Special People...

(I know I don't normally do this but I'm giving you a content warning. Every once in awhile I go back to my fist love and write a horror piece. It's what I thought I wanted to write when I was much younger and thought about being a writer. Then I discovered it's not my strong suit. But I still do it every once in awhile. Normally my horror leans toward only slightly unsettling. This is not that. This is going to have talk about disturbing subjects as well as violent images. So if that is not your bag, and especially if that is not your bag during these horrific times, you are free to leave with no hard feelings.)

"...I know it seems like I'm the one doing all the talking, but that's because what you have to say isn't very interesting to be quite frank. I've heard it all before. 'Let me go, oh please let me go.' It's repetitive and boring. I know you will negotiate with me for money or promising to never say anything to the police. You will try and bargain away your own life if I just let your wife go.

But here is the truth. You have nothing to bargain with. I'm going to take what I want no matter what you say or do. I could pretend with you. Tell you that you've won me over and I will let her go, but you and I both know that's not going to happen. You knew it as soon as you saw my face. If I was thinking about letting anyone go I'd be in a mask wouldn't I?

I also know you are wondering 'Why me? Why us?' right about now. Wondering if there was something you did wrong, or could have done differently. And, honestly, Carl, I find that line of questioning to be incredibly selfish. Why you? Why not you? Should it have been your neighbors instead? Anyone but you? Maybe a little gratitude that I came to you when the kids were still away at school. I could have done this over Spring break. I honestly thought about it, but your kids are very social. Someone would have noticed if they went silent. You and your wife are big on social media, but not as big on actual social interactions. It's going to take a lot more time for anyone to notice you're missing. Much easier.

You might even ask, some have, why me? Not me as in you but me. Why do I do this? Some people really want a villain origin story. And I think it's really prevalent with me because I'm a woman. People really feel like they need to know why I am this way. You want the sob story about how Daddy abused me. Or my brother. Or an uncle. Maybe a minister. There has to be a rape in my past or I wouldn't be like this. If you can find out where my pain is maybe you can speak to it and get out of this situation.

I find that to be sexist and insulting. Men get to be evil, in movies, in books, in real life, just because they are evil. But women? Oh no. We had to be a victim first. Sometimes our victimization is even the trigger point for a man to go bad. He comes home and finds that his wife has been raped and killed and BOOM! He's out the door seeking bloody revenge on her attackers. Then we can sympathize with him. He's protecting her.

Bullshit. He didn't protect her. He's compensating for his failure. And it isn't even his failure. He has nothing to do with it. He's inconsequential. It's the failure of the assholes who committed the first crime. It's the failure of a system that says women are things to be used and discarded. Well, Carl, I'm not a victim. I never have been. I am not a failure of the system.

Not that that matters either. I mean, say I do get caught. I won't. I mean, I guess I might, I just haven't yet. But say I do get caught. Then it doesn't matter who any of us really were. You, Carl, become the beta male who couldn't protect his wife from a woman. How soft are you? Your wife will probably be turned into a paragon of virtue, at least for a little while until they get bored with that and dig around in her past to find that time she gave the tennis instructor a little pickle tickle after lessons. He wasn't the only one teaching that day. School's in, if you know what I mean.

Oh don't looked shocked, Carl, there doesn't actually have to be a tennis instructor for there to be a tennis instructor story. It just depends on if they need her to be a Madonna or a Whore.

Me? Well depending on the part of the internet you look at I'll either be that victim that we talked about. Hurt people, hurt people don't you know? Or I'll be trans. Or an illegal immigrant, or what the fuck, both. Trans illegal immigrant slaughters family while waiting for Green Card. Yes, I know it doesn't make sense that I'd be eligible for a Green Card if I was here illegally, but do you think they care? No way, the more talking points for their side the better.

Normal everyday American woman who you passed in the grocery store at least once a month for a year decides to carve up boring suburban couple just because she felt like it, is a much more disturbing headline isn't it? Not a lot there to other either you or me.

I mean if it could happen to you, Carl, it could happen to anyone couldn't it? You aren't special. Or at least you weren't. Isn't it ironic that this will actually make you special. And make your kids really special. They will forever be people whose parents were murdered by a serial killer. Of course the news will get the details wrong. I'll be a male, 30ish, loner, living with my mother in those stories, but you? You will be special.

But not until I give you that.

And your wife? She'll get the best treatment of all. The true victim in all of this. Though there will be whispers about sexual assault. I'm sorry about that. Hopefully the police will make it very clear to your kids that mom was just dissected not sexually assaulted. And do you think they will feel better about that? I mean, would you?

Probably. Or maybe not. Maybe you are one of those people who love the gory details in how a psycho became a psycho. Tell me about the rapes. In detail. Don't miss anything. Isn't it terrifying? Doesn't it make your skin crawl? Tell me again. Make it a podcast. Make it a movie starring a way too attractive actor playing the part of the serial killer so I can watch it without really accepting what I'm watching.

Maybe we are all abused? Have you ever thought of that, Carl? Maybe the system we live under has sexually traumatized all of us so we all have villain origin stories just waiting to be realized.

Or maybe we just sometimes like to hurt people.

Hurt people hurt people makes it easy to say it's not you. You are fine. You didn't do anything to deserve being hurt. That person is a hurt person who hurts people. And you aren't the sort of person who hurts someone because you were not hurt. But where did it start then? If hurt people hurt people, if the bad guy is a bad guy because dear old dad was bad, and his dad was bad, and his dad was bad and on and on, who was the first bad guy?

There had to be a non hurt person who hurt someone, right? I mean, logically that had to happen. Since so many people believe that a woman cannot go bad unless she was raped let's look at that. The first person who raped someone, who held down another person and invaded their body without permission, they hadn't been raped. So why did they do it? Or was it that rape was the way we all started and it wasn't until years after the first man stood on two legs and walked through the world that someone even considered asking the woman what she wanted? I mean, it's biblical that she was going to bring children through pain, right? We just all assume that's the pain of childbirth, but what if it really meant the pain of conception without consent?

I know, Carl, this is heady stuff to think about when you are tied to a chair sitting in your own piss. But it's the sort of thing that works through my head. I've thought deeply about the subject, as I'm sure you could imagine.

Only through knowing ourselves can we know the world, Carl.

And I mean, there's a lot to know about me. Why do I do this? Why do I spend so much time watching a family, getting to know their habits, getting them used to seeing me at the store, or the gas station, maybe their kid's basketball games, before I take them? What drives me? Why don't other people do this? What about the people who do or did do this? Am I wired the same as Ted Bundy? Are we cut from the same cloth? Or Aileen Wuornos? Is there something in our DNA that makes us this way?

And in the end, does it matter?

Like right now, Carl, if I were to ask you if you cared if I was missing that part of me that makes human connections or if I was violently abused as a child and am now seeking revenge on All American couples who remind me of my foster parents, would it matter to you? Would you care which was the reason why I am going to tie you to a stainless steel table and peel your skin away from your body? Perform an autopsy on you, but while you are living? Be with you while you either bleed out or go into cardiac arrest from the shock? Would you care the reason?

Debbie didn't.

Oh, sorry, Carl, I guess you didn't realize how long you were knocked out earlier. Debbie's already gone. She took it like a champ though. Stared at me with contempt until the spark left her eyes. I think I could have been friends with her.

Oh well, on with the day.

You're about to be special, Carl. So special."