2 | Liam #2
It’s simple. It carries the message across, and I know the boys will continue their ritual of sex and food without a care in the world while I hide the remainder of our latest crime.
The fact that they kill together, then pick a nice spot to eat in each town before they get lost in one of their rooms—because they refuse to share one, even years of being together later—is almost romantic.
Poetic, even. It’s the perfect little bonding activity.
They kill together, they eat together, and then they fuck each other, while I remain alone, traveling with them from town to town with only the role of making sure those little fuckers don’t get caught. Pathetic.
I try to remind myself that I enjoy the hunts as much as they do, but sometimes it’s hard to remember.
It’s on nights like this—the ones where I almost get caught—that I am reminded no one, besides the boys, really cares.
I don’t have a woman waiting for me. It’s probably why in this town I have seemed to acquire a new hobby, but that’s not important at the moment, and I should really get rid of this body before it starts to smell.
I turn the key in the ignition, and the car starts making a subtle sound that is almost muffled entirely by the rain.
I continue driving, checking from time to time to see if I am being followed.
I know I am not. I was convincing enough in my act of innocence—an Oscar-worthy performance, if you will.
That officer bought it like a dog accepting a treat with poison inside.
The blind devotion dogs have; they will eat anything their master gives them.
And if you appear harmless enough, humans are the same.
They don’t think twice if the threat isn’t obvious, especially the ones wearing the uniform.
I don’t actually blame them, though; I understand them, even.
They spend hours and hours hunting down degenerates and criminals like myself.
It makes sense that when that little threat signal isn’t flashing neon red, they just ignore it. How would they know otherwise, anyway?
And if you think about it, that’s how a lot of serial killers have slipped through history for years and years.
Ted Bundy was a charmer. Jeffrey Dahmer appeared like the good little boy who was just a little misunderstood.
One time, they even found a damn victim still alive in his possession, screaming for help, and he managed to convince them that he was on drugs and that he was helping him.
They left the poor boy with him, only, of course, to find him dead months later.
And then you had that clown-dressing dude; I can’t even remember his name.
He was a creepy one. Still, he wasn’t suspected until it was too late.
In this society, it’s easy to blend into the crowd and get away with crimes that would make even Satan himself puke his guts.
Is it right? No, none of this is right. It’s actually awful, and we all deserve the death penalty, or at least life in prison.
But with the way this world works, I doubt this will happen.
At least not if it's up to me, and as long as I am in charge of hiding the bodies, it is in my hands.
After too long of a drive, I reach the abandoned property we have chosen as a dumping site—and by "we," I mean "I," because I am the one who thinks through every detail.
Mike prefers the role of picking the victims. Nathan is our image to the world: the good boy everyone trusts.
A young man who lost his parents and is traveling the world with his adoptive siblings, he makes sure the businesses we inherited work in our absence, and he makes the payments for houses, cars, motorcycles, or anything else we might need.
And me? I do the heavy lifting. I plan the details.
I find the next place to hunt. I am the one who does the research behind each victim, the hunting ground, and everything else we need.
I park the van in the same spot I did every time I came here before, open the back, and grab the body bag containing the woman.
She is heavy, but not too heavy. I place the shovel over her and carry them both in a princess-carry corpse style toward the spot I have chosen for her resting place.
Rigor mortis has already started, which makes it harder to carry her.
I checked the area for a week before we started hunting in this town.
It’s one of my methods to determine the best area to dispose of bodies.
It has to fit the set of rules designed to keep us out of trouble—rules carefully thought out years ago, when we were still young and the memory of my family was still alive.
They didn’t die for me to rot in a prison cell.
No more than five women per town. Never dispose of their bodies in the same area where we hunt. Always research both the hunting ground and the dumping site for a week before we start. Make sure it is remote. Always pay cash. Never get close enough to the locals. Don’t draw attention. Blend in.
For the most part, we have been really good at following the rules.
We have never had issues, never even been suspected.
Once, years ago, a body was discovered, but it was pinned to a serial killer who was active in that area.
It was one of our first games; we were still learning, evolving, if you may.
The rules work. They keep us safe. Even if the boys hate them, they are there for a reason.
I reach the top of the hill and pause for a moment to take in the view.
It’s a beautiful view, even with the rain making everything muddy.
The smell of wet soil, trees, and flowers fills the space—a smell I have always loved.
Even when I was just a boy locked in a room to avoid my father’s anger, the smell of rain has always been a comfort for me.
On rainy days, he would settle in his chair with a beer in hand, forgetting everything early in the day.
It was the curse of working construction; rain ruined everything. But for me? It was a blessing.
The rain is now pouring harder. It’s as if it knows, as if it is trying to help me with my task.
It’s covering my tracks. It helps me remain undetected.
I welcome it. I am pretty sure that if the rain continues, it will hide most evidence of my being here entirely.
It has been raining for weeks now, every day, and at this point, I am starting to think this is a regular thing for this town.
I could live here. I would love waking up to the sound of rain every day.
Maybe I could have a regular job, something I could do even on the days it rains.
Maybe I could have a wife and kids in this fantasy my mind is conjuring as I take in the view.
But this will never happen, and the woman in my arms needs to be introduced to her final home.
I continue my path, going deep into the woods surrounding the property until I am hidden completely from view.
I chose this particular space because the trees growing on the property are almost like a little forest. The only house close enough is located where I have parked, but it has been empty for years.
I did my research. The owners died around twenty years ago, and there were no living relatives to take on the property.
No one truly cared to maintain it, or the land surrounding it.
And now it’s the perfect little graveyard, with a few fresh graves already.
We are getting close to the time we need to move towns—faster than usual.
In each town lately, we reach the five victims faster than the previous one, and that alone scares me.
I wonder if soon we will have to find a new way to satisfy Mike’s bloodlust, one that will be riskier.
Maybe it will eventually land us in that prison cell we have been avoiding for a decade.
I like this town, though. Maybe in that imaginary life of mine, I would own this house.
It stands at the edge of the property; I park the van each night right in front of it before walking up the hill.
I noticed it the moment I stepped foot in this area.
It remained abandoned and forgotten through the years, which makes it the perfect place in more ways than one, because it is surrounded by wild nature and has enough trees to shield me from the world while I dig right now, for example.
And that alone would also make it the perfect place to live.
I love places where you can just be alone—the abandoned ones no one cares about.
I don’t walk too far from the top of the hill; there is no need for that. I pick a spot under a tree, one close to where three relatively fresh holes with bodies in them exist—bodies I have put there myself.
“You will have company in your afterlife, sweetie,” I say, and I must be crazy talking to a dead woman.
If anything else wasn’t enough of a clue to my insanity, this should be it.
Only a madman would talk to the dead, yet this is my life, and the dead are the only ones listening, it seems. I spend days and nights alone surrounded by people who love me, yet it feels like no one is truly there.
It’s as if every living person in my life has faded among the ghosts of the past. I know they are both living and dead, but they have little to no significance anymore.
Life is just life; it continues its course with no purpose at all.
And I continue down the path, hoping for a change that will never come.
Don’t get me wrong—I love my cousin and his boyfriend.
My chosen family. The people who stood by my side through every rough path I had to cross.
But sometimes—times like this... I wonder what it would be like to have a love like theirs.
I wonder what it would be like to be loved by someone like Nathan loves Mike. Unconditionally.