Lone Traveler

I don't really know what motivated me to write this at 2AM but here we are.

Caroline. I learned her name through the phone book, my shaking fingers carefully caressing its pages as I searched for the address I'd seen her at so many times. 43 Mako Drive, the small, brick house on the corner of Braxton and Mako. I'd memorized the shape of her home weeks before, my bare feet sliding across its wet grass every time I closed my eyes. Letters from her mailbox, addressed to Caroline Smith, confirmed what the book claimed.

She was perfect, absolutely flawless in every way. I'd watched her for seven months—almost every single day and night—silently following her as she strolled to and from her classes. Sometimes I stayed outside her bedroom window as we slept, my heart racing as I matched my breathing to hers. She never knew I was there, never acknowledged me as more than the distant shadow of a faceless tree, but I knew she needed me. She was all I could think about, all I wanted to be with. Beautiful, flawless, ideal. If anything could convince me that angels truly visited this greasy, obscene, vile planet, then it would have been to see her.

She was an artist, a creator; she built perfect worlds that only she and I could appreciate, universes fit for the two of us. She taught her art at the community center next to the unsightly yellow pizza restaurant. I didn't understand why she bothered showing up. The students didn't respect her; the other teachers didn't understand her; no one truly valued her. They couldn't see her perfection, her talent, the unearthly skill she possessed. No one knew what she was worth—except me. It was clear to me, everything she was capable of. The world wasn't able to comprehend what she could do; only I, and the God above, could fathom such beauty. I knew I had to free her, to save her from the life of dismay and disrespect she endured. Her perfection had to be known.

She always walked alone, always spent her days and nights with a just paintbrush and canvas. The mail at 43 Mako Drive was never addressed to anyone but Caroline, my fingers becoming accustomed to the rub of the ink-stained C of her name pressed into her envelopes. She had no one but her art, nothing but the worlds she created in the comfort of her home as I silently watched under the shroud of the long-set sun. She had me, had my support and devotion, my undying love and admiration, yet I knew that wasn't enough for her. She needed more, needed the embrace of the planet as they all screamed her name in singularity, hung her portraits in galleries and travelled halfway around the world to admire her brush strokes. She needed fame and fortune, acclaim and respect, followers and immorality. I knew I could give that to her, make her name a commodity and brand us as a single entity in the history of humanity.

I wanted to be the one to launch her fame, the name that always followed her around. I wanted to be the reason she went missing, the person to force her into the world. I needed to free her from this filthy planet, be the one to release her soul to the millions scattered throughout the corners of the uncivilized, obscene Earth. I knew she could inspire the masses and provoke the future.

I left her alone one night, let her sleep without the comfort of my warm carcass nestled just feet away. I had to, I needed to prepare. It was soon to be our time, the moment we'd forever become names tied together in the media, in the voices of the people, in the pages of history and the world alike. I wanted to perfect where I'd take her, where I'd free her soul into immortality. I needed it to be flawless enough to display her art to the world. I prepped and painted, cleaned and set forth the tools to extract her; my memory became blurred and uncertain as I toiled endlessly. It needed to be just as perfect as she. By the time I was content, my eyes had become bloody through lack of sleep, and the sun had long-since risen.

She was not in her room as my bare feet touched the familiar grass outside her window. I pulled open the unlocked back door, silently dragging my heels across the hardwood floor I'd felt so many times before. I'd once danced in that very spot, my feet softly tapping the ground not inches from where she slept; I could hear her breathing in perfect synchronization as I spun. Now her bed was empty, the window above it shattered and shimmering atop her sheets. Her bureau lay sideways, its contents spilled out on the floor. I picked up the ruby shirt she wore to bed almost every night and held it to my face, the familiar scent of her perfume washing over me. I continued through her house.

She valued her cleanliness, as did I. I'd watch as she spent hours, sometimes entire days, washing and organizing each and every inch of her home, always to perfection. Now it was a mess, a chaotic wreck of turmoil and struggle. She'd never done this to me before, never forced me to see her in such a shape of sheer humanity. Her walls, once rife with the beauty and life she painted, now lay bare, the art scattered and broken upon the floor. I clenched my teeth as I righted them, muscles tensing as I tried to hang them back in their correct places, but they were simply not the same. She had let someone else touch them; they had lost their perfection. I allowed them fall back to the floor as I continued up her stairs.

The crème carpet outside her studio door was stained a ruby red, still moist under the weight of my bare feet. I could hear her breathing heavily behind it, her gasps raspy and strained as if under a tremendous weight. I wrapped my hand around the doorknob, twisting the cold brass knob and silently pushing it open. I had to blink as I peered in, the vulgarity she exposed me to almost unbearable. The room was in disarray: paintings torn apart, brushes scattered across the floor, shelves toppled over sideways. The worlds she'd created for just the two of us, the universes that were supposed to inspire the future, were now stained, covered in blood and paint and split by knife. The hope she'd given the planet lay destroyed in the middle of the room by her broken body. She couldn't even save her own self.

She glanced up at me, her eyes studying me with a faint hint of recognition and dread, her mouth gagged and broken. I could hear her whimper softly, just as she occasionally did in her sleep as I stood watch. Spilled paints surrounded her and mixed into a single, grotesque shade—red, blues, yellows, whites, and every other color she'd previously had organized on the shelves beside the door. I stared at her for a moment, waiting for an apology as my eyes searched for the perfection and hope I'd seen for so long. She had been flawless, the only thing that could save the world from the pornographic, filthy wreck it had become. Now, as she lay on the ground, her eyes screaming for my help, all I could see was failure and dependence. A mirrored figure shifted in the far corner of the room, its back to me. I glanced up at it and slowly shook my head. She was no more perfect than the rest.

I turned around and quietly shut the door, then began back down the path I'd become so familiar traveling.

  The way I wrote this, the narrator is still the killer, he just doesn't remember or blocks it out. He has a split personality.  When he stays up the night before "preparing", he was actually killing her with his other self. And when she sees him, she recognizes him because he was just there committing those atrocious acts. And the figure in the corner was himself in a mirror, he only saw it as someone with their back turned because he didn't want to confront what he had just done.  

Alternate ending coming up.