Fatal Attraction

To be a good serial killer, you have to a routine, a practice, a ritual, if you will, something that you perfect before you have your first kill. That’s how it should be, that’s how the pros do it; Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, they all had rituals.

Disregarding the fact that they were all caught, and the majority of them were sentenced to death, these men were masterminds, the best of the best. I, Frank Iero, plan to be added to this list, if it is the last thing I do.

~

My previous murder -my first- was unpracticed, no plan, no ritual, no nothing. It was messy, uncoordinated, and terrible: there was blood everywhere.

She screamed, cried, and was overbearingly loud. I had planned to torture her, rape her, starve, and dehydrate her, but she was stronger than she should’ve been. She fought back and broke my nose. It was this uncontrollable feeling of rage that made me kill her then.

I was supposed to drug her, fuck with her head just a little at that motel, but she caught on faster than she was supposed to. I had to kill her then, I couldn’t let her get away.

I cut her throat, messily and unpracticed and it sprayed her warm blood up my arm and splattered carelessly across the molded brown carpet. I remember the effect the warm, sticky, red substance had on me, the immense attraction the liquid caused. Not to the dying woman on the floor: she was completely worthless. It was the seduction of the blood seeping out of her gorgeous open wound that caused the deep throbbing to start in my dick and brought me out of my enraged state.

I had to go then, I knew by the pounding of my heart and the way the air seemed to stand still. I left through the open window, not wanting to leave bloody fingerprints all over the glistening doorknob.

She was bad, my first; she almost got me caught. The screaming, the blood, and the shoe prints I left when I tracked through the crimson liquid.

Nevertheless, this time, this time would be better; I knew it.

~

I was ready.

Finally, after months of planning, waiting, watching, I was going to act. I had my practice, my soon-to-be ritual down pat. I’d studied murderer after murderer, watched every single show of 48 Hours, Law & Order, everything, anything I could research, I did. Anything to perfect my ritual, I would study for hours on end. I had it, finally, after one year, four months, and seventeen days, I had my plan. Grab, kidnap, torture, rape, drug, torture, and kill.

I’d been watching people, too, the women that would be my victims. I watched so many, carefully selecting who it would be and who couldn’t possibly be the perfect victim.

I had compassion of course, something that set me apart from most other murders. I crossed the women with families off my list, the ones with children waiting at home. It had taken a lot of time and studying to discover who had a family and who didn’t, but the small still-human part of me decided that it would be worth it.

I had taken a full three months in choosing between two women, both equally beautiful and charming and seemingly without anyone to care for.

I had given my first choice the nickname Cherry because of her fiery red and obviously fake hair. That seemed to be her only fake part, though; she dressed with class and acted like a sweet young virgin.

She seemed innocent, a little hesitant about everything having to do with the outside world; she was obviously young and apprehensive.

My second choice had been deemed Blu in my notes, simply for the fact that blue was her favorite color.

She was older than Cherry, maybe by a few years, more confident in her actions. She was still overly sweet, calm and polite even to the perverted old men littering the trashy streets of New York. Her style was less classy than Cherry’s was but still far from simple, it was just more haphazard, not so planned out.

They were both beautiful; sharing similar body builds and shapes, small and petite with curves in the right places. Blu had long golden brown hair that shimmered and glistened to the small of her back with bright green eyes. Cherry, of course, had her fiery red hair and crystal blue eyes that always looked a little glazed, as if she couldn’t quite leave the house without a puff or two of weed.

It wasn’t the looks that made my decision, though, it had been their attitudes.

It was Cherry’s small slip, her awkwardness and fright of the men in the Big Bad Apple that had decided her fate.

Numerous magazines and news reports proclaim the message that women that are more confident are less likely to be raped or kidnapped and murdered in the dirty streets of anywhere. This was true for most killers; we like possible kills that ooze ease.

Cherry and Blu were almost the same in their actions, this is what made it so hard for me to decide. But when Cherry had become visibly shaken and sped up her pace in an effort to escape the small confrontation that a different young man had started with her, I knew.

She was the one for me to begin my actual career with.

~

December 23rd was the date I’d chosen simply because it was one of the last days I would have to grab her before she disappeared for a few days for the holidays.

I would wait in the last small alley she would have to pass to arrive home and jump her from there, then take her slowly and quietly into the abandoned motel just a half a block away.

Perfect target, perfect place, perfect time set.

It was perfect, simply put.

Then, I was counting down the days, hours, minutes, right down the seconds until I would meet her in that faithful alleyway and start my would-be ever-famous killing career.

~

Four o’clock: the time that Cherry made her slow and tired walk back from where she worked, at Payless shoes in the Midtown Mall. I got to the spot exactly twelve minutes before, not waiting to be late, but not waiting to be too early, either.

“Grab, kidnap, torture, rape, drug, torture, and kill,” I kept repeating to myself, reminding myself of the would-be ritual.

It was 3:58 when you showed up. Tight jeans, a Slipknot tee shirt, and a backwards baseball cap containing your wild but beautiful auburn hair.

You were walking down the alley where I was pacing, looking awkward and nervous and frightened. My black outfit and dangerous hair must’ve scared you, is my guess. The time got away from me as I was watching you and then it was 4:02 and Cherry had been past and was out of fucking sight, but there was no way that I could let you past then. I’d been waiting for this moment for two full years and I was not going to let it go.

I saw the way you eyed me, you were attracted to me even though you were afraid. Your eyes traced my small body and you looked away hurriedly when you met my eyes. Your brown eyes glittered with fear and lust. I took slow and deliberate steps toward you until we were inches apart. Your hands gripped the straps of your pale lavender backpack tightly and you sucked your thin, gorgeous bottom lip into your mouth and began biting it with small, glistening white teeth.

“Hey beautiful,” I murmured before stepping closer, putting mere inches between us. Our breaths intertwined in the space between my body and ours and I nudged you against the wall to keep you trapped. Your legs were intertwined with mine as I inched my face closer and closer to yours, holding eye contact and smirking the entire time.

I kissed you and you didn’t kiss back, but you didn’t fight me off, either. It was when my hands wandered up your shirt and began tracing your hipbones and ribs that you started screaming and got that wild, crazy, terrified look in your eyes.

I jammed my mouth back on yours, muffling the screams between us and held your hands flat against the wall. I was going to be caught, I knew, if I didn’t hurry, so it was then that I let go of one of your hands and pulled the impressive knife out of the carrier just inside the waistband of my too-tight jeans.

You bit at my tongue and lips and I grinned into the kiss, the violence turning me on just the slightest bit more. When your hands got lose, I knew I couldn’t waste any more time and I plunged the knife deep into the area between your ribs. Your screams got less and less impressive and loud as I stabbed you more and more, the blood leaking out onto my hand and shoes.

Around twenty-six stabs, you stopped screaming and your eyes seemed to lose their shine and I stopped plunging the knife in then, ripping it out roughly and uncoordinated. I kissed your dead mouth one more time, hard and rough, and then sped off, tossing my shoes and shoving my hands into my pockets as I went.

The four blocks to my house were walked quietly and slow, my hard-on prominent the whole way as I replayed the scene of you dying repeatedly in my head.

~

Sometimes, plans don’t mean anything. Not all serial killers have an MO anyway. Just because things went all wrong and all of my preparation got fucked up, didn‘t mean that I couldn‘t still do kill you, and can‘t still become a serial killer.

So what if I‘ll be known for the messy my obvious lack of preparation? I could do it; I would do it. I didn’t waste a year and a half of my life researching just to give up with the plan went wrong and the unexpected happened.

Besides, it’s not the women you’re attracted to; it’s the women you attract.