#plathcreeper

First thing’s first: I won’t call him The Creeper. Victor Salva already patented that. And it’s too easy. He’s given us enough to come up with something better. It’s a man– ssscis-gendered…? We don’t have any suspects who aren’t… traditionally… mainstream gendered… people. And the lack of subtlety screams BOY. He knows enough about plants to handpick specific flowers for every girl in the school. He’s a twisted romantic, a little witty. He has access to a penis. I think he’s repressed. Definitely a virgin. Timid for lack of tact, not lack of interest in talking to people. But he’s observant. He has to spend a lot of time around the campus, so I’m ruling out all employees, including the young ones. This is someone who watches the way his peers interact and keeps an eye on the unnatural mannerisms when certain topics come up in conversation. This is someone without much social life to distract him, or someone with shallow acquaintanceships but no friends to notice when he’s spending all of his time on a project like this. This is an outsider on the inside. So you can call him The Botanist, The Florist, The Casanova, The Anthropologist.

I’m calling him The Wallflower.

I’ll mention the three crossed off my list first:

ANDI MICHAELS. Reasonable suspect. He has the classic profile of a common serial killer: middle-aged man, agreeable personality, eerily mundane, a little awkward. But I don’t buy it. He doesn’t fit my profile. He’s not at the school often enough to study everyone. I don’t think he’s The Wallflower. But I don’t think he’s innocent outside of this specific context. He’s worth keeping an eye on.

CHARLIE KING. Investigated. Thoroughly. Don’t want to talk about it. Too old, anyway. And too genuine. You can’t fake the patience and kindness he had that night. He’s not frustrated enough to be The Wallflower. I don’t think he’s… without secrets, but I know this isn’t his.

TERENCE LICHT. Undeniably suspicious. And I think suspecting him is what helped me build the profile. But he’s a RED HERRING. He’s not on campus enough to pay as much attention as The Wallflower has to. When he’s around, he’s always busy, and he’s kind of a big deal. With girls especially. And he’s not stupid enough to incriminate himself by making flowers an M.O. It’s too obvious.

I really think it’s a student. Specifically…

SIMON REIGN. Sure has been lonely and quiet since all of his friends left last semester. Everyone’s always talking about how he never gets close to anyone or sticks around one place for long. Kinda troubling, when you think about it. And his roommate’s never around much to keep an eye on anything weird he’s doing. He has the perfect opportunity and the loneliness to boot. And the perfect alibi, of course, is how he conveniently came out as gay just a few weeks before our ladykiller hit the scene.

DARBY CHAPMAN. Do I want to suspect my friend? No. Is my friend awkward, standoffish in social situations, foreign, reportedly anxious as a result of childhood trauma, heterosexual, and not getting any? I mean, sorry, DC, but it’s kind of hard to rule out. 

GREY CAVERLY. He has the wit and the mystery. He’s a good liar– or he is when nobody’s onto him. He’s more romantic than he lets on. He’s friendly at face value, aloof enough that he doesn’t have any close friends, and I always find him on the sidelines of campus. I don’t want to think it’s Grey. I have plenty of reasons not to think it’s Grey, but I’m worried that being breathtakingly charming isn’t exactly a valid alibi. In fact, it’s a little more worrying.

ZACH COLTRANE. The problem with Zach is I don’t know much about him, but that’s a little incriminating in itself, isn’t it? But I don’t really think he has the capacity. He’s dealing with enough of his own weird baggage, from what people say about him. I doubt he knows enough about human etiquette to leave the kind of notes The Wallflower leaves, but I can say that about a lot of people on this list. Here’s the thing: when an offbeat classmate asks me to plant-sit for him, he gets a one-way ticket onto this list.

LEVIATHAN JAMES. I guess I can thank Jonah for being the jumping-off point, but Levi’s the perfect suspect. He’s got the outcast cred down pat. People don’t understand him. They get frustrated with him. They yell at him. They whack him around. And he doesn’t understand them, either. A stranger in a strange land and a quiet watcher who’s so DESPERATE to fit in. I don’t…. I just don’t trust him.

     FINAL GIRL TACT says righteous is she who is both curious and alert. It’s the job of the virgin establish an interest in understanding the killer early into the mystery. She’s going in peace. ( But she’s not going defenseless.)

     There’re screams up and down the girls residence halls and a trip to the bathroom to wash her face shows a herd of students discussing gifts of their own. And from the sounds of it-- Max is one of the lucky ones. She’s NOT the only lady getting attention this evening. (Slashers, of course, never want just one target.)

     When she’s cleaned up, she packs her coat pockets and straps her rainboots tight for easy sprinting. Waits an hour after curfew-- just after Mitch says Dahlia finishes doing her first rounds-- to make a break for the outside. But she slows down when she sees the silhouette of someone in the lounge after hours.

     “ --I’m going out to the garden. ”