So twenty years after a woman's love restrained a beast the beast was back and open for business.  And as they say - it was like coming home. 

I started small, baby steps, wading into the shallow end of the pool - the woman was in her twenties, pretty, and bound and gagged before she knew what hit her.  She screamed as I remembered them screaming and died the very same; the very last light of life winking out of her eyes as I looked down on her from above, her head held softly in the palm of my hand. Door to door I continued on, selling insurance to those who would least suspect.  An acceptable cover, selling insurance - always had been; then as well as later, after what happened to the boy.  Made it easier to scout out and take notes of who lived alone and who did not.  For five years this continued, five years after the death of our son.  It was then I got sloppy.

It's frustrating, you know - this part of it.  I mean, it's not like I don't know, but more to the effect that I have a hard time understanding the meaning behind the why of why we embrace it.  I mean, seriously, you would have to be out of your fucking mind to attempt such a thing - and hey, yes, I will call a spade a spade, but truly, all of us?  Down to the most inept of us?  It has to be the narcissism - has to.  There is no other way around it.  I mean, why else would men like me feel the need to keep some sort of article which relates to their victims?  It's idiotic!  No - reckless; foolish.  Lacking the minimum amount of common sense the worst of us should have.  Is it because deep down we want to get caught?  Is this why our judgement is so off?  It doesn't make sense.  No, not now that I see it in hindsight.  Why would we keep these trinkets in the first place?  Is it inherent, brought on by the conceit of us?  It would appear so, as history shows - the ones you read about doing it again and again.  Some guy collecting ears he kept in a jar to another who would take only jewellery to which he and only he could masturbate to at half past the crazy hour.  Doesn't matter - not what it is, but that we do it.  Some little part of us - it wants to get caught, must.  This is all I can figure.  Why else had I kept their licenses? 

Yep - licenses; that was my thing.  Sometimes health cards and the like but only when that was all they had.  The cards were bound by elastic and sealed within a Ziploc bag I held in a box in my shed beneath the second to last floorboard beneath my workbench.   Do I have to explain how unwise something like this can be?  Sure I had my safeguards, yes, who wouldn't?  But did I honestly think it would ever happen?   No, I did not.  It did however, and only because of a portrait painted by my son.
        
Hanging in the main hall leading into our living room, Donavan had created the picture in sixth grade in honour of Martha's thirty-first birthday.  Years later, unbeknownst to any of us, it would become the linchpin which outed me. The string attached to either side of the portrait, the one which hung upon the nail coming out from the wall - this is what broke. And this is what sent Martha out to the shed that night.  Did the nail she went to get fall from her hand?  Is this what happened?  Did it roll?  I don't know.  Still, I have a hard time understanding why she would be in the shed looking for nails when all she needed was a new length of string from the drawer in the kitchen.  No matter.  What's done is done and what's found was found.  What upsets me is this: how it affected her.  I pictured her finding what she did and at first denying it once she realized what the licenses could signify.  After that, knowing Martha, she would try to rationalize what she was dealing with.  It wouldn't happen.  No, not if I knew Martha.  Which I do - did.  Later, I would find the trail she left on her laptop - the one which had linked some of my trips to some of the towns and cities the licenses said the woman were from.  Quite the investigator my little Martha had become; doing all this in between the time I called to check in - which I always did whenever I was on the road for more than two days at a time - to the time I returned.  It was then, as I spoke with Martha over the phone, that I knew something was off.  It was minute but there, her octave just shy.  These are the things you know after thirty years of marriage; things that only one other could ever come to know.
        
Anyway, I knew she knew but did not let her know I suspected.   I couldn't, not then, when the phone I was on was the only device I had at my disposal.  I drove home instead, speeding six hours straight.  During this time was when I decided not to kill her, certain that reason and the assurances I would give would be enough to see me through.  I would tell her I had stopped once before and that the reason for this had been her.  This worked in my head better than it did in real life, as she agreed with me in every scenario I could conjure, especially the one where she fully understood and realized that the death of our son had shaken me so much that I could not be blamed for lashing out at the world as I did; that it, not me, was at fault because of what it had done to me.  She would even go so far in saying it was on par to what my father had put me through growing up on the ranch.  
        
Fantasies, all of it - the mind of a madman - except for the truth which of course came next.
        
As I rounded the corner which led to our street I knew I was taking a chance; that Martha had instead called the police once she found my souvenirs and I was moments away from driving myself right into the walls of a cell which would before too long end with me strapped to a chair.  Either way, I was beginning to have the feeling that I had become more than fucked from Sunday.
        
Headlights off, I continued forward, around the bend.  All was quiet.  All was dark - save for our bedroom where the light was still on.  Inside, I checked her computer and found exactly what I thought I might; that Martha had been busy since last we spoke.  Next I went out back and checked the floorboard in my shed, the one which held my secret.  Sure enough, the fine dust of shavings had been disturbed.  Pulling out the box, I examined the cards.  Close, but the order was incorrect.  Allison Jersey was before Brenda McClellan, not after.   Martha had tried, yes, but failed.  It was time to talk.
        
Onwards I went, upstairs, towards the bedroom and Martha's sleeping frame.  On her side as always I watched her steadied breaths; looked on and reminisced.  How would I begin?  What would be the magic words?  From the beginning then - this is what I thought as I spoke her name to wake her.  This was when she attacked me; verbally, not physically, though it might as well have been.  If I didn't know it before, I sure as hell knew then: my wife's compassion - it is not a thing to be trifled with.  Martha had always been a strong and upfront person, this you know.  What I might have failed to interpret was how deep and far that compassion for any one person could go.  Me I've explained; how she supressed in me this need to kill, if only for a while.  She approached this in many ways: physically, emotionally and intellectually.  But not just for me - for everyone she met in life, be it family, friend or foe.   It was elegant; she was elegant, the way she conducted herself.   What I am trying to say is that I was caught off guard as I stood beside our bed and she roared up out of it, her rage at the ready, full and dark and much like venom. Shocked, I stepped back, trying to gain my bearings. It was extraordinary what I was witnessing, unprecedented - from a woman who in the previous thirty years had not so much as furrowed a brow at me.  A brow!  She had raised her voice, sure, who hasn't?  But the display I was beholding, the ferocity of it… 
        
"Seriously: you are my husband!"  She said, her voice all fury, her face much the same.  "How is it that you are even capable of this?  You're nothing!  We're nothing!  The meek - isn't that what you said?  That we'd inherit the earth?  Murray, you're a goddamn insurance salesman for Christ's sake!  How can something like this be inside you?"  Those words haunt me still, the last she ever said.  And do you know why?  Would you like to?  I thought you might.  You've come this far, why not a little further?  It was the look, you see, the one which danced upon the steel now set in the green of her eyes.  I knew it, and I knew it well.  It was the look every woman I have ever taken saw in my eyes before they died by my hand. 

If I did not end Martha then she was very much about to kill me.  This is what I want you know; this is what I wish to confess. 

Which brings me back to the question I began with: Could it be covered up? 

However, before I go on with that, I want to get something off my chest.  Something I realized not long ago.  It has to do with my unchecked narcissism.  I say unchecked now because I was wrong before, earlier when I said I did not need the admiration associated with my condition.  I am a big enough man to admit this.  Why else would I have told Martha how I liked to do them?  Why else would I leave a signature every single time?  Yeah, it's about me; all of it.  Always has been, always will.  Did you know they even have a name for me?  Did I mention that?  The Wrecker is what the papers say - what I've been deemed.  It's because I destroy their faces, you see.  Not only, but mostly.  The other reason is because I remove the jaw - the bottom half, taking most of the neck as I rip down to pull it free.

So - could it be covered up; this is what I'd been thinking at the beginning as I began to write this.  Is that really the kind of question a story should start with?  And believe me, this is a work of fiction: nothing in the above sentences actually happening.  Did you see that coming?  Well, did you?  You're probably thinking I'm fucking with you now, yes?  Or someone is anyway.  What is happening? - could this be what's running through your head?  Or perhaps: Where is the author going with this?  Better yet: Have I missed a page; possibly some crucial point of plot?  They're all good questions, every one.  But the truth?  The truth is now - me and you; what I do.  My MO is simple.  I watch.  I wait.  I see.  I scout.  Gathering information, I see if the person I have chosen lives alone or not.  Satisfied, I continue to wait, continue to watch.  I look for boyfriends.  I look for girlfriends.  I watch for parents who visit much too often and stay far too late.  After this is when I take it to the next level; when I write a story similar to the one you hold in your hands.  I then address it to you, my intended victim, and leave it between your doors.   But that's where I found this is what you might be thinking now.  This is when the fear should set in, when you're almost in the know.   I then go back to waiting, observing from somewhere close.  I have installed cameras in your house, the type you've failed to see.  You will look around as you are doing now but still you will not see; they are tiny, these devices, and very state of the art.  Once I know you are reading and once I know you're near the end I slip in undetected and travel up your stairs.  Sometimes they creak as I climb and sometimes they do not.  I walk soft; I do, but sometimes still I'm heard. Is that me now is what I'm saying, out beyond your door?  My feet now off the rise and stepping ever close?

To those who know me, I am a non-descript white male who blends well within a crowd.  For those who don't, I have taken over two dozen people in my lifetime.

To you I say prepare.