flicks open the gleaming razor edge of a switch blade.

  “I’ll find him.” Scott marches through the grass and years of unraked leaves.

  Allen stays close on his heels—committed—unable to admit in front of his teammates he’s uneasy by all the stories of the house on this forgotten land.

  George scoops up a branch and whacks at grass as he follows.

  • • • • •

  The bravest action I had was to run onto the property no one traveled even when triple-dog-dared. I was forever on the receiving end of the jocks’ abuse. Children today whine about bullies and feelings. What those boys did bordered on criminal, and
there weren’t any anti-bullying laws then.

  • • • • •

  I ran. I had to escape. Thing is, when propelled by fear, a person doesn’t gaze at his feet and pay attention to where he should be placing them. A wrought iron bar tripped me. My own momentum betrayed me. I tumbled over hard stone. I scraped up the untouched earth as if I were a tractor plowing the field, and nothing I could do would undo the path I left. They would know I fled this way. I had no doubt I would lose a nut.

  I got up, not bothering to clean off the black, rotten muck smeared on me from under the leaves. My mother would rage about the stains more than what I had landed on and how it road-rashed my arms.

  Any other situation and I would break down in tears from the pain. I could afford no time to cry. Instead, I kicked away some of the dirt.

  Tombstones.

  Maybe those cowards wouldn’t chase me into cursed land and a cemetery. It wasn’t big, most likely a family plot. The names and dates were long faded, but there were enough knocked over limestone to reveal a family once resided here.

  “Where are you, you little fuck!”

  I was dead, or soon to be forever marked as half a man. Trees were thick, and an old, rotten oak had collapsed under its own weight in some thunderstorm years before I was born. Rotten branches and no foliage, it offered no protection. Then I thought it might.

  Since it was rotting, maybe it had a hollow spot in the trunk. Leaping onto it, I found more stone was underneath the tree. It had collapsed on a limestone hut, leaving a gap between the stone roof and the stone wall. I wormed my way through, scraping and cutting up my belly to match my arms. It stung, but not like a knife to the balls would.

  “Where’d the fucker go!?”

  They had reached the cemetery. The sun beamed into the crypt. I had no idea they buried bodies this way. I was trapped if they found the ceiling gap. They might decide to put some weight into and close the hole. I would die in an unknown grave.

  Frantic, I searched the chamber. There were alcoves in the wall where folded bodies rotted to bones. In the center was a rectangular stone platform. Covered in a moth-eaten shroud was a body reduced to black bone. I don’t know what made me think of it. A body interned out in the open was normal in the middle ages. Some fantasy adventure I read once might have had a body displayed like this. It was to ensure no one touched, not the dead but the dais. I was motivated. I pushed past the skeleton on the bier and I found it. My escape. A tunnel. It didn’t matter where it lead, or even if it didn’t go anywhere anymore, as long as I traveled far enough down that the jocks didn’t spot me.

  My escape was short lived. They taunted me every day in school. They never admitted they lost me on the Carson or Benson or Watson property, or whatever name this year’s class gave to the forgotten piece of land. Only it wasn’t forgotten, it was just never spoken of. I had been on it and used it as an escape, learning a secret.

  Not the secret everyone in town knew. The property was now more a location for hazing of the unsuspecting, ‘I dare you to go inside’ shit. Now I knew one truth, and it meant nothing. And I would not share because it was the one item I held over the whole town.

  • • • • •

  High school taunting was worse.

  Allen stepped up his abuse—from the classic verbal, skipping the bathroom swirly, to the worst humiliation performed on any prepubescent boy. I was on my way to class doing all possible to avoid him when I found hands pushing into the sides of my pants. The fingers tugged and despite the cloth gripping my hips, my Walmart specials were around my ankles.

  Everyone laughed.

  “For so much hair, how do you find your dick?”

  “Tiny dick!”

  “With a dick that small your mom won’t even go to prom with you.”

  Prom was the furthest thing from my thoughts.

  “Tiny dick!”

  “How do you find it to pee?”

  Laughter. Haunting laughter and knowing even my classmates who never openly taunted me would speak of my miniscule penis. It was small—and I was insignificant.

  I hurt. I would blow my brains out right there if someone handed me a gun. My diploma wouldn’t say my name, instead it would read Tiny Dick with one Ball.

  My older sister raced to my rescue.

  For about half a second.

  “Do you know how fucking embarrassing you are? Oh my God! Pull your pants up. You are the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me! I have a senior reputation, and you’ll ruin it. I hate you!”

  Fuck. My own sister. I don’t know what I expected from her, but whatever it was it wasn’t her berating me on top of my mortification.

  A teacher herded me from the hall. “Don’t worry, Mr. Colson, it’s not big enough to be offensive.”

  More laughs.

  My shame was complete, and I had no one. No girl would desire a tiny dicked man. Even once I hit my growth spurt—now my nightly prayer—girls would forever speak of what I lacked in manhood.

  Even if I ran away and found a new life in a new town, how could I ever be with a woman?

  No, I would tough it out. I’d show them—him.

  No longer having to worry about attracting girls, I was left with more free time and I would use it to extract revenge on Allen.

  The interesting dynamics about high school was the way in which the social hierarchy worked. My sister, senior cheerleader, was expected to date college boys. Allen, senior jock, would chase freshman girls because they were too stupid to understand he would use them only for sex.

  College boys used senior girls for sex, but somehow that was okay within the confines of the dynamic, even though both college boys and high school senior boys would leave the girl when a more prominent prospect of sex entered their lives.

  Now Allen dated Melony—a freshman. Cute as a button, tight ass, no tits, could have passed for a sixth grader. Melony was a cheerleader and, therefore, my sister reasoned it was her duty to train her in the ways of social interaction.

  Melony—dumb twat—who was so happy that seniors wanted her in their circle she had blinders on.

  My sister had the smart habit of stealing one of dad’s beers every time he went on a bender. He drank all the time now. Since my humiliation at school the town branded me a fairy—leading to his silent shame. Men were to be men, and not have pansy sons. If I had fought back and gotten my ass kicked at least it was masculine. I never understood how I went from being the brunt of all school bullies to homosexual. Dad wasn’t a mean drunk, he would just drink until he passed out in his recliner. Gillian, on a good night, cleaned up Dad’s empties and grabbed a full beer. With so many smashed cans in the recycle box, he never knew how many he drank.

  Gillian and her friends held little séances. They loved to bring the new freshmen cheerleaders to the front yard of the plantation house. Kids built bonfires there for years and drank, fucked, tormented the unsuspecting freshmen with ghost tales and dares to venture inside.

  I would sneak out. It was easy to witness the parties I was never invited to from the woods. Then a short hop to the cemetery and through the underground railroad tunnel when they were inside the house.

  Karen popped a beer. “No way. You don’t just sleep with any boy.”

  “Yeah, you’re not a slut when you’re popular. You only give yourself to one of the jocks and only when they win games.” Carly chugged her beer.

  Karen passed a fresh beer to Melony.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Besides, jocks are the best way to escape this town. They get a scholarship, or a pro-team snatches them. You’re set with a meal ticket.”

  “Even if they dump you later for some other slut you’ll have had his baby and he’ll have to pay you child support.”

  “Who was the last player from our school to go pro?” Melony asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Karen pushed on the bottom of Melony’s beer, tipping more of the liquid into her mouth. “Drink up. You can’t be a light
weight. You have to be able to outdrink them or they will take advantage of you.”

  “You have to be in charge of the relationship.”

  “You got to get used to beer with us or when you drink with the boys you’ll pass out.”

  “Then you never know which one you’ll wake up with.”

  “I don’t want to wake up with any of them,” Melony said.

  They ignored Melony’s protests.

  “I don’t blame you there. You don’t want to start out with Trent, boy’s going to be a porn star.”

  They giggled, except for Melony. She sipped her beer, unsure why they laughed.

  “If Allen didn’t already have his name on you, I’d say start with George.”

  “Or your brother,” Karen laughed.

  “My brother will never be a jock.” Gillian opened her second beer, “It’s not like Allen is all that impressive, but he’ll do nicely for a first time.”

  “Have you girls slept with all the team?” Melony asked.

  “No, just the players we think will have a career. You don’t open your legs for just any one,” Gillian said.

  “Maybe not, but what about the new coach? He’s like fresh out of college, and so hot.” Karen melts.

  “Gross. He’s a teacher,” Melony finally disapproved. Holding her beer at her side, she tipped it secretly, spilling the contents onto the grass.

  “No. Teachers never end well, and even if he doesn’t get caught porking a student, he’s a teacher. He’ll never leave this town,” Gillian snapped. “Or his wife.”

  “Why not get good grades and go off to college?”

  “Drink your beer, Melony.”

  “Liquid courage for what you have to do next.”

  “What?”

  “You want to be popular, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, you girls are all anyone talks about at school,” Melony said.

  “Good. Then all you have to do is—”

  “Go inside the mansion and snap a picture—” Gillian held out a Polaroid camera. “In the basement.”