Some guys get real focused on the details. They find out where she works, works out, how often she gets phone calls, what she has for lunch. They might run into her as if accidentally, sit next to her on a bus, pass her at the mall. They’ll even steal her personal items: Lipstick, underwear, shoes. Maybe they go through her garbage, find out what she buys, what she eats, if she pays her bills on time, if she’s on the rag. I’d guess they get a kick out of it. It makes them feel like they have control. The more they know about her daily routine, the safer they feel.
But that’s overkill, and what’s more, that’s the same pattern a cop will follow to catch you. You don’t need to know that much. You get to know someone too well, it fucks up the killer/killee relationship. The last thing you want is to get too attached and puss out when it comes time for business. Rule one, right, is to leave no trace. But if you’re popping up left and right, someone’s bound to see you. And you’ve got circumstantial evidence to worry about, meaning you don’t want to leave hair and fingerprints all over the place. Despite what stalkers think, you’re better off going random. Besides, if you can’t spend ten minutes watching someone and know everything you need to, it’s time to find a new hobby.
Then you have these guys, they want to take a piece of the body with them. They want to have some kind of reward for what they did. These are your egomaniacs. It’s not enough for them to have done the deed, they have to have a private trophy gallery to prove it. They aren’t killing to kill, they’re killing to be acknowledged. Here’s where you’d put Jack the Ripper, if you were looking to categorize. These are also the guys who will write anonymous letters to the cops. If you read anything about these guys, it will tell you they wanted to be caught because something inside of them wanted punishment. Bullshit. They never caught the Zodiac, and they never caught old Jack. No one wants to get caught unless they’re looking to be on television. Ask Manson, that pussy never killed a single person with his own hands, and now he’s a fucking pop icon. For some guys, murder is their only shot at fame. That’s not me either. I’m not looking to be anyone’s fantasy. I don’t need a horde of girls writing me dirty letters to know I’m a man.
And then there are cannibals. The way I figure it, these guys are just lunatics. I can’t begin to understand the psychology behind that. Maybe they think it releases them from culpability, the way people don’t feel responsible for running down a deer if they eat it. Or maybe they think a part of the victim joins them, like those African ants that absorb the memory of their dead by devouring them. Probably they started off with an eating disorder, which means control issues, but Hell, don’t we all have those. Anyway, I don’t eat people. After what I do, that’s just not an option. I don’t exactly sanitize the shit before I use it.
Every once in awhile you get a Charles Starkweather, a Richard Ramirez, someone who’s just doing it for the hell of it, a bored psychopath. And there’s the sexual deviants, for them killing is usually an afterthought. There are corporate untouchables, hobos who cut up kiddies, a lady who specializes in lovers. You get the occasional librarian in Bumfuck with a basement full of three foot skeletons, ex-military schizo’s with a grudge, deer hunters who had an accident and discovered they could get away with it again. I heard of a guy who worked at a sperm bank and injected ladies with other people’s semen. That’s not my style. I’m better than those guys. You ever see a photo of Gacy? The guy’s a lardo and a fag. I don’t target children, or hookers, or those Dianetics losers. If you end up in my trunk, it was fucking random. I didn’t pick you in particular, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I digress.
The going theory is that we are all utterly psychopathic, affected by antisocial personality disorder and born with no capacity for empathy or remorse. Now that’s a crock of shit. Truth is, the first few people I killed, I threw up right afterward. It was a fucking mess. I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think it’s the most common misconception. I don’t lack empathy; I can relate to Joe Smith and his happy little life. I feel sorry for those starving kids in Mozambique. I have the ability to acknowledge other people’s emotions, to apply them to myself and respond appropriately. I have a healthy relationship with my girlfriend and my mother. I have the same emotions as other people. But unlike other people, I am in control of them. I’m not tumbling through life on a wave of my own biology. Sure, every now and again I lose it, but I don’t hide in darkened rooms weeping about it, or go berserk with jealousy if my girlfriend fucks some other guy. Most people are ruled by their emotions and that’s what makes them weak. You don’t believe me, ask Golding, ask Einstein, ask Hitler. Genius is tempered by emotion, idiocy is ruled by it.
Am I saying that killers are inherently superior to their prey? Absolutely not. The point is; we’re just not alike in a way that you can calculate. The characteristics we share are not unique to us. You can dissect as much as you like, but the remains will be the same as any random sample. You can diagnose psychosis, personality disorders, violent tendencies, abhorrent desires, but not until after the fact can you be sure. Of course we take similar routes, it’s only logical that people who enjoy the same pastime will follow the lead of their predecessors. Someone had to be the first to fire up a grill in the parking lot of a baseball game. And, let’s be honest, contemporary society almost reveres what we do. There’s bound to be emulation. Not to mention, we have to be effective and we have to be invisible, and there just aren’t a lot of original ideas out there on how to accomplish both. Or maybe there are, and we just don’t know about them because they’re that good. Either way, no one can predict a killer. We’ve been around since Cain, so if you can’t pick us out yet, you’ll never be able to.
We do share, however, a certain lust that there is no adequate word to describe. An urge not only to kill, but to injure, to molest, to mutilate the image of God as it is reflected in the face of man. This is what you want to know about, isn’t it? That’s the hook for you, right? You never really think about it, but you almost think about it. You play out little scenarios, imagine the act itself, picture your hands in my gloves. Maybe you go so far as to choose potential victims, kids walking alone, late at night, people coming home from bars, too drunk to drive, falling over themselves. Maybe you even think of a place, some abandoned warehouse you saw one night while out driving. But you stop there. For awhile. And then you’re thinking about what it would look like, the blood pouring into puddles, the skin curling up like bacon in a pan, the fingernails split away from struggling, eyes like silent prayers: Let me live. But you stop there. Me, I get past that taboo. I catch people, I bind them, I hang them from meat hooks and torture them, and then I kill them. Because I like it. I don’t know why, but I genuinely like it enough to keep doing it no matter what the potential repercussions.
Is that what you wanted to know?
-Mercy
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the mercy killings
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