Chapter 2
In the shadows of the dark bathroom, the young man with sad eyes washes his hands and does his best to wash the blood away. Once done, he flips on the blinding yellow bathroom light, the light buzzing to life. He stares at his washed-out face at the speckles of blood that had splashed his face after the brutal murder. He slowly wipes off one of the speckles before he begins to strip off his soaked clothes. He drops them into a pile by the door so that he can collect them and burn them after a warm shower. Standing under the pelting water, he stares at the stark white tile of the shower wall in front of him. Maybe he should get some new tiles for the shower wall; blue or green. His thoughts wash away about the tile and he is thinking about the murder again. He remembers the knife slicing the young woman’s skin that was shielding her neck arteries.
He tries to feel anything about the murder of the woman but just like the last six times, he feels…nothing. No excitement, no fear, no heart-pounding adrenaline as he had felt two years ago when he first began his murdering spree. He smiles slightly when he thinks about the first year of trying out killing. It was new, exciting, and he enjoyed every slow minute of each late night or early morning killings. And he made sure to kill different people each time to keep the cops guessing and unable to find any clues that would link him to the murders.
He begins washing his hair as the memories flow through his mind like the shampoo through his fingers. His smile slips from his face and the excitement leaves him an empty shell again. He had decided to move back to Arizona where he was born and had first begun killing to find that excitement again. But still, there is nothing. He tried something new and began killing in broad daylight. For a while, it was exciting because he thought he could get caught at any minute. But even that lost its appeal quickly. Once, he even murdered three girls at once. He drugged them, piled them into his car, and took them to an abandoned house in a quiet neighborhood. The house he took them to had been used at the beginning of his murdering career. He enjoyed the gagged screams as he tortured the three but even that didn’t last long.
He’s just…bored with killing now but he can’t just stop doing it; he’s addicted. He made a promise to not kill for two months to try and break the killing habit. After the first couple of weeks of that first month, he felt like an addict trying to go cold turkey from cocaine.
He found a young woman who had just broken up with her boyfriend and needed a shoulder to cry on at a local coffee shop back in Texas. She picked the wrong shoulder. After that, he decided to try out a group for addicts to try and shake the need to murder. But here he is, still at it. He may try again now that he is settled down in Wyoming but he isn’t completely sure that it will help. It hadn’t before but he might be willing to give it a go again. He had decided to leave Arizona behind and try a new state for inspiration.
He finishes his shower and steps out onto his plush green bath rug, dripping water down on the rug around his feet. He quickly dries off before he pulls on clean boxers, blue jeans, black socks, and a dark gray shirt. He then slips on a pair of gloves, that he keeps a box of under the sink, and carries out the pile of bloody clothes. He walks through the house he just purchased three weeks prior. He steps into his massive back yard sighing at his surroundings. He walks over to where he had burned some leaves, tossing the clothes on top of another pile of leaves that he had raked earlier so that he can burn them that night. He bought the house that is far from any neighbors because of the bad things that he does. He knows what he does is wrong but he continues to do it, not caring if he ever gets caught or not. Nor does he care about the lives that he has stolen over the years.
He stares down at the crunchy fall leaf pile underneath the bloody clothed mess. He wonders if he should make a pile of leaves and jump into them like he had done when he was a kid. The howling of a dog off in the distance pulls him out of his trance. A slight breeze picks up and he shivers even though it wasn’t even that cold outside. He grabs a small can of fire fluid and sprays it all over the pile of leaves and clothes. He smiles as he watches the stream of liquid splash over everything, washing the red into the leaves themselves. He tips the can away, stopping the stream. He puts the can down away from the pile and grabs the matches he has stored in a small metal box nearby. Striking the match, he watches the small flame dance to life before he flicks the match onto the pile. Instantly, the fire eats at the food given to it, lighting up the area in pretty oranges, reds, and yellows. After about an hour or so, the man checks to see if his clothes were nothing more than ashes. Satisfied that they are, he gets his hose, turns it on, watering the fire until only a billow of smoke is left. He turns off the water and treks back to the house. Ready for some sleep, he crawls into his King-sized bed. He slumps down under the covers, sighs and closes his eyes. As soon as he falls asleep, he dreams of murder.