Red

The neighbors have started to look at me funny. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m sweating in the blistering cold in my shorts and tank top, or because there’s a giant cut on my face from when that bitch scratched me two nights ago. Either way, I could smell their suspicions radiating off their skin--and it smells like sweat and old chalk--and I can’t stand it. So I make it a point to buy Mrs. Garretson a new wind chime for her every growing noisy collection. One day. One day I’ll pull every fuckin chime from every fuckin string and gag her with them.

But for now, I settle with a reassuring smile and a nod before I slink back into the safety of my white-washed house for the rest of the evening.

I’ve started to get sloppy. This is unacceptable. The problem with other’s like me is their sloppiness. Mostly it’s ego. Sloppiness, disorganization, and ego. That’s why they have all been caught. They always think they are smarter than the cops, quicker, one step ahead. You can never assume you are smarter than anyone else. The moment you forget your own humanity is the moment you are pressed up against a blue car with red and blue lights splashed across your face. Calling out to newspaper. Begging for attention. Amateurs.

You have to think like a detective. Like a normal person. Who would they suspect first? See, being the quiet kid doesn’t work anymore. No. In this generation, it’s the quiet kid you suspect first. The one who sits in the corner and draws weird red sketches of demons and mutilation. Can’t be that kid. That’s the one that gets weird looks. And when they shoot up the school, the weeping classmates swear that he was such a quiet kid and didn’t see it coming. Now they see it coming. Now they give you looks.

So you go to a few parties. Engage in small talk. “hey, where you from?” Kansas City.” Make up places. Make up names. Sometimes I get funny with it, “My name is Tyler Bateman.” “Freddy Myers”. “Rick James.” No one picks up on it. One time, I told some frat boy with a Heineken Light clutched in his steroid infused hand that my name was “Dexter Morgan” and he nodded and told me his name was “Chad.” Fucking Chad needed one of his muscles to burst.

But you can’t be too social either. Too many friends makes you sloppy to. Then they start asking questions like “Why do you always look so tired?” And “Where were you last night, I drove past your house and your car wasn’t there.” Too many questions. Friends are just as bad as cops.

That’s why fictional killers always get away with it, if they are the main character. Because they are programmed to already know all the steps to take to avoid capture. Because the writer, or director, wants them to live. Wants them to get away. It’s not fair. If anyone knew what I did-- what went on in the basement, just one floor down-- they wouldn’t want me to get away with it. They wouldn’t see the art…the beauty…in what I was creating.

But that was all falling apart now. Maybe the neighbors don’t immediately know there is a body laying on a gurney in my basement with maggots feasting on the open head wound as I neglect it for the time being. But if anyone ask about the slew of missing people, they will have this moment in the back of their heads. This image. Of their quirky neighbor wearing nothing but black basketball shorts and a dirty white tank top, looking disheveled and red in 40 degree weather. And that’s enough. That’s just enough.

And when did I get so sloppy? I don’t remember- no wait…I do. I remember the exact moment, time, date, I slightly faltered. When he looked at me in such the same fashion