The Online Profile of a Serial Killer

Posted on September 18, 2022 (Second Post)

We slept through the day – a deep long sleep that we both needed. It was nighttime again and she had not woken up. Her mouth hung slightly open and her eyes darted around under her eyelids. I tried to go back to sleep, but wakefulness seeped into my mind, and with it, came thoughts of Will.

I crept out of bed, trying not to wake her. I walked naked down the hallway and into the living room. On the sofa, I sat in darkness and rested the humming computer on my lap, its warmth heating my skin. Will's Facebook page was still open where I had left off. The next post read:

Real Will

June 28 at 11:55pm via mobile

She is trying to dial a number on the phone but I snatch it from her. She is running to another phone in another bedroom. I snatch the next phone from her. I think she is scared because her voice is cracking. I can't understand what she's saying.

You're nothing, I say. I'm following her down the hallway and she stops to swing her closed hand at me, but I catch her wrist. With her free hand, she claws at my face but I grab her other wrist. Her face changes, and her anger transforms into agony. A slow and deliberate wailing exits her throat, and I feel sorry for her.

This is a world of shit, I say. I'm going to take you away from this, I say.

My muscles tighten and I swing her body over the carpeted staircase. She is falling down the stairs now and lands on the mess of slippers at the bottom. A trickle of blood drips from her nose. She stumbles for the front door but she isn't fast enough. She's groggy and breathing heavily. I hold the door closed.

Please, she says. I pin her against the wall and she screams for a moment. Please, she says again.

You will never leave me now, I say.

I grasp her neck, and then she is unable to make a sound. Her back is rubbing on the light switches. As she struggles, the lights in the hallway and front porch are turning on and off. I feel her fingernails scraping across my arm. The sensation is delicious, but my stomach feels sick. Her face turns purple. Her eyes look like they might pop out of her head. Her body goes limp and I'm not strong enough to hold her up. She slides to the ground. On her back, she pushes me away with her legs. She charges to the kitchen. She reaches for the hanging butcher's knife beside the stove. But I catch her again and tackle her to the floor.

Her screams are coarse and I allow her to call out for help underneath me. Help, help, help, she screams in a hoarse voice. Help, she screams. A vein on her forehead protrudes from her hairline to her brow.

I lunge over and bite down on her nose. I hear the sound of bones crunching in my jaws. I shoot up, red around my mouth, and I bring my fist down on her gashed and broken nose again and again. Her face feels soft on my fist. She stops screaming. She stops moving.

Blood smears her now deformed face and shattered teeth, but I still recognize her eyes. Her body twitches, but her eyes remain still.

My bloody hand is pulsing as I walk up the stairs and into her closet. In the metal filing cabinet beside her hanging clothes I take out a manila envelope filled with stacks of cash and I stuff it into my pants. I take the rings and necklaces from the box on her dresser.

In the kitchen again, I look down at her body, her eyes still open and I recognize her behind her eyes. She is still there. I pull her by her limp arms out the back door, over the grass and into the tool shed. The past becomes ash, and she gives herself to this – to this place where time does not flow. She is immersed in infinity.

She is not there anymore, only here. The real Mindy.

The heaviness of the computer sank deeper into my lap and my heart pumped faster. The TV images of Mindy Luu-Wei flashed inside my head -- the backyard and the burned tool shed -- the smiling bikini-clad photos of dead Mindy Luu-Wei. Could this really be Mindy?

I thought of calling the police, but what would I tell them? I'd tell them that my roommate wrote this profile -- a roommate that disappeared without a trace -- a roommate whose last name and whereabouts I didn't know. They couldn't help me, just as they couldn't help me after what happened to my parents -- they didn't understand me then and I knew for certain that they wouldn't understand me now.

"What are you reading?" Marie stood in the mouth of the hallway.

I jumped. "It's nothing," I closed the laptop, still startled, and walked passed her to grab my boxers on my bedroom floor. Marie followed me into the room and watched me. I avoided her gaze as I slipped my boxers on. She looked suspicious.

"You... you're hiding something for me," she challenged.

I didn't answer. My mind was still racing. I thought of the panic attacks and neurotic thoughts that plagued Marie, and I was compelled to protect her from the insanity I had just read. I was her haven, her solace of normality, and if I were to help her, I needed to calm myself – I needed to clear the confusion in my own brain first, and keep reading.

"What are you hiding?" she asked gently. She thought I was hiding something – maybe another woman.

I sprawled out onto the mattress, lying on my back and resting my forearm over my eyes.

"You don't have to... to tell me. It's none of my business," she said. "I'm sorry for asking... really. It was nothing, I'm sure."

She shook her head and started to get dressed, and I felt relief. She'd be better off leaving, I thought – she'd be safer. And I would be safe from her queries – free to keep reading. I've never seen her angry before, and even then, her mannerisms were only slightly aggressive. I thought about stopping her, and my mouth opened to say stop, but nothing came out. All I could think about was Will and the next post.

She left without saying goodbye and I waited by the window to watch Marie walk out from the building's front doors below and onto the sidewalk, holding her purse across her chest. A distant siren from a fire truck broke the peace. The truck blasted its horn. The wailing and the honking grew louder and louder when the cab finally arrived and picked up Marie. I watched the cab turn the corner and disappear from sight. I shut the window, muffling the sound of the siren. I darted back onto my laptop, my hands shaking. One thought haunted my mind – where are you, Will?

Comments:

Itchie says...

i'm right here :)

09/18/22, 11:00 PM

I say...

Who are you?

09/18/22, 11:02 PM

Itchie says...

i'm who ur looking for honey

09/18/22, 11:04 PM  

I say...

Let's meet tomorrow. Where will you be?

09/18/22, 11:05 PM  

Itchie says...

Aristocrat on Queen Street after dark, drinking my martini's at the bar

09/18/22, 11:09 PM