Serial Killer
The blood was starting to clot and fall in globs to the floor. He continued to cut away the flesh from the bone in silence. He tossed the meat aside in large plastic storage tub.
It was not the thin cheap plastic storage tubs you would buy at the local mega-mart, they were the thick sturdy kind that were hard to find. All storage tubs used to be this thick, when he bought them in bulk in nineteen eighty four.
He wasn’t a hoarder. He just liked to plan ahead.
He planned so well ahead it was eerily like ESP. Which he did have in some small sense. He had enough to know he would need those containers when he saw them.
He didn’t know the economy was going to tank, leaving millions out of work. He had no foresight that the country was going to be so far in debt it could not get out, ever. He knew none of these things were going to happen.
He did know Katherine, with a “K”, was going to want to go home with him last night. He knew she would drink one more cherry martini once he got her there. He knew how the whole night would go. Not so much because of ESP, though he was sure it held a part.
It was due to his meticulous planning, and the fact the he knew Katherine was spelt with a K two weeks before their chance meeting at the bar.
He knew more than how to spell her name.
He knew where she worked, where she played, who she worked and played with. He would have made a great private detective. He knew her favorite color, her favorite drink, and (thanks to an online dating profile) what her perfect man would be like.
For three hours he was that man. A night of role playing. A smile, a laugh, and unlimited charm. Then he brought her home and mixed her a drink.
She wanted more, so much more. She’d found her perfect man, she wanted her happily ever after to start here and now. She was so desperate, so very desperate. She would have done anything he asked, anything.
That was all he needed.
Then as she neared the end of her drink, her flirting became slurred. Her movements became clumsy. She went to the restroom to urinate, and expired on the toilet.
It was a stroke of luck he hadn’t counted on.
He removed the wig of short dark hair, and took out the light brown contacts. He had both in every color. He enjoyed dressing up and playing the part.
It added to the adrenaline rush.
He could have been an actor.
He pulled the last piece of meat off the bone and tossed it in the plastic container.
He set the bones in a huge cauldron over the walk in gas fireplace in the front room. He left them to boil as he carried out the tub of meat to the woods.
He walked for a few hours, and set the tub down uncovered. He said nothing and enjoyed the sounds of the surrounding woods. There was no one around here for miles and miles.
After the bones were cleaned, he laid them out to dry on a large metal dehydrator he had built. Then he took the dry bones to a large industrial trash compactor located in the shed. Within minutes of the large machine’s whirring and cranking, it was over.
He took the bone fragments and dust, added them to some bonemeal mulch he’d bought a few weeks before for the garden.
He went down to the basement and cleaned the cold metal steel floor and the autopsy table.
He had the house built at his own expense. Room by room, each by different construction crews. No one knew the floor plans but him, everything was built without question, to his specification.
H.H. Holmes would have been proud.