Loving Death
12-10-12
"Kill them." Every night the same voice; seductive, sultry, hoarse with lust. "Kill them."
*** *** ***
This morning I woke up in a pool of blood. It wasn't mine. It's been the same way for the last six months. Eight months ago I woke in a pool of my own blood, disappointed that I had survived. Of course I was sent for treatment, spent two months in a facility. Got 'better'. But nobody knows that I still thought of death with a longing that I had never felt for any human. To me, death was a woman that needed wooing. A woman worthy of me.
I see her as a strong woman – no hooded cloak, no scythe. Just a woman whose shape cannot be defined by anything more than the words: seductive, elusive, beautiful and hazy. Long, luscious hair, black, and innocent green eyes – innocent until you look into them and see the centuries of knowledge and depth that they hold. I don't know why I see her so clearly in my mind, but I know that what I see is the truth, despite the caricatures of the skeletal man in the cloak.
*** *** ***
Thomas Brady was hacked to death in his house six months ago. The intruder left no physical evidence; simply entered through the unlocked door, murdered him, and left. Nobody locked their doors in this town. That is until Emma and Sally Mae, then Richard Smith, Jonathan Bowles, Mary and Gary Sue and their two-month-old twins Robert and Simon all died in a similar fashion. Not all of them were hacked with an axe like Thomas; sometimes it was a multiple stabbing, or a shooting, or a combination of the above. But after the ninth murder people became suspicious of each other and began to lock their doors at night.
Nobody was safe it seems. The death of the Sue twins was the most shocking – who would kill children? What was the purpose of these deaths?
*** *** ***
"Kill them." I first heard the words six months ago. I knew that it was death speaking to me – I knew her voice better than my own. I had courted her, and she had rejected me, but now it seemed as if I had to do something to make her believe in me again; I had to earn her affection.
The morning after I first heard those words, Thomas Brady was found dead and I woke up with bloodied sheets, wood splinters in my hands and an ache in my shoulders as if I had been chopping wood all night.
A few weeks later I heard the words again, and then Emma and Sally Mae were found stabbed to death. Over 80 wounds apiece, their torso's reduced to mince. I woke up with blood pooled around my hands and a knife sticking out of my pillow.
I told nobody of the voice, and I made it a habit to do my laundry first thing in the morning.
*** *** ***
The elastic quality of the skin as it slowly sucked the knife inside of it to find the life-giving blood that was desired. I was amazed at how easy it was. I loved stabbings. Hackings were also exhilarating. Hearing the bones creak, crack, snap and pop like bits of timber.
And then there were shootings. The time it took waiting for them to be in the exact place for me to shoot them was boring, but the exhilaration I felt as they moved into the perfect place and my finger tightened on the trigger was like a drug to me.
Watching as the light of life faded from their eyes as I strangled them I think was my favourite though. The feeling of their struggles getting weaker and weaker beneath my hands was something I treasured, the feeling that my hands would almost brush hers as I handed my gift to her. The knowledge that I was helping her and had the power to give her anyone or anything she asked for was intoxicating to my dreams and made me yearn to hand her more gifts.
This is what I dreamed of at night. Every morning I woke covered in blood and another body was found.
*** *** ***
Detective Green had never had a case as complicated as this before. He was sure that all these deaths were linked somehow, but each case was different. Some were single people, some were couples. Black, white, mixed race. Old, young. Shot, stabbed, hacked. No two murders were alike, yet he was sure that there was a connection. And he hoped to find it soon, before more people died. They had already lost nine people in three months. Nine citizens of Dawnfalls were deceased, and Det. Green had nothing to work with to help him find out who had done it.
*** *** ***
Three months ago Jane Jones and her boyfriend Bobby Jim were found garrotted in his car. A few weeks later the Christi residence was broken into and the entire family was wiped out in a vicious shooting that would have been heard for miles barring the fact that they lived on the furthest farm out near the woods. Nobody heard a thing, and it was only when the mailman came around in the morning and found the severed head of the Christi's newborn daughter in the mailbox that anybody even knew that they were dead. The body wasn't to be found for another few months.
The clues continued to pile up. Handprints from the Fargo stabbings, blood left at the scene of the Norman massacre.
*** *** ***
Nobody took any notice of the dead animals what with all the dead people, but soon the animal death toll began to rise above its normal 'road kill' total. Shootings, stabbings, beatings – all bloody and brutal. Dogs, cats, rabbits and even the odd cow or horse. It was only when farmers began losing their livestock and work animals that the deaths of the animals were taken into account. Was this linked to the human murders?
*** *** ***
"Kill them." The voice caressed my mind with gentle fingers. "Kill them all."
I was aware that I was leaving clues. The first killings had been easy, but after the people became suspicious and started locking their doors it became harder. After the Christi murders, I realised that I was the killer. How else would I have gotten blood soaked into my best pair of work boots and bits of gore spattered all over my shirt and favourite Glocks? How else could the decapitated body of a small girl be next to me on the bed. I hid it in the basement.
I knew now that it was my mission to kill them for her. She wanted them, like she had never wanted me. In order to win her affections, to make her want me, I had to impress her with as many souls as I could collect for her. She didn't discriminate – young, old, whatever. Dead was dead.
I believe that I had even killed animals for her – waking up in a bed full of dog or cat hair when you didn't own a pet was usually a bad sign. But occasionally I found the odd hoof-print on my abdomen or ass. Whatever. Dead was dead.
*** *** ***
Detective Green had finally decided to declare these murders the work of a serial killer. Even though there were no tangible links, his gut told him that the same person was doing all the killings. So many deaths in such a small space of time. And now he had clues, and he was waiting on results from fingerprint and DNA analysis (that had to be shipped upstate because his small town didn't have the needed equipment). The only problem with that is that the analysis took at least eight weeks to get there and back. Dawnfalls really needed to become technologically literate.
Finally the results came back. Keegan Woods. The shy twenty-year-old who had nearly taken his own life seven months ago. Det. Green couldn't believe it, so he sent the DNA back for a second analysis.
*** *** ***
"Kill them my sweet. Kill them for me."
I knew that they suspected me, Det. Green made it a point to drive past my house at least once a night. But I was clever and managed to slip past him. I don't know what I did at night, but I always woke up knowing someone else was dead and I was the culprit. The Masons across the street were the latest victims. Hacked and stabbed to death – all eight of them. Another gift for her.
*** *** ***
Keegan Woods. The results had come back the same. And in the time it had taken for the results to get back the Masons had been murdered, more than that, mutilated. The younger son had been found skinned, the daughter's abdomen was cut open and the medical examiner had found the head of their dog, Rusty, stuffed inside. The father, the four sons and the nephew were all missing their genetalia – which were later found neatly arranged in a vase on the dining room table. Det. Green was beside himself with fury – he could have prevented the deaths of those people, but he hadn't trusted the evidence.
*** *** ***
They are outside my house, I can hear them. Radios crackling, guns cocking. I am prepared, but I will take as many of them with me as I can. I have rigged the house with explosives, I have all my guns loaded and my knives sharpened. I know that they will try to bring me in quietly at first – to stand trial for my crimes – but I won't go quietly at all. I will continue to kill every man, woman and child.
*** *** ***
"Welcome home my love." Warm breath brushes past my ear. "You did good." A hand runs itself lightly over the scars at my wrists. "I am ready to love you back now."