Reflections – Portrait of a Serial Killer (Part One)

Part One:

I don’t see the monster the ‘papers say that I am when I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t see it at all.

I see a twenty-eight year old guy, good-looking I’m told. Given the number of women who have shared my bed – and the few propositions I’ve had from gay guys, too – who am I to say what my looks are? Girls tell me I have soulful eyes, a great friendly smile and have good physique, too. I’m not going to go into what they say about me in bed, but you can rest assured that I don’t appear to disappoint!

I have a head full of thick, naturally black hair (no need for cosmetic enhancement there, yet) and I am clean-shaven. I dress well and treat my women with courtesy and respect… even those I take their lives from. In those cases it is done with as little fuss as possible.

My mates would tell you that I’m good fun to be around; always up for a dare just for the laugh of it. I like a drink, but not to excess, not any more. Been there, done that, had the hangovers, thank you. No, nowadays you’re more likely to see me tucked up with a good book (not the Good Book, no way!) and a glass of decent red wine of an evening if I’m not socialising.

My interests range from rock music to ancient history, especially Ancient Greece. I can quote all sorts of facts and figures about the Greeks that would probably leave you bored witless rather than astounded at my cleverness. Such is the burden of intellect, I guess.

So far I have killed sixteen women. My first was just seventeen years old, the sister of a friend and was sort-of an accident. I didn’t mean to actually kill her, of course, not like all the others. We were sodding about in my bedroom and I accidentally suffocated her with one of the pillows off my bed. I was only messing around, too!

How was I to know she had a weak heart when even she didn’t know? I was not for a moment suspected of having caused Lara’s death. The coroner ruled it a tragic accident and that it could not have been foreseen. God bless the Coroner for her short-sightedness, that’s all I could say. Amazingly, her brother and I are still good pals.

I had not intended embarking on a career as a serial killer. God no! I'd intended joining the Air Force and doing the whole Top Gun thing. Then we as a nation started poking our noses into places around the world where we didn’t have any business doing so: Afghanistan and Iraq for instance. It struck me forcefully that I could actually die - be killed! – if I had the misfortune to be shipped out there so I quickly changed my mind about being the next Baron von Richthofen and signed-up for an accountancy course instead. I have never looked back.

I’ve heard or read that most serial killers are cold, emotionless folks who lack the ability to feel anything for their victims in most cases. That is not me. I have to tell you this: when I decided to kill again, I was as nervous as hell, not just for myself either. It was all the unknown and unknowables that excited yet terrified me. Would I find the right person? Would she fight back? Would I actually be able to go through with it and if I did, what would happen afterwards? Well, I answered all of those questions and many more the night I murdered Jenny Slade.

She was single, pretty in a Plain-Jane sort of way and out with some work friends when I saw her at the club. I knew as soon as I laid eyes on her that she was the one. I have no idea what it was about her that made her the ideal target that night, only that it felt right.

It was quick and relatively painless. A razor-sharp professionally-honed knife ensures that sort of outcome. She was dead before she realised that I had ended her life. I was pleased for her that it was that way.

I had no idea how I would react to deliberately taking a life. Lara was an accident, more or less. Jenny was calculated and premeditated. I had nothing to feel particularly ashamed-of or be concerned about when Lara’s life ended so suddenly. Being the deliberate cause of ending Jenny Slade’s life, though, was a whole different ball-game.

For a start, I threw-up almost immediately afterwards. I had to be real careful not to leave my puke too close to where Jenny’s body lay otherwise I would probably have had some awkward questions to answer further down the line.

I’d once seen a television programme about how some stupid guy got caught by that very method. Apparently the cops matched his DNA through his puke to a record they had of him in their database or something. As far as I knew I had never had to give a DNA sample as I had never been arrested or charged with a criminal offence. Even so I wasn’t about to take any chances.

Luckily for me some scuzzy littering bastard had tossed a plastic carrier-bag into a nearby hedge about twenty-five feet away from where I’d hidden Jenny’s body. I grabbed it and emptied my roiling stomach contents in to it, gagging violently as I did so. When I was only retching-up bile I took a deep breath, tied-off the bag handles to seal it and deposited it in the first litter bin I came across.

It was when I got home that what I had done really hit me. I was in my bedroom, laying on my bed when the tremors started. I tried to not think about the events of little more than an hour before, but the brain is a bastard to you sometimes. It just won’t let you shut things out: over and over and over again it replayed in excruciating detail my brief bloody relationship with Jenny Slade.

It began as a mild twitch in my left leg first, then my right. Then my arms began to to twitch and my head started thrashing from side to side as though I had been afflicted with St Vitus Dance. I willed myself to regain control of my body, but my brain was having way too much fun to allow me to decide what was best for me. I lay on my back in a state of constant uncontrolled motion for about fifteen minutes before the twitches and spasms began to ease off then finally abated. The whole thing left me breathless for more than one reason.

I’d been in a state of high excitement, adrenaline coursing around my body like the best quality heroin or similar (I had no idea as I had never touched street drugs in my life. I was going by what I’d read and heard), buzzing also from committing the ‘ultimate sin’. I felt on top of the world.

Remorse never came in to my thinking, at the time of the kill or at any time afterwards. I had done what I had set out to do – kill a stranger – and I had done it cleanly, successfully. I was in a state of controlled euphoria that stayed with me until I arrived home and was able to secrete myself in my bedroom. That was when the enormity of what I’d done hit home.

When I had regained full control of myself I sat on the edge of my messed-up bed.

“I am a killer; a murderer” I told my bedroom. Then I found a smile spreading across my face.

“Oh yes, you’re a goddamn killer!”

Author Notes: Rather than present this story as one long piece I have posted it in several parts to (hopefully) make reading it easier and more convenient.

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