SKA: Serial Killers Anonymous

by William Schlichter

  IX

  I’M NOT SURE I had a reason to drive in this part of my hometown since my teen years. It had been largely working middle class families then. Once the neighborhood turned questionable with petty crimes I never ventured back. New business always built new structures on the north end of town. They just kept plowing up farmland. No one wanted to be a part of revitalizing the decrepit south side.

  Crime occurred. The south area just bred crime. You would think instead of dilapidated, peeling paint ruins, drug dealers would make enough money to have well-manicured lawns and a fresh coat of paint. They claimed to make so much money, but lived in squalor. No wonder the police watched these places. They scream drug deals.

  I cruised by for three nights. The first night I nearly pissed myself, I saw so many patrolling cop cars. The second night I was able to witness from across the street, parked in a driveway. No one had been home or maybe living there at all. Not a single cop drove down the street. Dozens of people would pull up. Same event each time. A passenger would hop out and race to the door, hands shook and something was exchanged.

  All I cared was there were no children inside. I saw no signs of any despite the overturned plastic tricycle in the front yard. It was a ruse, or the child had been removed by CPS. Either way, there were no children at the residence.

  The third night I learned why the first night had seen so many patrols. I had arrived at dusk. A cop car was parked in front of the house and the dealer was leaning in the driver’s side window. They slapped hands and bumped fists the same way all the drug exchanges transpired the night before.

  He paid the officer off, in cash or drugs or both, I don’t know which. This turned my stomach. No wonder some of these places operated with ease. Even one dirty cop allowed dozens to get their drugs. The rest of the night the officer avoided the neighborhood and drug sales occurred as normal.

  I made a mental map of the house and yard then the ways each transaction happened. I had formulated my plan to end this place.

  There were seventeen hardware stores in my town and none open in the drug riddled neighborhoods. I wondered if business returned to the south of town how that would affect the trafficking. Would places work to stop it? I’m old, maybe I’m out of the loop on how drug economics work. I bought a five-gallon gas can from several different stores. Paid cash. No one notices an old man—we are too invisible. I filled the cans at a few different cash accepting gas stations.

  Drug trafficking had an etiquette. You didn’t just pull up to the house if another car was there. If a friendly exchange occurred, you drove on past, circled the block and came back. No assembly line transactions, just friendly neighbors slowing down to say hi and going on. Where did people learn these rules of the drug trade? With these kinds of management skills this guy could do well in an office setting.

  Too bad life didn’t work out for him. I don’t know if he sold the drugs to the man who removed my family from this earth, but he would pay for it, as would all the rest in my town.

  Let me tell you. After this night was over I was going to hit the gym. Destroying drug dealers was physically demanding and I was healthy, but by no means in shape.

  After a drug sale I knew I had five to ten minutes before another.

  I opened the Rogue’s rear hatch and realized I needed to remove the bulb from the dome light less I give myself away. I should have gotten a burner car or whatever they are called. My plans required a reliable vehicle.

  Despite how heavy the gas cans were I managed to get them across the street unseen. I put the first gas can under a back window to mask the strong smell. I lost my ability to detect how strong after the second can.

  I placed gas under each window. None of the fools inside noticed me. I had to make six trips and avoid about twenty transactions. My next action was tricky and time consuming. My plan was to make sure no one could escape and everyone was killed. Just burning the house down was not enough. Left alive, the guy would be selling out of the NoTell Motel by dawn.

  What I did would convey a message. It may take several dope homes being removed from the map before someone realized it was a message, but I would get my point across—and remove my family’s killer.

  I ran oil soaked sheets between each gas can for a fuse. Long before 9/11 you could buy fuse cord at the local feed store without question. Now I would be put on a terror watch list. I didn’t know, but after all those NCIS programs I figured they could trace back where I purchased the fuse. I would have to devise a better way of setting off the gas. I didn’t want to pour the gas and cause more of a smell, people inside might investigate. I did have to stop seven times as drug deals went down, but no one noticed me. This was too time consuming and risky. I stayed in the shadows. People demanded their drugs too badly to scan their environment. As the night wore on I knew next time I’d need a new method.

  Once I had the gas cans linked together I dumped a five-gallon bucket on the porch. The splash of liquid against the door and smell of gas did grab attention. Lighting a flare, I tossed it and ran. I bounced the flare off the porch ceiling so the fall gave me a second longer to be in the street.

  The sparkling flare caught the fumes.

  Whooshing gusts blew past me.

  I was just out of range when the porch exploded in a fireball.

  A hurricane of warm wind then perfect stillness left me cold, as nothing stirred for a breath around me.

  I didn’t stop to glance back. I knew secondary explosions should follow—they did—breaking the silence and lighting up the night sky. No one would escape the house on the ground floor. Flames covered each first-floor window and the back door. The porch burned hot—fast—the once beautiful gabled roof collapsed before I got inside my car.

  The screams of those inside didn’t bother me.

  I never heard the sirens.

  All three newspapers I found in the hospital lobby the next morning displayed pictures of a burnt house protected by police tape with the headline: Three burned to death in suspected drug house.

  I kept an eye on the news. The police ruled it some kind of turf altercation. Nothing was investigated as far as what I read in the newspapers. I knew it wasn’t totally true, but no one cared some drug dealers were dead.

  No other little girl would lose out because of those people.

  X

  “YOU COULDN’T BURN down every crack house.” Jesse admires Jack’s accomplishment to rid his town of drug dealers. More impressive than kidnappings and murders.

  “No, one burnt house…no one cared about. Two might prevent me from ending the dealer who cost me my family. I didn’t know which one sold the drugs, so I would end them all,” Jack says.

  “How does his actions not make him like the rest of us?” Robert asks.

  “I sought revenge, and I enjoyed it. It became my reason for life. Once I ended the heroin dealers I didn’t stop. I didn’t know which specific house it was. I sought to end all the evil in town, the cops on the take, rumors of the high school girls’ basketball coach who gave extra attention to certain players. It destroyed all maliciousness,” Jack says. “Somehow I thought, with each passing drug house gone, my little grandbaby would wake up.” Sobs emanate from his darkened station. “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. Nothing I do will allow me into heaven to be with her again.”

  “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. Nietzsche words are your truth,” says Edgars.

  “He knew of no other way to death but pain.” Jane’s tone finds pity for the older man.

  Of all here, he wanted to protect. Could Jack be willing to assist? Jesse’s brain whirls.

  “Now you know why I’m here. Why I tolerate what you’ve all done. My motives, at first, were pure, but I journeyed beyond. I acquired pleasure in my killing. Because I enjoyed it—I’m a monster,” Jack says.

  “Why do we have to be monsters because we take lives?” Kenneth asks.

  “You say it’s an affront to a hi
gher being, but if we were created in his image, we have the same desires as Him.”

  “He says to love one another,” adds Jesse.

  “Read your Old Testament, Kid. He was a wrathful and vengeful God. He extolled great punishments over people for disobeying Him and his favorite punishment was death. Jack, if anybody here doles out the will of the Old Testament Father,” Robert says. “If he’s checking at the gate, I bet you get in.”

  “How do you take God’s will so lightly?”

  “Because He kills and so do I,” Robert says.

  “A man professing to know God would not be such a killer,” The Plagiarist says. “Your time in church—”

  “I never was much for a God who took attendance. I read the Bible, unlike most who enter a building once a week. God is a serial killer,” Robert says.

  “If only your God would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!” Kenneth quotes.

  “Psalm 139:19,” Robert says. “But you’re not quoting from the King James version, God’s true words.”

  “So now we justify our killing as being God’s messengers?” Jane asks. “If I work for God then why do I have self-doubt?”

  “You don’t work for God. He works through us.”

  “So did The Christ. He doubted and rejected God, his blessed Father,” Robert says.

  “We aren’t working for God. Many of the people I killed were innocent,” Edgars says.

  “Not mine. Whores and homosexual tyrannies, all affronts to God. Being a homo is wrong. I know it says so,” Ed assures.

  “It does. But it also places a higher sin on eating shrimp,” adds the Plagiarist.

  “God will not be our excuse,” Jane snaps. “Even if in AA God is the answer—not here. We will not use an outside influence to justify murder.”

  “Another rule?” Al asks.

  “We accept responsibility for our own actions. We don’t blame God. We don’t blame anyone. We admit what we did was within us and we ask for help in stopping,” Jane says.

  “How do I stop?” Even if the question came from just one person they all were asking it.

  After several breaths of no banter Al speaks. “You asked what the police thought of the redhead’s disappearance. The man’s DNA revealed he was a serial rapist who would face charges for his other crimes. I only saw one news report mentioning the mysterious man who allegedly set him up, there identifiable blood and semen at the crime scene. And I left no evidence of me.”

  “You know police suppress information,” Jesse says. “We all think we are so much smarter than the cops, but we all speak about how sloppy we’ve been.”

  “We have spoken of the early kills. The dozens since I have perfected. I don’t leave anything behind I don’t want found,” says Jane.

  “You have a confirmed rapist in jail. Why muddy the case by searching for a ghost? Besides, one psychiatrist at his trial strongly suggested there was a second man at the crime—a second personality who instructed him to perform the acts he did. The jury never bought it. He was locked away,” Al says.

  “Leaving you free to practice your sickness on the redhead,” Jack says.

  “No casting of stones, now. But you are correct—it is a sickness,” Al says.

  XI

  THE REDHEAD FOUND some fresh fight within her as I opened the door to the basement. She squirmed enough I didn’t risk carrying her on my shoulder and us tumbling. Placing her bare feet on the linoleum floor, I found green eyes wishing to harm me. I slid my arms under her pits to carry her in front of me. I should bind her feet. Every time she kicked I lifted her up to prevent her becoming my landing pad at the bottom of the steps.

  Rescued her from a rape she now accepted her fate would be worse at my hand. She would be the first to test my chamber. I hoped I had thought of everything, but most likely not. A smart girl might breach my defenses before I broke her spirit. I didn’t choose on brains, though sometimes I did consider ethnicity. Swipe a Hispanic girl or an Asian because true serial killers tended to stay within their own race.

  Getting her down the steps alive to the family friendly living space halted her skirmish. I think the lack of torture devices startled her more. The upcoming bath would change her mind.

  Her face was swollen from where her attacker punched her. I palpated the spot. Instinctually she jerked away. It would bruise, but no permanent damage to her freckled face. She was my first redhead. She had a natural fire within her and smelled divine. I was in love with her spirit—a spirit I would steal from her.

  After killing a few girls in my car, I knew I sought a permanent partner, but I needed a secure place for her—inescapable. I had plotted my safe room for my guest. It had to meet my functions, and yet be a home to me and my love—when I found her.

  I installed a four-person tub in the bathroom. Over its center was a hooking apparatus of my own design using sexual bondage tools. After all I did to prepare this basement I wondered why I didn’t go to engineering school. I could have employed myself in a side career of installing S&M gear in playrooms for those adventurous couples.

  My flipping open a knife blade freeze her. Slicing the cord, I replaced her wrist bindings in fur padded shackles.

  She no longer feared the blade. She cursed and spit at me until dry-throated and hoarse. She did have a fire—I sought to steal it from her, make her mine. Breaking her into subservience would be pleasure. I felt she could be more to me. So than many women give in quickly to my will, not this one.

  Lifting her up, I hung the chain between the shackles in the suspension hook. I pulled the rope attached to a pully system of my own design, allowing for the adjustment of a woman’s particular height. I raised her until she dangled on the tips of her toes. She had long, freckle-covered legs. Her toes—thin and boney.

  Her first and expected act was to struggle against the bindings by kicking at me. Losing her balance, her body weight would drag her down and hurt her shoulders. Quickly, without my correction, she learned not to scuffle. All her focus shifted to maintaining balance on those stretched toes. It strained her calf muscles until they cramped. She would try and lower herself to the flats of her feet, but it would shift her weight and overextend her shoulders, forcing her back to her toes.

  She would hang in constant balance of pain, attempting to find a stance which hurt the least on her wiry frame.

  I allow the first kick. It was expected even the most peaceful, docile person made one attempt. It was the second which cost her. I pulled on her rope a bit more, testing my theory of her having to struggle to regain her balance until it stung her calves from standing on her toe tips as if she were a ballerina. The discomfort must have been more tolerable than the agony from the weight on her shoulders. Allowing her to hang long enough, aching constantly, was part of bending her to my will.

  I had thought about securing her neck, but some girls might give up on life and hang themselves. Body disposal was not on my agenda. This way a girl might dislocate a shoulder but still be breathing.

  I cut her clothes from her body. Her shoulders were covered in freckles. They sprinkled all the way down to her breasts, which beamed china white without a mole or single blemish, the nipples—pink and poked hard as bullets. Under the right areola the breast had a divot. No amount of pressing or squeezing reshaped the cleft. A defect, but it only enhanced her beauty, a marring of the form made special because only a select few had ever seen it. Or would ever glimpse it again.

  She protested my touch, snarling profanities and perfunctory threats with her hoarse voice. She needed water. Dehydration also my plan. She could scream threats about my future incarceration if I didn’t release her immediately, but no one else would hear.

  I cut away her skirt.

  She had an orange muff—trimmed. Freckles dotted her hips. She was beautiful. She was mine.

  Her clothes burned in the trash incinerator. I collected her earrings and navel piercings, replacing the belly button ring with one less adaptable for p
icking a lock. I should have checked her at the car and left the bobbles as more evidence.

  I sponged off her body with warm water, careful with each dab against her skin. She struggled, but the shifting of her weight to shudder from my touch prevented her from keeping on her toes. Forced to allow my contact she relaxes.

  “You’re beautiful. I warn you, next will be the most unpleasant part.”

  She ceased her physical struggle, but not her verbal berating of me. I would enjoy breaking her. It was the breaking of her spirit turning her into mine. Making her desire to be my pet was the thrill which drove me. Failure would mean her death. Examining why I do what I do is part of my motivation. It was the breaking—the control—that excited me.

  I unscrewed the cap to a glass bottle. The direction said to mix with a clear, carbonated beverage, but my goal was dehydration.

  I raised the bottle to her lips. She refused to drink.

  Breaking capillaries by clamping her nose shut with my left-hand forces her mouth open for a breath. I poured in the liquid.

  I expected her to spit up some, but not as much as she did. I loved the fighter in her. I clamped her nose again, and this time I shoved a flexible, plastic tube down her throat. She gagged when it reaches her stomach. I poured the liquid slow.

  The combination of laxatives caused terrible cramps, voiding her system of all contents. I needed her hungry.