A Child Killer's Soliloquy: Chapter 5

I set out only a day or two later. I really can’t remember the time span between that conversation and that night. I don’t think anybody can forget an experience quite like it.

One's first kill is really nothing, even if one has nothing but disdain for the victim. I hated that man and his mother, and I use the word man very loosely. But my next victim... my next victim deserved none of my ire. Her only sin against me was being too convenient a target.

Like I've said already, my next victim needed to be a child, which she was. I'd place her about seven, maybe eight years old. Perhaps nine years old, but that is highly unlikely. She seemed to young even for that young age.

She also possessed an innocence, betrayed in her happy laugh as she skipped rope all alone, that let people who heard it know she had not yet been acquainted with the evils of this world. Undoubtedly she had loving parents. Her clothes were clean, and seemed also new. They certainly would have protected her from those evils.

Yet, for whatever reason, this fateful night that protection lapsed. To my benefit, and more importantly, my wife's, she was out alone after dusk. I saw her as I strolled through some public park. The park was poorly illuminated by streetlights beyond its boundaries, and in the growing darkness gave it an eerie appearance. The jungle gyms and monkey bars children played on in daylight now appeared like ominous skeletal metal masses, their silhouettes resembling more mechanical abominations, testaments to the hubris of man, jutting from the blacktop of the playground. The riding toys, shaped like sea creatures and horses and African animals, looked like different wild animals stopped in time. None of it moved. This scene, which could have been painted by Dali if he were inspired by the Comte de Lautreamont, was totally still except for one happy little girl.

She had short brown hair, too short any girl already interested in boys. She wore a green t-shirt and some shorts. She jumped rope quite well despite wearing simple flip flop shoes. She giggled and laughed as she jumped, entertained by her own thoughts and imagination. It seemed as though some unseen person, lurking in the shadows, kept her laughing with a series of jokes.

And yet there was I, lurking in the shadows. My every footstep as careful and quiet as possible. I wore all black, covering almost all of my skin except my face. Unfortunately, one cannot easily prowl streets, even from the safety of one's car, if one hides one's face. People, I think, are accustomed to faces. They prefer it, and anything humanoid hiding its face is just as good as without one, by which of course I mean unsettling and otherworldly.

I sweated, for it was hot. Her choice of clothing bearing her extremities was more appropriate for the heat of this night. It had been a hot day, too. Yet I was dressed for colder weather, purposefully so that I might blend into the shadows in which I prowled, rendered invisible to the eyes of the one I stalked.

And I was so successful and evading her detection until I was within arm's reach of her. Perhaps it was that I was wearing all black or that I was behind her, which naturally shakes the constitution of any soul, but she stopped laughing and jumping all at once when she realized my presence.

She asked me something and I replied. Honestly, I cannot remember exactly what but the fear was present in her trembling voice. I think mine was also full of trepidation.

It wasn't catching her that was hard, but keeping her from screaming loud enough to alert anyone. Before my hand covered her mouth she managed to let off the beginning of a cry for help. Luckily, this went unheard or unheeded like a prayer. Her teeth unsuccessfully tried to chew through my glove to bit my palm.

I pinned her to the ground, restraining her small body with the weight of my fully-grown one. She struggled without any gaining any ground. She fought like soldiers who, in the mist of a modern battlefield, find themselves cut off from supplies, low on ammunition, and with an armored enemy rolling on top of their position. This is to say she fought desperately, with nothing held back, no effort spared. No limb did not writhe in her attempt to escape. Even as she tried to bloody my hand, biting like the vampire I hoped to treat, barely audible shrieks came from deep inside her throat.

I placed one hand on the back of her head, and my other, as already stated, was sealing her mouth shut. The fingertips of each hand were on opposite sides, my left hand's fingers coming from the rear to wrap around the right side of her cranium and in my right palm her jaw, my right fingers easily reaching her left ear.

I took several attempts to break her neck. Nothing is ever as easy as it looks in the movies. And the end result was not pretty. I am saying I would not call this a clean kill, but no matter, I am no assassin. By the end, her neck was completely distorted, and she faced behind her, her dead eyes staring into mine as if, even after she had expired, still trapped inside the panicked electric signals in her brain, she was trying to reach out to me to learn some reason for her death.

For my part, I admit I cried. I begged her forgiveness, trying not to sob loudly enough to alert any passersby.

It was successful, though, in that she did not bleed. If she did bleed, the blood would be wasted and all this effort would have been in vain. I lifted the corpse in my arms, carrying her as if she were sleeping in my arms. Her head fell on my shoulder as if she was resting on it, but the reversal of the way she was facing made it so much more eerie. Despite this being my own deed, I could not help but be perturbed by this, as if I were watching the crime on television from the warm safety of my living room. And it was to regain this normal life, to watch some movie again with my wife by my side, that I did this. I wrapped her arms around my neck and hurried back into the darker shadows, carrying the corpse back to my car.

With the evidence of my crime in the trunk, I drove around my city for several hours, waiting for those early morning hours which are darkest. That's when I returned to my neighborhood, staring more into the rear view mirror than I should have, ensuring that I wasn't being followed.

I arrived safely at my house, which was dark. The only light on it came from my car's headlights, making it look both haunted and abandoned. As soon as my headlights went off, the house vanished into the darkness. Only after my eyes did adjust, did it begin to look like some mountain of shadow standing against a still greater range of shadows. Even the moon and stars seemed unwilling to illuminate this night, either in assistance to me or in mourning for her. In both cases, the effect was still the same.

Getting out of the car, I looked around at my neighbors' homes. I looked for human silhouettes on decks or porches, bedroom lights still on, or any other signal of an observer who might see me carry the evidence into my basement. My luck failed to fail me, as if this night God favored the wicked. Without any eyes on me, of this I was sure, I carried the victim into the basement of my house.

I don't know if I've said this before, but my basement remains mostly unfinished. This being said, there exists down there a toilet, not unlike a Pittsburgh toilet but less randomly placed. It was placed next to a basin sink in a small walled off section of the basement, which even had its own door. My wife and I had this installed about a year ago, shortly before she fell ill, as the first step of converting our basement to a complete home gym. There was even a rectangular enclave carved into the basement wall where we intended to place the shower.

The stolen tupperware was brought downstairs before I set out. It sat on a table, piled neatly, not one bit of it touching the dirty grit of the basement. Plastic tarps and a clean table separated The ugliness of an afflicted couple's forgotten dream gym and the desired cleanliness of my first kill. I even took the effort to remove the spiderwebs and cobwebs from the ceiling before setting all this up.

The hardest part of this night was, in the dim light I provided myself in this basement, coming from a camping lantern placed as far away from the door as possible, tying up her corpse so that she hanged from the ceiling by her ankles, like the piece of meat she had become. Just beneath her was a large plastic tarp meant for painting. Previously unused, I had decided it should be stored here, and used for each subsequent kill until killing itself became unnecessary. I placed the first tupperware container beneath her. Her head dangled, her neck outstretched, the vertebrae now completely disconnected from each other. She appeared more inhuman the more I looked at her, and this had the effect of reducing my pity for her, and thus reducing my feelings of remorse.

I find that interesting. The more I became acquainted with what I had done just hours before, the more I felt at peace with its horror. This came to help me with what came next.

I cut her dead throat, letting the now cold blood pour down. Perhaps my cut was too deep or too long, but the blood fell out too quickly, filling the tupperware faster than I could replace it. Each replacement container filled so quickly that overflow became an inevitability. A noticeable puddle of a murdered child's blood pooled on the plastic tarp. I kept my torso and extremities out of this little red lake, and at that time I was totally unsure of how to dispose of it. Still, I had to focus on the task at hand.

I continued to fill the tupperware containers. The much sought after evidence of a double murder found itself becoming evidence in what would become a local hysteria. Unbeknownst to me at that time, this child murder, and the ones that would follow, would lead my sleepy city into a panic.

At the same time as I was draining her body of blood, rather clumsily emptying that essential red liquid into very clean Tupperware containers, her parents were asleep in bed, blissfully unaware of their mischievous daughter's demise. She had sneaked out of the house, wanting the jump rope at the park all night for the reasons children give for their impulsive actions. Yet she would never have to answer for this transgression as an infinitely greater one was committed onto her. Her parents would report her missing the next morning when they found no trace of her at home. It would be declared a suspected kidnapping shortly after most people had their lunch. The newspapers are quickly jumped to the conclusion that this was the work of a pedophile, very possibly the same one who murdered and old woman who pimped her now adult son to him.

The tupperwares were filled, not all of them though, and ready to be transported up the stairs. The large pool of discarded blood, on the plastic tarp, was cleaned with a sponge. Soaking this sponge and then ringing it out over the toilet proved to be a long, tedious process. Yet it would prove to be a cake walk when I met with the task of dismembering her body. The small parts, and her skull which I smashed apart, were flushed down the toilet. I said some Bible verse or other, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, as some form of respect.

The larger parts of her I put in large trash bags, already half filled with garbage and to be filled with more, in order to best conceal her remains from any detection. These bags would only go out to the garbage man once filled, and even then only a few hours before he came by.

When they did finally go out, sitting for two and a half hours on the curb, I watched every minute from my living room window, my heart racing. Afraid I was of anyone passing by being disturbed enough by the smell of dead flesh beginning to rot to rouse their curiosity. This did not happen. I was afraid that the garbage collector would rip open the bag by some accident, thereupon discovering the remains of my victim, whose name and face by then was ubiquitous in my city.

When he did come, no such thing happened. The garbage man went about his duty, totally unaware that by doing no more than he did, he became complicit in a crime which no doubt repulsed him, and how close he was to becoming a city hero, had he only made some mistake.

My wife was in the same room as me, her skin healing. She was no longer sick as she drank the virgin blood from a coffee mug with a cute unicorn on it. Her hair had rapidly grown back, and she was resplendent with beauty. Despite my initial doubts and misgivings, which continued even from the completion of the first murder and its failed results, I now knew she was indeed a vampire.