The Online Profile of a Serial Killer

Posted on September 18, 2022

My footsteps echoed off the faces of buildings towering around me. It was three in the morning, the air void of daytime noises of cars and crowds. I pushed forward, fingering the Zippo lighter in my pocket, rushing to buy smokes at the corner only five minutes away so I could go back home – go back to Will.

A solo voice barked down the road as if a man was arguing with himself. I squinted and saw the familiar bum yelling at a light post. He was a perpetual landmark in the neighborhood, as if the streets, sidewalks, curbs, gutters, dumpsters and bus stops were his home. He moved slowly around his domain, day after day, stopping to talk to a fire hydrant, or a wastebasket, or a sewer lid. He's either Asian or Aboriginal, I couldn't really tell – his long black hair covered his face and features. His dark beard grew wiry thin like a character in a kung-fu film.

I crossed the street to avoid him, and he crossed, too, mirroring me. My hands clenched into nervous fists in my pockets.

"You're not going to fucking get me with your phone rays," he screamed. He moved closer to me and I took out my fists. He stopped abruptly, as if hitting an invisible glass wall, and I hurried passed him. His snarls faded away behind me, and my hands relaxed.

Relieved to reach the corner store, I sidestepped small talk with the clerk, bought two packs of De Maurier Balanced, and made my way home taking a different route – the long way.

I smoked four cigarettes by the time I reached my condo.

Opening the door of my unit and throwing the packs of smokes on the coffee table, I dashed to the hallway and saw the spare room door open. I paused, thinking to myself. Had I left it open?

"Will?"

No answer.

On my laptop in the living room, the email icon was blinking with a new message. It was Marie's fourth email asking why I hadn't replied. I ignored it and opened Will's Facebook profile.

The posts were written very eloquently, like passages from a novel. The way he spoke and the way he wrote were worlds apart. It seemed to me, that the voice in his posts was the voice Will wanted for himself. In person, he cursed, mispronounced words, spoke in double negatives – but on Facebook, he was almost divine with his language. In his posts, he replicated the words of a seasoned author or playwright.

Each post was written in the present tense, in first person, describing things as if they were happening in the moment, like the line: "I'm eating dinner very slowly, savoring the juiciness of the steak. The warmth of the meat blends with the coldness of the cranberry sauce."

One entry began: "In a record shop in Manhattan, I rummage through a crate of vinyl records and sneeze from the dust. I lift the crate from its side handles, and carry the stack of records into the listening booth. Hours pass, absorbing the soothing, changing, invigorating and inspiring melodies, when someone tells me to give other customers a chance, and I tell him to go fuck himself".

Then the post goes on to list each record in the crate:

The Beatles, The White Album.

The Beatles, Revolver

The Beatles, Rubber Soul

The Bee Gees, One Night Only

And so on.

I read for the better part of ten hours and was still on Will's 2013 posts. Sitting there, I wondered – did Will write from his phone while simultaneously experiencing moments in his life, or were his posts memories of other days long passed? Or was he writing his posts like how I write my blog -- collecting events from the day and recording them?