Stalker

Caution: This story is written from the perspective of a serial killer as he stalks his most sought after victim. There are no graphic depictions of violence, sexual or otherwise. But it is hinted at in the way he sexualizes the idea of hurting her.

A girl stood on her porch and took a drag of her cigarette. A man watches her from behind her shed, he goes unnoticed. The sun is just beginning to get lower in the crisp fall sky. He takes a step forward; a twig cracks under his foot. She looks to one side of the yard, then another. He was sure she saw him for a moment. When she turned around and took a drag of her cigarette again, he felt a sense of relief.

Suddenly a car pulled into the lot in front of her neighbor's house. The man ducked back behind the shed, and the woman tossed her cigarette to the ground and went inside her home, locking the door tightly behind her. He didn’t have to check. He knew it was locked. It was always locked. His prey was diligent, never letting her guard down for a moment.

He had killed before, but they always let their guard down, giving him an opening, making it easy. She never made it easy. He could break a window in if he were desperate enough to get to her, but it had become a game to him. Sneaking around unnoticed, waiting for an opening, constantly scanning her for weakness.

The people around her considered her paranoid. She probably would have found it validating that each of those paranoid actions was actively saving her life every moment. He found it frustrating, and invigorating. His prey was a worthy adversary, his first real challenge. It was romantic in a way, in his mind at least. She was the one, the prey he craved the most.

If he spent the rest of his life chasing her, he would be satisfied. She would not be satisfied with that of course. She was scared all the time, and she didn’t even know he existed. But leaving her house gave her panic attacks. She experienced hallucinations of the room filling with smoke or voices screaming in the background of every silence. She had flashbacks of horrible traumas and was occasionally hospitalized for mental health crisis.

He hated that, the hospital was impossible to stalk in. The nurses did the stalking, they knew everyone there and what they were there for and who was allowed to visit. That was when he would focus on other prey. He would crave her, and to relieve the cravings he would find another victim, hoping for another survivor.

They would always disappoint him. They would leave a door unlocked or have a broken window they never cared to fix, or they would invite him in themselves. Sometimes they would catch him stalking them on their way home or on their late-night bar outing. He would turn on the charm and get an invitation home.

He didn’t like to be seen with them. He didn’t want any witness descriptions given to police in the investigation. He didn’t have online chat threads with them to tie them back to him. He wanted to be a phantom, an unknown. A ghost in the night who could strike at any moment. But when the opening presented itself, he could be quite charming.

When she got home, he would feel so much relief. He didn’t know if he’d have any reason to live once he killed her. How would he go on? Perhaps he would kill himself after he was done with her. By this point he would be craving her so much he would seriously consider breaking a window in and getting it over with. He’d never had to do that before.

‘What would she do?’ He thought.

He imagined her in her underwear and a t shirt, laying in her bed asleep. He imagined her being awoken by the sound of broken glass. She would probably reach for the closest hard heavy object to her. Like a lamp. She didn’t think through every step of her life to keep herself safe so effectively just to not have a plan for when someone breaks in the window. She’s probably thought it through.

She’d stay in her room and hide, waiting for him. She probably would have already called the police. She probably would have given them her address first. He decided he would have to break in her bedroom window. Give her less time to react.

He would break in the window and take her phone before she could get to it. She slept with it across the room from her. It was the one flaw in her survival instincts really. She silenced her phone and kept it across the room so her sleep wouldn’t be interrupted by notifications.

She really loved her sleep; she would be so mad at him for interrupting. He thought she would be really cute pissed off with tape over her mouth. Tape? He didn’t have tape. He’d never used it. He always killed them immediately.

He thought about it. He couldn’t do that to her; he wanted to savor it. So, the window wouldn’t do. Could he charm her like he had the others? He never initiated it or sought out that kind of opening.

Perhaps her shut in lifestyle had left her feeling isolated. Perhaps she was in desperate need for a friend? Or romance? Or even a quick lay? He imagined meeting her at a bar, they would dance and laugh. He would kiss her as the bar was closing. She’d suggest they go back to her place; they’d get a taxi.

No not a taxi damnit! He thought to himself. The driver will be able to identify him. Maybe not tho, if they made out in the back of the car the whole drive. He’d never see his face. He’d drop them off; the man would follow the woman to her door.

She’d unlock it, walk in, point this way to the bathroom, that way to the kitchen. He’d lock the door behind them quietly and pull a rag from his pocket, Chloroform. Where would he get chloroform?

“Hey creep!” A voice broke him from his train of through.

He turned around to find the woman, holding a gun to his head.

“Fuck you” she said, pulling the trigger.

The woman dug a deep hole in her back yard under the cover of darkness. She wrapped the man’s body in a sheet. She rolled him into the hole and piled a few feet of dirt on top of him, then she dropped a rose bush in the hole and finished filling it in with dirt.