Perhaps this night wasn’t so bad, after all. I bring the coat up to my nose, smelling my own musk mingling with the cologne and that scent that is uniquely Jeremy. What would it be like to heat the air with those scents together in real time? I shiver just thinking about it, and my legs wobble when I step out of the car.
Mother would have been proud if she thought I was tipsy from the party, and therefore socializing. But I’m glad to be alone. It’s silly, but I race to my room and tear off my dress, laying on my bed naked next to Jeremy’s coat and curling up to sleep.
Jeremy
“Please, I have money!” Lorenzo Sirvio whines, the desperation making his voice shrill.
I have money. I live off an inheritance, the interest more than enough to keep me doing what I do best: killing the sickest of the sick. One could argue that I’m included in the “sickest of the sick,” and I can’t say I’d disagree.
Unlike my victims, however, there’s no one to pick me off.
I look into Lorenzo’s eyes. I see nothing. The cloudiness of fear, the gloss around his eyes from tears. But I don’t see a single thing that moves me to emotion.
I look out the window of this tower, this empire that he’s built. I know he lives off the pain of others, and the crimes he’s committed that have a paper trail are nothing compared to the ones known only to their victims, suffering in silence. I’m no hero, but I was happy to loosen the bolt on the door where he kept the six orphan children in an old warehouse. I watched from afar as those children scattered out, out in the world, no longer in his hands. If I were a hero, I’d be ushering them to safety. I’m not truly here to punish. I have a compulsion to kill that I justify by killing criminals.
If I’m going to kill anyway, why not kill those who don’t deserve to live?
You may not like murder, but if I told you more about the things that Lorenzo Sirvio has done, or the worse things my victims have done? Well, you’d be mostly fine with it, no matter how uncomfortable it would be. They violate justice. I bring out a perverted sense of that justice being exacted.
“Can you hear me?” Lorenzo whimpers.
I had looked at him, then looked past him. I have a gun, because guns scare the shit out of people. He doesn’t get to know that my weapon of choice is a knife. He gets to take the quick way out of the building.
I knew that his windows were scheduled to be cleaned, and I made sure the panel was removed when he’d be alone in his office. Normally Lorenzo would masturbate before he left to enact his worse fantasies. The stalking of each victim challenges my ability to not feel anything. Well, that’s perhaps worrisome thing. It generally doesn’t challenge my sociopathy. I didn’t feel anything. I was gathering information, figuring out my best moves, keeping track.
I was going to go for something different last night when I followed Lorenzo to the hotel bar, where he liked to pick up high-value escorts and beat the shit out of them. He pays the hotel for its silence, and the escorts have no recourse. The cut they give the hotel isn’t as high as what Lorenzo Sirvio offers. Sirvio has the kind of money I have.
If I cared about money, if I was stupid enough to allow him to try and bribe me, I could manage to double my own money. But I don’t care about money.
I don’t care about the dreadful things these despicable victims I chose do.
I’ve only come close to caring about one other thing before…well, before my parents. Undoubtedly, a psychologist could have quite a time dissecting why I cared for my parents and, after witnessing their murder/suicide, I now care about so little and commit murders I generally make look like suicides. I have no interest in the psychology. I only know that my compulsion to kill creates a sort of brotherly bond with Carter Luwein. His stepmother raised him to kill, and he’s got his own trauma. Carter actually cares about people, about heinous acts, though he was raised to kill. Ultimately, Carter cares more about killing than anything else.
Now, Carrie Winters — a girl that my initial searching reveals barely exists on the internet, and I’m excited to do more in-person reconnaissance on her — is the closest thing I’ve ever felt about someone. I don’t want to kill her. I want to kill for her.
I’ve only ever wanted to kill. And that? I always do that for me. Because that’s my compulsion.
The instant I saw her, I needed her more than I needed to slice flesh with my blade. To watch that look on someone’s face when they knew they were going to die.
It took a while, but Lorenzo’s making that face now. Being as wealthy as he is, Lorenzo thought he would get out of this somehow.
“You’re going to walk out that window,” I say. I don’t bother concealing the boredom in my voice. Looking to his eyes, that look where he’s lost all hope — it isn’t giving me the thrill that it once did.
I do have the aftershock of arousal when the lights dim on his soul. I do love that loss of hope, in that moment where I’m a god in absolute control. I’ve laid down my holy judgement, calling for his death. And yet today I still don’t care. I don’t care about his crimes. I hardly care about his death.
Lorenzo takes a shuddering step forward. I hold the gun up to ensure he’ll do as he’s told.
Stupid, really, that a gun threatens him when I’m making him walk out an open window, forty-two stories up in a high-rise office building. Still, it has worked before and it works today. These billionaire types fear pain, and they fear a loss of control. Walking out of a building is such an elegant way for them to feel like they’re in control, when really if they refused and I had to shove them or shoot them, I could be at real risk of getting caught.
Lorenzo plummets to his death, his undignified screeching barely penetrating my thoughts.
A surge of power courses through me.
Normally after a kill, I’d go fuck some stranger in a bar.
Yes, if you’ve had a one night stand with a charming, wealthy bachelor in this city or several others I like to visit, you’ve probably fucked me. A serial killer doesn’t wear a sign around his neck that says “I’m fucking you because I’m horny after committing a murder.” The only sign I have is the throbbing erection that tents my trousers after I’m finished.
Still, I already know that despite my cock’s insistence, I won’t be charming and bedding any random stranger tonight.