The Killings Read online

  Robert swallowed hard and cursed out loud as he flipped through the Atlanta Constitution. An elderly woman walking in the opposite direction, dressed for church in white pinstriped dress and black pillbox hat, winced at his outburst.

  “God bless you, ma’am,” Robert said, tipping his hat. The old woman scowled back at him.

  He managed a wan smile before returning to the article. Once again, the newspaper contained a report of another young colored woman murdered. Like the others, the victim had been raped, her throat cut. There was mention of some type of mutilation that was similar to the other victims; eleven victims so far by his count. Robert could only imagine what had been done to her, and his imagination was pretty good. It frightened him. He could see the faces of the victims, imagine the look and smell of the blood, the feel of the blade carving through living flesh so deep that it scored their vertebrae. He could see the look of terror and pain on the woman’s comely features as death sucked the living soul right out of her.

  Robert closed his eyes and felt a shudder. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was what these women had felt as they succumbed to their attacker - the terrific agony of being slowly, viciously undone. What their last thoughts on this earth had been like … the regrets for things left not-yet-experienced and unachieved, the sense of profound loss, knowing they would never see their loved ones again, and then after, when they left this world. The after is what interested Robert and confounded him the most. What did they experience once their heart stopped beating and their lungs ceased inhaling and exhaling? Did they feel anything? Was there a heaven or hell waiting for them, or just some great nothingness?

  Robert went to church most Sundays, but he still wasn’t sure if he believed there was anything after this life. Jesus? Naked White angels playing harps, plus all the stuff you saw on stained-glass windows? He didn’t disbelieve. He just wasn’t completely convinced. He wasn’t so sure that Jim Crow laws, the KKK, or colored women being slaughtered like hogs were all in the plan of a loving God, though he was certain the preacher would say just that during services this morning. (“The Lord works in mysterious ways!”)

  Robert looked down at the photo of a woman’s silhouette, her body splayed with arms and legs akimbo beneath a white sheet. Sometimes he had his doubts.

  In another article, a local judge insisted there was no such thing as a “Negro Jack the Ripper” in Atlanta and claimed that all the murders were the work of different men. He’d even made a comment about there being a thousand colored men in Atlanta right now who would slit their women’s throats given half a chance. Robert thought it was too bad the judge was an old White man and the Ripper only attacked Negro women. It was nice to imagine him finding out the truth the hard way.

  This wasn’t a bunch of hysterical, ignorant, superstitious niggers running scared from their own shadow and seeing the boogeyman on every dark street corner. There was no doubt in Robert’s mind that there really was a killer or killers out there preying on young colored women. He didn’t know if it was a lone lunatic or the KKK or some other racist group, but he knew the streets weren’t safe any more and the cops were not going to help them. And Robert knew the latest Ripper victim, Sadie Hollis.

  He had gone to grade school with her older brother, Freddy. She was a light-skinned girl with long wavy hair like a White woman and a loud boisterous nature that often got her into trouble. She was slender, with long skinny legs like a young colt. She drank a little too much and was rumored to have a few too many gentlemen friends, but Robert had always liked her. Now some lunatic had reduced Sadie to a black-and-white newspaper photo of meat, bone, and blood. Her throat had been cut from one ear to the other. She’d been nearly decapitated, according to the newspaper.

  Girls Robert had known most of his life were being butchered and left for the maggots and cockroaches. He knew that if it was revealed that the Klan was behind these murders there would be trouble. Racial tensions in Atlanta were bad enough, but if the KKK was killing Negroes, it would get much, much worse. Not even the most docile, napkin-headed Uncle Toms would sit by and let White folks kidnap and murder their women without fighting back. Colored folks would riot in protest, and the White folks would respond with guns. There would be beatings, arrests, and lynchings. Robert’s stomach twisted. In the end, all their outrage would lead to was more dead Negroes.

  On the next page was another article about “the Atlanta Ripper.” This one was trying to insinuate a connection between the killings here and the killings that happened in England more than twenty years ago, but Robert couldn’t imagine someone coming all the way from England just to cut up a bunch of poor Negroes. He couldn’t imagine anyone coming from across town for that unless some White girl had been raped and there was a lynching underway. The way Robert saw it, if someone was killing folks in this neighborhood, it was someone from this neighborhood. It was the only thing that made sense.

  TWO

  July 19, 2011, Atlanta, Georgia

  Power.

  The feeling was overwhelming. It was as consuming as the burning hatred, the rage, the lust to crush the bitch’s delicate neck bones to splinters, pulverize her esophagus, see her eyes fill with the realization of her death, hear her last strangled breath. Every muscle was filled with this - power.

  A surge of murderous might emanated from the alien presence occupying space in Michael Carter’s brain - and it felt good. He called it the fury. He didn’t know how or why it had chosen him, but he was grateful for it. It had changed his life. It had turned him from the lonely geek who sat in his room all night reading comic books and horror novels, playing video games, and watching porn into a motherfucking monster, a killing machine, death on a goddamn spree! This demon, beast, poltergeist thing whispering terrible nothings in his amygdala had several lifetimes of horrible memories that it willingly, gleefully shared. And Michael had a few ideas of his own. He had been fantasizing about killing conceited cunts like this for as long as he could remember, but he never thought he’d do it, never thought he’d ever work up the nerve, but now ... now it was more than possible. It had become his newest hobby.

  Adrenalin and endorphins flooded Michael’s brain. Power. It filled every molecule, burned inside him like gasoline firing in a combustion engine, a fucking muscle car engine like a Charger or a Mustang, a fucking Porsche. A Ferrari! That’s what he felt like. Like a Ferrari with a tank full of gas and the speedometer revving up to 200 mph. So much fucking power! Enough to break bones, pulverize muscle, snap ligaments, and tear tendons. It was enough to kill the half-breed bitch, snap her like a damn toothpick.

  His legs trembled as he followed her. His hands shook. All the spit in his mouth dried up. His underwear felt uncomfortably tight as his erection swelled. He began to hum some silly tune he’d heard on some fast-food commercial. It was an old heavy metal song about a man who had to kill the woman he used to love. Michael didn’t know what the hell that had to do with hamburgers, but it seemed to fit the situation. He used to love women like this, but they only liked White boys and gangstas. Niggas like him weren’t good enough for them. He wasn’t some over-privileged White boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who got his jollies slumming in the ghetto. He wasn’t some thug getting rich off the misery and degradation of his own people. He didn’t sell drugs, didn’t carry a gun, didn’t wear his pants hanging off his ass, didn’t have washboard abs covered in prison tattoos, and he didn’t have an Escalade with twenty-two inch rims, a platinum necklace, or a diamond-encrusted watch from Jacob the Jeweler. He couldn’t even rap. But he could kill. That he could do very well.

  There was no awareness in her posture or movements as she made her way down the street. She didn’t even look back once. She had no idea she was being followed, no idea that she was a victim, prey, meat for an appetite so strong that it negated her very right to exist. It was past midnight. She was alone, probably unarmed, yet there was no fear in her at all as she passed one dark alley after another. Michael would have sens
ed it if it was there. It would be there soon enough. The fear would come right before the pain.

  Her name was Nona Gates. She was just three years out of her teens and beautiful ... intimidatingly beautiful, the kind of half-White bitch who would have made him stutter and twitch before the fury entered his head. Cappuccino-colored skin, the thin waifish body of a dancer, and light-colored eyes like sandalwood. Her hair was soft, wooly, picked out into an afro that reached from one shoulder to the other. She wore a brown leather miniskirt and matching hip boots with a white halter top. Her seventies retro look was almost flawless, ruined only by the Bluetooth earpiece attached to the side of her head. She wasn’t talking and hadn’t been for several blocks, not since she left her house on her way to see her rich, White boyfriend. Michael had followed her many nights. He knew where she was going, what she was doing, and it was wrong, wrong, WRONG! Michael made a note to rip the Bluetooth out of her ear first, before she could call for help.

  He was right behind her now. Six steps away. Five steps, four steps, three, two. She turned around seconds before his hands reached out and clamped down on her throat, crushing the cry for help before it could form. He effortlessly lifted her off her feet and dragged her into an alley. It was empty, occupied only by rats and garbage cans. Michael was still holding the woman by the throat as she thrashed and kicked and punched at his face. She was making little gurgling sounds. Her eyes were wild, panicked, a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf, struggling to escape. She tried to claw his face. Michael relaxed his grip on her throat and let her catch her breath.

  She wheezed, coughed, stumbled backward against the graffiti-covered, piss-stained alley wall, clutched her chest like she was having a heart attack, and then spoke. “You fucking psycho! You almost killed me!” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I know you, don’t I, motherfucker? You’re - “

  Michael seized her again and began to squeeze, harder this time, dragging her down to the filthy concrete floor and sitting on her chest, crushing more air from her laboring lungs. She beat at him with her fists, clawed skin from his arms, until he let go of her throat again.

  “Heeelp!” she tried to scream, but she could not get enough air into her lungs to manage more than a hoarse whisper. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You’ll do whatever I want?” Michael still had his hand on her throat. He backhanded her lightly with his other hand.

  “Please!” Tears began to pool in her eyes. “I’ll do whatever you want!”

  “You’ll suck my dick?” Another backhand to the face.

  “I-”

  He tightened his grip on her throat. “Would you like that? Huh?” He released his grip on her throat again, giving her a little more air.

  “Don’t kill me, please ...” Her voice was gaining strength. “I ... yes ... I’ll suck your dick. I ... I’ll let you ...you can do anything you want ... you can fuck me in the ass if you want. Just please ... don’t kill me.” Her eyes were darting around in a panicked state. She would be screaming again soon. Michael began strangling her again.

  The fury was wailing in his skull like a siren. Its power increased with her fear. Michael was drunk with the ecstasy of the kill. He squeezed until her eyes rolled up in her head and she blacked out. He let go of her throat, still sitting on her chest, pleased to see that she was still breathing. He slapped her several times until her eyes came back into focus. There was fear in them now. So much fear. She knew she was about to die, knew there was no escape.

  “You’d let me fuck you in the ass? Let me? Let me?” He was yelling in her face now. His voice sounded to him like the voice in his head, the voice of the fury. He lowered his volume, brought himself back under control. “Is that what you and your White boyfriend do? Does he like big, fat, Black asses? You like his little pink cock in your ass? You like sucking it? I’m going to fuck you in the ass all right. I’m going to do anything I want to you, but you won’t be alive to enjoy it.” He whispered the last words directly into her ear.

  He was grinning now, smiling, almost laughing. There was nothing like destroying the thing you hated most. Nothing on earth could compete with that sensation. The scrawny little White boy she was fucking was going to be lonely tonight, but not Michael. He pulled a long antique straight razor from his pocket and flipped it open. He was going to be busy for quite some time.

  ***

  Her body came apart as he slashed at it with the razor, cutting her throat so deep he almost removed her head. He sliced her halter top down the center and then ripped it in two as blood bubbled from the severed arteries in her neck. Gurgling, whistling sounds came from her lacerated trachea. She took a few final breaths through the yawning maw he’d cut beneath her chin and then began to convulse. Her bowels voided, filling the dank alley air with the smell of human urine and feces, which perfectly complemented the putrescent odors surrounding him.

  Michael seized her jaw and pulled her head back, widening the wound until he could stick his entire hand inside. The strangled breathing noises stopped. Michael wondered if she’d lived long enough to feel him rip open her throat, wondered if she’d been conscious as he’d tried to pull her head off. He hoped she was. He hoped she’d felt it all.

  Michael stared at the woman’s firm, round breasts, their dark chocolate nipples like two Hershey’s kisses. They were the perfect size. Not too big. Not too small. They fit his hands like they’d been made for them. He squeezed and pulled them, twisting the nipples like he was trying to tear them from her chest, saddened by the fact that she was already dead and couldn’t feel this violation, this last degradation, or those soon to follow. A torrent of red gushed between her cleavage as she continued to bleed out. Michael’s cock throbbed urgently in his pants, the Fury urged him on, shrieking obscenities in his skull.

  The Fury was more than just an emotion, more than just his own rage anthropomorphized. It was a living presence, an entirely separate consciousness with its own unique thoughts, emotions, and desires. It didn’t control him, nor did it serve his will. It was simply there, whispering suggestions, cheering him on when he was on his rampages. It was not like being possessed. It was more like being inspired. Like a best friend who liked to do the same shit he liked, a muse helping him get over the hurdles of social morality and civilization, to shrug free of the fetters restraining his darker, more animalistic nature, urging him to have fun.

  Go ahead! Fuck her. Hurt her. Kill her!

  He liked that analogy. A muse. It reminded him of a composer staring at his piano for hours at a time when something suddenly pops into his head and unleashes a torrent of creativity from which a symphony is born. That’s what Michael felt now, a flood of creativity, his mind alive with so many seductive possibilities for the dead thing beneath him that he could hardly decide.

  What to do? What to do?

  He freed his tumescent organ from his pants, stroking it vigorously as he stared at her breasts, her face, her dying expression. He slid his cock between the dead woman’s breasts, squeezing them together as he fucked her blood-slickened cleavage in a hate-fueled fit of satyriasis.

  He roared like a lion as he ejaculated, spraying his seed across the dead woman’s face. His erection remained undiminished. The Fury still shrieked its rage in his skull, filling his mind with more ... inspiration. He picked up the razor again and began sawing off her breasts, cutting through the tender fat and muscle and lifting her mammary glands from her chest. He plopped the bloody trophies into his jacket pockets and then dragged the razor down her belly, opening her up and spilling ropes of bluish purple intestines onto the alley floor as he cut his way down to her sex.

  Her labia and clitoris were slowly and carefully excised. Michael was meticulous now. He wanted her sex intact. He had seen the act in his head, courtesy of his gruesome little muse, and he knew then that he had to do it, had to have that trophy. The Fury was fond of trophies and Michael was acquiring a taste for them as well.

  He looked up and checke
d the alley, making sure he was alone, that no one could see. There was a large trash bin blocking him from the view of anyone passing on the street, and the businesses that bordered the alley had closed hours before. They were alone.

  With delicate care, Michael peeled Nona Gates’s vagina off in one piece and held it up to the moonlight. He held it to his face and peeked through the orifice that had once led to man’s greatest obsession. He dragged his tongue languorously over the silken folds of flesh, tasting her meaty blood, the acrid tang of urine, inhaling the musky earthy aroma of her. Michael shoved this last trophy into his pocket as well.

  Nona had been right - she had known him. They had gone to elementary school together before her family moved out of the neighborhood. Michael had occasionally passed her on the street or in the grocery store or downtown as he rushed to begin another day in his mind-numbing, soul-sucking, office-drone existence and she hers. Now he had found a way out of the monotony of his paycheck-to-paycheck servitude, and he had liberated Nona as well. She would never again have to worry about how she was going to pay the light bill or if she was going to get laid off today or if she could afford those new shoes or that new Smart Phone or to get her hair done or her nails done or if her weak-ass peckerwood boyfriend was cheating on her or any of the other stupid shit stupid bitches like her worried about. She didn’t have shit to worry about now.

  Michael looked down at Nona’s face, but it wasn’t Nona anymore. It was just a dead thing barely recognizable as female. He had removed everything that had once made this lifeless sack of flesh a woman - almost everything. He sliced deeper, cutting and sawing through skin, muscle, and tendons, digging his hands through her organs and then seizing his prize, grabbing it and yanking it out through the jagged hole where her womanhood once was, removing first her ovaries and then her entire uterus. These he left beside her in the alley.