This is a 1st person narrative. Again this ais a first draft, please forgive any spelling or grammar errors.
Murphy’s Law
By Matthew S. Van Hove
Just think about it. You go through life eating the same food, working the same job, having the same sex. You feel dead inside. What if one day you just suddenly woke up?
I did. My life wasn’t anything great; two kids, a wife, mortgage, mediocre job that I hated going to, and a family car that made me look more like a dork than the cool guy I remembered in collage.
I had so many dreams when I was younger, so many ambitions that I thought I could accomplish. I went to collage like I was supposed to. Left almost a month after high school let out. Moved to a new city and started my new life. I buried myself in studies, homework, extra curricular activities. I lived the life of the normal every day collage student. I had friends then; I was always the life of the party, and no one could ever say that I wasn’t cool or hip. I was the collage guy that always went home with a different girl every night, sometimes more than one.
Then I graduated. A Masters in graphic design and three job offers that would set me up for life. My career was well underway.
Then the crash came.
Not a car crash no that would have been a blessing. The company I worked for was caught up in some type of legal scam. They were doing something with copyright laws and things like that. The whole company went down the tubes and our CEO was arrested along with each member of the board. I was lucky. I was only a peon then, someone who came to work every day and did what he was told. I wasn’t charged but I did have a lot of my designs pulled off the market and that put a huge hurting on my life.
Aside from all this happening, I had met the girl of my dreams and she thought I was just as cool as I was in collage. It helped that she was still in collage and thought all the stupid stuff I had done those few years ago were still “awesome.” We got careless and she ended up pregnant. Unplanned, and unwanted by me, my life was good the way it was and I didn’t want it to change. She was going to keep it whether I wanted her to or not. As you can see, this was the beginning of my downfall.
So we got married and I became a dad soon after. Just as my first daughter was being born, KABLAM! The s**t hit’s the fan with my company and I am out of a job. My collage student wife couldn’t drop out, I didn’t want her to. So I do what any normal human being would do. I went to the other two companies that had wanted me before. Apparently the fall out from the scandal had affected me in ways I hadn’t foreseen. I hadn’t been part of the scandal, or even in the planning of it, yet I was labeled with that title of a “high risk” employee.
I got turned down by each and every one. Every designer job I applied for I was turned down. My work had been pulled from use, that was problem one. I was part of a company that had stolen mass amounts of money and even ideas from its clients, that was problem two. Problem three was I was desperate and they could smell it on me as soon as I walked into the interview room. Three strikes and I’m out apparently.
So I took a full time job at a local restaurant being a waiter and the three of us seemed to have gotten along just fine. Tips were good, and I had gotten to be good enough to be requested by regular customers that liked to tip big. That’s when my now out of collage and non working wife dropped a bomb on me. She was pregnant again. At least by two months. The moderate two bedroom apartment was suddenly not big enough for all of us. Not only that but my full time job was not bringing in enough income for us any longer.
So I did what any responsible parent and husband would do. I got a second job. I went from working forty hours a week to almost eighty. I wasn’t sleeping well and forget about relaxing. But I did it. I did it for five years. No vacation, no relaxation, no down time. No ME time to be more exact. My wife was now a full time mom with two kids; her collage degree was nothing more than a piece of paper on the wall. We started to struggle more as prices for everything went up and as my two daughters got older.
So here I was a family man, with a degree in graphic design, and someone who should be making at least six figures a year; working two full time jobs and living in a three bedroom apartment. That changed quickly as space became too cramped. We needed a house, or so I was told. So we got a house, a nice spacious four bedroom house that could fit the four of us and all of our stuff.
I know what you are saying; “This guy sounds like very other human on the face of this planet.” and you would be right. If I hadn’t bought a gun to protect my family.
I honestly did buy it for our protection. It wasn’t supposed to be used for anything but that. Don’t ask me what made me bring it to my second job that night, I’m still not even sure, but I put it in my pocket as if it were something as simple as my wallet. My second job was working graveyard at a gas station. Unfortunately they hadn’t gotten the idea to lock up the store and open a tiny window like other places; this place was open for everything.
The people I would have come through at the late hours of the night were characters. There was the bum that would come in every Monday and buy a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor. Tuesday night was the prostitute and her newest John buying condoms and some snacks for her for later. Thursday was the pastor from the local church. He would buy some condoms without looking at me and some candy. I never wanted to know why he was buying those things so late at night or what they were for. Friday night was always the best; I had the slew of collage and high school students coming in trying to buy everything they could. Sometimes they would get food, other times I would have to card them and tell them I couldn’t sell them booze since they didn’t look anything close to thirty five.
This particular Tuesday though, the prostitute that came in had someone that seemed agitated. She bought her usual condoms, but when she came up to pay she didn’t smile at me or make any small talk like she normally did. Instead, she seemed to keep her head down and even tried to leave with out getting her change. As I popped the register drawer open, her newest John pulled a gun on me and screamed for the money. I was petrified to say the least. Here I was with a gun aimed at my head. My life flashed before my eyes, and when it did something inside of me snapped.
The security camera shows me smack the gun out of his hand and then pull my own. It was described as “being so fluid that I looked like a trained killer.” I kinda liked that, made me feel good to hear it, some sort of praise for someone that has been through such mediocrity. What the camera doesn’t show though, is what happened after I hoped over the counter and cornered the guy near the beer cooler.
You see it in movies all the time, someone being pushed to the breaking point and they snap. I was past that point when I pressed the barrel of my gun to his forehead. My eyes narrowed and I looked down at him, not as a person but as something that was beneath me. I had every chance to let him go, or call the cops; I hadn’t even hit the silent alarm. The hooker was cowering near the coffee pots when the would-be robber finally spoke up.
“Please, please let me go.”
I couldn’t believe my ears, this piece of s**t had pulled a gun on me and threatened my life and now he was asking for mercy? I mean I held his life in my hands and I guess that is what you do, you ask for mercy and forgiveness when the shoe is on the other foot or in this case the gun in the other hand. Do I give it to him? This scum, does he really deserve to live? Does he have family or someone who is expecting him home? All of those questions went through my mind, and the rational side of me told me to put my gun away and call the cops. Let them sort everything out. My fingers didn’t want to listen to that though.
My thumb moved on its own, pulling the hammer back on my gun, almost daring me to pull my hand away. I could feel my index finger tightening on the trigger, in the split second that it took, I could feel the trigger depress and give, the heat filling my hand and then the sudden warm spray against my face. My eyes must have closed, because when I opened them the two bit crook was dead and his blood and grey matter had splattered all over the floor. The hooker screamed then and pulled my attention away from the body at my feet.
She had seen me kill the guy. Seen me pull the trigger on the helpless man’s head ending his life.
My breathing was ragged, adrenaline was coursing through me and I could feel my heart beating in my temples. I told her to shut up and stop crying, but she wouldn’t. She just kept repeating “oh my god” over and over again. I pressed the gun to her forehead just as I had the scum bag that was dead behind me and looked at her. She was crying and once again I felt that thrill. I acted before I could even realize what was going on. I just pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times I fired at her, blood spraying after each pull. I then ran out the back door.
I don’t know if I believe in the theory of blacking out, but that is what it was said had happened to me.
The feeling I had as I got into my car was something I had never felt before. I felt alive, as if the world had suddenly become a silent movie. The feeling of holding the robber’s life and the hooker’s life in my hands gave me something I hadn’t had in a very long time. The feeling of power and being in control of the situation. I had lost that after my graphic design firm tanked. I had let my life spin out of control and for some reason the gun that was still tightly gripped in my hand had given me that back. I felt elated, almost as if my smile would split my face. I started the car and drove off.
I made my way home and frowned as I pulled up to the house that I couldn’t afford. The wife that would never understand and the two girls that would never see me again. I sat in my car trying to go over everything that had happened and it dawned on me that I had been stupid. I left a ton of evidence for the police to find. I needed to go back and fix that small problem.
I didn’t want to go to jail, no one wants to go to jail, and that was what would happen if I didn’t fix the convenience store.
I snuck back in through the back door and sighed. No one had come in, I mean I was gone for less than fifteen minutes but you can never be too sure. I quickly went about grabbing both of the bodies and dropped them outside. There was a drain in the back to catch the water and oil that slipped from cars just after they got their discounted car washes. I stripped them both and grabbed three bottles of the bleach we sold. I doused them with it and then used the hose to spray them clean and the blood down the drain.
They were naked and clean, now what do I do with them? Dumpster? No that would be way too easy to link back to me. There was a farm not far from the gas station, so I did what anyone would do. I dumped them in the corn field. For all I knew, the farmer wouldn’t even notice them till he started harvesting. But now I had their clothes as well as a blood stained area around the drain. I used another bottle of bleach to scrub the blood off and then used a bottle of liquid plumber on the drain. It would destroy any evidence that hung around, at least I hoped so.
I went into the restroom and cleaned myself up as well, and then went back into the main store. There were two very large blood stains that I treated the same way as I treated the ground outside. It was simple really, I had so much energy that I felt like I could lift a car. The store looked spotless after I was done, my boss would be pleased and so would I. I hadn’t hit the alarm yet and I didn’t think I would have to, my story was simple. The thug ran out the back door, which is usually kept unlocked during business hours anyway, and he took the hooker with him. I didn’t know where they went after that. Or at least that would be what I told my boss and the police in the morning. Right now I had their clothes, and it had to be dealt with immediately. I went to the back again and looked around, again I thought of the dumpster, but it was too close. I thought of the farm but that was already a dump spot. I needed to make this seem like a confusing crime.
I went to the bar that was a few blocks down and dumped the clothes there. Only after I had doused them in cleaning solution and gave them a thorough cleaning. I picked them up after putting on a pair of latex gloves and heaved them into the dumpster. It was no longer a crime in the heat of the moment; this was planned by the attempt to conceal it. I was in for the whole nine yards now.
The rest of that day was a blur. I remember talking to the police, giving them my statement, they looked at my gun saw that it was fired and I explained that I had fired into the air to scare them off. They found his gun and processed the scene. There wasn’t anything I had missed, at least that I thought. The police had let me go home; I called in sick to the restaurant and slept all day. I don’t remember the last time I had slept so peacefully.
Three months had passed since the incident and I was getting agitated. The feeling of dullness had started to creep back into my life. I couldn’t have that, not sense I had tasted the thrill of real life. I carried my gun on me everywhere now, just in case I happened to come across the perfect time to get that thrill again.
The two corpses had finally been found in the field, only after they had been mutilated by carrion and the thresher the farmer had owned. The police had ruled it an execution style killing and left it at that, or at least that is what the news said.
I was a free man.
It felt good too. I was walking on air then. My wife had never been happier, my work improved and my life in general just seemed to get better. Yet my trigger finger itched. I started looking up serial killers on the net, looking at how they started, seeing how they eluded the authorities for so long. It was simpler than I thought. I had no motive, no pattern, hell I hadn’t even started yet. But I could feel the hunger for that control again. It was like a drug that I needed to get a fix for.
I started to become anxious, fidgety, and I couldn’t focus on anything. It was after a particularly annoying day at the restaurant that I decided I needed a new thrill. I hadn’t thought of the last two as victims, and the next one I didn’t consider one either. The only word I could think of was simple; they were my prey.
I went out one night I was supposed to be working at the gas station and patrolled the streets. I was looking for anyone that was somewhere they shouldn’t have been. Walking alone in a dark alley or down a dark street. A couple making out where they shouldn’t be. I was looking for anything. Just when I was about to give up, I found her. I didn’t know her name and I really didn’t care. She walked right down the back alley of a grouping of buildings. I parked and turned off my car. I felt that thrill again, I felt like a large cat stalking its prey.
I silently followed her down the alley, hiding behind dumpsters, ducking into shadows, almost like those spy movies. Only this time I was the bad guy. I knew what I was about to do was going to throw me into a world I knew nothing about, but hey even the big names had to start somewhere.
She turned back onto the sidewalk and I groaned thinking I had missed my chance, but as soon as I stepped from the alley, she was waiting for me.
“You following me?” she asked.
Her voice was soft, sweet; it was like music to my ears. I shook my head no and she frowned.
“Too bad. You’re kind of cute in a creepy stalkerish way.”
I smiled and she smiled back. She went on to tell me her name, why she was walking alone, and that if I escorted her home there was a definite opportunity for a night cap. I swear to god it was something out of a sex magazine forum. I just smiled the whole time, nodding and commenting when it was necessary. All the while I was waiting for the right opportunity.
She led me up to her townhouse and I smiled as she asked me to join her for a drink. I nodded and went inside.
Inside was a blur to me yet again, I remember taking her drink and her going to freshen up. I looked through her cabinets and found something that I didn’t expect. Three epinephrine shots. She must have had allergies, again I didn’t care. I did know enough about the shot to know that if she was given a dose without needing it, she’d get woozy and there was a good chance for her to have a heart attack. I took all three quickly and closed the cabinet before she returned.
She gave me a stiff drink and then “seduced” me to the bedroom. I pulled her out of her clothes and kissed my way to her thighs. I motioned that I was biting her thigh, but instead I pushed the epinephrine pen into her thigh. She let out a short yelp and said “not so rough” so I complied and started kissing her other thigh. Once again I used the second pen and injected her right above her pubic bone. She moaned this time and giggled. I looked at her and she was definitely feeling something. I was free to do the third shot with out any more playing. I moved to her foot and pressed the third pen against the ball of her foot and she yelped again. I stood up and she looked up at me.
“My heart’s beating so fast.”
I nodded and smiled.
I watched her suddenly convulse and spasm as she grabbed at her chest. I watched her as she gasped and let out a death rattle as her body went rigid. I looked at her naked lifeless body and a shudder went through me.
I followed my last plan of attack, only this time I used her tub. I washed every inch of her body and let me tell you, it was the most thrilling thing I have ever done. I pulled her out of the tub and wrapped her in one of her own bath towels and hefted her over my shoulder. I carried her up to the top of her townhouse and laid her onto the roof. I placed her in the middle of the flattened roof, to where only a helicopter could see her. I then went back down stairs and cleaned up the apartment of everything I had touched. I scrubbed the door and the handles, the cupboard, the glass I had used, and I even washed her sheets. I then made the bed and went into the bathroom. I cleaned out the tub with bleach to destroy any evidence of blood, I didn’t see any but you never know, and then used Drain-O on the pipes.
I walked out of her apartment like I owned the place and made my way home. I didn’t even think twice. I nearly ran to my car as I felt that adrenaline again. Once again I had gotten away with murder.
I made this a monthly trip from then on, making sure to pick someone at random and in a completely different style. The news flourished with reports of the killings, no one linked it to me so each time they were looking for a new person or persons. I was on cloud nine.
My total had climbed to twenty five before I screwed up. Like everything addicting, you escalate your use to get your fix. It went from once a month two twice, then three times a week. Until it had gotten up to once a week I would be out on the prowl.
My last victim, the one that they finally caught up to me on, was a sixteen year old cheerleader from the local high school. I had planned everything to the smallest detail. But like life, something unexpected happened. She had thrown a party earlier because her parents had left town for the week.
I had her up in her room, he tears running down her cheeks as I drug a knife over her chin. It had gotten to the point that I wanted, I needed to hear them cry, call out for help, and beg for mercy. Just as she offered to do “anything” to be let go, I plunged the knife into her heart! Her bedroom door opened and her best friend saw me.
I couldn’t let her go, so I chased after her. Unfortunately for me she made it to her house before I could do anything. Cursing to myself the whole time as to why I had left the door unlocked, I cleaned up my crime scene. Used the girls own tub once again, and dumped the body somewhere completely out of the way. I went back to pour the drain cleaner down the tub and found the house surrounded by police. I hadn’t gotten the chance to make her bed or anything. I was as good as caught.
I won’t bore you with the details of them coming to my home, my wife swearing I didn’t do it and all that. You all know this stuff already. Or else I wouldn’t be here, in this electric chair with you all staring at me like I am a fish in a bowl. You know I got caught, and now you know that I have over twenty five under my belt. Do I regret it? Of course not, that thrill of feeling their lives slip through my fingers changed me. It woke me up to what the world really is and how it should be.
Dog eat dog!
But there is truth in one thing, and I believe that it happens to everyone. Everything that can and will happen does.
I was pushed to my braking point, and it will happen to you too. Each and every one of you watching me die. You will all feel the thrill that I did. You will all hear my screams and see me breathe my last breath and it will stay with you. You’ll go home tonight and have the best sex you ever had, eat the best meal you ever cooked, and sleep better than you ever had before. All because you got to feel the same thrill I did each and every time I killed someone.
You are all like me. This morbid fascination with death is nothing more than you trying to get a handle on what you want to do. Because when they throw that switch, it won’t be me dying up here. No, it will be you wife, or maybe your boss. Or your accountant that screwed up your taxes. It won’t be me. It will be you.
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