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Send to FriendI was exhausted due to my lack of sleep. When I had gotten up that morning, I was on the edge, tense and agitated. Having gotten very little sleep, however, gradually caught up with me, drowsiness and the drained away at my energy.
At the time, I was a gas station attendant at Mobil. I had two jobs, actually. In the morning, I pumped gas at Mobil. Late afternoons, evenings, and nights I was a waiter at Friendly's. Neither job paid exceptionally well by itself, but combined, I was able to pay my bills and get by.
"Hey, Alex, you feeling okay?" Ellen Blaise asked as I stood behind the cash register, squeezing my droopy eyes lightly with my thumb and forefinger. Ellen was new to the job and I had been in charge—more or less—of training her, showing her the ropes, and helping her out. She was learning reasonably well, though I doubt that that's any kind of reflection of my mediocre-at-best teaching ability and social skills.
I was never very talkative—not because I'm shy but rather because I generally have nothing to say or any real desire to engage in conversation or social interaction. I wouldn't label myself a misanthrope, precisely. It’s not that I dislike people or hate anyone in particular. I've just never had much motivation to make new friends or get involved with anybody long-term. I trained Ellen during her first few weeks of employment because the manager had asked me to, and it was really no big hassle to me, so I figured, why not?
Though despite my typical dour and quiet demeanor, I suppose standing hunched over, rubbing my bloodshot eyes and applying pressure to my temples to help alleviate a throbbing headache might be a sign that perhaps something was wrong and I might be sick.
"I'm fine," I said, stroking my palm against my stubbly cheek. "I just didn't sleep well last night."
She frowned, brushing her hair back, but finally let go of the issue.
Ellen was, in many ways, like Heather. Their appearance was different. Where Heather had blond hair and a pale complexion, Ellen had a bit of a darker skin tone and brown hair. But the two were a lot alike as well. Ellen was only a few years older than Heather, and with a slim build. She seemed to be just as shy and timid as Heather (before Heather had snorted her cocaine)—if not more so. But of course, Ellen didn't strike me as the type who would whore herself out on the streets at night to pay for her next drug fix. She was, in fact, a college student, working here for a part time job to support herself while she worked to obtain a degree in psychology. Aside from that, I didn't know too much about her. We didn't talk much, except for when I was showing her how to do something or we were discussing other work-related matters.
"I just had a bit of a wild night last night, that's all," I said, thinking back to my encounter with Hikaru, whom I wasn't even sure if she was real or some twisted figment of my imagination. I felt almost ashamed now that she had scared me so badly.
Yet looking back at what I had done to Heather, I felt nothing at all. The event hadn't even been twelve hours ago, yet it seemed as though years had gone by since I'd murdered her. Whatever excitement I might have felt over what had happened was gone now. The murder was nothing special and nowhere near as magical as I had hoped it would be. Upon looking back, I realized that it was nothing short of a painful disappointment. There was something missing from the actual murder, something I couldn't put my finger on. All I knew was that murdering Heather was nowhere near as wonderful as my fantasies had been. There was no satisfaction, not even the illusion of satisfaction. The disappointment that had peeked through before came at me now in full force. Perhaps next time I might do things right, but at that point, I wasn't even sure if there would be a next time.
I looked at Ellen, and in my mind's eye I could see Ellen strapped to a bed naked, sobbing, crying while I gagged her with duct tape. I stand over her with a knife. I cut her open and then I rape her until she bleeds to death. This vision of overpowering her was enough to give me a massive erection, and it took all my strength and will power not to tackle Ellen and make the fantasy into a reality.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice slightly hitched, "I'll be back in a few minutes."
Ellen only looked at me awkwardly; completely unaware of what was going on inside my head. No doubt she was happier that way, though she had no way of knowing that herself.
I awkwardly drew away from the cash register and hurried to the bathroom.
While in the men's room, sitting on the toilet with the lock of the stall firmly latched, I closed my eyes and placed myself back at Motel 6. Everything was as it has been the night before, except it was Ellen naked and cuffed to the bed instead of Heather. Ellen whom I raped and killed. She begged me to stop, tears streaming down her blood-soaked face, but I continued rocking back and forth, pumping harder and harder as her muffled sobs and screams grew louder through the gagging pillowcase stuffed down her throat.
With my left fist firmly enclosed around my throbbing erection, I tensed up, biting back a loud sexual moan and ejaculated, shooting my load against the stall door. I sat motionless for what seemed like ten minutes on the toilet, panting, while my dick softened inside my fist.
I opened my eyes and saw that I had shot my load all over the door of the stall, and my semen was now dripping thickly down the door. I pulled my pants up and tied my belt before grabbing a wad of toilet paper to clean up the semen. Once the semen had been cleaned off, I tossed the toilet paper into the toilet bowl and stepped on the handle to flush it down. Afterward, my eyes veered toward the left, and my entire body froze and broke out in gooseflesh as I saw a piece of graffiti that I could’ve sworn hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. It was a message etched across the wall, written in bright red magic marker:
You’ll pay for everything you’ve done
Just like your father!
I began to sweat and tremble as my throat closed up. The first image that came to my mind was the damning face of Hikaru, casting judgment upon me, shooting jagged icicles with her coal-black eyes. If you touch Ellen, a husky, cryptic voice that was like a heavy windstorm hissed in my mind, then the hell you put Heather through will seem like Heaven compared to what I'll do to you.
"Get outta my head," I whimpered.
I unlatched the lock to the stall and tore the door open, pushing myself out of the stall. My heart was racing. I looked around in every direction—towards the exit door to my left, the urinal to the right of the stall, and the two sinks and dingy mirror across the room from where I stood. I could feel Hikaru's evil presence emanating from every direction like a noxious breeze contaminating the air, scraping painfully against my flesh as it plucked each stiffened hair from the back of my neck. I could hear footsteps taping outside...someone jiggling the doorknob—
"Oh shit..."
The door swung open slowly and I thought for sure I was dead, that Hikaru would swallow me whole.
Instead of Hikaru, the person entering the bathroom was a thin bald man in faded jeans and a black leather jacket. I stood, speechless; overwhelmed with relief that Hikaru had left me alone. If she had been here to begin with…
"How's it goin'?"
I merely nodded and watched as he walked past me. The man stood in front of the urinal and I could hear the sound of urine spraying against the porcelain.
Still shaking, I slowly exited the men's room and went back to work.
"Are you sure everything's all right?" Ellen asked as I returned to work in front of the cash register. The look of concern was still on her face.
"I'm fine," I told her with a contrived smile.
I still wanted nothing more than to wrap my hands around her throat. The urge to kill was still strong within me. Sexually, I had satisfied my libido, at least temporarily. But spiritually, the hunger remained alive and awake. Whatever was missing from last night, I wanted to achieve it the next time around. Only then would I feel complete. I was a drug addict now, and while I still kind of wanted more cocaine, my true drug of choice was murder. The impulse to kill again was strong, but I fought it off. I didn't want to give in because if I did, I would be pushing my luck.
I never truly felt in control of my life, but now I feared I might be losing control of my actions as well. If I gave in and committed another murder, I feared I might never be able to stop. Free will was a thing of the past, if I ever truly possessed it at all. I was nothing but a vessel, a prisoner of my most morbid desires and impulses.
After my work shift ended at two in the afternoon, a headline article in the local newspaper had caught my attention. I was never one to keep up with current events and generally don't know what's going on with the rest of the world. But while walking past the newsstand, this particular front-page headline had caught my attention, perhaps because it had hit so close to home:
NINETEEN YEAR OLD TEENAGE GIRL FOUND
BRUTALLY MURDERED AT MOTEL 6!
The fact that she had been nothing more than a prostitute (if police had even determined that fact yet—I wasn't really sure if they had or not) wasn't likely to make her death that big of a deal. It wasn't as though a famous celebrity had been raped and killed in a motel room. But the shear brutality of the crime would pique the interest of the residents within the community, and most likely scare them a little. It certainly grabbed my attention, and I bought a copy and read through the article again and again as I crossed the parking lot to my car.
The article described the murder in vague details, explaining only that the woman had been brutally raped and murdered, but leaving out the grisly details of how she had died or what had been done with her body. One of the rookie officers (name withheld) was sickened and vomited upon entering the crime scene. Heather's name had been omitted from the article, and police made no mention of any evidence collected or theories formulated while scrutinizing the crime scene. They only went on record to say that they feared a serial killer might be on the loose, though details were very sketchy at this point.
I saved the newspaper, placing it in the front passenger seat of my car.
For the first time in my life, I was a famous man. All my life I had been a nobody. A high school dropout pumping gas and waiting tables for a living. At long last I had done something that had forced a reaction out of the people of this shithole community, and still I was an anonymous figure to them. They would talk about the murder in Motel 6 without even knowing who had done it, speculating a potential murderer, getting all their profilers to try and get inside my head and try and figure out who I am and what makes me tick, even though they had never even met me. They could collect whatever forensic evidence from the scene they wanted, but I had no prior history with Heather and they would be unable to conceive a plausible reason as to why I would want to kill her or make any connection whatsoever, so I was nice and safe as long as I didn't push my luck. The story would fade, and so would the police's determination to find the culprit of the "Motel 6 Massacre," as they had dubbed it in the newspaper article.
I took some small measure of gratification that I had finally done something that made a difference, and that my petty existence had finally mattered, but I was more interested in the act itself. I had successfully pulled it off and gotten away with it, no doubt, though the article still made me a little nervous, and I feared if someone caught me sitting in my car reading this thing too fixatedly, they might suspect something was wrong, even though the very notion was absurd. But in many ways it still felt like a failure, at least somewhat. Should I take my chances and try again another night, or quit while I’m ahead? This question would haunt me for a long time to come, nagging me. A part of me wanted to go for it a second time in hopes of perhaps gaining true satisfaction this time around. Yet the other part said it would be too dangerous. It would require a great deal of thought, but for now, it was a matter for another time.
I pulled my car out of the parking slot and drove home, afraid, for some reason, of attracting too much attention. From my apartment, I would prepare for my shift at Friendly's and try to take my mind off the events that had transpired recently.
And so I went into Friendly's, where I worked throughout the afternoon, evening, and well into the nighttime. When I got home from my shift, I was dead tired, feeling as though I didn't possess enough energy even to eat a small dinner before heading off to bed, not that I was very hungry to begin with. Had I not been too dazed and drowsy to the point where it pushed away most of my emotions except for crankiness and irritability, I might have been amazed that I had managed to drive myself home without getting into an accident. But I was way too exhausted to even think of that, or to care.
Nor had thoughts of Heather, Ellen, or Hikaru crossed my mind.
After throwing off my shoes and jacket, I merely collapsed on the couch and immediately fell asleep.
And mercifully, I hadn't had any dreams that night.