Author: Jeff Strand
Date: 2013-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Short Stories; Thriller; Suspense; Fiction; Humor; Mystery
Description: The reprehensible man sits in the restaurant. Laughing with his friends. Entertaining them with a story about his wretched behavior. He doesn't know that somebody at another table is watching him. Somebody filled with hatred. Somebody waiting for him to be alone. Somebody with duct tape and a gun. It's a night for vengeance. And a hell of a lot more.
Publisher: Darkfuse

First Edition

Stalking You Now
© 2013 by Jeff Strand

All Rights Reserved.

A DarkFuse Release
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Other Books by Author

Benjamin's Parasite

Fangboy

Big-time thanks to my test readers for catching stuff that would make me look most stupid indeed: Tod Clark, Michael McBride, Jim Morey, and Rhonda Wilson.

“So she sets the steak down in front of me like it’s some kind of prize, and I can see right away that it’s not medium rare. And I’m just livid. She doesn’t even sit down; she just stands there, face all beaming like somebody jammed a flashlight into her skull. So I think, okay, I’ll be nice about this. I cut into this thing, and there’s no juice at all. Not a drop. It’s like every bit of moisture has been burnt out of it.”

He makes wild gestures with his fork as he tells his story. His three idiot friends are entranced. I tell myself that if there was nobody else in the restaurant, I might go over there and stab each of them in the face, just to change their imbecilic grins into screams. But there are seven other people, not counting cooks or dishwashers in the back, and I wouldn’t do such a reckless thing anyway, so I continue to watch.

“What am I supposed to do? If I say I want my steak medium rare and she brings it out medium, that’s no big deal. I’ll tell her what she did wrong and she’ll do better next time. But this thing is at least medium well, and when I come home after a hard day at work, I want to eat my dinner instead of gnaw on it, you know? So I say ‘What the hell is this?’ and she acts like I slapped her. I don’t hit women, I know better than that, and if I did, it sure wouldn’t be over a steak, but I swear she practically flinches.”

I cut into my own steak. It’s rare, just as I ordered it.

“And she starts getting all teary-eyed and she asks me if she cooked it wrong, and I say, yeah you cooked it wrong, anybody can see that. So then we have this whole deal where she’s telling me that I hurt her feelings, and she’s all boo-hoo-hoo!” He contorts his face and puts his hands to his eyes in a grotesque parody of sobbing and wiping away tears. His friends laugh knowingly, obviously having dealt with a similar annoying problem in their own lives.

“I’m not the bad guy here. It’s not like she has a job. It’s not like her kids are living with us. The only thing she had to do all day was cook dinner. Does she think I’m going to marry somebody who can’t cook a steak? And the thing is, I’m totally fine with her messing up the steak. Everybody makes mistakes. Just don’t get all weepy when I try to make sure that future steaks aren’t crap. That makes sense, right?”

His friends assure him that he’s completely in the right. One of the other mouth-breathers starts in with his own attempt at an amusing anecdote, so I try to focus on enjoying my meal. My financial situation isn’t great and I rarely eat out at all, much less at a semi-classy restaurant like this. It’s very good. I wish I could do it more often.

I eat faster than they do, so I linger over my last couple of bites while I wait for them to finish. After clearing their plates and taking their dessert order, the waiter stops at my table to ask if I would like dessert as well.

“No, no, I’d explode,” I say. I point to the ruddy-faced piece of garbage, who is laughing at something that I’m sure isn’t very funny. I speak quietly, even though they’re fully engaged in their own conversation and wouldn’t hear me. “Would I be able to send a bottle of wine over to their table?”

“Of course, sir. What kind would you like?”

I don’t know wines very well. “Is there a brand that’s cheap, but people don’t think of as cheap? I want to pay the minimum it takes for them not to think they’re getting cheap wine.”

“The wine they have been enjoying this evening is a merlot, thirty-eight dollars a bottle.”

“Can I just send over a glass?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s do that. One glass to Terrence, the big guy on the end.”

The waiter leaves. I glance over at the cherry-covered cheesecake the couple next to me is sharing and wish I’d ordered dessert.

A few minutes later, the waiter arrives at their table with their gigantic slices of cake and pie. He sets a glass of red wine down in front of Terrence, who looks confused, and when the waiter points to me, he looks even more confused. I smile and raise my water glass as a toast.

He has no idea who I am.

He awkwardly toasts me in return, and whispers something to the other guys at the table. None of them try to be subtle about staring at me. I take out my wallet, estimate the amount of the check plus a decent tip, toss a few bills on the table, and walk out of the restaurant. I feel pretty good.

* * *

If Terrence goes home, I’ll return to my hotel room, get some sleep, and resume the stalking tomorrow. But he doesn’t. Instead, he and his friends drive to a bar a few blocks away.

I wait in the parking lot for a few minutes, humming to pass the time, and then I walk inside.

The place is filled with smoke. Disgusting. I despise smoke. But I despise Terrence even more, so I walk on in. The four of them are seated at the bar. Terrence is on the end and there’s an empty stool next to him, but I don’t want to just plop down next to him. I want him to notice that I’m there on his own. The bar has Ms. Pac-Man, so I walk over to the machine and pretend to play.

I stand there for about ten minutes, but the drunken bastard doesn’t notice. I can see him in the reflection of the video game screen, so I know he’s not merely being discrete.

I abandon my original plan and just sit down next to him.

“Can I buy you another drink?” I ask.

He looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “Listen, buddy, I’m not a homophobe. If you gays want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us, that’s fine with me. I only have a problem with faggots when they’re hitting on me, so if you could find someplace else to drink, I won’t have to kick your ass.”

His friends are all watching. I wonder if he’d be talking as tough if he didn’t have backup.

“I’m hetero,” I say. “Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”

“Yeah? Who did you think I was?”

“A friend.”

“Well, now you know I’m not.”

“I apologize for the misunderstanding,” I tell him. But I don’t move from the stool. I gesture for the bartender’s attention and order a beer.

I pretend I’m not aware that Terrence is staring at me for a few moments, then I glance at him. “What?”

“I think you should sit someplace else.”

“I apologize if my mistaken identity made you uncomfortable,” I say, looking him directly in the eye. “But I’m not as young as I used to be, so once I sit down, I’m usually not inclined to get up until I finish my beer. I think you can relate. What are you, about forty-four?”

He’s exactly forty-four. And I can tell that he’s not sure if it’s a lucky guess or if I know who he is.

“Do I need to knock you off that seat?” Terrence asks.

The bartender slams my beer down in front of me. “If you guys are gonna start shit, start it someplace else.”

“We’re not starting anything,” I say.

“My rent is so goddamn high I can barely keep the place open as it is,” says the bartender, who apparently was in the mood to rant and waiting for something to set him off. “I don’t need to spend extra money paying for whatever damage you apes cause.”

“We’re not starting anything,” I repeat. I’m unafraid of Terrence, but it’s not in my plan to get punched. I take out my wallet, pull out my last three bills, and toss them on the counter.

“It’s three fifty,” the bartender says.

Crap. This is awkward. I don’t have fifty cents. The whole point is to intimidate Terrence, and not being able to pay for my beer isn’t going to help me accomplish that. Fuck.

I feel myself break into a cold sweat, but it’s dark in here and I’m sure Terrence can’t tell. I look at the bartender, then I look at Terrence. “He’ll pay for the difference,” I say, and then I quickly—but not too quickly—slide off the stool and walk out of the bar.

I hope the four of them don’t come out after me. Having eavesdropped on their restaurant conversation, I know his friends are creeps, but they don’t deserve to meet the same fate that awaits Terrence. Few people do. When I decide to take my revenge, it’s going to be extremely unpleasant for him.

Does he have even the slightest idea who I am?

He’s never seen me. The reprehensible monster probably doesn’t even know he ruined my life twenty-five years ago. Probably thought he was safe. Probably never looks back over his shoulder, or in the closet, or under the bed.

I’ve spent half my life being afraid because of him.

But not anymore.

They don’t come out of the bar. I wonder if one of his friends convinced him it wasn’t worth it, or if they all laughed and went back to their drinking. I wonder if he actually paid the fifty cents.

I wonder if he’s scared, just a little.

* * *

Breaking into his car is easy. Waiting for him to return to it is hard. I’ve got a small backpack with some emergency supplies, like duct tape, but I didn’t bring anything to entertain me while I sit there. After three hours, I start to worry that maybe he’d been responsible enough to call a cab, but finally I see him stumbling back toward the vehicle. Two of his friends are with him. The third left an hour ago.

I duck down in the backseat. It’s dark in the parking lot, but if he glances in the back, he’ll see me. His drunken staggering is almost cartoonish, so I don’t think he’ll look. If he does, I’ll have to show him the gun I’m holding. I hope he won’t look.

He doesn’t look. I can hear the clink of metal on metal as his first two attempts to unlock the door fail. This car is last year’s model. He doesn’t need an actual key; he could unlock it by pressing a button. Either he lost the keyless entry button or he’s too drunk to remember he even has it.

He finally achieves this amazing feat of dexterity and slides into the car. The reek of smoke and beer follows him immediately, and I feel a little sick. How much smoke stench can one body absorb?

Terrence slams his door shut and starts the engine, getting it right on the first try. We back out of the parking space. I’m not thrilled by the idea of riding in a car with somebody who is drunk off his ass, since having us both die in a grisly car accident would make for an unsatisfying revenge. But I’ll trust his ability to get us to the first traffic light without causing our demise.

He turns left onto the street.

I’m right behind you, Terrence, you oblivious waste of human flesh. You have no idea how many times I’ve killed you in my mind, how many ways I have taken you apart, how much of your blood has run between my fingers.

I could sit up and put a bullet into the back of his intoxicated head right now, but that’s no good. He needs to understand what he’s done to me. And he needs to realize that he most assuredly, most positively, most definitely did not get away with it.

While he’s suffering, he needs to know why.

Terrence is either having very good luck with getting green lights or he’s just running the red ones. We go nearly twelve blocks before he finally stops.

The moment he does, I sit up. He gasps and starts to turn around in his seat. I point my revolver at his face.

It’s close enough that if he had really good reflexes, he could knock it right out of my hand. But I doubt he has good reflexes even when he’s sober.

“I’ve got money,” he says.

“I know,” I tell him. “Did you pay my fifty cents?”

“No. I mean, yes.”

“Which is it?”

“I would have paid. The bartender didn’t ask for it.”

“All right.”

“My wallet’s in my back pocket.”

“I’ll steal it later. When the light’s green, drive. Slowly. No turns. No sudden stops. Do not take your hands off the wheel. Do not look at any other drivers, and do not try to butt-dial your phone, or I will shoot you. I didn’t say kill you. I said shoot you. I’m not looking for this to become a torture situation, but that’s entirely up to you.”

His disgusting body quivers as he succumbs to tears. “Please, just take the money.”

“No.”

“You can even have the car.”

“I don’t want your car. You’ve been DUI’ing in it.”

“Please…”

“Stop the begging. In fact, do not speak. The only way you’re going to live through this is if you stay quiet and follow my instructions.”

I’m lying. There’s not a chance in hell I’ll let him live through this. But I’m not quite ready for him to know the end is inevitable. I want us to be staring deep into each other’s eyes at his moment of realization.

“The light’s green,” I say. “Drive.”

He drives. I really hope he doesn’t swerve or try anything stupid. I’m confident that I’ve got the situation under control, but I’m only human, and a scared, drunk guy like him might try something insane, like plowing into a fire hydrant.

“Just stay calm,” I tell him, switching from my menacing voice to something more soothing. “We’ll get through this.”

He’s sobbing. I should be enjoying this, but it’s actually kind of pathetic and off-putting. I almost want to pop a bullet into him right now, but no, I’d regret that.

We drive for a couple of minutes before he speaks again. “My wife is going to wonder where I am.”

“You don’t have a wife. You have a live-in girlfriend named Mindy. Are you trying to make yourself sound less expendable?” That’s kind of clever for a drunk guy, but I’m not in the mood to appreciate cleverness. “Do you want me to kill you right now for being a liar?”

“I got mixed up.”

“I’m sure you did. Did you tell Mindy you were going out drinking with the boys? Or would that compromise your dominance over her?”

“Is this about her?”

It’s not. “Maybe.”

“It only happened once. I barely touched her.” Now he’s blubbering. “Did she tell you how she was acting? Did she tell you what she said? You would have done the same thing!”

“Wow. I thought you were a clever drunk, but now you’re blurting out stupid confessions. Stick to soft drinks, asshole. Did you tell her you were on your way home? Don’t lie to me, because I’ll check your call history.”

“No. I didn’t want to wake her up.”

“Good.”

Knowing that Terrence is a wife beater should make me feel even better about what I’m going to do to him, but I honestly don’t care. Wife beater, child molester, pet killer…it doesn’t matter to me. Hell, I don’t even care if he spends every waking moment doing charity work to benefit legless orphans, or if he’s on the verge of curing six or seven major diseases.

All I care about is what he did to me. I’m a very focused person.

Fortunately, he doesn’t try anything stupid, and it’s not too long before his sobbing turns into simple weeping. I think a silver car is following me for a couple of minutes, but just as I start to become concerned it makes a right turn.

After we’ve been driving for about ten minutes, I tell him to pull into the parking lot of a strip mall. When I checked it out this morning, the mall looked like it had been abandoned for months, and most of the windows have been broken out, so it’s safe to assume that there won’t be any security. Anyway, we won’t be here very long.

I tap him with the barrel of the gun to make sure he doesn’t forget about it, then I get out of the car. I step far enough away from the driver’s-side door that he can’t fling it open and bash me with it, and tell him to get out.

He does so without protest.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asks.

I shake my head. “You’re riding in the trunk. Unlock it and get in. Do it quick.” The longer he’s driving at gunpoint, the more risk of something going wrong, but he doesn’t need an explanation.

To his credit, he immediately hurries to the back of the vehicle, unlocks the trunk, and raises the lid. He’s probably desperately hoping this really is about money, and that if he cooperates, he’ll escape with his life.

He’s not exactly nimble, so it’s difficult for him to climb into the trunk, but he does so without it being too embarrassing of a spectacle and I slam the lid shut.

Then I realize that Terrence still has the fucking car keys.

I refuse to panic. I don’t remember either one of us locking the car doors, so I’ll be able to pull the lever from inside and pop it open again. It was a dumb mistake, an unacceptably sloppy moment, but at least I didn’t screw up in a manner that could get me killed.

The driver’s-side door is indeed unlocked. Thank freaking God. I open the trunk, point the gun at Terrence’s cowering body, and order him to throw me the keys.

He does.

I slam the trunk shut again.

I can’t believe I let something like that happen. But now my concentration is back, one hundred percent, and it certainly won’t happen again.

I get in the car, start the engine, and drive away.

* * *

It takes about half an hour to get there. During the drive, my anxiety level is high but manageable. Terrence’s girlfriend is probably fast asleep. Maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s worried. Maybe she called one of his friends, who told her when he left the bar. Maybe the friend didn’t say a word, covering for Terrence in case he was off with a mistress, but is now worried about his drunken buddy. Maybe.

But however it worked out, the cops aren’t going to be actively searching for a forty-four-year-old who hasn’t come home after a night of boozing it up. It’s possible his girlfriend or friends reported him as a drunk driver, but not likely.

I’m not concerned.

We get to the storage unit. I pull right up to the sliding metal door and put the car into park. I doubt that Terrence will be dumb enough to pound on the trunk and cause a ruckus, but it won’t matter if he is, because nobody is around to hear.

I get out of the car and unlock the sliding door. The storage unit is a huge one, big enough to comfortably store four automobiles, so I’m able to raise the door, get back in the car, and drive right in.

I turn off the engine. We wouldn’t want to get carbon monoxide poisoning, right? I get out of the car, then pull down the door, casting us into complete darkness.

I used to love the dark.

There’s not much in the storage unit, so I don’t have to worry about tripping as I walk to the far corner and turn on the lamp. The light is nothing more than a soft glow; creepy and appropriate.

I unlock the trunk and raise the lid.

“Get out,” I say.

He climbs out of the trunk. Then he falls flat on his face. I’d laugh at him, but of course his legs would have fallen asleep after being confined in such a small place for so long, and it’s not his fault. I don’t help him up, though. I wait for the feeling to return to his legs, then force him to sit down in a wooden chair.

He says nothing as I tie him up. Handcuffing him to something would be quicker and easier, but I like the old-fashioned feel of tying up a captive. I feel a rush of satisfaction with each knot.

I’ve got him. Finally, I’ve got him.

“Do you know who I am?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“No idea?”

“No, sir.”

He’s being polite now. Adorable.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear, I have no idea. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“No. I do not. Trust me. I’ve spent a lot of time staring at a picture of your ugly face.”

“Then who are you? What did I do to you?”

“Where were you on July twentieth, 1988?”

Terrence’s eyes widen. He may not remember the exact date, but he sure as hell knows what happened in the summer of 1988.

“I don’t understand,” he says, sounding confused and panicked. “I don’t know you. I’ve never met you.”

“No, but you took everything from me.”

“I didn’t do anything to you!”

“Bullshit! Bull.
Shit.” I’m starting to become too angry. I can’t let this become about rage. It’s supposed to be calculated. Diabolical. A perfect revenge.

“You’ve got the wrong guy, I mean it!”

“Say that again. See what happens.”

“I didn’t hurt anyone!”

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

“No!”

He’s lying. He has to have figured it out by now.

But I force a smile. I walk over to a small shelf, which is empty except for one item.

I hold up the axe.

Suddenly he understands everything.

This son of a bitch, this worthless hog of a man, knows exactly what he did. He remembers being amazed that his homemade fake ID got him past the bouncer and into the club. He remembers convincing a sweet young girl named Amber to leave with him. He remembers that Amber was more than a little tipsy, and up for anything he had in mind. He remembers his frustration when she said they couldn’t go back to her place, because if her roommate heard them fooling around, she’d tell Amber’s boyfriend. He remembers wishing he didn’t still live at home with his parents.

He remembers telling the police all of this.

He remembers driving around, trying to find a place where they could park. He remembers getting the idea, and not thinking Amber would be okay with it, and being happily surprised when she’s not only okay with it, she’s enthusiastic.

He remembers going to the storage facility where he makes minimum wage. He remembers thinking how naughty and dangerous it feels to unlock somebody’s private storage unit (he could get fired!) (this was so illegal!) and take a willing girl inside. It’s completely dark. It’s so exciting.

He definitely remembers fucking her, though he described it as “being intimate” to the reporters.

And no matter how long he lives, he won’t forget her fumbling through her purse for a postcoital cigarette and flicking on the lighter flame. He won’t forget discovering the bodies.

I killed those eight people with an axe, but I didn’t chop them up. I used the blunt side to bash their heads into unrecognizable muck. It’s why the press dubbed me the Flatside Killer, easily one of the worst nicknames ever given to a serial killer.

Terrence called his boss, and then the police.

I’d rented the storage unit under a fake name, of course, and I’d made sure there was nothing connecting my victims, who ranged in ages from twenty-two to sixty-four. Some were men and some were women; I didn’t care, as long as they broke when I hit them.

No matter how cautious I’d been and how carefully I’d tried to cover my tracks, the big loose end with my murder spree was that I’d kept the bodies. Sure, I’d embalmed them to eliminate the smell, both to avoid detection and for my own benefit, but they were right there on the canvas, all eight of them, bodies arranged in my own obscene little attempt at art.

I couldn’t very well hang around in the United States with the FBI investigating a pile of corpses, so I paid a ridiculous amount of money and got myself a new identity in Mexico.

It turned out that either I was really good at what I did, or the authorities were really bad. I was never identified as the killer, at least not in a way I ever heard about.

But I spent twenty-five years keeping my head down and being afraid.

Not anymore.

I gently prod his nose with the blunt end of the axe. “Figure it out yet?”

“You can’t hold that against me!” Terrence insists. “I didn’t know you! I didn’t do anything!”

“Did the Flatside Killer ever strike again?” I ask him, prodding him again, harder this time. Not hard enough to break his nose but hard enough to leave a red mark. “Do you know what it’s like to have to give up that kind of euphoria? Do you know what it’s like to spend every waking moment worrying the police are going to break down your door?”

“But why me? Why not the cops? Why not the lab guys? Why do you have to come after me? I had nothing against you! I didn’t even know who you were!”

“I can’t kill everybody who was involved with the case. That would be ridiculous, Terrence. You’re the one who started it all. You didn’t have to say anything. You could have just left.”

I feel like I’m starting to sound a little bit insane. I understand it’s not really his fault, and it’s crazy to think he wouldn’t call the police. But I despise him. I don’t care how irrational it is; if my mind worked normally, I wouldn’t have killed eight people for the fun of it.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asks.

“I’m going to bash your face in with this axe. Eventually I’ll break through your skull into your brain, but I’m going to start with the lower half of your face and keep hitting until you have no jaw left. If I had some kind of injection that would keep you conscious through the whole process, I’d use it, but fortunately for you I don’t, so you may get lucky and pass out at some point before you die.”

Terrence vomits all over his chest and the ropes.

He coughs and sputters, and for a second I think he’s actually choking on it and I’m going to have to do something, but finally he speaks. “Why now?”

There’s no reason not to tell him, since he’ll be dead within minutes. But I don’t want to. He doesn’t need to know I had a heart attack—a minor one, it turned out, but scary as hell—and that as I lay on the floor of my hovel, unable to breathe, I thought about how I’d wasted the last quarter-century of my life.

That makes me sound weak.

Terrence is going to think many things about me in the moments before he dies, but none of them will be that I am weak.

I raise the axe and take a slow-motion practice swing to make sure the blade will strike him directly in the chin. It has to be a downward angle. I don’t want bone fragments shooting up too far and ending my revenge too soon.

There are quite a few things I could say right now, such as “Any last words?” or “I’ll see you in hell,” but there’s really no need to say anything. This is going to be the most satisfying moment I’ve experienced in twenty-five years. I may even get emotional afterward, but that’s okay, there’s no shame in that.

I can’t wait to hear the way he—

Somebody knocks.

I freeze.

We both turn our heads toward the metal door of the storage unit, as if looking at the door would provide any clue about who was knocking on the other side. I glance back at Terrence, and I can tell that he’s trying to decide if he should shout out.

He shouldn’t. He really, truly should not.

“Don’t make a sound,” I whisper, lowering the axe. “If they go away, I’ll let you go.”

It’s a completely inept lie. No way will Terrence believe that. Still, if he thinks he can extend his life just a while longer…

“Help me!” he shouts.

I curse and slam the axe into his head.

Not only is the trajectory wrong, so that I strike him right in the temple, but the axe is turned the wrong way, and the blade sinks several inches into his skull.

His mouth drops open. A thick trickle of blood runs down the side of his head.

I let go of the axe. It pops out of his head and falls to the cement floor with a loud clatter.

Whoever is outside knocks again, more vigorously this time.

I want to just drop to the floor, curl into the fetal position, and cry for a while. But that would be pointless. Though I’ve been screwed out of a worthy revenge, I’m not going to give up and go to prison over this.

There’s too much dead weight to get him into the trunk of the car quickly. Instead I shove the chair onto its side and throw a drop cloth over him. Somebody who is specifically looking for a dead body will immediately figure out where Terrence’s corpse is hiding, but maybe this is just a nosy security guard.

I wedge the gun into the back of my pants. Not a safe place for it. I hope I can talk my way out of this.

I slide open the door.

A woman is standing there. Her silver car is parked in front of the storage unit. She’s blonde, cute, and way too young for a repulsive cretin like Terrence. I’ve never actually seen Mindy in person, but I’ve seen a couple of pictures.

She’s been crying and she looks scared.

As far as I can tell, she’s not armed, though anything could be in her purse.

“Where is he?” she asks.

I decide to respect her intelligence and not pretend I don’t know who she’s talking about. But first I need to make sure I don’t get shot. “Put down the purse,” I tell her.

She drops the purse without hesitation. Obviously there wasn’t a weapon in there. She didn’t come here expecting to do battle with an axe-wielding maniac.

No way does she know who I am.

“Where is he?” she repeats.

Her eyes dart to the drop cloth, then back to me.

How much does she know? Did she see him driving at gunpoint? Did she see me force him into the trunk? She was pounding on the door when Terrence shouted; is it possible she didn’t hear him?

It’s no great tragedy if I have to kill her. She looks like a perfectly good victim. But I really dislike the idea of murdering somebody just to compensate for my carelessness. Back when the Flatside Killer was actively slaying, there was never any collateral damage. I only killed my intended prey.

“He’s not here,” I say.

“I heard him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard him shout ‘Help me!’ I know he’s in here.” When she wipes a tear from her eye, her hand is shaking, though quite honestly she seems more angry than upset. I feel that if I underestimate her and let my guard down, I could end up with an axe in my skull.

“You heard wrong.” Obviously, I’m attempting to buy some time while I figure out a way to get out of this that doesn’t involve a second bloody corpse.

She looks directly into my eyes. “I won’t say anything.”

The tone of her voice and her pleading expression surprise the hell out of me, because I believe her. She’s not just trying to save her life.

“Really?” I ask. “You think I’ve got your boyfriend in here with me, and you’re not going to say anything?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Did you think I just happened to be driving by this place? I was following him. I know what’s going on. I know what Terrence was doing. It was only a matter of time before he fucked the wrong man’s wife.”

I like that. As far as incorrect assumptions go, it’s one of the best ones she could have come up with. Of course, I’m not wearing a wedding band, so…

“Girlfriend,” I correct.

“Can I see him?”

“You don’t want to. Trust me.”

She points to the drop cloth. “He’s under there, right?”

“Yes. He’s not waking up. You don’t need to know more than that.”

Mindy walks into the storage unit. The axe is underneath the drop cloth with Terrence’s body, so I should probably tackle her or something, but instead I just watch carefully. If she lifts the cloth, I can count on at least a couple of seconds of shock, and I’ll tackle her then.

She walks up to the drop cloth. Then she kicks it. Hard.

She kicks it again and again, and I start to worry that she’s going to kick the axe and break her foot. I can see a couple of red blotches starting to form on the fabric.

Finally she lets out a sob and steps away. She stumbles over to the side of the storage unit and leans against the wall.

I really don’t know how to respond. Should I try to comfort her? Should I kill her?

“How did you do it?” she asks.

“Axe to the head.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” She wipes her eyes and chuckles. “Wow. I assumed you shot him or something.”

“You would have heard a gunshot.”

“They don’t make silencers anymore?”

“I’m not a professional assassin. Just an angry boyfriend.”

“I guess. You’ve got to be pretty damn angry to whack somebody in the head with an axe. Saved me the trouble of killing the son of a bitch myself, but I couldn’t have used an axe.”

“What would you have used?”

“I don’t know. Poison, maybe.”

“So, what, you would have followed him and thrown poison on him?” I’m trying to be funny, but it doesn’t really come off as a joke.

“I wasn’t going to kill him tonight. All I wanted to do was catch him in the act. When I saw you in the car with him, I knew exactly what was happening.”

“You’re pretty good at following cars.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been riding with me. It was pure luck, I promise you.” She lets out a sudden hysterical giggle and quickly slaps her hand over her mouth. She takes a few quick, panicked breaths through her nose, then lowers her hand again. “God, I can’t believe he’s dead.”

“Do you feel bad about it?”

“I feel like I should feel bad about it.”

“Don’t shed any tears. He deserved what he got.”

She shakes her head. “Not really. Not for screwing around. He was a cheating, woman-slapping bastard, but he didn’t deserve to have his head chopped in half.”

“It wasn’t chopped in half.”

“What did you do to your girlfriend?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell her what you did?”

“Hell no.”

“So what’s going to happen?”

“Why are you asking so many questions?”

“Why wouldn’t I ask questions?” She puts her hand on her belly. “You just murdered the father of my baby!”

“Oh.” I should probably say something more profound than that, but suddenly my vocabulary has dropped to almost nothing. “I didn’t know.”

“Neither did he.”

When I opened the sliding door, I knew things would be tense. I hadn’t imagined that they might also be socially awkward.

“Would you have done things differently if you’d known?” she asks.

“Maybe.”

“Then it’s good you didn’t know.”

I’d like her to leave now. I’m the axe murderer, but she’s creeping me out. And it’s not very intelligent for us to stand here with the door open and a dead body lying on the floor, even if it’s covered.

“I have to shut the door now,” I say. “I’ve got to get him into the trunk and bury the body.”

“Where?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“That’s fair. But we should get our story straight.”

“You’re not my accomplice. We’re not here to provide alibis for each other. Just pretend you didn’t go out tonight and don’t say anything to anybody.”

“I want to help you.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I need more closure. I can’t leave it like this.”

“Like what? He’s dead! I killed him and you probably shattered half of his bones. How much more closure can you possibly need? He’s out of your life. Go home.”

She doesn’t move. I should kill her.

I should have killed her as soon as I raised the door. Only a complete idiot would let her live. The second I discovered she was not a heavily armed police officer, I should have bashed in her skull.

Should have done it before I knew she was pregnant.

That shouldn’t factor into my decision. I don’t care about things like that. I would never do any of the sick stuff some killers do when a woman has a fetus inside of her, but if it dies with her, that’s the way it goes.

Why isn’t she leaving?

“I want to help you get rid of the body.”

“Most people try to distance themselves from crimes. Why would you want to incriminate yourself? You could go to prison! Pretend you never saw me, for God’s sake.”

“I’m not good at pretending.”

Okay. She has to die. There’s really no other option here. I tried to not have to kill her, but she had to be a pain in the ass, so now I’ve got to do it, right? The only question is, do I pop a bullet in her brain and get it over with, or should I do something more fulfilling?

I got screwed out of my proper revenge against Terrence, so I’m leaning toward the latter, but it’s also risky to keep stretching this out. I should be long gone from here by now.

She’s staring at me. She thinks I’m trying to decide if I should let her help, and not if I should kill her quickly or slowly.

“Why won’t you let me help?”

“Because.”

“Unless you’re five, that’s not a reason.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Maybe you don’t need my help, but couldn’t you use it? Isn’t it easier to get a body into the trunk if two people are carrying it? Wouldn’t it be faster for both of us to dig a grave instead of just you?”

“You’re pregnant.”

“So what?”

“Pregnant women shouldn’t be lifting dead bodies.”

“It’s not like I’m eight months along. I’m not even showing. That’s a stupid reason.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve offended her. I feel kind of bad about suggesting that she’s too delicate for this kind of work.

“I’m sorry.”

I cannot believe I just apologized. Jesus.

Why won’t she leave me alone?

“It’s okay. Let me help.”

If this continues much longer, I’m going to bash myself with the axe, so I either have to kill her or let her be my cleanup assistant.

Fine. She can come. But if she thinks we’re going on some kind of cross-country killing spree together, she’s sorely mistaken.

“Okay, you can help me get him into the trunk,” I tell her. I’m prepared for her to let out a “Woo!” and high-five me, but she simply nods. “We need to wrap him up more tightly in the drop cloth, but I’ll do that, unless you want to roll around in there with him or something.”

She frowns. “Why would you say that?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? Why would you make a comment like that?”

“It was a joke.”

“It didn’t sound like a joke. Are you saying I’m some kind of deviant? That I’d like rolling around with my dead boyfriend’s corpse?”

I consider whether to point out that “dead boyfriend’s corpse” is redundant. I decide I might as well. “You don’t need to say ‘dead boyfriend’s corpse.’ You could say ‘dead boyfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’s corpse’ and get across the same meaning.”

I’m not anal-retentive about grammar issues. I just don’t like that she thinks she’s allowed to be offended by my joke. She doesn’t have to laugh, but we’re not equal partners here, and she can keep her moral outrage to herself.

“Let it go,” I say.

“I just want to know what you meant.”

“I meant to add a bit of humor to an ugly situation. I’m sorry it upset your delicate sensibilities.” It doesn’t count as a real apology, since I’m clearly being sarcastic. “If you don’t like the way I make conversation, then you can leave.”

“All right,” she says. “I apologize. No, I do not wish to roll around in a drop cloth with my late boyfriend, but I will be glad to assist you in wrapping the cloth more tightly so that his bodily fluids do not leak out.”

Her sarcasm is somewhat more bitter than mine, but that’s okay.

“Then let’s do it.”

I don’t want to carry around a heavy body when I’ve got a gun wedged in my pants. Mindy looks scared but not surprised when I take it out. I walk to the far end of the storage unit and set it down in the corner. If she’s stupid enough to make a run for it, I’m confident I can take her down in plenty of time.

It’s a high-quality, absorbent drop cloth, but I know we are going to get some blood on ourselves, even if she hadn’t kicked the shit out of Terrence. Fortunately, we are able to get him tightly wrapped without too much of a mess—a few drops on my shirt, and a trickle on Mindy’s pants. And though I hate to admit it, it is much easier to get the body into the trunk with somebody else helping.

She spits into the trunk. “Asshole,” she says.

“You realize you just spat DNA in there, right?”

She freezes. Puts her hand over her mouth. Then uses the bottom of her shirt to wipe the saliva off the drop cloth. “We’re going to burn this, aren’t we?”

“Well, we are now.” I don’t really care about my DNA being all over the scene, since I have no criminal record and I’ll be back in Costa Rica before the cops find anything. If Mindy ends up in prison, hey, she should have listened when I told her to leave.

I pick up a shovel, purchased two weeks ago but not used yet, and a flashlight. I toss them into the trunk with the corpse, and then I close the lid. Mindy walks around Terrence’s car and gets in the passenger seat. I get into the driver’s seat and stare at the steering wheel for a moment, trying to decide if I want to get into yet another argument, or whether I should just drive out of here.

“Do you really want to leave your car here?”

“I’d rather not, but I also don’t want you to leave me.”

“You can follow.”

“How do I know you won’t try to lose me?”

“I didn’t lose you on the way here.”

“You didn’t know I was there.”

I put on my seat belt. “You know what? I don’t really care if you ride along or not. If you’re not worried about your safety, I’m sure as hell not going to be.”

She fastens her own seat belt. “Good. Thanks.”

I turn on the engine, then check the rearview mirror. “Except your car is blocking me.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll move it.”

Mindy quickly gets out of the car and into her own vehicle. It’s hard to believe things went so smoothly back when I was a thrill-killer. Now I feel like the kind of buffoon who deserves to get caught.

She moves her car, just enough to let me out.

I back up, and she hurriedly shuts off her engine and gets out, clearly believing I’m going to drive off and leave her. I almost think she’ll jump in front of my car—well, Terrence’s car, technically—before she lets that happen.

But I wasn’t going to leave her. I apply the brakes, and she gets in.

We drive off.

And…I realize I left the gun behind. I don’t need it right now or even want it, but that’s another blunder to add to tonight’s tally. This woman is really messing with my mind.

* * *

She gives me exactly thirty seconds of peace—I actually count them—before the next question. “What are you going to do to your girlfriend?”

“You already asked that.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You didn’t answer truthfully.”

“I’m not going to do anything to her.”

“Bullshit. You expect me to believe you found out she was having an affair with Terrence, and you’re so angry that you murdered him, but you’re not going to say a peep to her?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“What are you going to say when she asks about him?”

“There would be absolutely no reason for her to ask me about him. I didn’t know him. She’s not going to say ‘Hey, this guy I was fucking has gone missing. Got any details?’ And I didn’t kill him out of anger. Or revenge. I killed him because I didn’t want to lose her. So, yes, I’m going to pretend everything is fine, and hope it was a one-time thing.”

Mindy nods. “Okay. I can respect that.”

“Thank you.”

“But let’s say you did want to teach her a lesson.”

“I don’t.”

“I know you don’t, but hypothetically. What if you came home from burying Terrence and caught her in bed with another guy. No, let’s say two guys. What if you came home and she was in bed with two guys?”

“Are these your own fantasies we’re talking about?”

“Maybe that’s taking it too far. We’ll say one guy. You come home and you see a strange car parked in the driveway. You think that’s kind of weird since it’s so late, but you’re not too concerned. Then as you put your hand on the doorknob you get this weird feeling, like something is going on in there you’re not supposed to know about, and you can’t explain why, but you turn the doorknob very slowly, trying not to make a sound, trying to sneak into your own house.”

“I don’t live with her,” I say.

Mindy ignores me. “As soon as you step inside, you can hear noises coming from upstairs. Bedsprings creaking. Moans. You know exactly what you’re hearing, but you don’t want to believe it, so you very quietly make your way up the stairs. You walk down the hallway, and the noises are getting louder, and you see she’s left the bedroom door open.”

“Even if I did live with her, you’ve got the floor plan completely wrong.”

“You look in the bedroom, and there they are. She’s on top, riding him almost as if she’s trying to give you the best possible view of what’s happening. You just stand there in shock. You can’t believe what you’re seeing. And then she notices you. Your eyes lock…and she doesn’t even stop.”

“Keeping it credible, huh?”

“What would you do?”

“So we’re dealing with some sort of alternate reality in which I could walk in on her cheating on me, and she wouldn’t even be polite enough to pause for a moment?”

“Sure.”

“Then I suppose I’d ask her to stop.”

“Okay, let’s dial it back a bit.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“You come home and catch them in the act. You wait for him to leave—”

“I wouldn’t wait for him to leave.”

“In this scenario you do.”

“There’s no scenario in which I would.”

“Will you stop taking this so literally? I’m not asking you to sign off on a plan of action, for God’s sake. I’m just curious. So let’s say you’re so shocked you can’t react, and then when the guy leaves, you’re alone with your girlfriend. What do you do?”

“Nothing. I love her. Anything I did would be to him. Despite what you might think of me, I don’t hurt women. That’s not how I was raised.”

“Okay.” She’s silent for a very brief, merciful moment. “Do you want to know what I would do?”

“If you had a lesbian girlfriend who cheated on you?”

“Sure.”

“What would you do? Shove a broken bottle into her face?”

“Nope. No physical violence at all. All I would do is let her know that I knew.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“And you felt the need to share that pathetic plan with me?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t come out and say anything. I’d be subtle. I’d say one of the neighbors complained that a strange car in our driveway was blocking the sidewalk, and I’d pretend I believed whatever excuse she came up with. And maybe every couple of days or so, just as the guilt starts to fade, I’d figure out some other subtle way to remind her, just enough that she suspected I knew, but couldn’t be sure.”

She’s really terrible at this. I don’t want to debate her, because that would encourage her to continue speaking, but what she’s saying is ridiculous. “Really? Having murdered her lover, you’re going to throw around hints that you were involved?”

“We didn’t murder her lover. You’re not paying attention.”

“So he’s still around? She’s still sleeping with him?”

“Yes. Or she was, until the guilt began to eat her alive, and she got so paranoid that she had to break it off.”

“Then let me explain the big difference between us. You, apparently, would enjoy a relationship where you torment somebody, getting your thrills from a long-term revenge. That’s fine. If you want a sour, unpleasant romance, I’m not going to judge you. Me, I prefer to remove the element causing the problems, so the relationship can be fixed.”

“Do you really think Terrence was the problem in your relationship?”

“His penis was, at least.”

“That’s pretty naïve of you. Don’t you think there’s anything you could do differently, besides axe-murder her boy-toy? When was the last time you brought her flowers?”

For a split second I’m offended she would suggest I’m the one responsible for the problems in the relationship with my completely fabricated girlfriend.

I need to stop talking to her about this. If this conversation goes on, at some point there will be some sort of continuity error on my part. Not that it matters, I guess. At this point I can’t even remember why I lied to her. What difference does it make if she knows I’m the Flatside Killer?

Hell, maybe I’ve already given it away. It’s not like this was a planned-out story. She might know I’m not who I say I am. She might be toying with me.

Mindy needs to die. I’m not petty enough to murder somebody for being annoying, but if she’s one step ahead of me in this little game, then I need to get rid of her.

I don’t care if she’s pregnant.

She might not even be pregnant.

No, she’s probably really pregnant. I’d know if she was lying.

Killing a pregnant woman is basically the same as killing two people, and I have no moral issue with killing two people. Killing two people at once is kind of impressive, actually, if you take it out of context and don’t tell anybody the second person was an unborn child.

If she keeps being annoying, I’ll kill her.

No, if she stays at the same level of annoyance, I’ll spare her, but if she grows more annoying, she dies.

That’s petty.

I don’t know why I’m even worrying about this. What difference does it make why I kill somebody?

I will let her do half of the body-disposal work, and then I will bash her over the head with the shovel. If she’s proud of being a cruel person, why not give her a cruel death?

* * *

She actually lapses into silence as we continue driving. It lasts until we pull off onto a dirt road.

When fantasizing about my revenge, I’d thought about leaving Terrence in the storage unit, just like I did with my other victims. I’d almost convinced myself it was a good idea; after all, what did it matter where his corpse was found, since I would be back in hiding?

But…no. I couldn’t justify it. I would become suicidal if my crimes were discovered in the same way as before. So Terrence has to go into the ground.

Mindy looks nervous. Good. I hope she’s scared. I hope she’s terrified. I hope she’s envisioning horrible things I might do to her.

“Are we really just going to bury him?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Is that safe?”

“For him?”

“You know what I mean. Won’t he be found?”

I shrug. “Eventually, I guess.”

“And that’s a bad thing, right?”

“If I were planning to hang out here and try to resume a normal life, I guess it would be a bad thing if somebody dug up his body.”

“What about me?”

“You wanted to come along. If you were worried about being connected to his murder, perhaps you should have stayed behind. I didn’t force you into the car.”

“Take me out of the equation. Won’t animals dig up a body pretty quickly? Even if you’re planning to skip town, you don’t want something digging up the grave before you’re even on a plane, do you? Why not dismember the body and get rid of the pieces separately?”

“Do you want to dismember his body?”

“No.”

“If we bury him, he’s gone and done with. I don’t want to spend the next three months getting rid of a finger at a time.”

Mindy looks unconvinced that my plan of action is the right one. I force a grin.

“I’m kidding,” I tell her. “We’re going to bury him deep. No animals are going to dig down six feet for him. Nobody will find him. As long as you don’t phone in a confession to the police, you’ll be fine.”

She seems to trust me, and smiles with relief. “Thanks.”

* * *

Though carrying a body through the woods is awkward and difficult, especially with a shovel balanced on its chest, it’s easier than dragging one, which is what I was originally going to do.

There’s no conversation as we do this. Mindy is much better company when she doesn’t talk.

I’m getting devoured by these goddamn insects and I know she is, too. To her credit, she doesn’t complain. I want to bitch about it a little, but I don’t want to encourage her, so I suffer in silence. You’re not supposed to scratch them. I’ll be scratching my legs bloody tonight.

We don’t go too far into the woods. Maybe a quarter mile.

If I’d known I was going to have a partner in crime, I’d have brought a second shovel. Instead, I let her hold the flashlight as I dig.

She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. When she finally does speak, it’s to offer to take over the digging. I decline.

Now I almost wish she would grate on my nerves, because I’m still planning to murder her.

The digging is going quickly. I’m breathing heavily and working up enough of a sweat that I stop thinking about those wretched bugs attacking me.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take over?” she asks.

The hole is deep enough for a shallow grave, which is where I would stop if I were alone. Should I keep digging, just because I told her we’d make sure the body was never found? That seems kind of silly. Why would I even consider doing that? Why have I not already killed her? Yes, it’s convenient to let her hold the flashlight, but that’s no reason to let somebody live.

“All right,” I tell her. I step out of the grave and hand her the shovel.

She’s a good digger. Not to the point where I think “Uh-oh, she’s done this sort of thing before,” and she’s not digging as efficiently as I did, of course, but I’m impressed.

What would it be like to have a partner?

It’s a ridiculous thing to think about, but, fuck it, she’s busy digging and I might as well think about it.

I could commit the acts of murder. She could help me dispose of the bodies. Then we could make frenzied love in the deadly afterglow.

Probably not going to happen.

What would she do if I tried to hit on her? If I assured her that just because I’d murdered a human being, there was absolutely no obligation on her part, that she should in no way take this as any hint that I was seeking anything nonconsensual, what would she say?

She’d say something like “I just dug half of my boyfriend’s grave. Are you kidding me?”

She’s insane, though. At least a little bit. She might be experiencing some sort of weird sexual thrill from the whole thing, and she might be waiting for me to make a move. We could do nasty things right there in the open grave.

That would be a very appealing concept, if not for the bugs.

I bet she’s into bugs.

“Stop that,” she says.

“What?”

“You’re staring at my ass while I’m digging.”

She doesn’t say this in a playful “Tee-hee, stop staring at my shapely buttocks, you bad, bad boy!” manner. She says it in such a way as to indicate that she would really appreciate it if I would stop staring at her ass.

“I wasn’t,” I say, shocked at how embarrassed I am to have been caught.

“Do you want to take another turn?”

I shake my head. “I think that’s fine. Let’s dump him.”

She tosses the shovel aside and climbs out of the grave. We each take an end of Terrence’s body and drop him right in without ceremony. It sounds like something breaks as he hits.

“Rot in hell,” she tells him.

“Agreed,” I say.

I pick up the shovel and begin to scoop dirt back into the grave. She watches until his body is completely covered, then wanders off. Not out of sight, but far enough that she thinks I can’t tell she’s crying.

It’s okay. I was emotional after my first body disposal, and I didn’t even know the guy.

I’ll kill her after I finish filling in the grave.

That’s almost unspeakably idiotic. I should kill her now and put her in the grave. Did I seriously just consider the idea of filling in this grave, killing Mindy, and then digging a second grave for her body?

If I get caught and spend the rest of my life in prison, I kind of deserve it. God, I’m stupid.

I’ll do it humanely. I’ve never been one to torture somebody to death anyway. That’s just sadistic. I’m all in favor of ghastly violence, but there’s no reason to drag it out, unless you’re some kind of deranged sicko.

Shovel to the head. Give her a dented skull and a broken neck. She won’t even feel it. And if I don’t hit her quite right, if she falls to the ground gurgling blood and still alive, I’ll decapitate her with the shovel blade before she has too much time to suffer.

I should do it now.

Or I could let her live.

Really, truly, when you think about it, what would be the downside to dropping her off at her vehicle, shaking her hand, and wishing her well in her future endeavors?

Aside from the risk of something minor like, say, her blabbing everything to the police and sending them after me with torches, pitchforks, and semiautomatic machine guns?

There’s no decision to be made here. It’s time to stop pretending there is.

“Hey,” I call out to her. “Did you want to say something?”

“What do you mean?”

“Over the grave. Did you want to say something before I finish covering the grave? A few words for the deceased?”

“I already did. ‘Rot in hell.’”

I nod. “All right. I was just making sure.”

I add a couple more shovelfuls of dirt. Mindy curses under her breath, and then wanders back to the hole.

“It’s not like I was married to the son of a bitch. I don’t owe him anything.”

“I know.”

She looks into the grave. “Dear Terrence, if I had total control over your fate, I probably would not have gone so far as to murder you, so accept my apology, for what it’s worth. And I don’t actually hope you burn in hell, but I don’t want you in heaven either, so I hope there’s no afterlife. And I do hope that you get maggots in your eye sockets, and if that makes me a piece-of-crap person, I’m okay with it.”

“Well said,” I tell her.

My plan to smack her in the head with the shovel while she was speaking to Terrence would have been more effective if I had actually smacked her in the head with the shovel while she was speaking to Terrence.

She’s still staring into the grave.

So I offer up a mental apology that I’m not foolish enough to say out loud, even in a whisper, and then I swing the shovel.

It’s a good swing. I don’t botch the swing at all. There’s plenty of power behind it, and the aim is perfect. But she was expecting it, and she moves out of the way.

I swing again. This time I hit her. It’s not a solid hit, and it gets her in the side instead of the skull. The blow is nowhere close to fatal, not even incapacitating, though she loses her balance and tumbles into the grave.

I jump in after her. There’s probably nobody around for miles, but it’s best to kill her before she starts screaming.

She kicks me in the shin, so hard that I yelp. It feels like she cracked the fucking bone in two.

She screams.

I lift the shovel high over my head.

She kicks again, this time connecting dead center with my groin. The world goes blurry and I drop to my knees.

I let go of the shovel. I am vaguely aware of how close I come to a wacky slapstick moment where the shovel I’ve dropped bashes me on the head; however, the shovel misses me by an unknown distance and falls onto the dirt.

Mindy attacks.

We struggle. She has the advantage of my pain and disorientation, and also her vicious fingernails. But I’m stronger and have murdered people.

She’s winning.

I’m no sexist, but how the hell is she winning?

“What’s the matter with you?” she screams. “Why would you do that?”

I have no good answer at the moment.

She’s clawing at my eyes, but I have thus far avoided having them punctured.

I throw a punch at her neck that hits her shoulder. It’s a weak hit. Doesn’t slow her down at all.

I’m pulling my punches. Even down here in this grave, with the very real possibility that she might beat me in a physical fight, I’m pulling my punches. This is insane.

The punch she aims at my neck does not hit my shoulder, nor is it a weak punch. I clutch at my throat, gasping for breath.

She grabs a handful of my hair, and the next thing I know my face is deep in the soft dirt.

“Why did you betray me?” she asks, sobbing. Cognitively, I know her words are laughably corny, but they sure don’t sound corny with my face in the grave dirt.

I’m so discombobulated that I attempt to answer, which just gets me a mouthful of dirt. I try to pull my head free, and can’t believe I’m unable to do so.

“You didn’t need to do that,” she says. “This didn’t have to happen. Everything was fine.”

I discover that spitting out dirt while one’s face is being pushed into dirt is ineffective.

I can’t breathe. I’m going to suffocate here in this grave unless I summon some more strength, but now she’s on my back, pushing my head down with both hands, and I may be screwed.

My face presses into something. It could be Terrence’s dead face. The drop cloth separates us, but it’s still eerie. Is he smiling?

Would he feel avenged by the knowledge that I’m going to die facedown on top of him, or would that be a further insult to his death?

I think: insult.

I desperately need to breathe.

What an awful way to die.

I’m trying as hard as I can to escape. I may have been pulling my punches out of some deranged feelings I still can’t understand, but I am most definitely trying to get her off me now, and I can’t do it.

I need her to show mercy.

I’m fading.

I’m gone.

* * *

I haven’t left the grave.

I’m sitting up now, leaning against the dirt wall. My face is still covered with dirt, and I try to blink it out of my eyes. They burn.

My mouth tastes like mud. I push air through my nose, trying to get dirt out of my nostrils.

My hands are bound together with duct tape.

Mindy is sitting in the grave with me.

“I found your backpack in the car,” she says. “At least I assume it was yours, unless Terrence carried around a kill kit I didn’t know about. You were pretty well-prepared.” She holds up a hunting knife. “Was this in case you needed to do detail work on him?”

It’s not damning evidence. I’ve never used it on anybody. But I still don’t like her touching my things.

“It was a gift.”

“Don’t lie to me. I’m not going to let you treat me like I’m stupid. I want you to tell me who you are.”

My feet are bound together with duct tape, too, wrapped at the ankles with what seems like half a roll of the stuff. Since I couldn’t beat her when I was trying to catch her off-guard with a shovel, it seems unlikely that I’m going to turn this situation to my advantage when I’m helpless and she’s got a knife.

“I’m nobody.”

“You’re not nobody.” She wipes her eyes, which are red and swollen. “I’m not good at torture. I’ve never done it. I have no idea how to get maximum pain out of somebody, but I can cut things and break things until you talk. Please don’t make me do that.”

“I’m nobody,” I insist. “Your boyfriend was banging my girlfriend and I killed him. That’s all there is to it.” She hasn’t found anything that contradicts my story. She’s being completely irrational.

“All there was to it, except for you trying to kill me, too.”

“I needed to clean up the loose ends. Nothing personal.”

“Sure. Why would killing somebody ever have to be personal, right?” She’s fidgeting with the knife, switching from one hand to the other. “I’m not saying we had anything. No spark. Nothing to keep us together after we finished burying Terrence. But…you didn’t have to try to hurt me. You really didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“No, I really, truly am.”

I wish she’d bound my hands behind my back, so I could subtly try to free myself and take her by surprise. But my hands are in my lap. If I can get my arms around her neck, I might be okay, but that seems unlikely.

“I’m not going to get all girly with emotion on you,” she says. “I just want you to know that you didn’t have to do that.”

“I know. It was a mistake.”

“Tell me the truth about why you killed Terrence.”

“I already have.”

“You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you? Instead of giving me a straightforward answer, you’re going to make me torture it out of you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. If that’s what you feel you need to do, if you’ve crossed some sort of line to where you want to force me to give you information I don’t have, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

She wipes her eyes again. A tear runs down her cheek, leaving a narrow streak in the dirt on her face. “So let me make sure I’m one hundred percent clear on this,” she says, voice cracking a bit. “You are making the choice, on purpose, not to answer my question, so that I’m forced to try to make you talk. Is that what’s happening?”

“Don’t put this on me,” I tell her. “If you want to cut me, that’s all on you. That’s your choice. If you think you’re going to have problems with it afterward, if you think it’s going to haunt you, then maybe you shouldn’t do it.”

Can she tell I’m sweating?

Does it matter? An innocent man would sweat under these circumstances.

Mindy looks sad. Not simply resigned to what she’s going to have to do, but genuinely sad.

She holds the knife blade up to my left eye.

“I’m the Flatside Killer,” I say.

I’m not good with pain when I’m the recipient.

She lets out an incredulous laugh. “That’s who you are? How the hell did I not figure this out earlier?”

“You know me?”

“Of course I know you. Do you really think I lived with Terrence without knowing about the Flatside Killer? He used that story to hit on me at a bar.”

“I told you who I am. Please put the knife away.”

She lowers the knife away from my eyeball but keeps it out. “So, what, was he secretly trying to track you down, so you had to kill him before he discovered your true identity?”

“Nothing that elaborate.”

“Revenge?”

“Yes.”

“Revenge for telling the police after he accidentally found the bodies of people you killed?”

“Yes.”

“You think he shouldn’t have said anything? He should have just gone on with his evening as if nothing had happened?”

“What I did has nothing to do with the morality of what he did. He ruined my life. That’s all there is to it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“I prefer things that do.” She starts fidgeting with the knife again. I really wish she’d get rid of it.

“Are you going to let me go?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t want a death on your conscience. Not even somebody like me.”

She holds the knife up to my eye again. “Don’t rush me into a decision. If you rush me, I’m going with my impulse, which is to kill you. So don’t fucking rush me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What you’ve basically told me,” she says, moving the knife even closer to my eye, “is that you killed the man I love, the father of my baby, and he was never cheating on me.”

I’m feeling a bit of panic now. “You knew he was.”

“No, I suspected he was. I thought that’s what he was doing tonight. But he wasn’t.”

“He was. I promise you.”

“With who?”

“I don’t know that. But I know—”

“You don’t know anything. He might have been completely innocent.”

“He hit you.”

“He didn’t deserve to die for that.”

“I disagree.”

“You killed him because you’re a psycho serial killer. You weren’t making up for any injustice. You’re just a sadistic monster.”

I have an eye thing. I wouldn’t even be able to stick a knife in somebody else’s eye. I need her to move this knife someplace else or I’m going to lose it.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“What?”

“I could have killed you as soon as you got in my car…hell, I could have done it as soon as you walked into the storage unit. But I didn’t. I don’t understand my feelings most of the time, but I do understand this one, and I love you.”

It’s not true. Before she shoved my face in the dirt, I might have felt a mild affection toward her, but not anymore.

She’s not moving the knife.

“Fuck you,” she says. I have to admit that it’s probably the answer I deserve.

Mindy finally lowers the knife.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask.

“I’m delivering you, in a nice gift-wrapped package, to the police.”

“Really? You assisted me in the murder of your baby’s daddy and now you’re going to involve the cops?”

“I did not assist you in the murder. Your sociopath ass did that all by yourself. Helping you dispose of the body? Well, gee, that all makes sense if I tell them I knew who you were and was afraid for my life, right? I was distraught. I went along with you because I didn’t want to be in a grave, too.”

“You’d have no way of knowing who I was.”

“Is that so? My boyfriend and I meet when he tells me he was the one who found the victims of the Flatside Killer. When my boyfriend is brutally murdered, my first thought is, hey, maybe it’s the Flatside Killer. That’s so little of a stretch that I’m disgusted with myself for not thinking of it on my own.”

“It won’t work. They won’t believe you.”

“Of course they will. Even if there was a camera on me this whole time, I’d be okay. In fact, from now on, I did know you were the Flatside Killer, and you fell right into my trap. We’ll even play the heroic angle: I wouldn’t let you leave me at the storage unit because I was worried you might go after somebody else, and I wanted to keep you in my sight.”

“Again, it won’t work.”

“We’ll see. Do you know what’s worth the risk? The fame and glory associated with bringing a serial killer to justice. That’ll take care of my baby just fine, so I thank you.”

She no longer needs to wipe any tears from her eyes.

“What you’re saying is that you’re going to try to profit from a murder. That makes you no better than me.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No.”

“Oh, you’re cute. Even by the standards of some loser trying to save himself from life in prison, it’s pretty weak to suggest that doing something good, like removing a brutal psycho brain-damaged serial killer from society, is an immoral act just because it comes with rewards.”

“Are we having a philosophical discussion now?”

She unspools a piece of duct tape from the roll. “No, because you’re going to stop talking.” She rips off the tape and sticks it over my mouth.

It’s hard to breathe because there’s still dirt in my nose.

“There are a few ways we can do this,” she says. “I could smother you again until you lose consciousness, but I don’t think I could trust you to stay asleep for that long. I was worried enough that you’d be awake when I ran back from the car. So we’ll veto that idea.”

Even if my mouth weren’t taped, I’d have nothing to say.

“The next option would be to cut your hamstrings. One slice on each and you won’t be going anywhere. The thing is, somebody as pathetic as you would probably bleed to death, so that idea doesn’t work either. I could bury you up to your neck, except that makes me look kind of ghoulish, which isn’t what I want.”

I offer a muffled suggestion.

“Don’t talk,” she says. “I’m brainstorming.”

I continue to talk through the duct tape. What’s she going to do, slash my throat for refusing to shut up?

Well, maybe—I don’t know what this lady is capable of at this point—but I’m willing to risk it.

She rips off the tape. It hurts.

“What?”

“Just tape me all the way, for Christ’s sake,” I say. “Mummy me. I won’t be able to go anywhere.”

I wish this were a sneaky plan on my part, but if she wrapped me entirely in duct tape I really wouldn’t be able to escape. I just don’t want her to decide that the hamstring idea had merit. Or that I’d be less adept at navigating the woods if she gouged out my eyes.

“I could do that,” she says, nodding. She looks far too cool and composed. I wish she’d return to being frazzled, slightly hysterical, and annoying. “But wouldn’t you rather just ride with me in the car?”

I nod.

“Give me your arm,” she says.

“Why?”

“Just give me your arm. Hold it out.”

“Hell no.”

“Would you rather I bury you up to your neck? What if wild animals find you?”

“Wild animals aren’t going to find me.”

“Ants, then. Fire ants. All over your head. Swarming. Stinging the crap out of you.”

I hold out my arms. I’d like to think she’s just going to cut the tape binding my wrists together, but that’s probably not her intention. She looks me in the eyes, and I can tell she’s psyching herself up for something. This can’t be good.

“I need to show you I’m not afraid to stab you.”

Without hesitation, she jabs the blade of the knife into my upper arm.

She doesn’t plunge it too deep, but blood spills immediately, and goddamn does it hurt. I want to launch into a stream of epithets but I manage to keep myself under control.

“Do we understand each other?” she asks.

“Why’d you do that?”

“To prove I would.”

“You didn’t have to stab me!”

“Yes, I did. That was the whole point.”

I can’t believe it. She stabbed me. She smothered me until I passed out and then she stabbed me. This is so far beyond what should be acceptable that I can’t even verbalize it.

“Do I need to stab your other arm?” she asks. Her tone is like a mother asking her son if he wants another spanking, or if he’s ready to behave.

“No,” I say, trying to sound like a deadly serial killer and not a whiny child. It’s embarrassingly difficult to accomplish this.

“Good. The next one will not be another arm stab. You betray my trust and I won’t stop stabbing until you’re dead. Got it?”

“I’ve got it.”

She begins to saw away at the duct tape binding my ankles together. It’s a very good knife, but her tape-cutting skills aren’t spectacular, and it takes a while. I resist the temptation to make a sarcastic comment.

Finally my feet are free. Mindy points the knife at me, as if in warning, then stands up.

“Get up,” she says.

“My legs are asleep,” I tell her, “so if I stumble, don’t take it as an attack.”

“How about we wait until your legs aren’t asleep, so I don’t have to kill you over a misunderstanding?”

“Works for me.”

I sit there. Something weird about me: I love the pinprick sensation when feeling returns to a limb. I will often sit on my hands until they go numb just to get that sensation. I’m not enjoying it quite as much now.

“You ready?” Mindy asks.

“Yeah.”

“Stand up.”

I stand up. I don’t stumble.

She very quickly turns her back to me and climbs out of the grave. I might have been able to grab her then, but more likely I would’ve gotten a knife in my face. I’ll wait for a more opportune moment to strike.

I’m not sure if I should be relieved by her plan of action or worried by it. If she really wanted to hand me over to the cops, the safest thing she could do is follow my suggestion: tape me up and leave me. Why risk walking me back to the car and riding into town with me?

If we discount the possibility that she’s a complete idiot, since I don’t believe she is, this might all be a fake-out. She’s trying to scare me, but once she’s made her point, she’ll let me go.

Or she has something much worse planned.

Why kill somebody quickly in the woods when you could do it slowly in a soundproofed basement?

I know one thing for sure: I’m not going to jail. Mindy might be the big hero who brought the Flatside Killer to justice, but it’ll be the Flatside Killer’s corpse. Let her tell reporters how she plunged the knife into my back, again and again.

“Come out of the grave,” she tells me.

I hold up my hands. “I can’t do it with my hands taped together.”

“Stop it!” she says, furious. “Do not even start that shit! We’re not going to play games where you try to pull one over on me. You do exactly what the hell you’re told, and you do it exactly when the hell I tell you to do it, and you respect my intelligence!”

“All right,” I say. “I apologize.”

I was definitely trying to con her into cutting the tape, but to be fair, it’s not easy to climb out of a hole when you can’t put your hands apart for leverage.

It takes me a few attempts to get out, and she probably thinks I’m faking it, but she doesn’t stab me to death, so that’s good.

“Face that way,” she says, pointing in the direction of the car.

I turn that way, as requested.

She walks up behind me. She jabs me in the back with the knife, hard enough to hurt but not enough to break the skin. I wince.

“Walk slow,” she says.

She’s got the knife and the flashlight, so I don’t think she could grab me if I made a break for it. But she could stab me or club me over the head, and thus I need to pick my moment carefully.

I’m running away for certain, though.

It’s not going to take us long to get back to the car, even walking slowly, so I need to find a good moment soon. I’ll try to engage her in conversation as a distraction.

“This isn’t the life you want,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?”

“Celebrity.”

“I’m not worried about that. It’ll fade. Killers stay famous forever, but nobody remembers who caught them. Who caught Ted Bundy?”

“I don’t know. The cops.”

“Come up with something better. Come on, try to convince me to change my plan. I want to hear what you’ve got.”

“I thought you told me not to play games?”

“This is different. I give you permission to speak.”

“They don’t believe your story. They’ll know you were involved with Terrence’s death.”

“We’ve already covered this. If you’re not going to come up with something new, then, yeah, I’d rather you not speak.”

“You might—”

“You know what? Don’t talk. You had your chance and you screwed it up by rehashing your old crap. I’m no longer interested.”

“I’ve got a great reason,” I tell her.

She jabs me in the back again. I’m not sure if this one breaks the skin.

“Damn it!”

“I said, stop talking.”

Something is trickling down my back. “Bitch.”

“I was wondering how long it would take you to get to the b-word. Typical.”

“Hey, when you stab me in the back, you’re acting like a bitch. There’s nothing sexist about that.”

“I didn’t stab you. I poked you.”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you need Mommy to kiss your boo-boo to make it all better? Do you want me to get you a Band-Aid with little pictures of jet planes on it? Oh, poor, poor Flattie. I don’t know how I’ll sleep at night knowing I poked a tiny little dot in your back.”

Has she lost her fear of me, or is she overcompensating? Though I suspect it’s the latter, I can work with both possibilities. She may very well end up murdering me, but it sure as hell won’t be after she’s made fun of me.

Mindy will know which one of us is the scary one.

She’ll know beyond any possible doubt.

Or…I could just run. She might not expect it if I do it right now.

I run.

I could probably outrun her, but my hands are bound and she’s got the car keys, so if this becomes a race, eventually she’ll have the car and I won’t. So my best option is to get far enough ahead of her to find an unpleasant place to hide.

“Are you kidding me?” she shouts as I run off.

I do not reply.

I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Or, more accurately, I put more effort into running than I ever have in my life; unfortunately, the uneven ground and my inability to see much of anything are impacting my speed.

A branch slashes across my face.

My left foot comes down on a tree root or something else uneven, and though I stumble I don’t pitch forward onto the ground.

Is she following me?

I don’t think she’s following me.

That would be fantastic.

Then I hear footsteps and breathing. She’s decided to follow me.

“You can’t get away from me!” she shouts.

I’m not convinced of that. I’m scared but right now I’m feeling pretty good about my chances. This head start is really going to help.

She’s still shouting: “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t come back! I’ll cut you to pieces! Get back here, goddamn it!”

I don’t think I will. I tear through the woods. She should have been much more careful. When you have a savage serial predator as your hostage, you don’t just keep a knife to his back, not unless you want him to—

Something grabs my foot and I fall.

Okay, nothing actually grabbed it, but whatever I tripped over sure felt that way. My fall is not a mild tumble from which I can easily leap back to my feet, but a full-on face-plant, with blood.

The beam of the flashlight zips past me.

I cough and sputter as I try to get back up. I never did get all of the dirt out of my nostrils, so having a bloody nose right now is decidedly inconvenient. I snort some of it onto my shirt, but then continue running.

She’s still coming after me.

More branches slash across my face. Jesus, do they grow freaking razor blade trees out here?

“I’m gonna fuck you up!” Mindy informs me. She is very, very, very upset with me, it appears.

I wish things had worked out better, since apparently she does have it in her to chase after somebody through the woods with a knife. We would not have been equal partners, but she could have handled some of the more athletic tasks.

My ankle twists, giving a little snap that sounds like my ankle saying “We won’t be doing any more running for a while.” I hit the ground even harder than I did less than a minute ago, and I feel like I may have split my nose right up the center.

I scramble along the ground, hoping to find a good place to hide. A secret passage, maybe. Or a cave. At this point, I’m not choosy.

I hold my breath.

I can see Mindy. She’s about fifty feet away, moving the flashlight beam back and forth, searching. Somehow I managed to crash to the ground without her knowing where I am.

I can’t keep holding my breath. I settle for breathing quietly and remaining as motionless as possible. There’s not really any brush or anything covering me, so she’ll probably find me before too long, but she’s a newbie to hunting humans, so maybe she’ll veer off course.

“Where are you?” she shouts, as if I’d really answer that question.

She turns around in a complete circle. The flashlight beam goes well over my head.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she says. She’s not very good at the taunting.

She’s just standing there, trying to figure out which way to go. Did I really lose her that completely?

“I’m going to find you for sure,” she announces. “No way are you getting away from me. If you come out on your own, I’ll let you go.”

Bullshit, I think. Even I wouldn’t use that transparent of a lie. She should have said something credible.

“If I have to find you myself, I’m going to skin you alive!” She holds up the knife. “I’m going to use this knife, and I’m going to shave off all of your skin with it! I don’t care how much you scream! I don’t care if the cops find us and I go to jail right alongside you! Do you understand me, you son of a bitch? Do you want to die badly, or would you rather we work this out a different way?”

She’s panicking. For all she knows, I’m still running. Long gone. She thinks she’s going to spend the rest of her life waiting for my return.

She knows I’m patient about such things.

I’m in a fuckload of pain and, yes, I’m frightened right now, but if she doesn’t find me, I’d be totally satisfied with her living a life of fear. I’d find a way to send her occasional reminders of my existence.

I’d love that.

I wish she’d start walking in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, she’s still searching with the flashlight beam. I’m tempted to crawl someplace better hidden, but one snapped branch and she might zero in on me. I have to be silent. Try to blend in. Visualize invisibility.

Visualize invisibility? What a dumb thing to think.

Something crawls on my hand and I flinch. I can’t see for sure, but as I brush it off I think it’s an ant. Great. I’m probably camped out on top of an anthill. Irony is so much goddamn fun.

Mindy is pacing. I can’t see her face but I bet she has a glorious expression of unease. For all she knows, I could be right behind her. I could have a knife she didn’t know about. The blade could be inches from the back of her neck right now.

I’d love to see her suddenly spin around, as if she’s imagined that exact thing, but she doesn’t. She continues sweeping the flashlight beam around.

Give it up. Just move on. You’re not going to find me.

Something stings my leg. Maybe I really am next to an anthill. Unbelievable. I’m going to have to let those little bastards sting me, because if I move, she’ll hear me.

“Hey!” Mindy shouts. “There’s no reason for us to do this! We’re both screwed without each other. How are you going to get home?”

She needs to do much better than that. The transportation issue is not weighing heavily on my mind.

“If I have to leave without you, I’m coming back with every cop in the city. They’ll be swarming these woods. You’ll never get away.”

That’s a little better. But since her stated plans included delivering me to the police anyway, or skinning me alive, I’m still not convinced that revealing my location is the best way to go.

She’s silent for a moment. She holds the flashlight up to her face as she dabs at her eyes, then she lowers it again.

“I love you!” she calls out.

I laugh. Now she’s just desperate.

Shit. I shouldn’t have laughed.

Did she hear me?

No, she didn’t. Thank God. I wipe off some of the blood streaming down over my lips and continue to watch her.

An ant stings my injured ankle. It continues to sting me as I very slowly bend my knee…

No. That makes some leaves rustle. I freeze.

She shines the flashlight beam toward me.

I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.

The light goes right into my eyes.

Now she shines the light back on herself, holding the flashlight directly beneath her face, the way people do when they’re telling a ghost story.

“Hello, there,” she says, smiling as she looks at me.

And then the moment of ultimate humiliation: my bladder can’t handle this. I didn’t piss myself when she held the knife up to my eyeball, but now I feel the wet warmth and I wish I’d died with my face in the dirt.

“I can seeeeeeeeee you!” she sings.

I don’t respond. Maybe she didn’t really see me.

No, that is some seriously deranged wishful thinking. She saw me. She’s looking right at me.

She shines the flashlight onto the blade of the knife.

“You ready for this?” she asks.

Her voice trembles a bit. She’s faking the whole “playing games with the victim” routine, but it doesn’t matter, because I’m hurt and weaponless and she’s got my knife.

“Too scared to talk?”

I can’t let her think I’ve been paralyzed into terrified silence. “Don’t come over here,” I tell her.

“Why not?”

“Because if you do, I will rip you apart with my bare hands.” The words sound less intimidating because of my swollen nose, but I hope they get the point across.

Mindy begins to walk toward me. “Then I’ll just have to chop off your hands.”

“You can’t chop off my hands with a knife like that.”

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t take a while.”

At least now I can get away from these ants. I smack at my pants a few times to kill the ones that are stinging me, and start to stand up.

“Don’t stand up on my behalf,” Mindy says. I’m not sure if she’s walking so slowly because she thinks it’s more frightening, or if she’s just uncertain about whether she actually wants to reach me.

I stand up completely. My foot hurts like hell, but I refuse to fall. “If you come over here, you die.”

“You’ve got something on your nose.”

“Screw you.”

She stops walking when about ten feet separate us. “So what are we going to do, Mr. Flatside Killer?”

“Go our separate ways. Forget this ever happened.”

Mindy shakes her head. “There’s no reward in that for me.”

“I don’t think there are any actual rewards for my capture. At least not anymore.”

“I didn’t mean a literal cash reward,” she says. She doesn’t say “you fucking idiot” but it is implied. “I’m still getting the credit for bringing you in.”

“Or skinning me alive.”

“Yeah. Or that. Which one do you prefer?”

“Why don’t you put down the knife? We could find out which one of us is truly better.”

“I’ll tell you what, Flattie. If I become mentally retarded in the next few seconds, I’ll consider that idea.”

I shrug. “I’m not going without a fight.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

I raise my fists. “All right, then. If you think you can beat me, then walk right over here and prove it. When I get that knife from you, I think I’ll start by cutting out your tongue. That hurts like hell. Lots of nerves in your tongue. Then I will start slashing your cheeks; give you a great big extra-long smile.”

She hasn’t resumed walking toward me yet.

“Then we’ll go for a good old-fashioned disemboweling,” I tell her. “Stretch those intestines out as far as they’ll go. I won’t make you eat them, because that would be gross, but maybe I’ll make you lick a few inches.”

No reaction from her that I can see.

“Then I’ll open up your chest and cut out your heart. I’ve never eaten heart. I think I should try it. You might be the inspiration for me to go on a heart-eating rampage. What do you think about that?”

“I think…” She trails off, but then shines the flashlight beam directly on my crotch. “…you pissed your pants.”

She comes at me with the knife.

I’m ready for her.

She swings it at me, and I block her arm with my fist. The knife falls to the ground.

Then she clubs me in the head with the flashlight, and I fall to the ground as well.

She bashes me with the flashlight four or five times, until the light disappears and pieces of plastic scatter. I think a D-battery knocks out one of my teeth.

There’s blood in my eyes, but I think I see her pick up the knife.

Yes, she definitely has the knife.

She crouches over me.

I try to say something menacing. All I do is spit up some blood.

She plunges the blade deep into my chest.

I scream. I wish I could suffer through the pain and horror without screaming, but I can’t. I have to scream.

Mindy presses the knife against my throat, and suddenly I don’t even care about the humiliation of my screaming. I’ve never been so scared in my life, and if she knows that, maybe she’ll take pity on me. Maybe she can’t kill somebody who’s terrified and completely helpless.

“Please!” I try to shout, though it’s less of a shout than a gurgle. “Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!”

“You had your chance.”

I frantically shake my head. Blood flies off my hair like a dog shaking itself after a bath. “No! I take back what I did!”

“You what? I can’t even understand you.”

“I take back what I did! I take it back!”

“You take back what you did? Did you really say that to me?”

I nod. Oh, God, I’m going to bleed to death if she doesn’t help me.

“I don’t even know what you’re referring to. Do you mean you take back trying to kill me? You take back trying to run away? What the hell are you even talking about?”

I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just don’t want to die.

“Please!”

“If I let you live, you’ll try to pull more crap.”

“No! No! I won’t! I promise!”

“You will.”

“No, no, no, no, no! I won’t do anything! I swear!”

“How can I trust you?”

“You can!”

“But how do I know I can trust you?”

I have to make her trust me. I have to show her I won’t do anything. I’ll go to prison if that’s what she wants. But I don’t know what to say to make her believe me. I try to blink the blood out of my eyes so I can look her in the eyes and show her how genuine I am.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll take you back to the car with me. But I’m cutting your hamstrings first.”

* * *

I don’t think I completely lose consciousness again, but I fade in and out as I crawl along the path in the darkness. My feet hurt like hell at first but now they’re numb as I drag them behind me. My knees, however, are full of sensation. I think they’re practically shredded. My palms are almost as bad.

We’re moving very slowly, but Mindy doesn’t seem to be losing patience with me. She doesn’t even kick me.

When we reach the car, she bandages my cuts and gashes with duct tape. It doesn’t stick very well to the places that are bleeding the worst. I’m barely able to get into the passenger seat of the car, though some jabs in my back with the tip of the knife encourage me to put forth my best effort.

Suddenly we’re driving. I’m getting blood all over Terrence’s car. My hands are now duct-taped together behind my back, which is very uncomfortable, though I don’t complain.

Mindy glances over at me. “When you kill people, do you use any drugs to keep them conscious? An injection or something?”

“No.” I don’t tell her I’d been thinking about that earlier. No need to try to bond with her.

“Do you know of any? This is going to be less fun if I can’t keep you awake.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh well.”

“I think I’m going to bleed to death.”

“Nah. I taped you up pretty good. You won’t bleed out for a while. And once I tell the police who you are, they’ll want to keep you alive to make sure they get your full confession.”

I start to say something. Start to remind her that she went beyond what was necessary to subdue me. Turned me into a half-mutilated mess. The general public is not going to adore her for this, and the rest of her life will turn out better if people don’t know what she’s done.

But I don’t say anything. Because I promised I wouldn’t try any more tricks, and I don’t want her to stab me again if I break that promise.

Also, I think I really will bleed to death if she’s the only one taking care of my wounds. Even if we stop at a pharmacy and she picks up some gauze and antiseptic, I think I’m dead without an actual medical professional.

I wish I had connections in the criminal underworld that would patch me up, no questions asked.

“It’s too bad,” Mindy says. “We could have buried Terrence and gone our separate ways.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to listen to some music?”

“Nah.”

“I do.” She turns on the radio and flips through the stations. But there’s nothing good on, so we resume driving in silence.

I cough up some blood that I can’t wipe off my mouth.

“You’re disgusting,” Mindy tells me.

I fade for a moment, and then suddenly I jolt to full attention as I see several cop cars. They’re all parked in the lot outside of the police station, and we’re driving right in front of the building.

Now I don’t want to go to prison.

Mindy pulls up directly in front of the main entrance and shuts off the engine.

She looks over at me. “You ready?”

“No.”

“How long do you think somebody could sit in front of a police station with a passenger in their car completely covered with blood?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t guess very long.”

“Probably not.”

“I could open up your door for you. Let you run away and go down in a hailstorm of bullets. Would you like that?”

“No.”

She drums her fingertips on the steering wheel.

“Won’t be long now.”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Waiting.”

She takes the key out of the ignition, puts her finger through the key ring, and spins it around a couple of times, while humming a cheerful tune.

“I bet they’ll put you in solitary,” she says. “That’s good. Less raping for you.”

“Okay.”

Mindy puts the keys back into the ignition, starts up the car again, and drives away from the building. We pull onto the street and drive off.

“Scared you, didn’t I?” she asks.

I’m so relieved that I can barely speak. I don’t even care about the imminent bleeding-to-death issue.

“Tell me something,” she says. “What were you really planning to do to your girlfriend after you killed Terrence?”

“I don’t have a…” Then I smile, even though it hurts and makes blood trickle down the sides of my mouth. “I’d take you with me,” I say. “We’d be tired from burying him, but we’d be energized, too, and she’d have no idea we were coming for her…”

I tell her everything we would do, in pornographic detail.

Mindy loves it.

* * *

We’re in a rowboat in the middle of a lake. It’s a pretty crappy rowboat, but it was easy to steal.

Mindy stole it. My arms are still bound behind me. She doesn’t completely trust me yet.

“This is where I dreamed I’d get rid of the bodies,” Mindy says as she rows. “I could never figure out if it would be safer to put them all in one lake, or use lots of different lakes.”

“I’m not sure,” I admit.

“Even during my most vivid fantasies, I knew I could never really do it. Not like you. I wanted to, believe me, but I don’t know if I was too scared of getting caught or if it was a moral thing. Later, I just thought I’d been a fucked-up teenager. I haven’t even thought about those feelings in years.”

“There’s nothing wrong with those feelings.”

She laughs. “Of course there is. I know that. But I discovered tonight that they’re still there. What I went through with you was scary and miserable, but—and I hope you don’t take offense to this—I liked hurting you. Not because of revenge. I just liked doing it.”

She reaches down and lets her fingers trail through the water. “I’m going to try it. At least once before I become a mom. I’d love to be the hero who captured the Flatside Killer, but, sick as it sounds, I think I’m just going to follow in his footsteps. I want a different name, though.”

“Mindy the Mangler?”

“Nah.”

“Mindy the…Mutilator? Machete Mindy?”

“No, and no.”

“I have a shitty name. If we’re going to be partners, why shouldn’t you?”

“I don’t think ‘Mindy’ is a good killer name. Anyway, you’re not supposed to make up your own nickname. The press does that. By the way, what is your real name?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“It’s Clyde.”

“Clyde? Really?”

“Yeah.”

Not really.

She leans over and kisses me gently on the lips.

“Nice to meet you, Clyde. But I hope you didn’t think we were going to be partners. You’ve helped me, more than you’ll ever know. And I wouldn’t feel right asking for more than what you’ve already given, so…good-bye.”

I struggle, and when it becomes clear I’m not going to win, I try to turn myself into dead weight, but she gets me over the side.

My wounds explode with pain as I strike the cold water. It was a belly flop. Not dignified.

I sink quickly.

I frantically kick my legs and try to rip the tape binding my hands. The kicking is not working. Nor is trying to rip the tape. Adrenaline has failed me.

I think I’m going to have another heart attack before I hit the bottom.

Will I hit the bottom? I can’t tell if I’m sinking or rising. Am I floating?

Everything is completely dark.

I don’t stop screaming until I run out of air.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe…

About the Author

Jeff Strand is the author of such demented novels as Pressure, Dweller, A Bad Day for Voodoo, Wolf Hunt, Benjamin’s Parasite, Fangboy, Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”). Visit his Gleefully Macabre website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.

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Table of Contents

Other Books by Author

About the Author

About the Publisher

Share Your Experience

Table of Contents

Other Books by Author

About the Author

About the Publisher

Share Your Experience