The Serial Killers Guide to Love (Deadly Darling #1)

Chapter 5

5

Sam

She makes me stupid

I am officially a stalker. After leaving my store, I had the urge to go see Lilly. Why?

Who knows.

The darkness in me wanted her, but not in the same way I wanted to kill someone. I want her to be safe.

I don’t want her to worry.

There are many wants that float around my mind that I can’t name without shuddering.

The restaurant I picked is not very crowded, and I can sit and watch the pier. It is late afternoon and as this is more of a tourist place, there is always a weekend and vacation feeling to this place.

Each scream of a seagull pushes me further away from the here and now. I will have to follow up with what I started. Plants for the store, right.

Maybe getting to know Lilly is not a bad idea.

Maybe she could.

Don’t be an idiot. The voice, my real voice, laughs at me from the deep. As much as I am surprised to feel my It so close to the surface, I can’t say that I dislike the company. It was his doing. He wanted to see her.

He needed to make sure that she was fine.

“Do it already.”

I can hear it in my mind, calling out to me to use her DNA and do a background research, but a part of me doesn’t want to. I did research on all the neighbors on the street. Not to kill them. Just to make sure that they will never interfere with my activities. I know their schedule, I know what they do and what they think and want better than they know it themselves.

Clicking on my phone, I check the newest police reports. I don’t like to read the news or watch them like most people. I like to read what the police write and I can do this because I learned how, a long time ago.

Being a discreet serial killer takes serious skills.

This is such a dad joke that I have to laugh at myself for a bit.

Serial killer and serious skills.

But the police always had the juiciest things in their reports.

As I clicked from one case to another, I looked for something. This is a part of the hunt I usually adore. The moments when I look for my next kill. When I search for cases that the police are too blind to solve, but I can’t focus.

As the waitress returns, I order a plate of pasta. Carbs are good for the nerves and I like the pasta here, it’s fresh. Pesto, she recommends and I accept the recommendation. They know me here, I am a good tipper.

After the pasta arrives and I start to eat it, I keep switching between various images I have about Lilly. She’s too skittish, and I would like to know why.

I can see something in her, a certain shadow that only people that got in direct touch with death have, but she couldn’t be doing something like that, could she?

On the other side, why do I have this feeling as if she tried to hide, as if she’s ready to run away on a moment’s notice.

Hm.

The pasta is good, the waitress was right.

When I ask for the check, she’s written her IG and number on it.

Candy, call me.

Why are they doing that? I could be a serial killer. Damn, I am a serial killer, not that Candy is what I crave to cut open, but still. I never understood the fascination some women have for serial killers. Is it the bad boy trope?

My eyes slide over the people that sit on the deck with me. A couple on a date. This looks like a second date, and from the way he is sweating, he hopes that she will invite him up today. She on the other hand isn’t sure.

She keeps checking her phone, and that is an easy giveaway for the fact that she is hoping to hear from someone else. I am not sure if she’s just second runner up for the other man, I just know that the man she’s with doesn’t manage to hold her attention. He should spend more time reading her body language and less time drooling over her. Women don’t like that.

They want to be desired, but I must agree the drooling is disgusting.

During my younger years I was on a few dates, and I never got the feeling that I wanted to repeat the experience. Why?

If I want to know what is inside a person, I cut them open. That easy. But the women I dated loved my aloft way of being around them. I became something they couldn’t have and that they wanted.

One of them managed to break into my apartment and I found her naked in my bed. Why would anyone do that?

She was upset when I kindly asked her to leave or I will call the police.

I never saw her again.

A new police report shows up and I scroll through it.

Bla Bla.. Wait

There is that moment when my lights turn on, it’s the equivalent of the eureka moment for a killer.

At least for a killer like me, who is always on the lookout for a touch of mystery and a riddle to unlock.

This killer looks flashy.

He left his victim inside a car, but the fun part is that he took her brain, her heart and her uterus out before stitching her back up.

Yep, homeboy wants to be on the front page. No one does such work, and leaves a victim where it can be found if they don’t look for a touch of stardom.

I wonder how the press will name him as soon as they find out what he did.

And will he always remove the same organs.

Clicking on the pictures that are not open for the public but my smart little program allows me to access, I find the ones I am looking for.

The cuts are clean and the suture is elegant, surgical. He used red thread, but this is the work of someone who cut and stitched before.

Even her chest and belly are pretty, and the thread looks as if one could pull at it and unwrap a present.

Another report said that a crumpled piece of paper was found in her cranium.

The paper is white.

Ha.

A laugh is making my shoulders shake, he is pulling a Blank. That’s funny.

Serial killer dad jokes, wouldn't that be a bestseller.

Let’s see you, my boy, what are you doing next, and are you worthy to land on Sam’s list?

In the meantime, I keep clicking around. I will need a douchebag soon, and I land on something easy and simple.

A man that used to be a social worker and beat his wife to death. It does not matter how many people one kills, a tainted soul will never recover, no matter what, and I must know, I am the expert in tainted souls.

Candy returns with my desert. I enjoy food, I have a high metabolism. I don’t know if it’s all the killing or my passion for running 5k, but I can keep a six pack and eat lava cake. There is something about a good lava cake.

There is okay lava cake, that’s more like a sponge cake, but it is cake and has chocolate, so I will eat it.

There is good lava cake, when the inside is gooey, but not gooey enough, but you like it, it leaves a chocolate taste on your tongue

And there is the amazing lava cake. Where everything is right. She brings it without whipped cream. I hate whipped cream, it is so fake, like me.

Whipped cream pretends to be something that it’s not.

Maybe I could blame it on the trauma. As many people that are not perfectly functional members of society, I grew up in the foster system.