Watermelon Sugar Die

Nice Guy

The amber alert hit his phone. Missing 14 year-old girl with blonde hair. Five foot-two, ninety-two pounds. An eye witness said the missing person was last seen entering a white sports car.

Had the witness said sports car?.. or Had they said, "Lamborghini?" 

He had to stop doing this. It was too easy to get caught. Cameras. Witnesses. Amber alerts. Harry needed to go back to England for awhile until things blew over in the States. He'd have his lawyers plea chronic anxiety to the director. They could buy him a few weeks. The rest of the cast could shoot their scenes around him. 

But London wouldn't keep him from killing. He remembered the lake where he'd left the body of a classmate, Hennie, a tall gentle girl that sat at the back of his Geography classroom and sighed whenever he'd look back at her. She'd let him kiss her in the garden near the pond. Her body shaking from the newness of it all. When choked her, she never slapped his hands away or flailed about in the grass. She crumpled into a pile, and Harry had expected Hennie would catch her breath, slap his shoulder and call him an arsehole. When they found her body in the pond weeks later, clothed and seemingly unharmed, they had deemed it an accidental drowning. Harry brought her parents a basket of ginger muffins with his condolences. Hennie's parents, Harry's girlfriend, his co-workers at the bakery, all said, "What a nice guy."

Then, he'd gone on "X-Factor," been put in a boy band, and spent the next ten years working his arse off. Most of that time, he hadn't killed anyone. He'd been tempted many times. But Louis had been around, distracting him with his big mouth. He couldn't have dark thoughts around Louis, or any thoughts really. Louis was a pinata full of Aderol, a thousand Christmas crackers, an endless Mardi Gras parade. He brought the noise. He brought the fun. He brought  the sun. He needed Louis. It would be like old times.

But, first, Harry had one more thing to do. He hiked to an obscure trail in the canyon, his familiar bucket hat and white gloves on.. It was 45 minutes before a  young man, tone and tan, and surely full of fight came across his path. Young women, old people, there was no challenge there. They were for light days. He needed something heavy. Something to last him. "Excuse me," he approached the young hiker, "Could I use your phone a minute? I must have lost mine in the woods somewhere."

"Holy shit," the man recognized Harry. "Absolutely, man."

Harry tapped at the screen, pretending to call. He looked at the hiker, "Bro, I think you have a tick right here." Harry tapped at his own neck. The hiker clawed at his skin in panic. "Where?"

Harry handed the hiker his phone back. He reached out his hands to the young man's neck.. "Here, let me just get that for you..."