Chapter 2
TWO
RYKER
My phone miraculously gets reception out here. I mean, I’m on this exact network—prepaid, of course—specifically because it has the most coverage in the woods, but it’s still spotty most times.
I sit down on a nearby fallen log and tab over to the crime section of the New Bristol Ledger.
“Another murder in New Bristol,” I say out loud as I browse.
My conversation partner makes a gurgling sound.
It’s probably hard for him to say much more on account of being gagged and having a few holes in his chest. I’m just waiting for him to bleed out at this point. The blood pooling underneath him is pretty impressive.
Drip, drip, drip down his naked body and onto the forest floor.
I’d found him hiking out here, and honestly, if you go hiking, alone, in early February, you’re kind of asking to get murdered.
He’d been an okay conversationalist before that. An avid hiker. Single, but looking desperately for the perfect woman.
Not a slut, which means there’s only five women in the world I could date, he’d said, and I’d laughed like that was the funniest joke I’d heard.
When we’d stopped for lunch, I’d slipped him the sleeping pills.
I turn my attention back to the news article. Male victim, strangled in his own home, single—and, I can kind of read the derision in the article, there were drugs in his system at the time of death.
“The victim probably knew the killer. You don’t strangle somebody in their own home just for shits and giggles,” I tell the future corpse.
“I wouldn’t do it. It’s way too risky. I’d have to worry about neighbors seeing and hearing, about leaving evidence behind…
” I laugh. “You’re from New Bristol though.
Do you think your neighbors will miss you? ”
The future corpse doesn’t make a sound.
Huh. Maybe he’s already a corpse.
I poke his body with a stick. Nothing.
I suppose he could be faking it to get me to cut him down, but judging from the limpness in his body and just how fucking long I’d left him hanging by his wrists, I’d say he’s dead.
I check the time on my phone again. It had taken him about half an hour to die once I’d finished playing with him.
I hold my phone up to take a photo. I desperately want a memento of this—of the blue tinge to the guy’s lips, the way the blood trickled down in new patterns, even the specific slash and stab marks I’d made.
I know better though. I lower the phone again with a sigh.
I wonder if the strangler in New Bristol took a photo, or if they were smart enough to destroy all evidence. Did they get off on choking their victim? Was it personal?
“It wasn’t personal for me,” I tell the corpse. “You were an idiot, and kind of an asshole about women, but you were nice enough to me. A man’s got urges though, right?”
Wrong.
Most men don’t have these urges.
I don’t really give a shit about most men, though. I’ve never been interested in being normal, in doing what society asked of me. If it were up to my parents, I’d have joined them in the dying coal industry and destroyed my lungs so some higher up can eke out an extra ten cents of profit.
Anyway, if my brother can treat his wife like shit and everybody accepts him, I don’t see why a murder every year or so is any different. Just because I’m not married to these men?
Marriage, huh.
Maybe the reason I’d decided to go through with it this time is because this idiot wouldn’t shut up about how important it was to find a partner and get married. My mom’s been on my case too, saying I can’t find anyone if I’m always on the road.
Like I want to find anyone.
What am I going to do, get married and kill them a few years later? It’d get suspicious if I kept doing that. And most people wouldn’t want to marry a serial killer. It’d be dishonest to go into a relationship without disclosing that.
I laugh to myself.
Yeah, that’s the problem. The dishonesty, and not the serial killing.
I walk over to the tree trunk and untie the knot that was keeping the man strung up. His body drops to the ground with a loud thunk. A few branches break under his weight.
I put on my gloves again and roll the guy a few feet into the grave I’d dug for him. That part had really made him struggle, like he’d thought I was going to bury him alive.
I’d done that once, and it just wasn’t the same. I like seeing the blood drip out of them. I like seeing the light vanishing from their eyes.
Of course, I’d gotten distracted from it this time because of the stupid news article.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pay enough attention to you,” I tell the corpse. “You were good though. Great wank fodder. Trust me, I’ll be jerking off to thoughts of your struggles for a while.”
I start covering up the body. I make sure to fill the hole completely, and when I’m done, I use the leftover dirt to disperse the puddle of blood. I cover everything with more branches and leaf litter.
When I’m done, it’s impossible to tell that anything had happened here at all.
“I’ll give you… two days,” I say to the grave. “Two days before you’re listed missing.” I think his name was Dan. Dan something.
Well, whatever.
I heft both of our backpacks. His is lighter than mine, but that’s a given since it doesn’t hold the rope or knives I’d used for the murder. The shovel is unwieldy, but it’s not like there’s a good way to dig a grave without one.
Thankfully, it’s now evening, and since it’s early February, it’s still too cold for most people to want to do the hikes out here. I make my way back to the main trail, a good forty-minute walk from my murder site.
It’s quiet, and my headlamp is the only source of light.
There’s one other car parked in the parking lot. Dan’s, probably. It’s from the right state, anyway.
If not for the car, people might not even realize there’s somebody unaccounted for. I’d love to drive it away, but getting rid of vehicles is harder than getting rid of bodies.
Hikers get lost in parks all the time. It’s a fucking epidemic of idiots who think they can handle the elements only to trip over their brand-new boots and crack their heads open.
I pack everything into my new, used SUV and start driving.
I’ll stop somewhere to destroy Dan’s things, then get back on schedule. I’ve got a job in New Bristol, but I’ll rest at a motel for the night.
I pay in cash, of course, and I show the clerk a fake ID when she asks for one.
“What brings you out here?” she asks as she hands me the keys.
None of your business.
“Just passing through. I thought I could make the trip in one night, but I’m too fucking tired after all.” I smile at her. “I’ve been on the road since five in the morning.”
She makes the requisite sympathetic sounds. “Well, rest up. We’ll have coffee and muffins available for breakfast.”
I thank her and finally make it to the motel room. I shower thoroughly, then dump my clothes and shoes into soapy water to wash them.
While they soak, I turn on the TV to find something to watch.
“Strangled in his own home,” the tv newscaster is saying. “I don’t mean to speculate, but that means it was probably a woman, right?”
The words on the screen tell me they’re interviewing some behavioral psychology expert. One of those people who thinks he can deduce the killer based on just a few anecdotes and a shitload of assumptions.
“I haven’t seen all the facts, of course, since the police are keeping things under wraps, but that’s a common misconception. Women’s preferred methods are poisoning, and sometimes, suffocation. Men often strangle their intimate partners.”
For some reason, that makes the news anchor laugh. “Well, unless Tim Pollard was gay—”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I mute the program and focus just on the images on screen. They’re not showing any actual crime scene photos, unfortunately, just poor departed Tim in his prime.
But he was a junkie, they said.
The pictures don’t show a guy who gets high regularly. A little bit reedy, sure, but I’ve seen drug addicts. The sunken eyes, the sallow skin, are all dead giveaways.
This guy wasn’t a drug addict.
Hmm.
I’m sure the cops will notice that. They’re stupid, but not that stupid. Unless there’s some reason they don’t give a shit about solving Tim’s murder.
I turn on one of my true crime podcasts instead. I’m about to find out exactly how they figured out who was behind all the Route 45 murders.
My mind isn’t on the podcast though. I force myself to finish cleaning my clothes. As I’m hanging them up to dry, I’m reminded, again, of the kid I’d picked up last year.
Liam from New Bristol.
I’d sometimes imagined what had happened before I’d picked him up. Middle of nowhere, in the mountains, far from home. Muddy shoes, muddy clothes. Dirt everywhere.
And blood splatter on his wrist. Not his own blood.
I’d kept an ear out for crime news from the area, and the Traville local paper had a small mention about a body being found, some two weeks later. It had been devoured by local wildlife, though, so the identity was never discovered.
As far as I can tell, there’s been no follow up to that.
Was that the person Liam had murdered? He’d done all right, if his victim isn’t more than a missing person in some forgotten police register.
Fucking mouthy brat probably laughed about that, too.
I’d looked him up afterward. It hadn’t been hard to find his surname with his first name and address, and that had yielded a gold mine.
I’d found his socials and spied on the photos he’d posted.
It was an endless stream of party photos and bitching about rich people stuff.
Last year’s fashions, celebrity gossip, charity events and all that.
It’s different from how he’d presented himself to me.
The social media makes him seem flighty and shallow, not funny and curious and so, so casual about death.
I lay down on the bed and hit the light switches, then reach into my boxers to grip my cock.
I close my eyes.
The first image I see is Dan’s terrified face as I drive the knife into his chest. My cock hardens immediately, remembering the ragged gasps.
The begging.
It’s the best part. The one where they think their pleading will get me to change my mind. Their promises to never tell anyone, so long as I let them go.
I know they’ll never tell anyone, because when I’m done, they can’t.
I stroke myself firmly, wishing I could do this with my hand slick with blood. It would smell divine, the copper filling my nostrils.
But I’m never going to be one of those idiots who gets caught because I escalate too fast, because I get careless.
“I didn’t do anything to you!” Dan had sobbed.
No, he’d just been unlucky. Liam’s “universe” had seen fit to put Dan in my path, and that unfortunate coincidence had meant he was going to die.
I imagine Liam handing me a knife and licking the blood from the blade when I hand it back. Maybe with his mouth still red and coppery, he’d go down on me.
Fuck.
I drive my hips up and stroke harder, my cock pulsing at the image.
“Keep count for me,” he’d say, only this time he’s probably talking about orgasms instead of bodies.
Fucking brat.
I groan, trying to focus on thoughts of dead Dan, but it’s all Liam now, stretched out and bloody and begging me to fuck him hard with our shared corpse lying in bed next to us.
I’d give him such a hard pounding, and I hope his screams are as loud as anyone in their death throes.
It’s the thought of Liam licking blood from his own wrist that sends me over the edge though. His tongue darting out and watching me the entire time, taunting me.
I want to see him with blood and semen splattered across his lips.
I slow my movements, letting my breathing go back to normal.
The TV is still playing, but the news has moved on to a piece about some internet cat celebrity.
I reach up to lick my hand, then think better of it. I’ve never been a fan of the taste of cum. I’d rather taste blood.
How many times have I jerked off to thoughts of that stupid brat now? He’s been hounding my mind since I dropped him off at the subway station almost a year ago.
It’s a phase. I know the brat is probably more like his social media than what I’d seen. He isn’t actually a killer. For all I know, the blood was from a minor cut he gave a friend.
But it’s a nice fantasy.
I head to the bathroom to clean up.
No sense in leaving DNA evidence behind.
Maybe when I’m in New Bristol, I’ll look Liam up again, and he’ll be different enough from my ideal that I can get over this fucking obsession.