by Jay Kerk
“I used to see him sleep with this other woman. When he’d finish, he’d tell me I had to be a man and keep his secrets, men stood by each other, and that when I was old enough, I’d understand. I didn’t understand what cheating meant. Anyway, I didn’t say a word.”
Dr-Anna45: “Okay. Go on.”
“Then mom would return, and they’d have a fight. I remember very well. The screaming, the crying, the flying plates; the memory now annoys me a lot. I used to sob and try to get between them because my mom used to be violent with him. The neighbors called the police on them one time, but they did nothing because she had hit him.” I sent.
“Then, to get revenge, she started going out with one of his friends. They used to come home as well, and as with just curtains as room separators, I could see them.”
Dr-Anna45: “Thanks for sharing. It’s an important part of your history, so it’ll be important for your therapy. When did they hit you?”
I hated when she was right. The beating, where to start. Her talk about history and therapy was very patronizing, as if she perceived every part of me.
“Wait, I’m getting there. So, the first couple of times they didn’t see me. Then the guy saw me. I forget his name, something like Germaine. Let’s call him that. He waited ‘til my mom got into the shower, and he called for me, saying he knew I wasn’t asleep. So I went over to him. I remember so vividly. He was smoking something nasty-smelling. He told me that if I said a word, he’d cut my throat in my sleep.” I hit Enter.
“He pulled me closer, grabbing my short hair with his strong fingers. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. He ordered me to say, ‘I understand, sir.’ I didn’t. So he hit me with his knuckles on the head, not a full punch but still very painful. Once, twice, ten times. ‘Say it, you stubborn motherfucker!’ I wouldn’t. I cried of pain, and I felt like choking because I didn’t want to say it.” I hit Enter.
“I tried running. He held onto me. He pinched me in my butt and back, and he no longer asked me to say anything. He only threatened and hit. This became a habit, every time he came over, I’d get a beating. I’d shiver with fear while they were sleeping together, and when she moaned harder or he grunted louder, I knew they were about to finish, and I’d get my beating.”
Dr-Anna45: “Oh, god. I’m so sorry about that. How do you feel about this memory?”
“I don’t feel anything, honestly. It’s something that happened, and I don’t need to feel anything about it. The funny thing is that I didn’t remember this until a few years back. I went throughout high school not remembering it.”
Dr-Anna45: “You don’t feel sad or angry, or have any feelings of guilt?”
“No. It used to anger me. But after growing up with that, I decided not to feel anything about it.”
Dr-Anna45: “When did you remember everything?”
“I don’t recall specifically. A few years back.”
Dr-Anna45: “What happened? Is there more?”
“So then, I started growing white hairs among the black ones. Not very many, but they were enough. I wet the bed, but not too often. My mom wanted to take me to a doctor, but my dad said he could fix it. He told her that some manly activities like hunting would be enough.
“He took me on a hunting trip. When we got there, he drank a few beers, and after that, he insisted I tell him what frightened me. I made the biggest mistake and told him everything, and he lost it. He hit me, he bit me, he went batshit crazy all over me in the forest.
“We took the car and drove to the nearest phone to call her. She answered, and he told her he would kill her. He shouted, and he hit me on the head, back, legs, pretty much everywhere, much worse than Germaine had.”
Dr-Anna45: Face with eyes opened. “Police?”
“By the time we got home, she’d fled the place. For two years he stayed mad at me. He hit me every now and then, especially and aggressively when he got drunk. He told me I had no honor because I didn’t know how to protect my women. He called me a weakling. I skipped school for two weeks after the incident, because of the bruising. No police.”
Dr-Anna45: “Then?”
“He died. May his fucking soul turn in its grave for eternity. My mom returned. She was so sweet. She asked for my forgiveness. A lot.”
Dr-Anna45: “Where is she now?”
“Upstairs.”
Dr-Anna45: “You live with your mom?”
“Hahaha. No. She died. Heaven.” Cloud picture.
Dr-Anna45: “I’ll be brief because I’ve got to leave. I used to love someone a lot, an artist. I left my husband for him. Our one-year anniversary was coming up, and he had one of his not-so-good moments, so I prescribed him something. Not supposed to, but I did anyway, I tried to help him. I loved him so much and couldn’t see him suffer. He took half the bottle and died.” Crying face.
Dr-Anna45: “I don’t know whether or not he committed suicide. I think he did take his own life, but I hate that people think so as well. I lost my license… I hope this is enough. No, you won’t find the story on the Internet, they sealed all the records.”
Dr-Anna45: “I was lost. I did drugs…”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. You poor thing.”
Dr-Anna45: “It’s okay. Life is hard. Then I met someone, and although we both had problems, we were a good fit, despite the odds, but then I went back to my husband.”
Dr-Anna45: “I have to go now. Let’s talk next week, and we’ll meet for coffee like I promised you.”
“No. You didn’t tell me about the hitting, and why you asked about it. You promised.” I swore if she left without telling me, I would cut her into a thousand pieces when I caught her.
“Is the beating and my childhood the reason I like young girls young women?”
Dr-Anna45: “Oh, okay, quickly then. No, not that. It essentially relates to your emotions. You don’t feel many emotions, and you don’t identify with other people’s emotions. Like if someone is sad, you know, you just don’t care, and this is the main trait that sociopaths and psychopaths share. This emotional void is filled with intense desires.”
Dr-Anna45: “Gtg bye. The term and definition don’t matter. What matters is that it’s a fact, and we need to deal with it.”
She logged off.
The news shocked me. She called me a sociopath, a psychopath. Me?? How dare she? I boiled with rage. I trashed the whole place; two screens and the racing seat didn’t survive the attack. What did she mean I don’t feel many emotions? That I don’t feel for other people?
CHAPTER 6:
FOCUS
The days passed quickly, and I enjoyed every moment. Work was becoming more rewarding, and my mental clarity was unimaginable at this stage.
Dr-Anna45 gave me the address at which to meet her, and it was only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from my place. I told Sylvie I was going on a business trip, a conference related to telecommunications and new management systems. During my absence, she was supposed to draft the letter to her mom, and once I was back, we would put our plan into action. The letter would tell Mel not to look for her and not to take drastic measures.
I packed my clothes and tools. I was ready to know who this Anna was. We agreed to meet in a café at 11 a.m. I was there at 9, looking at the landscape and studying the traffic. It wasn’t a busy shop. It stood among a few stores and a supermarket with a generous parking space.
I parked in the sweetest spot after rounding the place a few times. From where I was, I could see the entrance to the café and still have a view of the parking lot. I assumed Anna would arrive half an hour before the appointment and then sit in a different place than we had agreed upon to give herself the chance to leave if she sensed something wrong with my appearance.
I’d had to control my temper during our last discussion. She had explained to me about emotions and how I lacked the ability to empathize with others. I told her to share a photo of herself so I could recognize her, but she didn’t want to, and I told her I didn’t want
to share my phone number.
“What if we could not find each other?” I asked.
She agreed we need some sort of identification cues, we thought together about solutions, and finally, we decided to wear something yellow.
Time slowed down. I was focused, in hunter mode. Everything moved in slow motion. I felt like a jaguar. I took out my binoculars and relaxed back in the car seat. I recorded in my tablet the plate number, model, and color of each car parked in the lot. I was worried that she would stay in the car, just as I had.
A Mercedes sedan pulled into the parking lot. A woman in a yellow shirt with a jacket climbed out and then took a hat out of her bag. She was very good-looking, of eastern Asian origin. What I found weird was that her hair was both blonde and black at the same time. Crazy people. That’s her!
She went into the cafe wearing a hat and holding a book. Stubborn. She chose the corner booth and stayed in it. I could see well with the binoculars. I wished the cafe was ones of those places where they wrote your name on your cup, but it wasn’t. As far as I was concerned, her name was Anna, even though it was definitely a fake name.
I walked unnoticed to her car and placed a magnetic GPS tracker on the bottom. I decided to send her a message that I couldn’t make it. If she had the website’s app on her phone then good, and if not, I assumed she would wait half an hour and leave.
I wrote: “Hi. The policed stopped me. They said my car was stolen about six months ago, and I told them I bought it about ten months ago. They’re checking the ownership papers, they took me into the station.”
“The station is about twenty minutes from the café, but I don’t want to keep you. We’ll try again soon. Kisses.” I sent it.
I also sent her my picture wearing a yellow shirt, up to the neck, and a crying face. I wrote, “Sorry” under it. I saw her reach for her phone. Now I knew it was her. I was relieved. She took her coffee and book off the table and left.
Three days, and I was lurking around her place. I had switched the plates from the dark sedan I rented, and I intentionally covered the whole car with mud, so the color was unidentifiable. The neighborhood didn’t have cameras.
Anna lived in a regular suburban house, like mine but fancier. She lived with a man and a small girl, probably her family.
I waited until both of them had gone out with the child and then broke into the place. They didn’t have a security system, but the house was made of brick with heavy doors, not the usual cheap sliding. I picked the lock without leaving a trace and then went through my usual routine, I took a used pair of panties and set up the camera.
I placed a couple of bugs around the bedroom and a small camera on top of the closet. I wanted to know Anna and her husband’s sexual routine and how they did it. I also needed to practice his voice. It was crucial for my plan—I wanted her to enjoy it.
Our next session was coming up in two days. I wanted to be back in my basement for it, so I was hoping I’d have the chance to act before the session. Ideally, her husband would be out of town, but in case that wasn’t possible, I needed to know his schedule exactly. I’d followed him to work. He had a lame nine-to-five job. On one occasion, Anna met him for lunch. They sent the girl to preschool for a few hours during the day.
I decided my time inside the house should not be more than one hour, two hours maximum. I would make it look like a robbery, for the cops. My heart raced at the idea. I closed my eyes, turned on. I jerked off, cleaned up after myself and left for the motel, but before I left, I placed a magnetic camera on one of the garbage cans so I could keep an eye on them tonight.
I needed two hours of sleep and a shower. I wanted to be clean for my doctor. Sylvie was nagging me to return, and she told me that Melanie wasn’t doing well. I was scared the bitch would die before I got back, and then Sylvie would end up with social services.
The next morning at 7 a.m., I was doing my usual surveillance. The husband left, and a half hour later, Anna dropped the girl off at preschool. I went into the house and waited for her. I closed a few of the shades upstairs and bagged jewelry and cash. I put on a generous amount of her husband’s cologne. There were a few ways this could go down, and I was prepared for all of them.
I wore my ski mask, the one that had a small sheath over the eyes, black surgical gloves, and shoes with disposable blue covers. These covers made it hard to detect the shoe markings at crime scenes, and they silenced the noise while walking. I placed my bag under the bed.
I took my time looking at her stuff, her clothes and what she had. I took many photos and a short video of the house layout and the lovely family.
Let’s see if you still feel jolly when I’m done with you.
The car pulled into the driveway. A few seconds and she would be inside. I wondered what she would do today: aerobics and a shower, or make breakfast, or just watch TV. I waited upstairs. I was glad the stairs didn’t make noise in case I needed to go down.
Breakfast it was. I hid under the bed. I regretted not having a camera downstairs. The time didn’t pass quite as quickly as I desired. She finished and came upstairs, but I was reluctant to make my move. I was right, she took off her clothes and put an exercise outfit on. She was a bit too thin under the clothes. Her spine and ribs were visible. She went back downstairs.
She finished in half an hour and came back up. She stood in front of the mirrored closet and looked at her body. She tucked her stomach in, she stood on her toes, maybe to check her ass. I didn’t want her to take a shower and come back out in a towel—I wanted to rip the clothes off her body. I got out from under the bed slowly and stood up without a sound.
“Oi.” I had been practicing an Irish accent, and as a robber my voice was deep. She saw me for a second in the mirror before I grabbed her around the waist from behind and used my leg to trip her. I didn’t let her fall down; instead, we stumbled on the bed where she landed face down. She shouted, “Stop!” I placed my hand over her mouth.
“It’s been some time since I did something saucy for you,” I said.
“Henry, is that you? Oh my god. I’m scared, baby,” she said.
“Enjoy it, babe. Of course it’s me. Who else would it be? Don’t ya know my smell?” I relaxed my grip on her. “Do you want me to stop? Play along, you’ll enjoy it. You always tell me you want me to do something spontaneous. Dangerous.”
She was reluctant. I sighed in disappointment and said something without the accent but a bit high pitched. I hoped that flew over her head. “Maaan, I took off for this roleplay.” I relaxed my grip more and waited for a second.
“Sorry,” she said.
Yes. Touchdown. Perfection.
“Don’t say a ward,” I told her. “I was nicking this place as a fierce fella, then you fine thing came along. I couldn’t feck off. I want you too badly, I have to be a bad boyo.”
“You scared the shit out of me,” she said. “What are you wearing?”
“Shh. I said no wards.”
I wanted to kiss her neck, but I thought about the DNA trace. I started groping her ass, I had heard her asking him to do that during one of their steamy nights.
I ripped off her blouse, her sports bra, and then her tight yoga pants. I ripped off a piece of the pants and gagged her with it.
“You’ll get de time o’ yoohr life,” I said.
I already had a condom on under my clothes. I unzipped, keeping my pants on. I waited for her to come, and then I got very rough. I hit her to injure her, and she moaned. As I was coming, I pulled her hair, and she started crying.
I pulled her two hands behind her back and pressed on them with my knees, then I choked her until she passed out. I had planned for five minutes to clear the place, during which I removed the bugs and the camera. I left no trace left behind. That should be about the time when she’d wake up.
I waited for her to come around. As she was waking up, she turned, and I jumped on her. I tied her up, face down. She tried but couldn’t scream because of the gag.
&nbs
p; I leaned close to her ear, and I whispered to her, “Kelly, Dr. Anna. Fuck your will. I hope you liked it as much as I did.”
I trashed the bedroom and the living room, taking valuables. Before I left, I went up and hit her back more than fifty times with a belt.
Payback bitch, for every time you made me angry.
I drove back home, and along the way, I threw her belongings in several different dumpsters far from her house. Maybe the jewelry would show up in different pawn shops in a week’s time, throwing the cops off.
I wondered whether she knew it was me or not. Surely, she knew. I wondered if I should go back soon and kill her. Maybe. If she annoyed me again.
CHAPTER 7:
DREAMS DO COME TRUE
Sweet revenge relaxed me, made me a different person. I took what I wanted, and nothing could stop me. The major news coverage of the attack came a week afterward, they said a woman had been attacked, the mother of a four-year-old, but they didn’t release her name. The police had nothing, and they wouldn’t find anything. I thought to myself the attack wasn’t a Ted Bundy move— this was me making a point, showing her what was right. As expected, she missed our next session, and honestly, it didn’t bother me. I just wanted to speak to her one more time to tell her, “Fuck you.”
I made a few visits to Laurie’s, but I spent most of my time with Sylvie. She had written the letter to her mom explaining she would leave home, she couldn’t tolerate living with her anymore, and that she’d bought bus tickets to move away. She asked Melanie not to look for her because she’d end up in a foster home, which none of them wanted. She also told her mother she loved her, but that this was for the best for both of them.
I didn’t go to Melanie’s place again. I wanted to be away when it all blew up, as if we had broken up. Sylvie often came to the apartment, we made love, and we agreed she would give her the letter the following morning.