Murderer

   I stepped in the boat and sat inside. It was not a big space and it all smell like fish but, given the circumstances, I didn’t thought I should say or do anything about those two things. Little things, might I add, compared to the situation at hand. Onboard came the man that had been pointing at me with his gun all along but then the other one, the one that seemed less likely to shoot at any given opportunity, told him to step out of there and let him do it. There was no one else that could help me and it was too dark too distinguish anything more than the water, the boat and the armed man that had stepped out and disappeared.

 The man I was with had turned the engine and we were traveling fast. The sea was calm and there seemed to be no fishing boats or ferries that could see us. It was almost as if it was meant to be that way and, of course for me, that wasn’t so good.

 After what seemed liked an hour of journey into the open sea, the man stopped the engine and looked straight at my eyes. It was unsettling, as he was one of those people with very bright eyes that make you feel uncomfortable when you look directly at them. I had always wondered if they knew they made people feel that uneasy.

-       Did you really do it?

 There it was. It had been obvious; from the moment they had kidnapped me in my home that he wanted to ask that question so bad. Right then, he seemed eager to know the truth behind all of this, probably the truth about why he was with me right in the middle of the ocean, where no one will ever hear us talk or say the most amazing of truths. I could almost tell he was sweating, the stains beneath his armpits growing, his upper lip trembling at my sight.

-       What is that I apparently did?

 The man snored a bit, smile and kind of laughing. He was nervous. It was so obvious: his hand trembled when he wiped off his sweat and his smile wasn’t the one of a man that feels safe or sure about anything anymore. Maybe, after all, the wrong man had stepped in the boat with me.

-       We were hired.

-       I assumed as much

-       You killed a family.

-       Yes.

 The man seemed to tremble once more, due to my “confession”. To be honest, I’ve never really hidden anything about what I’ve done. I’ve made my peace with it all, specially then, when I seemed so close to death. Why lie to him when he was obviously so eager to know the truth, so eager to think he knew or that he understood what his task was all about.

-       And you say it like that? So… So cool and casual? Are you crazy?

-     I’m not mentally unstable, although the fact that I’ve killed makes me very likely to have one of those fancy disorders every murderer seems to have these days.

-       How many more?

 I couldn’t contain a smirk when he asked this. Not only because I knew it would make him tremble again, but also because people were always like that, wanting the morbid little details of how I had done something or the other. It was so typical of every single person in the world to apparently feel disgusted and scared but deep down, been utterly interested in what I had to say about all the corpses I’ve created. They sometimes seem even more interested that I was when I did what I did.

-       I don’t know. I’d rather not count.

-       The people that hired told me you raped their…

-       No. That’s not true.

 The man appeared to want to leap over me but he contained himself. Apparently he thought that I was denying the truth and that made him even more frustrated and confused but the truth was, and still is, that I never raped anyone. I’ve heard the stories, on the news and so on. They said I was ruthless but then they began to say I raped people and that’s just incorrect. If I had any more feelings I would be hurt.

-       They said…

-       You trust too much on your clients. Never thought for a second they could be lying?

-       I talked with them and…

-     Oh yes, because people are incapable of lying when they hire a hitman. Is that what you are because you seem pretty bad at this?

 There. Shaking like a leaf. I know he’s scared of me, thinking I’m some kind of animal, a beast that has to be put down. But the fun thing is that he knows or feels he cannot contain me for long and, most curiously, he seems to think I’m not guilty of this all. Because, why else would he be asking all these questions? Then again, it might be only that he’s fucking scared and he’s just stalling, avoiding the killing.

-       Are you going to kill me anytime soon?

-       Shut up.

-       It was you who began the interrogation.

 The man seemed to be thinking. I bet he was trying to decide what to do next. Maybe he thought that I might be more valuable dead than alive. The police were looking for me, that’s for sure, and I had a reward sign on my head. Apparently he wasn’t as stupid as he looked, thinking of the best way to profit properly from this assignment. He could even surrender me to the police and collect the money all by himself, leaving the other idiot to mend for himself, thinking I was dead.

-       You killed many people.

-       I know.

-       And you don’t regret it?

-       No. Why should I?

-       You’re not sorry? Not even for one of those murders?

 I looked at him carefully, trying to decide what to say. There was something more in all of this, something that had eluded me from the start. The moment they had taken me from my home it had been all about the other guy, the tall one. He had threatened me, put a bag on my head, and pointed the gun straight to my heart. This guy I was with had only driven us to the dock and then had decided to kill me, at the very last minute. And then, it became clear.

-       Don’t tell me that I killed your wife or brother?

 The man went crazy when I said those words. He threw himself at me and started punching me all over: on the face, the chest, the stomach and the head. My hands were still tight behind my back so there wasn’t much I could do except moving violently, in order not only to drive him away but also to make the boat turn sideways to escape swimming. He couldn’t chase me through the ocean.

 But nothing of the sort happened. He just stopped beating the fuck outta me and decided to breath heavily, as far as he could from me. It hurt; I’m not going to say it didn’t. But there was no damage that he could do that would really hurt me. I was beyond all of that at that point. He could have stabbed me and I wouldn’t have cared at all. My lips were cracked, bleeding and all my body was numb from his punches but I wasn’t bad enough to look at him from my corners and smile.

-       Predictable.

-       Shut up…

-    You know, even if you do kill me, nothing is going to bring anyone back? It won’t happen.

-       Shut up!

-       The dead are done. Believe me, I know.

 Then, the guy pulled out the gun and pointed at me. He no longer trembled but he was still sweaty and his eyes were wide open, as if he wanted to be sure of what he was doing. I cleaned my face a bit from my blood without breaking the link between our eyes. Maybe he was going to kill me, maybe this was it for me but it didn’t matter. He was one more of my victims and that was enough for me. So I laughed.

 The bullet pierced right through my brain, coming out the other end and falling in the water. The man pushed my body to the water and left. He knew my body was going to be found and that everyone would know a murderer was now dead. And no one would be interested in knowing who killed me because I deserved it. But, in the end, I knew that just before the end he had been mine and that was all worth it.

The Killings

   Ten years had passed since the murders, ten years in which captain McCormick had not been able to get proper sleep. She had gotten a divorce and her children preferred to be away from her, although they called her sometimes. She thought that was more out of respect than because they actually cared about what happened to her. They were living their lives far away, with their own families and jobs. Her former husband had remarried and her children seemed to like their stepmother more than they liked her.

Or maybe it was the town. Maybe it was the things that  had happened there and her youngest son had seen some of them with his own eyes. She didn’t blame him for not coming back. Oddly enough, of her three children, he was the only one who called her regularly and not only on the holidays. She knew that he called out of fear of the past, thinking that what had happened may happen again one day.

 Captain McCormick still worked with the county police and she was proud too. After those horrible days, security had been strengthened and her county became an example for many others around the state. Samantha McCormick was proud that her work had done so much good but there’s always a case that hunts a policeman. There’s always that one unsolved case that hunts you to your death.

 It had begun during the state fair, when the bodies of two schoolteachers, both women, were found one morning in the middle of the rodeo ring. The corpses had been left in perfect state except for the eyes, which had been taken out. Besides that, everything seemed to be fine with them: no signs of extreme violence, no signs of rape or torture.

 Samantha looked for the murderer for at least a month until they found three more bodies, in the forest north of town. They were all male, various ages. They appeared to have been hanged but the heavy rain had made the tree branches weak and they had broken due to the weight of the dead men. At the moment, they thought both series of murders were not related but it was very uncommon for such a small county to have two murderers on the loose.

 Besides, because of the media, everyone got scared into thinking the streets were filled with murderers waiting for them to take a wrong step on the street. Some people left town and others barricaded them inside their houses. Some time later, a family was found burned to death inside their home and it was determined someone had initiated the fire by using the gas installation. It was then when Samantha began to think the murders were all related.

 It was impossible that three people were doing so much damage. Specially here, in a community were everyone knew each other and were strange behavior was easy to spot. Samantha had seen that private eye spirit in people before and it had never failed. She had been summoned many times by people thinking that their neighbor was a killer when in reality they were hiding affairs or just happened to be stealing money from their jobs.

 But this was different and, although many of her companions did not believe her, she was sure it was a mass murderer. Then, she was personally attacked. A man had taken her son and two other boys from outside the movie theater. She put every single policeman to work, scouting through the woods and the farmland to the south. Finally, they located tow of the boys still alive.  The third one had been killed with a gun in front of them and they claimed the murderer had told them he was going to eat them.

 Samantha sent all members of her family out of town, with her mother who lived in a big city far away. Only her husband stayed because he thought she was becoming increasingly obsessed with everything around the case and she was: that man had attacked her personally and she wasn’t going to let anyone to that to her. She couldn’t shake out the memory of her son trembling like mad, his eyes filled with tears and the blood covered shack where he and a his friends had been held hostage.

 Weeks after her children left town, police found the body of two elderly women. They had been left on one side of the road leading to some hot springs, which were really popular with tourists around the region. Then, everything stopped. They checked everyone’s house, every inch of the forest and the files, of the hot springs and every single public and private building in the county. Not only they did not found one more body, but also they didn’t found any suspects they could interrogate.

 Samantha got obsessed in the search for the culprits and would often drive all night around town to check on things, believing the murder or murderers might come out late at night to escape or kill again. But nothing happened. The only real change in her life was that her husband got fed up with her obsession and left her alone in town. She didn’t really care, at least not at the moment.

 She interrogated the kid that had been rescued with her son and, although she learned some new details about the kidnapping, she happened to be extremely harsh on the poor boy that kept weeping and was about to pass out by the end of her interview. The kid’s mother chased Samantha out, telling her to look for those mad men instead of harassing the only victims that happened to be alive.

 The head of the state police came to town to check on the mass killings investigation and decided to put someone else on the case and give Samantha a leave of absence to be with her family and get away from it all, at least for a few weeks. But she just couldn’t. She visited her children at her mother’s but it was then when they all realized nothing was going to be the same again.

 Her children were scared of her as she only sat on the living room, checking every single data on the killings on her computer. She did that every single day she stayed with her children and when her mother quarreled with her, telling Samantha she was no real mother if she cared mother about dead people than about her own children. Samantha responded that her job was to see that no one’s children; no one’s relatives will never be killed again. She stated that her job was first.

 This affirmation was hard on her children who decided to stop insisting on getting their mother back. To them, it was like her mother had been one more victim of the killings. They stayed behind when she went back to town and her mother only asked of her the necessary money to take care of the three children. Samantha did not argue and for the next seven years she sent money to her mother, no argument, no questions.

 She went back to solve the case, or so she thought, but she never got really far with it. Some of the evidence suddenly pointed towards a cult, a satanic group that had decided to settle in town and kill randomly and then leave, leaving no trace. It was the theory she backed after so many years, but the killings became a cold case, and unsolvable one.

 Every year Samantha attended a remembrance of the victims of the killings and many of the family members thanked her for never letting go of it all. They knew it had all been very hard on her too but they appreciated the fact that she was still looking for the person or persons that had committed such awful crimes.

 After ten years of the killings, people had begun to forget about it all. The county had become one of the safest places in the whole country and tourists poured in often to check out the hot springs, the food and the hospitality. She knew that some small groups came to visit the places were the murders took place but she didn’t mind, although she always suspected the murder could come back.

 But if he or they did, it never became obvious. People came and went and Samantha stood there for many more years. Even after her retirement, she would still try to solve the puzzle but she was never able to. She often cried, alone in her house. Not only because she felt so frustrated, not being able to go any far into the case. She also cried because the killer had not only killed those people but because he (or they) had destroyed many families, the spirit of a place and their hopes for the future. Samantha knew this to be a fact, from personal experience.

Hate

   They all hate him. I know I do. He acts all perfect and many people around here think he is just that: perfect. I bet he hide so many thinks beneath those stupid smiles and acts of kindness. No human person is like that; we all act of cowardice or shame but never just because we are good. We just want to be it so bad we go to great lengths to transform in those idiotic beings that just spit positivity.

 He’s a fake. I just know it. He gave everyone a present on his floor last Christmas and even organized a party for them, dressed as Santa Claus. And people danced around him like dogs under the hypnosis of a really good trainer. It was disgusting how they looked, as if they were in the presence of God himself or at least one of the many saints. And he even acts the part, always helping and doing and being all over the place.

 Was he fat as a kid? Or did his parents maybe hate him? No, of course not. That wouldn’t have happened to him. People said that he would speak of his childhood often, remembering how it was all easier. Ha! Easier than now, when almost every single idiot in this office building treats him like his a deity? I doubt it. He must have been one of those insufferable jocks, full of himself, with everyone cheering around just because he looked like some guy from a magazine.

 I always try to get away from people like that. All they do is treat people like the stupidest of pets, making them do, as he wants. He doesn’t even have to ask, which is even more revolting. They just do it, as if getting the reward of his smile was more than enough to feed their children or pay their bills. I’ve heard them, women and children worshipping him in the elevator, talking about how kind and sensitive he is.

 People will believe anything if they want to, even if it kills them. They’re not smart enough to feel, to sense. I laugh in my head overtime they organized that annoying secret valentines game. They always try to pull me into that and, once, I almost agreed to do it. At the end of the day, I’m not much more smart than they are and I do work here with them. But then they spoke of how that stupid fuck was organizing it all. So I just said no and left for my house.

 Days after that I ran into him. He smiled to me! As I was a friend or one of his dogs. I just got out of the elevator and went to the bathroom, as I had no need to stand more than a minute in the presence of that cheeky smug smile, expecting me and anyone else to do the same. I want him to know that we’re not all enthralled by his physical appearance and his effort to be liked by everyone.

 He wants us all to like him? Then he should behave like any other of us, just work and shut the fuck up. We don’t wanna know about his colorful life full of beauty, and style and drama that’s only dramatic to him. Of course, he has been employee of the month so many times, no one even asks anymore about the picture they take when you win. They even said he asked fro the pictures to be removed, as he didn’t want to be disliked.

 Funny he said that, if he did say that is. Because I don’t dislike him. I don’t. Don’t ever get me wrong there. I hate him. I fully and truly hate his guts. I hate his smile, I hate those pictures of everyone’s holidays they put up once on the company’s Facebook page. Of course he was on a beach somewhere half around the world, tanned and his body ridiculously fit and lean. It was obvious that he was perfect in every fucking sense. And I hate that.

You may calm me resented or that I envy him. Maybe, I would not know if that is so. What I do know is that a fucking hate that guy and everything he stands for. He makes people feel less than they are and then he just greets them and think that will make everybody feel better because, like the Pope, he stretches the hand of all those less fortunate. And those poor devils do think that they are his friends just because he smiles at them or because they hear one of his stupid little stories.

 I’ve gone to the doctor, the shrink that is. Believe me, I’m not happy thinking about that guy every day in the office. So I went to see one of those doctors and he says I’m obsessive and I’m looking to deep into it. He tells me I should just leave it at that and live for myself. But I can, I have explained to him. How can I have time for my own when I have to go to that damn floor everyday and hear him make one of his lectures to people.

 That doctor doesn’t know I feel ill, sick to my stomach every time I hear that man’s voice. Many people say you can’t really hate, that it takes something really strong to feel that for someone. I tell you, I didn’t take a lot for me to feel what I feel. And it is hate, and I hate that feeling too. I have a life, not much but I do have it and I don’t want to spend it thinking of some male model that parades around.

 He hypnotized me once, that doctor. I thought the idea was stupid but I let him do it, as I wanted peace for once on my mind. He said, after I woke up or however you name it, that I have dangerous tendencies towards criminal behavior and that I have deep problems rooted in my brain. Fuck, what an idiot that doctor is. I could have told him that myself, awake and for a cheaper price. Of course, I never went back to see him. I don’t need people charging me for telling me the obvious.

 I want to kill him. That’s what the doc meant. And I have thought of it many times, carefully. I do it before I go to sleep or when I daydream at work. Some days ago he came to my corner and asked me for some papers. I wanted to throw up, right there. Sick isn’t it? Then, as I reached for the papers without saying a single word, I imagined punching him to his death. How beautiful would he look like with blood all over his face?

 This is not good. I know killing is a bad thing, that’s obvious. But what can I do? Every single time I see him, that strange rush invades my whole body and makes me feel like I could really do it. You know? I’ve thought several ways to do it, all of them fun to me. Of course I don’t share this with anyone. People would overreact and say I’m mass murderer or some shit like that. And the truth is I just want HIM dead. I know if I do it, I wouldn’t do it again. No need to.

 The day after he asked me for those papers, I decided I would follow him to his house. Why? Easy: before he dies I want him to tell me what lies beneath that entire perfect surface. Because, as you know, I don’t believe for a second all of those nice little details about his life and how he loves everyone and so on. I know there must be something really rotten below all that beauty. There always is. No one is perfect in this world and, the better the cover, the nastier the secrets.

 So I followed him down to the basement, because he’s one of few that comes work by car. And then it struck me: it doesn’t matter. His life, what he has or hasn’t done. I don’t give a fuck about that. What I really care about is the image he gives to the world. He might fuck children, kill whores or spread STD’s. I don’t care. I care about that fake smile he gives to everyone he meets. I want that finished.

 Yesterday, I almost went for it. I went to the bathroom to pee and he went in to and went for one of the stalls. We were alone. He was whistling. The rush came back and I knew that was the perfect moment. I could strangle him myself with my hands, seeing his soul leaving his body and his smile finally disappearing from his face. But when I decided to do it, another man came in and I just went out, breathing heavily as if I had been running.

 Then comes today. The guy announce to everyone, as if he was the president, that he will be leaving us to pursue other endeavors. I almost went crazy when I heard about it. But then, I relaxed. My life could get back to normal and I could make all these thoughts go away. Him leaving would be my cure. And the only person that would ever know about this all would be me because here, inside my head, there’s only me. And I’m thankful for that.