Randy and Walter: Killers

by Tristan Slaughter

  It was a skin-piercing cold mid-January morning when Amy left to town to get groceries among other necessities. It was going to be an all day journey for her. She had left Randy asleep in bed. Before she left, she drove Georgia to the school grounds. Before she got out of the car, she leaned over and kissed her daughter. If only she had known what she was going to come home to that afternoon.

  Randy woke up with the sun in his eyes. Walking through the house, he immediately noticed Amy wasn’t home. He found a note attached to the refrigerator door by a little magnetic owl. The note was short and simple.

  Randy, I’ve gone to town for some groceries and a few other things we need. I won’t be home until late. Please make sure Georgia’s okay. Make something for her to eat and get her to do her homework.

  Love you. Your loving wife, Amy

  An odd smile creased Randy’s face upon reading this. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of milk.

  With his wife not home, he shunned a glass and drank it from the carton, then put it back on the shelf. The time on the clock read 1:00 p.m. In another hour and a half Georgia would be home. His mind was reeling.

  They would finally be alone together. Fantasies filled his mind, and though he wanted to ignore them, the feelings were too strong.

  He had never thought this would happen, never imagined he would do this. But he would, he wanted it, needed it and yearned for it; but for now, he would be patient. Randy took a shower and didn’t bother getting dressed; instead he stretched out on his bed and waited. He watched the clock which now read 2:23 p.m.

  The minutes seemed to pass by with agonizing slowness. He soon began to wonder just why he was being like his. Even he himself couldn’t fully understand it. It finally occurred to him that there really was no reason why and he needed to just accept who he was.

  The more he tried to understand it the more complicated it became. So, he didn’t bother thinking about such things any further.

  Finally, he heard the front door open and close, followed by the soft patter of his daughter’s footsteps, then her sweet voice calling out.

  “Georgia, come here, honey,” Randy called to her, his stomach tingling like there was a thousand butterflies in there trying to escape.

  She walked into the bedroom and noticed him sitting up against the headrest. Although the thick blanket covered his lower body, she could still tell he was nude.

  “Come sit with me. I want to talk for a minute,” he said.

  Georgia looked at him for a moment, her eyes filled with both fear and puzzlement.

  “I can’t, Daddy, I have some homework to do. Mom said I should get right to it when I got home,” she replied as she backed out into the hallway.

  It was either the way she looked at him or just her utter lack of respect for his authority that made him so angry, so violent. Before either of them knew what was happening, Randy had jumped from the bed to his daughter, grabbing her by the throat.

  Her skin was soft to the touch and Randy liked the way it felt as he slammed her head into the door, then the wall. When it connected with the plaster, he could feel his daughter’s skull giving way against the wood. He dropped her and began to rip her clothes off. Even though this wasn’t what he’d dreamt, he had to admit, it was invigorating.

  He was enjoying himself immensely. He came down on top of his daughter’s lifeless body, and without hesitation, he began to stick his member between her legs. He pounded himself into her as hard as he could, laughing the whole time.

  That is until he heard the scream from behind him, the scream of his loving wife filled with disgust and fear at what she had walked in on.

  But then the fear turned to contempt and anger.

  Randy looked over at her and smiled, as she began to run at him.

  Randy stood silently over the corpses of his wife and daughter.

  Blood, vomit and pieces of flesh dripped off of his naked body. The walls and floor around him were covered in thick layers of congealing plasma. As he looked over and remembered what he did, a feeling off disgust came over him.

  He fell to his knees and began to throw up. When he felt he was puking up his organs, he wiped his mouth and curled himself into a fetal position. The tears came quickly and they rolled down his cheeks. He hated himself for what he’d done, for what he had become. There was no way he could hide this, everyone would find out and he deserved everything they did to him.

  As he lay on the cold, bloodstained wooden floor, Randy realized something he hadn’t noticed before.

  Coming to his feet, he ran into the kitchen. The note on the refrigerator said that Amy had gone to get groceries and some other things, yet she’d returned hours later with nothing. He looked at his wife and saw her purse lying against the wall where it had been dropped. He went to it and opened it, searching for her cell phone. Within a few seconds he had the small black phone in his hand. He searched through the messages and numbers until he came across what he was looking for. There was a name D in the contact list. He called the number and a man’s voice picked up.

  “Couldn’t wait for more, huh?”

  Randy hung up quickly and a plan began to form in his mind. He took the bodies into the basement and laid them onto the concrete floor. He found a decent place in the middle of the room, and with a pickaxe in hand, began to work his way through the thick concrete. It took him all night and half of the next day, but he finally finished and put the bodies into the four foot hole.

  Before he covered the hole, he went upstairs and started cleaning up all the blood. He peeled the wallpaper off and scraped up the blood that was drying to the floor like spilt syrup. Within a mere three hours, the room and hallway looked as if nothing had ever happened. He dumped the stained wallpaper and cleaning tools in the hole with his dead family. He still didn’t cover the hole, though. He had one more thing to take care of first.

  The letter D. There was only one person that could have been. Daniel J. Gordon. Amy’s friend who had been her attorney during the divorce. Randy found the phone book Amy kept in the living room in a small wooden cupboard next to the couch. He flipped through it until he found Daniel’s name. In it was his address and phone number. The number was the same as the one on her cell phone. Putting the phone book back in place, he realized two things. One, he was still naked and covered in dried blood and two, it was only 3:00 p.m. Daniel would still be at his office. He probably wouldn’t be home until later, around five or six. So Randy had plenty of time to clean himself off and get something to eat. He went into the bathroom and ran the hot water for a shower.

  After his shower, which lasted about a half hour as blood is harder to get off than he thought, he got dressed and went into the kitchen.

  The time on his wristwatch read 4:36 p.m. About another two hours and he could finish cleaning up his mess and hide what he’d done forever.

  He found himself a stainless steel pot and filled it with water.

  Wanting something homemade, he made himself some spaghetti with some fresh sauce. It was possibly the best he had ever cooked.

  How odd I seem so fulfilled. So happy, Randy thought as he ate his pasta. There was no guilt, no sense of loss.

  Although this was true, he just couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this was all leading to something. Something he may have dreamt and now forgotten.

  The time was 5:42 p.m., time for him to finish what he started. Randy threw the dishes into the sink and left the house, locking the door behind him.

  Luckily, Daniel’s house was located on the outskirts of town, away from any neighbors or anyone else who may be around. As Randy pulled up to the house, he saw Daniel walking from his little silver car to his house. Randy smiled, his timing was perfect.

  Daniel’s house was a Victorian style home. A white-painted three-story house that probably held more secrets than anything else ever could.

  Randy watched him through the windows for a time as Daniel went from room to room, doing God only knew w
hat. When Randy decided it was nice and dark, he got out of his car and went to the front door. He held a knife hidden in the sleeve of his jacket. The idea was for Daniel to open the door and then Randy would stab him in the throat and drag his body to the car.

  That’s not what happened though. Instead, all the lights in the house cut off and the front door slowly opened.

  Cautious, Randy crept his way into the dark house. There was no noise; it was deathly silent, as if no one was in there. Which was strange, considering he just personally watched Daniel walking around the house from room to room.

  Randy slid the knife out of his sleeve and into the palm of his hand, expecting to be attacked at any moment. Then the lights flickered back to life. Randy noticed right away that something was very wrong.

  Blood covered the walls and the floor. It even dripped from the ceiling. Randy looked into the living room where someone was laughing. He could only hope it was the TV.

  It wasn’t.

  Instead, it was a tall, skinny man with a shaved head and a full beard. He stood in the middle of the living room with a sledgehammer in his hand. The man walked to Randy who in turn backed up, staying as far away from the man as possible. Three bodies were on the ground in the living room. The man was wearing a long, dark black leather trench coat with black gloves and the rest of his suit was also black leather, with leather pants and a zip-up leather shirt. Whoever this guy was, he sure didn’t seem to care about being discovered.

  He dropped the sledgehammer in front of Randy and turned to the front door to leave. Before he exited, he turned and glared at Randy with two piercing, hazel eyes. With a voice so low it could have been a whisper, he said, “Good luck cleaning this up, Randy. See ya around.”

  Before Randy could say a word, the man turned and left the house. Randy stood in the hall for a time, wondering what had just happened. Headlights from outside backed away and left, then receded down the street.

  Randy gathered his wits and went into the living room. The pummeled corpses were of Daniel, his twelve year old son, and his wife.

  Their heads had been smashed in along with pieces of their body. Their arms and legs were bent backwards the bones sticking through the skin. Pieces of their skull lay like fractured eggs on the floor, pink and grey brains oozing out like spilt jello.

  With no other options and his plan ruined, Randy quickly came up with another solution. He went into the kitchen and found a liquor cabinet. He broke open all the liquor bottles and poured the contents of each bottle around the house, making especially sure to cover the corpses. He lit a match and set the Victorian house on fire.

  As he walked down the front steps, fire brimming behind him, he noticed that his car was gone. Whoever the man had been, he’d stolen his car and left him at the scene of a triple murder.

  Questions poured into his mind but he had no time to wonder about them now. He heard sirens in the distance and when he turned around, the house was already a massive blaze. Someone had called the fire department and it sounded like quite a few also.

  Without hesitating, Randy began to run. He ran into the nearby woods and kept on running, leaving the burning house and the sound of the sirens far behind him.

  He didn’t stop running until he reached town. Over the far rooftops he could see the black plume of smoke.

  His muscles and sides ached but he ignored the pain. Something very odd had just occurred and he knew he needed to figure it out.

  He had to find out who that guy was.

  He sat for a moment, withdrew a cigarette from his pants pocket and lit it. As he sat there questioning the past events and drawing in the smoke from the filtered cigarette, he heard more sirens coming his way. He quickly jumped backward into a ditch lining the road and got flat on his stomach. Fire trucks were on there way to Daniel’s house along with more cops and an ambulance. He wondered for a second if maybe the guy who’d left him holding the bag had called the cops. Whoever this guy was, he’d just tried to set Randy up.

  He didn’t know why, but by the way events had played out, he had a feeling whatever the guy was up to, this was only the beginning.

  A few hours later, Randy was still walking along the sidewalk. Although he was now in the town proper, he still was far from his home. As he walked, he noticed a familiar sign lying in the middle of the parking lot. He walked over to it and gasped. The sign read, Rapture Bar.

  The Rapture Bar was the bar he’d been beaten nearly to death in so many years ago. As he started to remember something, headlights flooded him. He flung himself out of the way as the car skidded to a halt right where he was standing a half second ago.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw it was his car. The front driver side door opened and a man got out. He looked at Randy, who was lying in the parking lot, shaking and afraid. The man threw Randy his car keys which landed beside him.

  He smiled at Randy and said in that same, quiet voice, “Congrats, Rand’, you escaped. Don’t worry about the corpses in your basement; I got rid of those for ya, too. I’ll be seeing you again real soon. Have a safe drive home.” After the man finished speaking, his smile turned into a grimace. He turned and walked to another car Randy hadn’t noticed before then; a black Mustang with a red roof.

  Randy stood quickly, attempting to yell, “Who are you?” But before the words came out the car and the man were gone. Randy couldn’t help but wonder what it all meant. At the moment, however, he didn’t care. He was too tired. He climbed into his car and headed home, the events of the past two days fading out of his mind, for the moment at least. As he drove, he grew aggravated to find his mirrors and the seat weren’t where he’d left them.

  The guy had messed with them and now they were all out of position.

  Randy returned home that night to find his house was entirely clean. The bodies of Amy and Georgia were gone from the basement and the hole had been filled in and new cement had been applied.

  Perhaps this is where the bodies were buried, now sealed under a new layer of concrete, but somehow, though, Randy doubted it. That man didn’t come off as the type who believed or cared about such things. He came off as someone who believes in nothing and cares for less. He searched the house, making sure that nothing had been taken. When he was absolutely sure nothing was missing he undressed and went to bed.

  Randy slept till late in the afternoon the next day. When he finally awoke, it wasn’t because he wanted to; it was because someone was banging on the front door. He got up, pulled on a pair of pants and a white t- shirt and went to the door and opened it. Outside waiting patiently, was a policeman in his mid-forties. The cop was a short, pudgy man with a grey mustache and bushy hair. He looked as though he’d spent most of his life in donut shops.

  On his face he wore an expression of caring and concern. “Mr. Barcer?” the policeman asked.

  “Yes?” Randy replied.

  “Mr. Barcer, do you know where your wife and child are?”

  Randy’s thoughts became muddled as a wave of dizziness overcame him. They knew and they had him. He cleared his head in the hope that he was wrong.

  “No, not at this precise moment. They went out last night to go to my wife’s mother’s or something. I assumed they stayed the night, why, is something wrong? Did something happen to them?”

  The policeman took a moment to look into Randy’s eyes as if he was feeling him out.

  “Mr. Barcer, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you of this but it appears your wife and child went over to attorney Daniel J. Gordon’s office yesterday afternoon. It appears that Daniel and your wife were having an affair. We believe that she tried to cut it off and he became enraged. They fought and in the middle of the fight, Daniel’s wife, Elizabeta, and his son, William, came home. This caused a much bigger fight and sometime during the dispute Daniel may have attacked either his wife or yours first. In the end, he killed both his family and yours. After he realized what he’d done, he set his house on fire and stayed inside to die with them
. I’m so sorry for your loss, sir.”

  Randy had to force back a laugh. This seemed too stupid and unbelievable. Instead of laughing, Randy put on a face of sadness and asked, “My wife and daughter are dead? Oh my God, no.” He managed to scrounge up some tears for his charade. “I…can I see their bodies?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Barcer. There’s not much left, I’m afraid, the coroner had to use dental records to identify the bodies. Nothing really but ash remains. I’m really sorry to have to tell you this.” The cop’s face was morose.

  Randy fell back into the house, putting on a well-played show of sadness. He forced himself to cry more false tears, all the while laughing on the inside.

  Whoever that man had been, he was good.

  The policeman put a gentle hand onto Randy’s shoulder to console him and told him once again how sorry he was. The cop left soon after that, leaving Randy behind him after giving him the numbers for any questions he may have.

  Randy closed and locked the front door and immediately started laughing; he just couldn’t hold it in anymore. Somehow the entire situation just seemed so humorous.

  “What’s so funny, Rand’?” The quiet voice came from behind him. Randy turned to see the man sitting in his leather recliner, his wide eyes staring right into his.

  The smile the man had usually worn was gone.

  “Who are you?” Randy replied, not expecting an answer.

  “The names Walter. My father told me about you a few months ago.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes, that’s right. You may not believe this but I’m your brother.”

  “My brother?”

  “Once again, yes.”

  “What do you want with me? Why are you doing all this?”

  “It’s simple, Rand’ ole pal. I want to compete with you. It’s already obvious that I’m the better killer in the family, especially considering that I killed dad and a whole lot more as well.”

  “You killed dad? Why?”