Serial

Diary Entry: October 18th

Trigger warning: This part contains explicit descriptions of murder, rape and/or torture, which may be disturbing or triggering for some readers.

October 18th

It shouldn't have happened the way it did. She should've been the thirteenth. Lucky number thirteen.

What a joke.

Turns out she's the one with all the luck.

Looking back on it now, I can see all the things that went wrong. All the mistakes that were made. Stupid mistakes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Someone of my intelligence—and by now, experience—just doesn't make stupid mistakes like the ones that were made with this girl. Which means that the fault lay elsewhere. Forces that were out of my control, things that I couldn't have planned for or foreseen...

Like I said, it shouldn't have turned out the way it did.

Her name was Tina.

She didn't offer up this information. I saw it on the keychain she carried with her. It was green, with a glittery outline. It matched her eyes. Well, her contacts, really, because Tina was black, her skin a gorgeous shade of mocha. So her actual eyes were probably brown. I planned to find out after scooping them out.

Tina was pretty. Model-pretty. It was actually the first thing I noticed about her, after the waving of her arms of course.

I'd been on my way home from the gym, having had a particularly long day of classes and choosing to work out my aggressions on the treadmill. I wore an old blue hoodie, pulled up over my hair, which had curled up with sweat. My glasses were off, because they'd kept fogging up from the heat radiating off my skin.

I was the opposite of put-together when I saw her. Scruffy looking. Not one that someone would trust based off of looks alone. I knew this when I saw her waving her arms from the side of the road up ahead.

That's why I'd decided not to stop—I wanted to get home and take a shower, eat something, get some rest. I was tired and irritable, and the last thing I wanted to do was deal with some chick.

But when she saw that I wasn't slowing down, the bitch walked out into the middle of the street, forcing me to either swerve, hit her, or stop. For a second, I contemplated running her down...it would serve her right for purposely putting herself in the way of my car. But hit-and-runs were messy and much more difficult to cover up. Evidence was always left behind. On the body. On the car. On the road.

Running her over would've been reckless.

If she wanted me to stop, then fine. I'd stop.

Pressing down on the breaks, I'd managed to slow without skidding, and came to a stop beside her. By this point, she'd moved out of the road and dropped her arms.

"Everything okay?" I'd asked through the passenger side window.

I was smiling, but inside I was annoyed.

She sauntered over to my car, taking her sweet time, now that she'd gotten my attention.

"Blew a tire and my car went off into the ditch over there," she'd said, pointing behind her. Her kinky curls fell into her face as she turned back in my direction. Lifting her hand to her forehead, she attempted, but failed, to hold them out of her eyes.