Mostly Murder (5 page)

By the time Malice reached high school, he had honed his skills and had a whole bag of tricks to frighten people out of their wits. He had continued to watch scary television shows and movies. He had learned from some of the mean things said and done in books and comic books, and he dreamed of having his own TV show someday, one where he could make lots of money terrifying people and watching their reactions when they thought they had no escape from a terrible fate. Sometimes, he frightened complete strangers at the mall. He would follow them and see if he couldn't find a moment to slip something alive and nasty into their shopping bags so that when his victim rummaged in them, they might find a big hairy spider he'd caught or a handful of wriggling brown night crawlers.

Women especially hated the worms. It was just so funny to watch. He would follow them and wait on pins and needles for the big finale. Sometimes, they would open their bag or tote for some reason, and they would screech with horror and throw the bag as if it were a poisonous snake. The expressions on their faces were priceless. It was hilarious to watch, and he loved trying to do stuff like that on the sly. He liked the sense of power it gave him. Loved it, in fact. He could make people react, tremble and cry out and curse, but they never knew he was behind it. He would just act like the innocent bystander, just as shocked as the store's clerk or the guy waiting on them in the food court. He was getting really good at his tricks, and the thrill was just getting better and better. He always did it on Friday, and called it Fright Night. It was his favorite time of the week.

After a while, he began to watch shows about serial killers and how they abused and mistreated their victims. Sometimes he even got off on the way they murdered people because they killed them in such bizarre and interesting ways. They had rituals and souvenirs and fetishes and things they liked to do with the bodies. He wanted a dead body so bad he could taste it. So, he began to plan how he could get one. He wondered how it would feel to commit murder. How it would feel to stick one of his mom's big butcher knives into somebody's stomach. Maybe the long, sharp one that she cut up chickens with—that would probably do it. He wondered if he would have to push it in really hard, or if it would just slice the skin open real easy, like cutting into butter. He was pretty sure that he'd have to be fairly strong to do it. Especially if he did a lot of stabbing or carried on with the butchering for a long time.

Finally, he got the chance to try out some of his fantasies. He got himself a girlfriend, one he sort of liked. Her name was Betsy. She was real cute with brown hair and freckles but pretty timid and nervous, too, and easy to frighten. So he started out with all sorts of accidental scares just to warm her up for the big stuff. He planned it carefully, wanting to do it just right, maybe at her house when her parents weren't home. That's when she seemed to be the most nervous, especially when she was alone in her house at night. And her parents liked to go square dancing and to the movies and so forth, so they were gone a lot. Every Tuesday they went down to the parish community center and danced their do-si-dos and all that crap.

One night, after a late football practice, he waited until everybody else was gone, and then he showered and dressed in black clothes like a ninja. He'd seen some kung fu movies and the like, and he knew he'd blend into the shadows when he got into the house. Betsy was home alone. She had begged him to come over so he had told her he'd come by later, right after he was done with football practice. They hadn't had sex yet so he didn't want to scare her too bad too soon and risk her breaking up with him. But he loved her smooth little face and big scaredy-cat brown eyes.

He had gotten her all up and terrified with some bugs and driving too fast and pretending the brakes wouldn't work. She screamed and screamed, and then she'd punched him in the shoulder with her fist when she'd realized that he was lying about the brakes. It was so damn cool. He even liked how she hit him and then fought him some when he tried to console her. He got all excited when she was struggling with him. That was the truth, and he really liked that feeling. He wanted her to fight against him again. He wanted to hold her down and force her to do stuff that he'd always dreamed about doing to a girl.

So he left the stadium, real excited, and drove by the community center to make sure her parents' red Cadillac was still there. It was, so he drove to the woods behind her house and parked in some tall bushes. Then he crept through the darkness to her backyard. He found himself a little nervous, too, because if he got caught, they'd kick him off the football team, and he was really good and was going to win a scholarship to Tulane University. And he liked how all the people at school clapped him on the back and said things about his nice passes or his touchdown runs. The girls were all over him and wanted to wear his letter jacket, but he liked it too much to let anybody else wear it, or even try it on.

Once he got into her backyard, the family's beagle, named Buddy, smelled him right off and barked a little bit. But once Malice tossed him an open package of Oscar Mayer cheesy hot dogs and patted his head, the pooch ignored him and chowed down big time. So he moved stealthily and hunkered down under the family room window. Betsy was sitting inside on the couch, studying her algebra book. She was really smart in math, and helped him with his homework, which was another reason he liked her. But he didn't love her. He loved making her scream, and that was about it.

After slipping his black ski mask over his head and adjusting the eye holes, he pulled out the butcher knife he'd brought and got the back door key from under the flower pot on the steps. People were just so stupid to leave keys around like that. He would never do that, and he didn't let his mom do it, either. He let himself inside, very quiet in his black sneakers. His girlfriend had the stereo on really loud, playing a song by the Rolling Stones. He liked those guys. They always had girls hanging all over them, like Betsy liked to do with him, but then when he tried something with her, she'd always push him away, like he was terrible for wanting to have sex with her. He grinned. She wasn't going to push him away this time, no way.

He approached her from the dining room, tiptoeing up behind her, not making a single sound. When he got right behind the sofa, he grinned to himself, and then he whispered her name in a low, threatening growl. When Betsy whirled around, she got that look on her face for a split second, the one that turned him on so much. It did this time, too. Then she screamed bloody murder and threw her book at him and headed for the front door. Very agile and athletic, he jumped over the couch after her and caught her before she could get out of the room. She fought him desperately, but he lifted weights and outweighed her by at least eighty or ninety pounds. She wasn't all that hard to subdue, and he got her down and held both her hands over her head against the floor and sat on her stomach. She struggled and yelled, and then he hit her in the face. He hadn't really planned to do that, but he did like it. Blood spurted from her nose. She lay still a moment, stunned, but then she started fighting again and clawing at his face with her long red nails. To his shock, she was pretty strong in her terror and somehow managed to pull off his mask.

“You? What are you doing? Stop right now and get off me! Why are you doing this to me? Why? Stop it!” She kept yelling the same things over and over, sobbing now, squirming around under him and getting him all excited. He loved it, loved her fear and disappointment, and the way she ended up begging him to stop.

But now he was in a conundrum, to be sure. She was spitting mad, working herself into a full-fledged rage, still trying to scratch his eyes out, really, truly furious that it was him doing this to her. He couldn't let her tell on him, or he'd lose his scholarship. He just couldn't do that. His parents didn't have the money to send him where he wanted to go. He didn't have a choice now, and he had always wanted to kill somebody, now hadn't he? He wanted to see the light gradually go out of her eyes like it did in the movies.

So he got his knees over her arms and held them down. He put one hand around her neck and he put the point of the knife against her throat. Betsy lay very still then, her eyes wide and afraid, so he put down the knife and pressed both thumbs on her windpipe. That stopped all the yelling, and it got real quiet real quick, except for her gasping and the sound of her heels beating against the floor.

While she suffocated, he got to thinking about all the good times they'd had, at the school dances, and how pretty she'd looked in that short pink formal dress at last year's prom and how she'd helped him cheat his way to a ninety-six on his last math test. She wasn't so bad; maybe he ought to kill somebody else the first time. So he let up, and then she tried to claw his face and called him some real bad names. Then he got so angry that he grabbed the knife and just thrust it down into the side of her throat. He must've hit an artery because blood spurted out everywhere, all over him and the wall and the rug. He scrambled away from her and stood up, but within minutes, she was dead. He had killed her, when he hadn't really planned to, and he hadn't gotten to take her virginity, either, damn it.

Then he ran, outside and through the woods. He stopped at the edge of a little pond and washed himself clean of the blood on his hands and face. But it was all over his clothes so he pulled them off until he wore only gym shorts and a T-shirt. Trembling with fear and excitement and sexual gratification, he put the bloody clothes in a Wal-Mart plastic bag and pitched it into a Dumpster behind a garage. Then he went home, went straight to bed, and lay there reliving the whole thing, over and over, and every time he got more and more aroused. Oh, yeah, killing was fun. Killing was his thing, all right. Maybe he ought to be an assassin or a secret agent. Hone his kills, like James Bond. Kill his victims for money or patriotism. Yeah, that would be his perfect profession, a secret job where he could earn lots of money. He lay awake a long time, wondering how he could make it work, because that's what he was going to do with his life. Scare people, then kill them and watch them die. God, he was so excited that he could barely catch his breath.