Alive

Chapter 18: Sadistic Souvenirs

The front door to my apartment was boarded up, I guess the police must've kicked it down looking for me after I left. I had to go back outside and climb up the fire escape to my window, then break the glass with my fist wrapped up in a t-shirt from my bag.

It didn't make too much noise since there was a rug beneath the window ledge, where the glass landed silently. Making sure I wasn't going to get cut I climbed through the window frame. I could just imagine that, what a cosmic joke it would be; coming to my apartment to get my life back and getting cut and bleeding to death.

For a brief second I had a horrible thought, it made me feel sick. What if my trophies weren't here? What if the police had found them when they came looking for me and connected them to the pile of unsolved disappearances sitting on their desks.

I flicked the light switch on and ran to the bookcase in my living room. I knew exactly where 'Romeo And Juliet' should be, and as my eyes fell upon the spot, I exhaled loudly. A sigh of relief. There it was; where I'd left it. The police really didn't know my secret.

I pulled it out of its spot and put it into my bag, then I whizzed through my apartment like a tornado, snatching up what I wanted before leaving. Mark's ring from my bedside table, the cigarette lighter I took from Dylan the pothead, the pack of gum Jessica had on her when she came to retrieve her phone from me, or so she thought.

Hubba Bubba, that's the smell I associated with her; always popping it in her mouth as she wrote down customers' orders. It annoyed the hell out of me but I liked the strawberry smell.

Caleb's nightclub wristband, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had been 4 months since I'd killed anyone, so I hung around an alley near a rowdy nightclub. He came out barely able to walk and so I picked him to satisfy my urges. I stuck a needle into his neck, pushing a high effect sleeping pill in liquid form into his bloodstream and pulling him into my car.

Ashley Emerson, my seventh victim was the only one who almost escaped. He was a college student and happened to be their football team's quarterback. I guess I like a challenge. Even after I'd followed him to his house and drugged him, he was pretty fucking strong.

He woke up as I was tying him down and he hit me in the face, splitting my lip. I decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try and stick a needle into him a second time, given how pissed off he was. So I picked up the baseball bat that was leaning against the wall in his hallway and hit him with it.

Somehow he got out of the steel wire I'd wrapped around him and he ran at me. I swung the bat at him as hard as I could, putting all of my weight behind it until it cracked into his skull. And then I kept hitting and hitting, until my arms ached and the baseball bat splintered into 2 different pieces.

After I had cleaned up the mess I took his keys out of his pocket and found a football keyring hooked onto them. I smiled in my apartment as I looked down at the keyring now, I was pretty impressed that I had taken him down, even if I did say so myself.

I threw it into my bag along with all the other sadistic souvenirs. The earphones I'd used to strangle Hannah to death as she'd been listening to her iPod, Peter's stud earring I'd ripped out when he called me a venomous bitch; I wasn't offended or anything, I just thought it seemed an appropriate response. The red lipstick taken from Sophie's handbag after I'd cut her leg open and stabbed her in the chest.

I laughed to myself as I lifted the panda ornament off of my mantle piece. Harper Groves. What a bitch. The second fatality on my list of 10. I'd been walking home one day a few months after Elizabeth and I'd seen her kicking the shit out of some girl, bleeding all over the pavement, crying out. I got closer to them, being careful not be noticed.

"What are you then, huh you little rat? I wanna hear you say it, fag." She spat at the battered girl.

"A..." She croaked and spat out a mouthful of blood before finishing.

"A dyke."

"And why am I beating the shit out of your little faggot ass?"

"Be... Because... I'm disgusting."

"Exactly." She laughed. I'd never hated anyone so quickly before. I mean sure, I'm a serial killer, but I didn't discriminate. What I did wasn't out of hate, it was out of passion for killing. She was just a cruel piece of shit.

I ran up to her and slapped her across the cheek, then threw her to the ground. I kicked her in the head to make sure she stayed down for a while. Picking up the other girl, I saw how young she was.

She only looked about 13, 14 tops. Jesus. This other girl looked my age, 18, maybe even older, and she was kicking the living shit out some girl who'd barely entered her teen years. I was going to kill her. Not right then, but I was going to kill her.

The younger girl had to lean on me as she stood up, holding her ribs where she'd received multiple blows.

"Ugh! Fucking dykes." The older girl growled at us. I was automatically a lesbian because I'd helped a battered girl up off the floor? I mean I did like girls... But she didn't know that.

"Yep. Suck it. 'Cause we're not gonna." The younger girl laughed at what I'd said but cried out in pain as soon as she sucked in a breath.

"Whatever!" She got up, spat at us and walked off. I guess she didn't like the idea of a fair fight, against someone her own age and size.

"Hey!" I called after her.

"You're gonna regret doing that." She rolled her eyes and scoffed at me.

"Ooo, I'm terrified." She wasn't then, but she was the following week when I broke into her bedroom through the open window and climbed on top of her. I gagged her mouth and tied her hands together, then started slowly cutting her skin with my knife. She started crying as I dug it into her upper arm and twisted it. Wasn't so tough now, was she?

She saw the world in black and white. Her way of doing things was right, and if anyone didn't like that, she bullied them. Narrow minded, ignorant, pathetic. Just some of the words I hurled at her before slitting her neck open and smiling.

On her desk, beside the pile of exercise books with 'Harper Groves' sprawled across them, was a little ornament of a panda, the size of my thumb. Black and white, like her perception of this world. She was wrong. The world was so much better filled with colour. Especially red.