Devil On Dauphin Island

Hi, my name is Terry.

I guess I’ve always known that something was a bit off with me. I mean, I learned early on that I enjoyed watching things meet their end.

I was first kicked out of school when I was seven years old. They placed me into foster care for disturbed children, following an incident on the playground involving scissors and a pencil.

I found that the foster homes only made it easier for me to hone my skill and find better ways to satisfy my curiosities.

I started small at first, missing pets and discreet injuries to my temporary siblings and schoolmates. They were like test driving a car or target practice.

I was in my fifth house by the age of 16, still only imagining what it would feel like to fulfill this desire that had plagued me since I could remember, when I finally found her.

The perfect target.

I waited until everyone was asleep and snuck through the house after dark, knocking on doors, selecting my victim, by the first one to let me in.

She was 17, and she opened the door.

It was too easy, really. Once I was finished, I simply walked back down the hall and waited in my room for them to find her.

I found the screams and disorganized chaos, toxic. It also gave me the opportunity to observe and mimic the appropriate emotions one might expect from a bystander.

She was my first, and to be honest it wasn’t what I expected. I found it only sparked the need for more.

Everything before that was practice, and I was getting good. Really good.

By the time they even suspected it might be me, I was long gone, with nothing but the clothes on my back.

I snuck down to the truck stop to find a ride, and conveniently slipped into the back of a cattle trailer. We drive for hours until they finally stopped at a tiny diner in the middle of nowhere, somewhere off the coast of southern Alabama.

I watched from the window as they ordered, devouring the food the way I wanted to devour the waitress. Watching the way she chatted them up for a better tip, was disgusting.

When they finally got around to ordering dessert, she snuck out to her car for a cigarette. It was an old Toyota Corolla with crank windows and a broken hatchback.

I watched her suck that smoke in like her last breath, swallowing a little, before she blew the smoke back out into the air. It circled her hair like a snake, dancing around its prey, before dissolving into the darkness. As she flicked the cherry, I’d already decided I would hide in her backseat and see where she lived.

It was shortly after midnight before she closed up and climbed into the driver’s seat. The car door creaked like it was trying to warn her that I was there. The excitement in me building.

When we stopped, she took a moment to gather her belongings. The smell of pine-Sol on her clothes was so strong it burned my nose and I was afraid I might sneeze, giving away my hiding spot.

Ii listened to her walk away, the gravel crunched and shifted beneath her feet, I waited until I could no longer hear her and then, slipped out of the hatch.

The smell of the warm salt air brought me back to the shack I'd grown up in as a small boy. The sound of the water rushing onto the shore and chill in the air made me shiver.

Before I knew it, she had disappeared into one of the cabins on the beach. I would have to wait until morning to find her again.

I broke into one of the empty sheds, settled in and fell asleep.

I awoke to the sound of someone pounding on the door. Disoriented, I opened it to find that waitress standing there, holding a shotgun in her hand.

In a flash, everything went dark.

When I came to, I found myself gagged and tied to a chair, my eye was nearly swollen shut and my head was pounding like knuckles on an old oak door.

Funny, I never imagined as a hunter that someone might actually be hunting me.

I smiled at the irony, as she began removing my fingers.