Just Another Guy

He sat in his car in the office car park, his knuckles turning white from clenching the wheel so hard. She’d been a fiery one. They say that’s the case with red heads, but until last night he’d thought it was just a turn of phrase. Perhaps not. One thing was for certain, debating internally if the colour of her hair had an effect on her personality was not a priority. He’d made a mistake. A fatal one.

Normally they went quietly. They’d start with a scream, but shortly after they realised that he wasn’t there to steal from them, and that he was there to kill them, they’d go quiet. A silent cry would erupt as they pleaded for him to give them their life, attempting to appeal to his humanity. As if, by staying still and motionless, they were showing the required submission to convince him to not follow through. But not Amber. Amber had not stayed quiet.

Amber had made such a noise that the neighbours had heard. Worse than that, Amber had made smart noises. Amber knew that screams that indicated domestic violence or rape usually were ignored. So Amber hadn’t done that. Amber instead screamed ‘fire’.

It worked. He’d heard the knocks at the door as the neighbours shouted to Amber that they’d called the fire brigade. He’d had to think fast, meaning his meticulous planning had gone out the door. He resorted to brute force. He’d smacked her head hard and fast, and the once was enough to knock her out. He couldn’t kill her yet, he needed time to think.

He’d hauled her over his shoulder and out the back door and shoved her into the boot of his car. He drove on autopilot to the one place he felt safe, his office. What he hadn’t realised at the time, was that he had been seen by multiple witnesses. They saw Amber’s limp body being flung into his car, and when the fire brigade arrived, they were notified immediately that they’d need to call the police. One of the neighbours happened to be a keen journalist. By the time he’d pulled into the office car park around 2am in the morning, he’d already checked his phone and seen his own man hunt trending on twitter.

He had to act fast. His life depended on it. He calculated all of the possible routes he could take, and none of them looked good. They’d track him back to the office, and when they did, he’d be questioned as the CEO. He would need to find a new suspect to throw them off track. Someone that worked for him, someone that fit his physical profile.

Harry. The junior analyst. That could work. He estimated he had less than an hour to kill Amber, plant evidence leading to Harry and get home. He could do this, he just had to remain calm and pragmatic. He took a deep breath, stepped out of the car and opened up the boot.

Three Months Later...

James hung up the phone and a cold smile stretched across his face. He sat alone in his office, looking absently through the grandiose glass walls. His mother was dead.

She’d always been a problem unlike his father. His father only saw the version of him he’d created to blend in. Successful, powerful, rich. These were things his father hadn’t imagined possible, and so when he saw his son ‘thriving’ he became proud to the point of obsession. His mother hadn’t shared the same views.

Whilst when he’d killed the family dog many years ago, his father had brought him tea and toast to help with the ‘grief’, his mother had been suspicious. He remembered the way she had looked at him. Disgust and terror, fighting to hold on to the love she felt that was hanging by a thread.

“A mother knows her son.” She had once said. He hated that she knew him. That she knew the evil inside of him. That she’d tried to fix it even though he couldn’t be fixed. She wouldn’t be trying to help anymore. Because now, she was dead.

It was exactly the news he’d needed. His week had been a total disaster. After this mishap with Amber he’d needed to take extra precautions. Surveillance was crucial.

He’d been tracking a new target, Meredith. Hours of research had gone into it, just to discover she’d met a rather large amateur football player called Jim. This was against his golden rules. No boyfriends, husbands or fathers in the property. It was too risky. He didn’t like the idea of being over powered, because that could lead to being discovered. He only killed the ones that lived alone.

Whilst Jim hadn’t officially moved in with Meredith, he had spent every night in her apartment. James had watched them have passionate, but vanilla sex through her brightly lit window from across the street in his car. He thought if he waited for enough evenings, Jim would eventually leave, but he didn’t. James’ desire to kill was burning inside of him like an uncontrollable hunger, so much so that he even contemplated the risk of taking Jim too.

But of course, he’d talked himself into sense, and when he’d rationalised that he’d need to find a new target, he became enraged. He needed the thrill of a kill now, yet he couldn’t act upon it. He wondered if this was what heroin addicts felt like. But now his mother was dead, it changed everything.

She was the one person on earth that saw him for what he was. The one that he couldn’t manipulate, charm and control. This very fact made him feel powerless, like he was always on a timer to get caught somehow. But now, she was gone, not a soul on this earth saw his true nature. He felt invincible.

Like all great men, he was evolving, but he didn’t know then into what, as he aimlessly contemplated what t-shirt he’d wear to her funeral. This moment of liberation would be the defining factor that documentaries would one day analyse in depth. The moment that took him from rookie killer to the worlds most infamous predator.