witch▼death

I’m sitting here– isolated and petrified– in my apartment. There was another news report, this time about a girl, my age, murdered in her on-campus dormitory. I think that brings the count up to three, if I’m not mistaken. “Three?” you might opine. “Three, why, that’s hardly any at all. Henry Lee Lucas confessed to 28 murders.” He may very well have, but as a sovereign, uninhibited college student, even the thought of just one is too many. What’s even more frightening, however, is the arbitrary nature of the crimes. There’s no pattern, nor is there any conclusive evidence to suggest who might be doing this, even after three murders. Three. My current GPA. Maybe my academic headway corresponds positively to the number of victims. I shouldn’t make light of this, though, given the truly grisly nature of these crimes. That last girl, number three, the College Park Ripper had been waiting inside one of the shower stalls. Investigators suggest that he may have been there for well over 48 hours. Well, number three– it speaks immensely of our society that we all know the coined name for the killer, but not the names of the victims themselves– she had been the one unlucky enough to shower at 4am on Friday morning. She had probably been out drinking, something I don’t do all that often, and she’d traipsed in, liquor hanging from her breath, and tried to take a shower. I think they said he wrapped a bag around her head, to stifle the screams, and then stabbed her 36 times in the chest with a pocketknife. He then ran the shower, and it wasn’t until earlier this morning that someone found her, saturated in bloody clothes. Blood doesn’t run off entirely in the shower, I remember them saying that.

             This is too morbid, though, too dour. Considering that I haven’t got a home to go back to, I’m trapped on this campus, waiting for our inept police force to solve this. I should call Margot; see if she wants to get some lunch.

 II

           Margot is meeting me at some new, posh pizza place. A posh pizza place. I never thought I’d live to see the day. It is the nineties, though. Oh, here she comes. And she’s wearing my denim jacket. Of course. I hope the College Park Rippers visits her tonight– I could get my clothes back. She asked me if I was scared by what’s been going on. Of course I am. I’m terror-stricken. I live alone. My building’s security is adequate at best, and I’m probably the most feeble college student on campus. Even the cripples possess more brawn, more brute strength than I do. She suggests I stay with her. She lives with her boyfriend– Patrick. He’s nice enough I guess, but when the two of them are together, they’re intolerable. God, she keeps rambling. I thought I wanted to see her, but now I just want to go home. I want to light a cigarette and follow the news, see if they’ve made any more developments. I wonder if they’ve been able to estimate his build. I wonder if he’s the big, hulking type, you know? I bet he’s white– that’s a given. Is it wrong to wonder if he’s cute? They’re typically not, but I just watched Seven, and Kevin Spacey was kind of adorable. He’s got to be somewhat average looking, I presume. I mean, he slinks about these complexes, and he doesn’t arouse any suspicion. I wonder if he’s been to my building. Seen my building. I wonder if he’s ever contemplated going in there, to find his next victim. As far as I know, he could be there right now. Lying in wait, like a lion in the Serengeti. I want to go home– this lunch is wearisome. I told Margot that I needed to go. “Why?” she asked me. “You haven’t got class.” I told her I had someone else to meet. She didn’t believe me. She knows that, ostensibly, she and Patrick are my only friends here, if you can even count them as that. She borrows my clothes, though. I think that’s why she goes to lunch with me. My parents have money, so I, in turn, have money. They won’t let me come home, but my account is inundated with funds every morning. Margot likes that I pay for lunch, I think. Margot is a bitch.

 III

           It’s the evening now, and after that third girl’s death, you can practically feel the fear percolating around in the air. It’s infectious. Even those miles off, like in Arlington, they’re more prudent than they had been before. An extra degree of caution, the news is suggesting. Arlington– he is the College Park Ripper. He doesn’t want to go to Arlington. I’m sick of these killings being a spectacle. See, I ruminate intimately, by myself. But this has nothing to do with Arlington, or the broad in Missouri who laments that, “she’d almost considered going here.” Odious individuals wailing about how, “it could have been me.” It wasn’t. You’re not that important. I’d like to silence them for good, but luckily, the news seems to have skimmed over them, turning first to the Chief of Police. This is what I want. This is what I want to hear. Any updates, any news, anything, really. And then, I get squat. He recited the same, tired platitudes about how they’re going to catch him, and how they’ve assigned a massive task force to this case. It’s a bunch of pat. I almost want him to get away, now– sort of a big middle finger to law enforcement. I need a cigarette.

 IV

It’s chilly, tonight. I actually need a coat to smoke. That’s how you know fall is coming. Chilly weather, and dead coeds. Maybe he can keep this up until Halloween. We’re only a few weeks off. I can already imagine, seemingly virile men, dressing up as the College Park Ripper. It’ll be a big costume faux pas, but they’ll do it. “It’s edgy,” they’ll think. I can picture it now, students traipsing around campus, the killer still at large. I read an article a few weeks back, I can’t remember where, but it dealt with the current state of forensics in crime. It’s disheartening, really, not at all up to par with what we’re exposed to on television. So, in all likelihood, the killer could still be at large come Halloween. He could be another Zodiac, or Jack The Ripper. Our fears manifested, exacting their violence, and then disappearing into obscurity. It’s better for his image, then, that he not be caught, I think. Your legacy is directly related to evasiveness. Society is hungrier for crimes they can’t understand, crimes that they cannot blame on anyone in particular. I already see HBO adapting it to film. I need to go in, though. Classes are canceled, but I’m still so tired. I haven’t had anything to do in days, and my lack of stimulus has rendered me enervated. I’m not locking my balcony door, though. He couldn’t get in that way.

 V

I’m lying here in bed thinking of victim #1. I really need something else to occupy my thoughts. I just remember hearing, in detail, the timeline of events from her death. She’d come home from a late night studying– it was a Monday night– and immediately collapsed onto her bed. She was the first, so she had no reason to behave cautiously. They contend that she left her door unlocked, and at some point during the night, our killer snuck in. He didn’t kill her immediately, though. He perused her belongings, fondling her tchotchkes, rummaging through her cabinets. He probably woke her, and she sat there, motionless in bed, unsure of what was going on. Had she been the second victim– that poor bloke who lives downtown– for example, she’d have known instantly what was happening. She was about to get killed, unfortunate as it may be, and it was inevitable. But she didn’t know. Her mind probably rationalized it with some benign notion of robbery– not that robbery is benign, but compared to having your head sliced off, it’s contextually genial. But it wasn’t robbery. And after some time, he managed his way into her room. She was awake, they maintain, when he straddled her, knocking her out cold with one punch to the jaw. They found her body– or what was left of it– stripped naked, so it’s imagined that he’d engaged in some unseemly behavior before he killed her. Her sliding glass door had been shattered­­– probably his means of escape– and he used a stray shard of glass to slowly, and methodically, sever her head. They found the glass, but not the head. Imagine being a parent and having to identify the body. It’s gruesome stuff, man.  And as these parcels of thoughts float effervescently through my mind, I keep returning to the same central question: who is this man and what does he want? It’s the universal question of nature vs. nurture that’s haunted man for centuries. Is the College Park Ripper inherently evil, or is there some other factor at play? Maybe it was a faulty upbringing, a bad relationship, or an issue with authority? I don’t know, and as much as I’d like to make an assertion, I’m going to withhold any judgment until we find out who this man is. You never know, he might not be a bad guy.

 VI

           You’re going to think it sounds terrible, but I found myself disconcertingly upset this morning when I turned on the news. You’re not going to believe what they said. Last night, there wasn’t another victim. That’s right, our infamous ripper took the night off. Other than Tuesday– which doesn’t count, since that falls in the window of the preliminary stages– our killer hasn’t been absent a single night. Be it lurking, or, you know, actually killing, he’d been pretty active, and now this? Did all of my nonsensical pontification signal his end? Was it my words, my thoughts that sent him back into obscurity? Oh, and you’d be right to think that the media is over it. He was nothing more than a sound bite this morning, the remaining block of time allocated to some worthless, local hero. What a bunch of crap. He saved a cat from a tree, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and yet, this man– our ripper– murders three students, and he gets nothing more than a thumbnail? It’s unfair, is what it is. In a couple of years, everyone will remember our ripper, and no one will remember any of our trifling local heroes. I’m hoping I’m wrong, though. I’m going to call Margot; maybe she’s heard something. The media is worthless. Gossip travels faster than our pitiful news station does. She’s not answering. It’s only 8. She should be home. It’s odd.

 VII

           You’re not going to believe what happened. Okay, you just might, but Patrick and Margot were attacked last night. Margot is okay, but Patrick didn’t make it. Apparently, and this is all hearsay from neighbors, our ripper brought with him a tool box, and used it to ply open the door to Patrick’s apartment. Now, with my income, I could easily afford something nicer–there’s just nothing available– but my place is a palace compared to Patrick’s. Hell, he didn’t even need the tools, I bet. He could easily have bribed the doorman with some Krispy Kreme, and then wiggled with the locks a bit. I think, last time we talked, he mentioned that they hadn’t been updated since the sixties. I could have broken in there if I wanted to. Feeble old me, yeah. Nonetheless, he broke in. He didn’t lollygag this time; our ripper got straight to work. He bludgeoned Patrick with the claw of a hammer, and tossed Margot from the bed. Her head hit the end table, so she was somewhat dazed. Patrick, in a last-ditch effort to protect his woman, started to swing. The man has a gaping hole in his noggin, blood obfuscating his vision, and he’s going to try to fight his attacker off. Okay. Invariably, he failed, and he was hit again in the face with the hammer’s claw. This time, though, it lodged on his jawbone, and upon removal, it tore the entire thing clean off of his face. So, he’s helplessly bleeding to death in the corner, and Margot is still there, on the ground, with no idea what’s happening. She gets up, and spots our ripper removing Patrick’s clothes. I don’t know where it came from, or what possessed her, but Margot slammed a lamp over our ripper’s head, careened around the bed, and bolted straight out of the door. And now, here we are. Of course, this was late last night, so it figures that the news wouldn’t have it come 8am. Again, they’re worthless. What worries me, though, is the notion that some DNA may have been left behind. They’ve insinuated that the glass from the lamp may have left some lacerations on his head, and that his blood may be present there, along with Patrick’s. It’s worrisome indeed, because everything he’s worked for, all of it, would be lost because of Margot. I’m not going to visit her at the hospital. I can’t. I’m just too upset right now.

VIII

           Wouldn’t you know, they’ve identified the fingerprints of a Mr. Joseph Michaels. I guess during all of the hoopla, our ripper– or Joseph as he’s now known– lapsed into fervor, and got a little sloppy. He had some previous convictions for sex abuse. It’s all Margot’s fault. Why she felt the need to interfere is beyond me. Doesn’t she see that she’s ruining someone’s life? Even worse, should they apprehend him, they’ve got her pegged to testify. After all of this, the entire saga, Margot ends up the hero. She’s the sole survivor, she’s the one who saved the day, she’s the one who testified and put our ripper behind bars. It isn’t fair. There has to be something I can do, but I can’t. All of my initial fear, my petrification, is gone now. I’m indignant at the injustice being carried out here. Joseph Michaels had a real chance at doing something great, and now it’s all for naught. I’m dreading his inevitable capture. After all of this, he has to be of frightened of the police as I was of him. He’ll behave slovenly, and sooner or later, the police will intercept him. I need a cigarette.

 IX

           It’s like I’m clairvoyant. Just hours after Margot’s testimony to police, they’ve found Joseph Michaels. He was squatting in a boiler room at some abandoned DC school. Four victims, that’s it. That’s his legacy. No one will want to emulate him. Hell, I doubt he’ll even be remembered come this time next year. Of course, Patrick’s family will remember him, but they’re so irrelevant now. I mean, just look at the type of girl he was dating. In all honesty, we really haven’t lost much. And now, for me, I’ve got nothing left to do. I can sit here and wait, watching the trial unfold. I’m sure it won’t be sensational, since it’s all pretty clear-cut. There is nothing left here to excite me, to stimulate me. Even worse, classes are set to begin again. Thanks for that, Margot. I’m not ready for this, reverting back to boring old me. I can’t stand the thought of it. The very notion makes me want to heave myself over an overpass into the freeway. I’ve been checking my bank account, though, every so often, and I’ve got $143,894. I hadn’t even noticed. Mom and dad have been depositing, paying no care to what I actually had available. I’ve got an idea, though. I don’t know how it will work, or if it’s even legal, but maybe– just maybe– I could use that money to help Joseph. I could fund his defense, and they could use me as his character witness. What he did wasn’t bad; he was just misunderstood. It takes someone with an unchecked intellect like myself, someone who possesses depth, to truly comprehend who this man is. In the course of a few short days, he’s become an inspiration. I’ve invested too much of myself in this to just let it end here. Have him go to trial, get lethal injection– because of course they’ll kill what they can’t understand. No. It can’t happen. I won’t stand for it. I won’t.

 X

Craven

Plunge your knife into the bulbous orange mass. Make what you know a monster. Hum his tune, and the man, the man in your dream appears. Let down your guard and watch as your friend metamorphoses. He hides behind his mask, don’t we all? Obscure reality we’re all pipe-dreamers, stargazers.

The horrors of our world, eldritch devils from the deep. They do not wander in the hinterlands, beneath an insidiously grey sky, static in its route through the stars. Cloven hooves impressed below the phantom copse, they linger in our streets.

October 30th, 2014