Chapter 3 Cal
Cal
My rapid clicks increase with my frustration, the photos flying by so fast that it makes me feel ill.
Or maybe that's the whiskey. I think I've drunk too much, but it's the only thing that sates the need.
.. well, the only thing I currently have access to that sates the need.
Killing quenches the thirst too, but I can't just go out into a dark alley and find a girl at random to bring back to my apartment and stick a blade into.
No, I may be corrupt to the core, rotten and festering. I may be sick, clinically fucked up, but I'm not a proverbial psycho. Would that I were, of course. It would make this all so much easier if I just didn't have emotions... if I just didn't care.
But I do care. It's my cross to bear, I suppose. I'm not a fucking Norman Bates psychopath or a killer because the devil made me be one. I kill because there's absolute power in watching someone take their last breath. There's even greater power in being the reason they take their last breath.
I've suspected for years that there was something wrong with me, given the fact that pain gets me off. I guess it does for plenty of people, but I don't just like feeling it. I like inflicting it.
Unfortunately, I also like the illusion that I'm normal.
The perfectly average CEO of a successful startup with no wife because he's still in his party era, because he hasn't been forced to grow up yet, because he's just a typical guy enjoying the spoils of his profession.
I'm good at the illusion— it was so painstakingly crafted over years of work, and I won't let it be shattered over a single chance to play God.
I've managed to keep the need at bay this far, but it's come at a cost. Close calls with whores I've had to pay to stay silent after I choked them a little too hard, near misses with bitches who got a little too mouthy, and one horrific night where I thought I'd finally done it, taken things too far.
I dragged her into the bathtub, and Dex was here within twenty minutes of calling him.
She woke up just as I turned on the hacksaw and was ready to slice off her arm.
Dex was able to convince her that she fell in the tub because she was so drunk that she slipped, and she was so out of it that she accepted the sound of the reciprocating saw she never saw as my electric toothbrush.
It made no sense, but Dex could sell brimstone to the fucking devil. He's charming enough that he just smiles at someone and they wilt. By the time he drove her home, she crashed in his front seat, and when she woke, she had zero memory of anything that transpired the entire evening.
The near misses were getting nearer with time, and I knew better than to try and have a fucking relationship. God forbid the devil slip out of me when I'm making love to my wife, and then I wake up to her severed head.
No, I stick to those who cling to shadows.
.. the ones who won't tell if they get a little roughed up because that's what they're used to from their clients.
But I fucked up last month and notched the belt too tight around Candy's neck as she rode me like a bull at the rodeo.
I didn't notice she was really strangling at first, too caught up in how tight she was.
By the time I realized she was dying, the light was leaving her eyes, and I was so fucking hard I thought I could have fucked her into the bed.
I took a gamble and tried to come before she took her last breath.
There's a reason I stay out of Vegas, despite the empire my family has built there. I lost that gamble, and this time when Dex came to help me clean up my mess, she didn't wake up when I turned the saw on.
It's only been a few weeks since then, and my every waking thought has been utterly consumed by the need for more.
.. the need to kill. The sleeping moments, when they come, are much the same.
Dex has talked me off the ledge a dozen times, hidden my keys, and sent girls running before they could fall prey to me.
But all any of it has done is buy more time.
It hasn't stopped the need that fucking lives inside of me.
I don't know when it crawled under my skin or how it got there, but it lives inside my veins, and no attempts to bleed it out have been successful.
I can't choke it out either, because the girls always get scared of being pinned with murder and give up before I can get what I need from them.
Nothing fucking works.
I'm a junkie, a fucking addict.
And addicts will sink to whatever lows they must to get their next fix. It's why I'm on this site, clicking through the faces as if they're paint samples. I'll be painting my bathroom with their brains, maybe, so it should be easy to pick one.
Except it's not. Because I can't just step into a shadowy alley and choose the first one who walks up to me. The way I do it has to be clean. I don't get to know them, don't hear their name, or know their life story. I don't see their past trauma or their struggles.
But this site? Each photo has a name, an age, and an approximate weight and height. It could be a fucking dating site for all the information they provide, including the girls' hobbies or professions.
How am I supposed to decide who to kill between an elementary school teacher and a social worker? It's fucked, which is why I'm clicking through so rapidly that my computer freezes on the face of a sixteen-year-old who's got her first job as a receptionist at her father's law firm.
Fuck.
Rage simmers deep inside of me at the thought that there are sickos out there who would be happy to see this listing.
I’m not happy. And I hate the reminder that I’m really no better than any of the others.
I may not be looking for a sex slave, which is apparently what most of the girls here are being marketed for, but I’m looking for a victim… same as every other buyer here.
I slam my mouse down and hang my head in my hands, massaging away the ache in my temples.
I know I should kill myself.
It's the only mercy I can provide to womankind, a mercy they deserve after the injustices I've inflicted on them. But too many people count on me. Taking my own life would be selfish.
I rub my hands over my eyes and enjoy the pressure as I hold them there, taking a second to compose myself. I tell myself I'll pick the next one to come across the screen, that it will be fate.
When I get my computer mouse working again, I navigate to the home page, letting the list refresh with the newest listings.
Maybe because I already decided it was fate, I'm breathless when I see her.
No name, no age or height, or arbitrary numbers. No description.
It's a photo taken from a social media page—they all are. I don't know if that's how the operators of the site find their marks or what, but she's delectable.
I'm not a fucking cannibal, but delectable is the only word that comes to mind when I see her glossy pink lips parted around the neck of a beer bottle.
She's dressed modestly, but her dark hair and eyes make her look sultry.
There's an edge about her, something I can't quite place but that is undeniably there all the same.
She's absolute fucking perfection.
I double-click on the listing before they can update it with a name. If I'm lucky, I'll never know it.
The crypto has already been bought, so when I tap the buy link with my mouse, the transaction is instant. I watch my balance decrease, and the black box pops up on my computer screen.
The neon letters make me feel dizzy with a mix of euphoria and disgust.
CONGRATULATIONS—PURCHASE COMPLETED.