A Killers Match

He got to his feet and his shadow moved over her, while drops of cool water fell from his body onto her hot skin.

She lay there almost entirely lifeless. If it wasn’t for the searing red cuts and blue bruises that flushed across her body, he’d have believed she was dead. But she wasn’t. Her eyes glared up at him with a rage that pumped through her entire body. Sweat streaming down her forehead as if she was still fighting despite her body not being able to move.

She wasn’t dead. This had never happened before. He had his method precise and methodical. He surveilled the property for 2-3 weeks beforehand. He noted down their routines. He picked the ones that lived alone. He snuck in during the night. He beat them until they were gone. He took their drivers license. He went home.

Yet here he was, standing over her, unable to finish the job. What did this mean for his own twisted identity? Before today, he’d never believed that their feelings would affect his sadistic urges. Countless women had begged him for mercy. For him to stop, pleading with him, trying to appeal to his ‘humanity’.

Except her. She didn’t want his mercy. She wanted to die. She’d allowed his cruel torment willingly. She had looked at him not like the monster he was, but as her saviour. As if he had granted her the most precious, barbaric gift of all - an end. Her look of rage wasn’t because she resented his actions, it was because he hadn’t finished the job.

He had to understand her, but he wasn’t a man of words and she was in no state to talk. So, he began to search her apartment. At first it appeared ordinary. The same as every thirty-something year old’s home - until he saw the locked box tucked away beside her bed. He looked down at the sharp graze on his knuckle, where his fist had been met with a key she wore around her neck.

He ran back into the bathroom where she continued to lay on the floor and frantically yanked the key from it’s chain. Her eyes flashed with fear, making him even more determined to open it. His hands were shaking as he re-entered her bedroom and prized the box open.

Starbucks receipts. Forty-two to be precise. He pulled one out and noticed she’d handwritten a name at the bottom of it with a blue marker. ‘John Skinner’. The name was instantly recognisable. His face had been all over the news just a few months ago. Poison had been slipped into his coffee whilst he’d been walking around town. He’d dropped dead in front of H&M. He was the thirty-seventh victim of the ‘coffee killer’ according to the BBC news.

His head span. She was a cold blooded murderer. Just like him. They were the same. That’s why she hadn’t hated him as he viciously attacked her to satisfy his own needs. Why she’d welcomed death in the most brutal form.

He sprinted into the bathroom and began to pull her up, cradling her in his arms. Without saying a word, he looked at her and made a vow in his mind. He would heal her. He would make amends. She looked at him and he knew she understood. His life of solitary had come to an end. Perhaps now, he might finally not need to be alone.

He smiled, an expression so rare to grace his face, and silently placed her drivers licence back in her hand.