Perhaps it was the thrill. Maybe the feel. Whatever it was, it was addicting. I had my first when I was in junior high. I went out with some friends to this beach and we messed around a little. No nothing sexual, just kids having fun.
Well, when I said these kids were my friends, I kind of lied. They weren't my friends, more of acquaintances. I don't normally get asked to parties, so I thought they were pretty cool for inviting me. They drove me out there since I didn't have a car. They were so nice. Especially Valerie. She was so sweet. She kept hanging on my shoulder and grabbing my arm. All the way there she did that. And when we got to the beach, she hung on me even more. Always smiling and laughing, and then turning with those bright blue eyes at me.
After a while Valerie looked over to Blake, who gave a little nod. I wondered why he did that. And then Valerie yanked her arm away and shoved me to the ground. I looked up with what must have been a funny look because they all started to laugh at me. Then they got in there car and drove off, leaving me in the sand. I walked home and got in late.
The next day the entire school was laughing. I was so embarrassed. Valerie would walk by me in between classes and tease me. It made me angry. After school I followed her home. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just wanted it to stop. She kept making odd turns down odd alleys until finally turning and calling out to where I hid. "You creep!" She shouted, "Why are you following me? Now you've gotten me lost."
I felt bad so I stepped out from my hiding spot behind the dumpster. She saw me and stormed at me, berating me the whole time. Suddenly, in the middle of her rant, something snapped. It was as if my mind was clear. I grabbed her hair, making her shriek a little but since her head was yanked up, she couldn't scream to well. Especially when I slit her throat with the box cutter I kept in my pocket.
She started gasping and holding her throat, but it just kept coming out. I quickly grabbed her and tossed her in the dumpster, knowing that stabbings happen here all the time and no one ever got caught.  I raced back home, blood still on my shirt. My mother was sick in bed and dad left when I was young so I knew I could get rid of everything without anyone knowing. I burned the shirt in a garbage can and made sure to shower vigorously. My heartbeat raced. I think it was then that it hit me. I would never be able to  stop doing this.
Over the years I started to get smarter. I knew I couldn’t shove them all in dumpsters, so I thought of places no one would look. Where would be the perfect place to hide a body? and then it came to me. When you want to hide something, stick it in somewhere where it  looks natural. Cemeteries are filled with bodies. Who would look in a cemetery for a body? And so, I began to take walks over there after school.
I knew I couldn’t do anything for a while though. Valerie was very popular and everyone was on the look out for her once they realized she was gone. It was really quite clumsy of me. They ended up finding her body and tracing it back to that alley. The official story was that she was attacked on the way home. Another poor victim of gang violence.
Some of you might be wondering how I kept so restrained. It wasn’t easy. I staved off my desires by falling into stereotypes. killing small animals. I would trap them in the woods out behind my house. I would kill them in all different ways, trying to find out which way I preferred it. The best was definitely strangulation. I felt the most in power when I did it.
I didn’t get started with my work until college. My mother died soon after I began schooling at the local community college and she left me the whole house. I took great pains renovating it to fit my needs. It started off a little shabby, though actually quite big. It had two rooms upstairs, one of them being my mother’s that I turned into a guest bedroom, and the other was mine.
On the ground floor, There was a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a study. The downstairs used to be just an empty cement room for storage, but I ended up making a separate room. To get there, you’d have to traverse the junk piled all around. I dubbed it my kill room. The house itself was a ways out of town in a field. I didn’t have any neighbours, and just as well. It allowed me to have the most fun with my guests.
Now, I went to college with some money my grandparents left me. I ended up majoring in forensics. I wanted to work with the police but not really in the spotlight. Just another lab tech. Nobody cares about them. I studied hard and got plenty of good grades. I was the model student.
But at night, I would drive to the nearby city. I would scan the streets for days until I found the perfect one. Generally a girl. Young. Run away. I would follow them for days. Then, when they were alone, I would take them. I’d knock them out quickly, then bind and gag them and put them into the back of my van. Then I’d drive all the way home and wait for them to wake up.
It generally wouldn’t take too long. They would wake up, fear in their eyes, as they were suspended, their feet a few centimeters off the ground, from the hook hanging from the middle of the room. They would try to move their arms and realize I had put them in a straight jacket attached to the hook. Their feet were also bound by a leather strap attached to a hoop in the floor. All the while here I am sitting in a chair less than a yard away.
I would smile at them as they struggled. They would spin and spin. After a while I’d get bored and steady them to look into their face. I’ve seen many different emotions. Well, mostly three. Determination on the ones who kept squirming, thinking there was a possibility to get away if the just kept fighting. There wasn’t. Then there was fear coming from those who were begging to have me let them go. I wouldn’t. And lastly there was sadness. This was painted on those who gave up and resigned to their fate while still hoping their tears would move me to mercy. They didn’t.
I always correlated my kills to recent deaths. I read the obituaries like another would read the times for a matinee. I would stalk my prey until someone died and would be buried in the cemetery a few miles from my home. The night before I would take the body and dig several more feet into the already six feet deep hole, and then dump in my corpse. Then, I would cover it up again and no one would be the wiser.
However, there was one that surprised me. It was this girl I picked up with short, jet black hair, probably dyed, and ripped clothes. She struggled around for a time, trying to get out. Then, when I walked up to her to take a look at her face, she looked at my eyes and then at the leather cord in my hand. Her fear melted away and she looked at me with something like relief. As though this was exactly what she wanted. I quickly strangled her, the light leaving her eyes, and fear filling mine, but never once did that relief leave them until it was all over.
I was terrified. And yet at the same time, thrilled. It was the same feeling I had when I first killed Valerie all those years ago. It was so new. I quickly brought myself down however, and went to work. I laid the plastic all around the floor and lowered her stiff body onto it. I then proceeded to wrap every inch of her in the smooth polymer. Then I hefted her into the trunk of my van and drove to the cemetery.
Within a few days, I was back to work. Killing more of the scum that filled the streets. The news continued saying how the city had fewer and fewer homeless people. You’re welcome. Then came her. The one that ended everything. I had picked up a girl and went through the whole routine again and this one kept shouting about how this was a mistake, this can’t be happening, all of that junk that I have heard a million times before. She died like all the rest. What separated her was what happened after.
A few days afterward, I was watching the news and flipping through the obituaries when I a breaking news story came on. I was face to face with the image of my latest victim. Her name was Melanie Analie. I stared at the screen as they tell about how they are searching for her throughout the area. None of my victims had ever been newsworthy before.
Apparently, she was very popular in her school. Her parents loved her dearly. She even had scholarships to go to college. But then she disappeared a few months ago. Said she wanted to experience life from the view of the country’s poor. A social experiment. She had been calling her parents once a day until the calls suddenly stopped. They had grown worried and contacted the police. I had gotten careless. I remember a few times catching her making phone calls, but I didn’t think anything of it. Many homeless people sometimes call friends or relatives begging for money. How was I to know she was checking in every day?
But, it was fine. They would never find her anyway. And even if they did, no one would suspect me. I was the kindest man in town. I did volunteer work at the hospital. I worked with the police. I even worked part time as a birthday clown at kids parties. Who would look at me and say, killer? No one that’s who.
It wasn’t long before they figured out she was in this town before she disappeared. and unfortunately she lived out of this state and thus brought the FBI into it. They snooped around everywhere. Asking everyone questions. Being a forensic analyst on the local police force, I was kept in the loop of a lot of what they were doing. They weren’t even close.
Then, one night, it stormed harder than in the town’s history. Mathelda was nearly flooded. The Feds thought that this was going to destroy any evidence they had completely. It rained for a week, the rain never letting up. Once it was done, I was watching the news about all the damage. One of the main things damaged was the cemetery. When I heard that, my heart caught in my throat. The bodies had been washed up and now everyone was rying to piece them all back together and in the right grave.
Of course, it didn’t take long to realize that there were about thirty extra bodies in that cemetery, one of them being Melanie Analie’s. It turned into a hunt for a serial killer. They looked everywhere. I still knew I was safe. There was nothing linking them to me. Or so I thought.
They found stray DNA on one of the bodies. They checked it with the body it was paired with and found they didn’t match. Apparently, some of my plastic ripped and it got some of my DNA on it. They had it analysed and they found a match in their records. It matched the file we had on store of Forensic Analyst Philip K. Shapiro. It was me. But, unfortunately for them, I saw it first.
I knew I couldn’t hide it from them. So, I ran. I ran and kept on running. I buried their lead deep enough to give me enough time to book a plane to London and activate the emergency accounts I had set up in case I needed to run. Once I arrived in London, I booked another flight under Allan Perkins to Switzerland.
I began working internationally. I would continue with my routine, but I let myself get a little sloppy. Stopped hiding the bodies. I began to enjoy hearing about myself on the news. They called me the Boogeyman. Once they got close, I would leave inconspicuously to another country. They chased me for years. However, I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew from the moment Melanie’s face appeared on the news.
They finally caught me in Germany. They had found me at the place I was staying and chased me vigorously. I was shot in the gut and began to bleed out. The chase ended with me falling from fatigue and blood loss in front of a large cathedral. I was still trying to hold in my internal organs as the officers came up. I saw the man they had assigned to me from interpol. His name was William Crawford. He had been chasing me since Melanie. Even got a transfer to interpol to keep after me. I smiled at him as the darkness enveloped my vision.