Ten Minutes Till Midnight

I looked out the window at the courtyard below. Then again at my watch. Ten minutes till midnight. Ten minutes till the third one came. The first had not been planned, and the second just a matter of chance, but this third was the one I planned for. This would be my first actual murder.

I felt a rush as I thought those words. This would be the kill that determined the rest of my life. If I was ever caught after this, I would be given life in prison. Or the death penalty. Before this, I could have been given 25 years without parole. But in ten minutes, I could be sentenced to life. I smiled at the thought.

The first kill had been simply an accident. I killed her, accidentally. She had been my girlfriend. Sally had been so nice, and so adorable. She had been the most adorable person in the universe. Before I killed her. “No, that was wrong,” I decided. She still was. Now she was six feet under, pushing up daisies in the empty lot across the street. I hadn’t meant to kill her.

We had had a fight. She wanted to go to Chicago for spring break, and I had wanted to go to New York City. It seemed like such a silly fight now, but at the time it was of great importance to both of us. We had been arguing, and she had left the apartment and walked down to the courtyard I was now watching from the window. I had followed her, trying to make her stop.

I had chased her down and pulled her to me, trying to make her stop and listen to my logic. But she wouldn’t listen. “Sally, stop! We’re going to New York,” I had said sternly. I had taken her hand and said, “And that’s final.”

“No,” she had said. Then she had pulled her hand away from me, and walked away again. I had felt myself growing angrier. She had broken her promise. She had promised to never leave me. And then she was leaving.

“You can’t leave,” I had said, my voice sounding deadly calm. I had followed her to the middle of the courtyard. I took her arm and pulled her to the fountain. Then I had thrown her in the water and held her head beneath the water. She had struggled for a few moments, but before long she had no choice but to inhale the water. When the water hit her lungs, she started shaking. Five seconds later, she stopped moving, and the life had left her. When I realized what I had done, I did not feel remorse. I felt fear. I had feared that someone had seen what I had done, and would report me to the police. But no one had seen, for it was the dead of night in south Detroit. No one in their right mind would be outside, or peeking out of windows. After the initial fear had passed, I knew I had to get rid of the body. I pulled Sally’s corpse from the water and looked at her face. Her eyes were open, and they had a glazed look of fear on them.

I had lowered my hands to her face, and closed her eyes. Then I had left her body there. Momentarily. I had gone to the main office of the apartment building. Like every other night, the place had been unlocked but deserted. I took a plain sheet from the maid’s closet, and a shovel from the landscaper’s closet. Then I had returned to the courtyard where Sally’s body lay. I had picked up her dainty corpse and wrapped it in the sheet. I had tied the sheet around her waist, wrapped her up like a mummy. I had then put her body over my shoulder and carried her to the empty lot across the street. In the near darkness of the crescent moon, I had dug a hole and put her body into the hole, giving her a grave. Then I had walked away.

Later, it had occurred to me that the feeling of power I got when I killed felt so right, I had to do it again. But fear once again gripped me, and I kept myself from killing again. Until that girl came along. She had flirted with me, and thrown herself at me, so I had taken her to the apartment. She had looked just like Sally. She had spent the night in the bed where Sally had once slept. She had told me everything, as if I was her new best friend. Then when I had tried to make a move, she acted repulsed that I would be attracted to her. She had run away, and I had chased her in the same manner I had chased Sally. I had drowned her in the same manner as well. I had buried her next to Sally.

That was how I killed. And now the girl would be awake any minute now. I looked at her again. She lay in the bed across the room from me. Her hair was pale blonde, just like Sally’s had been. When she had been awake earlier, I had seen her eyes were the same shade of green hers had been. I knew when I had seen her in the park earlier today, I knew she would be number three. I knew I would kill her because of her resemblance to Sally.

I looked at my watch again. Two minutes to midnight. I walked over to where the girl lay. I stood over her and started looking at her face. I pulled a piece of hair from behind her face and tucked it behind her ear. I just watched her for the last minute until midnight.

I watched as my watch passed from eleven fifty nine P.M. to twelve A.M. When it happened. I took a step back from the girl. From the opposite side of the room, I turned the light switch on. In the sudden light, I called to the girl. “Wake up Sally.”

The girl sat up. She looked at me, and confused, said, “My name isn’t Sally.”

“Oh, but it is, Sally,” I told her.

“No it’s not,” she repeated.

“Sally,” I whispered softly, “You better run.”

She must’ve seen something in my eyes that told her I wasn’t joking. She leapt up from the bed and started running from the apartment. Her hair flew from her face as she ran, becoming gentle blonde waves. She ran down the hall, but she had never lived here. She took a left at the end of the hall, a fatal mistake. If she had gone right, she might have been able to escape, but she didn’t. She went left. The hallway to the left was a dead end. By the time she realized this, it was too late. I blocked the only exit. I cornered her in the dead end. Then she cried desperately, “What do you want from me?”

“I just want your death, Sally. I keep remembering how I killed you that one time, and I want to kill you again, it felt so right the first time,” I replied. I was simply stating the facts, but I could see the girl’s face twist in terror as I said them.

She stood there frozen in terror as I took her arm and dragged her from the building. I dragged her to the courtyard where I had killed the first two. As I put her in the same fountain where they had met their end, she found her voice and started screaming for help. I covered her mouth with my hand, silencing her screams.

She bit down on my hand, drawing blood. I slapped her with my free hand, and she stopped biting me. I shoved her head beneath the water, and watched as she shook when the water hit her lungs.

When she stopped moving, I took her body from the water and looked at her face. That’s when I realized her eyes didn’t have the same…glazed look the two before her had had. She was still alive. Not for long. Her eyes followed me as I took the shovel from underneath the bush. I had hidden the shovel with which I had buried the last two under a bush in the courtyard.

I raised the shovel above my head and cracked it down on the girl’s skull. I heard her skull crack. Then her bright crimson blood flowed from her head, and the life left her eyes.

I wrapped her body in the sheet and pulled her across the road. Then I buried her next to the second girl. When she was buried under the ground, I walked back to my apartment and took a hot shower.

I watched the dirt wash from under my fingernails as I showered. The water cleaned me of all the filth inside me. When I was done showering, I got dressed in my nightclothes. Then I went to sleep. Killing was tiring work.

When I woke, I looked out of the window that overlooked the courtyard. Normally, all I saw was a reminder of Sally and her death, but today, the fear gripped my heart again. There was blood on the sidewalk next to the courtyard. So much blood. It had dried, but there was so much blood. But that wasn’t what scared me. What scared me was the yellow tape surrounding the bloodstain.

Someone had called the cops. Now they would find me. I was sure of it. And now they would be able to take me away to prison.

I looked out in horror at the crime scene in front of me. I stood there paralyzed, in terror of prison. The people in prison would kill me. I heard a knock at the door, and it made me jump.

I walked over to the door in a trance. The fear gripped my heart, and I could barely breathe. When I opened the door and saw a police officer looking at me, my shallow breaths caught.

“Do you know this person?” the police officer asked. He showed me a picture of the girl’s face. She looked happy in the picture. I felt sick to my stomach. They were going to catch me.

“No,” I said, my voice sounding oddly calm.

The police officer looked at me strangely. “Okay, well them I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

The cop left, and I returned to looking out the window. There were three cops standing around. Then I saw one cross the street and look at the fresh mud where I had buried the girl from last night.

I saw him signal to the others. I watched in horror as they took a shovel from their truck, and began digging up her grave.

I watched as they dug up the shallow grave. Then I watched as they photographed the corpse. I watched as they took her body from the grave and put it in the medical examiner’s van.

I just sat at the window for the rest of the day, just staring out at the courtyard.

Late at night, ten minutes to midnight, in fact, there was another knock at the door. I opened the door to see the police officer from earlier standing there.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Helen Jenkins,” he said. He listed my rights. Then he turned me around and cuffed me. He led me down the hall to the door, putting me in the backseat of his police car. I didn’t say a word as he led me away.

He took me to the Detroit jail. I sat behind the bars as I waited. Water dripped from the faucet in the corner, and it was torture. It seemed like days before they came back to me.

The police man led me to an interrogation room. Then he left me there. I waiting, watching my reflection in the mirrored wall. I didn’t move except to breathe. I didn’t want to face the consequences of what I had done, but there was no avoiding it now.

In what seemed years, a man walked in the door and sat down in the chair across from me. He just sat there for a few minutes. Then he swallowed and said, “You’re in a lot of trouble. If you tell us why, we might be able to cut some time off your sentence.”

I looked at him. “We both know that’s a lie,” I stated bluntly.

“So you’re a smart one. You know you’re in a lot of trouble and we can’t do anything to take some time off your sentence,” he said.

I just nodded.

“Well, why did you kill Helen?” the man said.

“Who?”

“The girl your neighbors saw you with last night.”

“Because I love her,” I told him. I looked at him strangely. Why did he make me state the obvious?

“You mean loved, not love. You killed Helen,” he told me.

“No, her name is Sally, and she’s still alive.”

“No, she’s dead. Her name was Helen. Who’s Sally?” he asked.

“My girlfriend,” I replied.

The man flipped through his papers. He looked at a sheet of paper and pursed his lips. “Sally is gone. She went missing,” he said.

“Yes, she did.”

“Well, your answers are making no sense—” the man was cut off by a knock at the door.

The man walked to the door and talked to the man at the door. He spoke for a moment with the man, then returned to his seat.

“Okay, we need to talk. We used ground penetrating radar, and do you know how many bodies we found in the empty lot across from your apartment building?” he asked, sounding angry.

“How many?” I inquired. There should be three in total.

“Seventeen, the oldest being your girlfriend, Sally. All of the women buried there bore a resemblance to her. Helen was just the freshest corpse,” he stated.

There shouldn’t have been that many corpses…but wait. There were more girls…I remembered them. Between the girl I killed last night and the second girl, there had been fourteen others. I remembered their deaths. I smiled as I remembered the way they had struggled as I had drown them all. I had killed them all. I had killed them because they were reincarnations of Sally. I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes till midnight. I smiled.

“What kind of sick twisted woman are you?” the man asked, repulsed.