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Send to FriendI wanted to smack her for that remark.
In truth, I wanted to do much worse to her than I had done to Heather and Rosie, though this latter desire had little to do with her comment.
“Shut up,” I muttered, groaned, and blinked my watering eyes.
She only giggled. “Never thought of you as much of a party animal.”
And I suppose that’s probably what it looked like as well to other people: I had one hell of a great night, got totally wasted, and was now paying the price the morning after. That’s kind of how I felt as well. I could feel the veins inside my head vibrating, pulsating hotly, ready to burst any second. My eyes burned when I closed them, yet felt ten times worse when they were open and gazing at the piercing light from the windows. Even the fluorescent lights in here were nearly unbearable. As I looked toward Ellen, her face became a bright miasma of yellowing gray and pink luminescence, while her hair broke apart in crushing prisms whose sharp edges cut along the lining of my eyeballs.
“Must’ve been a hell of a night.”
“You could say that,” I agreed, massaging the index finger of my right hand along my temple in an attempt to quell my worsening headache while my other hand caressed the side of my sour stomach. I had been too nauseous even to eat breakfast this morning. I merely forced a Granola bar down my throat before leaving for work, only to pull over to the side of the highway during the commute to puke it back up. Even now, hours after having vomited, I could still feel the stomach acids eating away at my throat, nose, and mouth. “Was an interesting night, to say the least,” I murmured with barely enough strength to even speak coherently.
I wanted only to pass out, to at least experience the temporary void that is sleep or unconsciousness—if not death itself—and be whisked away from my body and offered at least a short reprieve from my suffering—both physical as well as emotional, the latter of which was equally exhausting.
“Well, I don’t think the boss will be too pleased to see you coming in here like that. It’s not very professional.”
And as Ellen had said this, a spark of anger set off within me. And who are YOU to say that to ME? I thought, appalled. I had been the one who had trained her (though by this point her training had been completed), yet she was giving me lectures on professionalism. I could remember just how shy and reserved Ellen had been when she had first started working here, yet now that she had gotten to know me a little better I couldn’t get her to shut up. She had become much too bold and officious for my liking.
“Whatever happens, happens,” I said nonchalantly with a shrug.
And that was now the philosophy I took to almost everything. If I got fired because I came into work in a hung-over trance and was unable to perform my duties, so be it. If I was eventually evicted from my apartment because I was unable to pay the rent, thus forced to be homeless for the rest of my life because I had nowhere else to turn, I could live with that. And if the police were somehow able to trace the murders of Heather and Rosie back to me, and I had to spend the rest of my life behind bars or on death row, then that was fine, too. I couldn’t control what happened to me. I couldn’t even control my own actions, so why should I give a shit about anything at all? The answer: There is no reason, because my life, this planet, and the whole fucking universe are completely meaningless.
“I’m just trying to look out for you.”
“I can take care of myself,” I replied curtly.
After a while, Ellen finally did shut up, which—by this point in our “relationship”—had been a rarity and a blessed relief, allowing me finally to bask in the blissful silence, save for the customers walking in and out of Mobil Mart, purchasing snacks and/or beverages or paying for gas.
On a few occasions, I could see Ellen gawking at the swelling bruise over my cheekbone, no doubt speculating how it had gotten there in the first place. I wondered absently if she would simply attribute the gash to my supposedly having been drunk the night before, or if she might somehow sense the grisly truth. And if she did, would she call the police? Even if she did, the fact alone that I had a bruise on my cheek proved nothing. I could have easily been mugged or perhaps run into a door or a wall while shuffling quickly and carelessly in the dark. There was no way Ellen would be able to guess what I had really been up to the night before just by looking at a bruise on my face anyway. I merely thought these thoughts in speculation of what she might be thinking about at this very moment while scrutinizing the gash on my face, as well as to allow at the very least enough adrenaline to keep me awake and alert. Though the fact that I didn’t care in the least whether I was caught and went to jail (at least not on a conscious level) defeated the latter purpose, as I felt no apprehension at all.
I blinked again, and then shot my eyes toward Ellen as if to say: What the fuck are you gawking at, bitch?
Ellen flinched and looked away, mortified. “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing deeply.
“Whatever,” I retorted begrudgingly. “It’s just a bruise. I accidentally slammed the door in my face when I pulled it open last night,” I lied, wondering if it was even halfway convincing, but not really caring. “Kind of embarrassing, actually, but really no big deal. It’s just a bruise. Will probably be gone in a couple days anyway.”
“Oh…okay,” Ellen said, still flustered. I could sense the timidity she had displayed the first day I had met her resurfacing, and welcomed it. At least now she’d be a little quieter than usual, which was especially important since I wasn’t in the mood right now to deal with anyone at all.
I should’ve just called in sick, I thought sullenly and sighed.
A part of me wanted not just to call in sick for the day, but to just quit entirely. Fuck the two-week notice, I could just walk off the job right now, go AWOL, and they’d never hear from me again. I’d do the same with my job at Friendly’s as well. Fuck all of this bullshit. I didn’t need to pay the rent or the bills. I could just as easily live on the streets and eat from the garbage cans without luxuries or comforts. A ton of people were homeless and survived, and I could as well, just standing around in rags, freezing nearly to death in the harsh winters while roasting beneath the punishing sun during brutal summers. It didn’t matter because when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, nothing to worry or care about. I could just sit around on the streets in a perpetual drunken haze, completely lethargic and oblivious to the world around me. Sometimes even now such fantasies seem like bliss to me, and the only thing better would be to be an Alzheimer’s patient, slowly sinking deeper in delirium until I am nothing more than a vegetable sitting around in a room just like my mother, gazing at nothing in particular, without a single thought or emotion tormenting me in my blissful catatonic haze. I felt completely dead inside anyway, so I figured I might as well be virtually dead to the world at large as well.
I looked at my watch, and the digital numerals danced before my eyes while they split apart and fused together again, before I was finally able to regain focus. Then I saw the time, my eyes still somewhat shaky, and saw that it was only nine in the morning. I sighed, knowing I had another three hours before I could leave, and after that, I had to go to my other job as well.
I gotta get outta here, I thought frantically. Just walk out, and they’ll never hear from me again.
“Excuse me,” called a woman from behind. I turned to see who it was, knowing it was another customer and hoping that Ellen could take care of her. She might as well make herself at least somewhat useful, I thought sullenly. The customer was a girl in her late teens, probably around seventeen or eighteen and fresh out of high school, with still a small amount of acne over her face, though she hadn’t been etched too badly with it. She looked at Ellen and me amiably and smiled, and even the sharp gleam of light from her braces had managed to inflame my sensitive eyes, forcing me look away briefly, squinting. “Could one of you help me with the gas pumps?” she requested.
“Sure thing,” I said as I slowly made my way out from behind the counter, looking once toward Ellen, who remained behind the cash register. She said nothing, but seemed to agree that it was best that I help the customer with the gas instead of her, since if one were to leave me alone with the customers in my groggy, near-vegetative state, and I probably really would be fired.
The bright sun scorched my eyes when I stepped outside, making me wince and throw up my arm to use as a visor as I squinted and hissed in agony. It was like getting a front row seat to a nuclear explosion, like watching the blinding flash of a supernova. Even as I closed my eyes, the unforgiving light seeped through my eyelids and continued to fry my retinas. All the while I could feel something clamping against my skull, squeezing tightly, bending it inward so I could feel a newly formed sharp groove of my skull digging into my brain.
Christ! I thought restlessly. What did that bitch DO to me?
“You okay, sir?” the girl asked, slightly concerned.
“Just fine,” I replied, wincing. “Just had a rough night, that’s all.”
She nodded, no doubt assuming that I had been out partying the night before and got drunk off my ass, just as Ellen had.
“How much gas do you want?” I asked as we reached Pump 3.
“Just fill it up, please,” she requested, “on regular.”
“Sure thing.”
Although my head felt as though it was being slowly compressed and my eyes felt as though they were on fire, my coordination hadn’t been thrown off too badly. I unscrewed the gas cap and then lifted the pump and held it in my hand for a moment, staring at it reflectively.
It was almost like holding a gun in my hand. The gas pump wasn’t quite a gun. The barrel was curved slightly, and while I could feel the weight of the pump in my hand, a gun would probably have been a lot heavier. But like a gun, I could do a lot of damage with a gas pump. If I were to take a swing, I could bash this girl’s head and shatter her skull. Or I could throw her to the ground, then drive the tip of the gas pump into her spine, leaving her to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair the way many gunshot wound survivors live out the rest of their days as cripples because the bullet shattered their spine. If I really wanted to be cruel and malicious, I could bash it into the back of her neck and turn her into a quadriplegic. Unlike a gun, though, the gas pump had a long, thick hose, which I might have been able to use to strangle someone, though with the shear girth and dexterity of the hose, it would probably prove more trouble than it was worth. Ah, but I could still soak the bitch with gasoline, leaving her drenched in the noxious fluids. I’d be sure to get plenty of it in her eyes to extend her suffering as much as possible and maybe leave her blind to boot.
Or, like a gun, I could turn it on myself as well. The barrel of the pump is longer than a normal handgun (but not a rifle or shotgun, of course), and is slightly curved, but I could still get it to fit comfortable enough into my mouth. Then, as with a gun, all I’d have to do would be to pull the “trigger” and the rest would take care of itself. Only while a bullet would blow out the back of my head and kill me instantaneously as it sprayed bone fragments and gray matter along the windows of the girl’s car, the gas would pour down my gullet, killing me slowly through poisoning. My stomach already felt sour, and I couldn’t see how it could possibly get worse, no matter what I ingested. But the gas would taste horrible. Those noxious fumes from that toxic fluid assailing my taste buds and leaving a vile stench coating my sinuses would probably make me puke all over again, maybe even regurgitating the poison out of my system (though not likely). And while I drank the gas and took my sweet time to die, writhing in nausea, this miserable cunt standing before me, or perhaps Ellen herself, might call the medics, who’d probably give me a stomach pump and save me.
All of that notwithstanding, why the hell not?
In The Bible, it says that he who commits suicide forfeits any chance of making it to heaven. But I knew I was going straight to hell regardless.
As a child, I did nothing to stop my father from beating my mother. And when my father had accidentally killed my mom, I helped bury the body. I helped cover up the crime. I suppose that alone could be forgiven. I had been very young at the time, confused and scared. And in the Ten Commandments, it says to honor your mother and your father, so that could have easily put someone in my circumstances into a very difficult situation, since by doing one thing would dishonor my mother, while the alternative would dishonor my father. Shit, talk about a spiritual dilemma!
What ensure my ticket to hell, however, was what I had done to Heather and Rosie. To have the kinds of fantasies I had was a grave sin in and of itself, no doubt. But it went deeper than that because I had acted on them. I killed both women mercilessly not because they had caused me to suffer, but simply because I wanted to; because I thought it would make my life better and more meaningful. Worst of all, I wasn’t in any way sorry for what I had done. For my crimes, I felt not an ounce of regret or remorse. It wasn’t that I was amoral. I knew the difference between right and wrong and I knew that what I had done was wrong; I just didn’t give a shit.
And if I were to go to hell eventually, it might as well have been now, because the sooner I went, the sooner I could get used to the torture, misery, and damnation; I’d simply become desensitized to it all the way someone who is constantly bombarded with grotesque images and atrocities would sooner or later become unaffected by them. Once that happened, it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal anymore, just business as usual. After a while, I would no longer notice the torture and torment I would be forced to endure for all eternity and as the years and centuries went by, I would gradually forget that there could be anything better than that fiery pit of damnation and turmoil, so in essence would become content with my misery. I’d have nothing to worry about because I’d have nothing to lose and things wouldn’t possibly be able to get any worse.
And it wasn’t as though my existence was actually worth anything, for I could bring nothing but pain and death to those I touched. This wasn’t much of a concern as it was never a goal of mine to leave my mark on the world or have a positive impact on someone’s life. If it happened, it happened, but it was never anything I was really aiming for. All I wanted was the enlightenment and power that could only be achieved by making my fantasies a reality, and with every passing second, that goal seemed further from my reach.
Yet if I had ended it all right here and now, then that would have made my goals forever impossible to reach. I’d forever burn in hell, completely meaningless and devoid of purpose, even more so than I was now. But as long as there was life within me, as long as I remained breathing and functional, there was still a faint glimmer of hope that my dream would someday come true, and somehow, through all the despair, I clung loosely to that hope, and it kept me alive, kept me sane and determined.
Ah, hope…such a cruel, heartless bitch…
Almost as cruel as Hikaru.
I shuttered in revulsion and fear, my arms quivering. The gas pump nearly slipped from my fingers twice before I was able to get it into the car and begin pumping the gas. And as I did that, I could see the girl beginning to lunge forward, ready to catch the gas pump if I were to drop it. Yet it still remained in my grasp, and I was still able to keep my footing and hopefully keep somewhat of a professional disposition. She took a step back and watched me, looking more puzzled now than anything else. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again and just stood there as I leaned against her car window for support.
“So what’s your name, anyway?”
She paused a moment, growing a bit uneasy as she brushed her quivering hand through her long dark hair and blinked a few times before answering. “What do you need to know my name for?”
“Just trying to start a conversation. We’re standing here, aren’t we? We might as well talk about something. I’ll go first if it’ll make you feel any better. My name is Alex.”
“I know,” she replied, speaking barely above a whisper. And then, speaking at a slightly louder volume, she pointed to my nametag and said: “It says so right there.”
I looked down to my nametag pinned to my breast pocket and read the all-familiar ALEX printed on it, and chuckled amicably. “Okay, well, anyway, you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“It’s Victoria,” she answered. “But everyone calls me Vicky.”
“That’s a nice name, Vicky,” I said, smiling warmly. She drew closer to me, seemingly able to calm down a bit, no longer quite as tense. When need be, I can be quite skilled at applying the pseudo-charm, at times. The facade wears away after a while and most people who get close to me (not that there have been too many people who have gotten close to me) eventually come to realize that while I’m great at making a good first impression (at least when I want to), making it last is a different matter entirely. They don’t see my true colors, of course, but they do come to realize after a while that I am probably not as charming as I let on. Still, if I were to make Vicky my next victim (the thought had crossed my mind a few times, though it was never anything that I took into serious consideration), she would have been easy pickings, for I had already begun to gain her trust. Once you gain someone’s trust, killing them becomes child’s play.
“Why, thank you,” she said, smiling back at me, and unlike my warm smile, hers had been genuine (at least I thought so).
I saw that I had already pumped a dollar’s worth of gas into her tank, and then looked back toward her and chuckled softly. “You know, this is kind of like having sex,” I said, and she shot me a puzzled look. “Pumping gas, I mean.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, you stick the pump into a hole, the orifice of the car, if you will. Then you start pumping the gas, pumping it full of liquids just like a man shoots semen over a woman during climax. Sounds kind of like having sex, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m not much of a Freudian.”
The conversation stopped there for a few minutes, as the dollar amount on the gas reached two dollar’s worth, then three (I don’t quite remember how much a gallon of gas would’ve cost in those days, though certainly a lot less than it does now). It was as it broke over the $3.25 mark, when I finally asked: “So tell me, Vicky, are you a virgin?”
She blushed, backing away once again. “Isn’t that kind of a personal question?”
“I know, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of girls who are really close friends like to share close, personal, and often times embarrassing and secretive things. Am I right?”
“I suppose, but I don’t even know you.”
“Exactly. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and in a few minutes, we’re never gonna see each other again and forget all about each other after today, I’m sure. So what’s a few embarrassing details. Not like I’m going to gossip about it to all your friends, family, and coworkers. Besides, I don’t know what the big deal about sex is, anyway. And why is it if a woman has sex too much she’s a filthy slut? Seems like a double-standard to me.”
I laughed quietly to myself at this. I was really good at laying on the bullshit, saying things I didn’t mean; making a huge deal about something I didn’t care about, outright lying, if I absolutely had to. I could’ve been a hell of a good politician if I only had the necessary inclination and motivation.
“But hey, whatever, conventional sex bores the hell out of me anyway.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I guess I’m more of a ‘whips and chains’ kinda guy, myself. But even that can get mundane after a while. I love blood sports, though. You just haven’t lived until you cut someone open and let them bleed all over you.”
Vicky backed away, and I could tell that she was growing uneasy around me all over again. The trust that I had earned from her was diminishing with each passing second, and whatever charm I had laid upon her had already faded now that I had given her a glimpse into my deepest sexual desires. For a while, she seemed to be able to say nothing. Then as the dollar amount in the gas reached six dollars, she said in a quavering voice: “But what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” I shrugged. “You can get it from vanilla sex, too.”
“I know, but wouldn’t you be more likely to get if their blood is all over you?”
“It’s all about trust, after all,” I said, my grin widening.
It was a form of double-speak.
To her interpretation, the trust meant that you would only participate in blood sports or other sadomasochistic activities with someone whom you had the utmost trust in. Not only would you trust that your partner didn’t have AIDS, but also that he or she would cause you no true harm, and that the fun, while painful, would be practiced safely.
Yet what I really meant was that it was all about how I could gain the trust of my victim, get them to feel at ease around me, thus leaving themselves vulnerable. When I killed them, it was all about trust, because without that foundation of trust, I couldn’t get them to allow me to strap them to the bed, thus, I couldn’t kill them the way I wanted to. Trust was the first step—one step I had no problem achieving—in attaining the satisfaction that had eluded me both times I went in for the kill.
Vicky nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”
“What really gets me off, though,” I went on, “is taking a butcher knife on my partner and driving the blade straight into her chest again and again. You know, when pulling the knife in and out of the stab wound, if you time it just right, you can get it into a really nice rhythm with your cock pumping into her cunt.”
“Sounds like murder,” she said, growing more and more perturbed.
“It is murder, of course, but not something I’d ever actually do,” I explain. “Still, when it comes to erotic masturbatory fantasies, you don’t get any better.”
“Okay, that’s more than I needed to know,” Vicky said, turning away and looking toward the windows of Mobile Mart, watching as a bald, middle-aged, morbidly obese man walked out the glass exit doors with two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes tucked beneath his sweaty armpits as he fished in his pockets for his car keys.
The dial reached ten dollars and the gas stopped pumping into her tank. The tank was now full and I pulled it out and replaced the gas cap. “That’ll be ten dollars, even,” I told her.
Vicky fished frantically through her purse, her feet shuffling on the ground away from me a few inches, before she gave me a crisp twenty-dollar bill. “Just keep the change,” she mumbled nervously, and then hurried into her car and quickly drove off.
I just stood there laughing.
As I went back into the Mobil Mart, my head was still throbbing painfully. I walked with a dizzying lurch, and was still sick to my stomach as well (though thankfully these symptoms would abate by the next morning). Yet somehow I still felt a lot better than before. The physical ailments had been just as intense, yet still seemed a lot less significant, and my depression over my inability to achieve satisfaction was blissfully forgotten at least for a few minutes. For those couple of minutes, I was actually laughing heartily, which is something I rarely do.
I knew that I would never kill Vicky and in all likelihood have scared her off from this particular Mobil gas station for good. But I still left an impression on her. Perhaps she was comfortable, serene, or at the very least content before. But now she had met me and I disrupted her happy little world, inserted doubt simply by being myself and confessing my fantasies. In no time flat her distress would wane and she would return to her former state of content and security. But for the time being, at least, I had shaken up her world, and that was good enough for me.
I went back into Mobile Mart and put the twenty-dollar bill in the cash register. I guess Ellen was looking over my shoulder because she saw the amount that I had put in the cash register and spoke up:
“She only took ten dollars worth of gas.”
“Yeah, but she gave me a twenty-dollar bill and said I should keep the change.”
“That’s twice what she owed, though,” Ellen said, looking baffled.
I shrugged. “Guess she wanted to give me a tip.”
“That’s quite a big tip.”
I shrugged again as my grin widened. “I guess she was really happy with the service she got.” I chuckled to myself. “The boss will definitely be pleased now. Professionalism right there, if I ever saw it.”
And it was then that my throbbing headache returned full-force, no longer seeming as insignificant as it had just a few seconds ago. It was as though my brain suddenly crashed into the front of my skull, the way a car might collide full speed into a tree or a building, crushed like an accordion. As my brain compressed, the nausea intensified, and I could feel what little contents in my stomach beginning to scale my throat.
“Excuse me,” I groaned and turned away and hurried to the bathroom.
I didn’t puke this time around, because I didn’t really have anything in my stomach to vomit with. Instead, for the most part—except for the first five seconds where I actually did vomit a little bit—I just stood with my head hanging in the toilet bowl, dry heaving; feeling as though each time I retched, someone was rubbing sandpaper along the back of my throat.
For a second or two, I thought I could see Hikaru’s black eyes gazing up at me from the toilet, and was startled. I bashed the top of my head against the rim and my face plunged into the toilet water. I stifled a scream and accidentally swallowed some of the water and got some up my nose as well. I lifted my head and coughed, feeling the cold water dripping from my hair and the tip of my nose. I blinked and looked down again, but Hikaru’s eyes were gone and all I could see now was my own reflection in the water.
It was then that I realized—slightly dazed that I was—that it hadn’t been Hikaru’s eyes at all that I had seen, but rather a few black dots breaking out before my eyes. In my feverish haze, I had almost passed out, I suppose, and when I mistook the darkening circles for the eyes of Hikaru, I grew frightened, bashed my head against the toilet and dunked my face in the water. The sudden shock of it all snapped me out of it and allowed me to remain conscious. I’m not entirely sure that that’s exactly what happened, even now but that’s the best theory I can come up with.
Christ, I must be losing my mind, I thought fuzzily.
I crawled on my side, still coughing and hacking the water out of my lungs, shivering now because I had gotten cold, and then leaned my back against the door of the rest room, closing my eyes. My head hurt worse than ever now, as though someone wearing cleats had been kicking it like a soccer ball again and again for several hours. I looked up far off to the left and saw some paper towels to the side of the mirror above the sink and thought I could dry myself off a bit with the paper towels so at least I wouldn’t be cold. I reached my hand out in that direction, but of course couldn’t come anywhere near to reaching it because I had been sitting down. My head felt too heavy, so no way in hell was I standing up anytime soon. And so I just sat there, shivering, my head lowered, and closed my eyes.
Whatever bliss and pleasure I had gotten from having freaked Vicky out only minutes ago had been vanquished entirely. There was no satisfaction in scaring someone, especially when they’d be over it in no time flat. Only through torturing and killing the bitches could I ever hope to reach satisfaction, and even then satisfaction was so far from my grasp. The depression and emptiness returned to me at full force like twin daggers impaling my heart. Satisfaction was a fleeting temptress drawing me closer, beckoning forward, then withering away at the last minute, slipping through my fingers.