Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer Read online

  I’ll figure something out.

  My plan to relax for a couple hours was wrecked. Robby and Ramón had attracted the full attention of my lizard brain, that part of you that focuses on survival. Their aggression had woken my mirror aggression. The adrenaline tap was flowing. They set off those alarms my father planted deep in my brain. I figure they aren’t done with me yet. They’ll want satisfaction. Revenge.

  I took my three bus rides back to the apartment and saw no one. I got off one stop early and walked the long way around, checking the neighborhood. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It strained my brain to think that Robby might have more than one friend — I hadn’t even expected Ramón — but I looked just in case. No one stuck out. I cut through the backyard where all the residents’ dogs take their copious shits, and went in through the propped-open backdoor. There are no security measures in this building. One, nobody owns anything any respectable thief would want to steal. Two, the kind of dodgy types you wouldn’t want getting into your building already live here.

  My door looked unmolested, and the apartment was in the same dingy shape I left it in this morning. I tore open a microwave meal and heated it up in a saucepan on the stove and ate it watching TV. Robby and Ramón will probably plan their revenge for work. Easier that way — and less chance they’ll get caught. I’ll have to figure out a way to excuse myself from the cafeteria and request something else. I’ll come up with something.

  I woke up around one-thirty to the sound of someone breaking into my apartment. My eyes snapped open in the blackness. I rolled out of bed without making any noise and pulled on my jeans. I reached under the mattress for my big knife and stuck it in my back waistband. My small knife was in the front pocket. I don’t have a gun here.

  I snapped on the bedside light and let my eyes adjust as I padded barefoot to the front room, where the lights were blazing. Robby and Ramón were pushing the door shut behind them.

  Before I could say a word, Robby had a gun on me, a cheap plastic thing that he held with his arm fully extended and his hand shaking. It looked like he got it at the toy store.

  “How do you like me now, bitch? You surprised to see me?”

  Ramón was dancing around off on the side like he was warming up for a sparring session at the gym. He seemed a little nervous. His face was covered with raised red patches like poison ivy. Coffee burn. He wasn’t watching me, though. He was watching Robby. He was probably afraid Robby would accidentally shoot him.

  “What do you want, Robby?” I kept my voice deadpan. His eyes kept cutting down to my shirt and I wished I was wearing a sports bra or something.

  “You surprised to see me, bitch?” He underlined every other word by stabbing the gun at me. He obviously hadn’t spent much time working on his script.

  “Yeah, I’m surprised to see you. What do you want?”

  He looked a little uncertain. Like maybe this wasn’t going the way he thought it would go. Ramón was still hopping around like he was on hot coals.

  Women have much better peripheral vision than men. It’s helpful in a situation where you have one wing nut swinging a Saturday night special around and another one doing the Mexican tap dance off to the side. I kept my eyes on Robby but I could still see Ramón.

  Men, on the other hand, suffer from tunnel vision. Robby kept his eyes on my face, looking for something good, like fear and capitulation.

  He was disappointed.

  “We’re gonna have a little party, huh? You scream and I’ll shoot you. Yeah. I’ll shoot you.”

  The two of them were hard pressed to make a joint IQ contribution in the double digits.

  “You shoot me, Robby, the neighbors are going to come over to see what’s going on.”

  “I don’t think so — they won’t want a piece of this, huh, Ramón. ’Sides, you’ll have a big hole in you, Carla, right? A big ol’ hole.” I wanted him to stop stressing his words by stabbing that gun at me. It was more likely as not to go off even if he didn’t intend it to. I’m sure discharging prematurely is something that happens to him all the time.

  “My name’s Darla. Not Carla.”

  Robby laughed a really disturbing high-pitched giggle and I realized he was nervous and maybe even high on something. I felt a little bad for him. I emasculated him with that can I threw and he sent Ramón to teach me a lesson and when that didn’t work, he came over here with a gun to show me he was a real man. And that wasn’t going to work either.

  I raised my hands, not straight up in the air like he was holding me up in an old Western, but just a little bit, like I wanted to show him I had nothing to hurt him with and wanted to be friends. Like I was saying, Let’s just be reasonable. I stepped closer to him. I tilted my head to the side like I was a listening bird. I’ve noticed that men like it when they can see your vulnerable, exposed neck.

  He smiled, delighted to see me come down a notch. He kept the gun stretched straight out toward me and cocked over to the side, his shoulder rolled forward. He looked like something off TV. I grew up around guns and I never saw anyone hold a gun like that.

  I was angling toward him so that I could keep Ramón in my field of vision. Ramón was still doing his little boxer’s dance, off in his own world, riveted by Robby’s performance.

  I wished then that I hadn’t put on my jeans. It would have been easier to distract Robby if I weren’t wearing any pants.

  I kept my hands right about even with my breasts and decided it was better, distraction-wise, that I didn’t have on my sports bra.

  I suddenly turned my head fast, widened my eyes, and looked at Ramón in alarm. Robby whipped his head to see what I was looking at. I took a big step to get on the far side of the gun and then clamped onto his arm with both of mine.

  He jumped in surprise. His reaction time was pitiful slow. I stomped his instep — he was just wearing tennis shoes — and then kneed him in the balls. I didn’t really have the right angle, but they must have been sore still from the can. He gave a little scream and dropped the gun.

  It thunked to the mangy carpet and I swept it up quick and pointed it at Ramón, who was just standing, dazed, looking from Robby to me and back again.

  “I don’t want to shoot you, Ramón, so why don’t you and Robby just leave now.”

  Ramón’s brain had gone off-line and he looked at Robby like he was waiting for Robby to make the decision, but Robby was in the fetal position keening.

  “Ramón!”

  He looked at me blank and then his face got angry. He already looked a little angry because of the coffee burns. He flexed his fists a few times and then started stomping over to me.

  The gun didn’t seem to phase him.

  I didn’t want to shoot anybody in my apartment for obvious reasons. Robby started screeching something at Ramón that made no sense to me but diverted Ramón’s attention for a second. I pulled out my big knife and exchanged it for the gun. I didn’t want anybody to bleed in my apartment either, but we were in lesser-evil town now.

  I got Ramón’s attention again when I made the switch. Robby was still talking up in that register only dogs can hear, but Ramón’s eyes were on the knife. He swallowed hard; I saw his Adam’s apple bob.

  Ramón was flexing his hands again but nervously this time and he wasn’t steaming toward me anymore. He was back to making those little dance moves.

  “How come you don’t get a gun, Ramón?” I flashed the knife at him, and then, to make my point, I threw it to my other hand. He looked a little paler around the red patches.

  Robby started clawing his way across the floor. I don’t know where he was going. I could feel the itch to just throw the knife and bury it in Ramón’s gut, like a natural impulse, like having somebody hand you a basketball when you’re under the basket and you just want to sink it. I hated that warring sensation I felt when I had to slap myself down. I’m so tired of running up against these situations that smack of Daddy and his rules and his ideas and trying to fight back with my
own.

  Seeing the knife took the heart out of Ramón. He was just half-assing it after that, and he kept glancing over at Robby either for approval or instructions or to make sure Robby wasn’t leaving without him.

  I stopped flashing the big knife and pulled out my small knife. Now I had a knife in each hand and a gun in my waistband and it felt familiar in a not-great, familial sense.

  “Ramón, last chance. Pick him up and get out.”

  Every time I talked to him, he woke back up and looked mad again. He looked like a cartoon bull and steam was coming out his ears. He started to give a sort of roar, and I threw the small knife and chunked it in his leg.

  He just stared down at it, thunderstruck, like he’d been stung by a bee or something. Then he bellowed in pain. He grabbed it — there seems to be a human instinct that says “get foreign objects out of body as soon as possible” — and yanked it out and stared at it. Blood started soaking his jeans. He looked at me, and I was holding the big knife in my throwing position.

  “Next one’s going in your throat.”

  He dropped my knife and crabbed over sideways to get Robby, never taking his eyes off me. He never said a word the whole time he was in the apartment. He reached down, still staring at me, and hauled Robby up by the armpits. Robby was feeling a tiny bit better and screamed something fuzzy at me as Ramón dragged him across the floor to the door, propped him for a second, then worked him out into the hall.

  Robby was right. None of the neighbors wanted to get involved.

  I cleaned the blood off the carpet where the knife fell. I ejected the magazine from the gun, jacked the slide for the bullet in the chamber, and then broke the gun down. Robby and Ramón might be done for the night, or they might come back with reinforcements. I needed to clear out, and fast.

  I got dressed and wiped the gun pieces down, then wrapped them in newspaper and put them in my backpack. I was packed and ready to go inside of ten minutes. I didn’t have much to take with me. Old habits are hard to break.

  I checked the street very carefully and didn’t see anything or anyone. I left and walked fast down the street to the playground. I had an idea of where I could wait until daylight.

  Unfortunately the playground is lit up at night like a ball field. It’s surrounded by a chain-link fence with a sign saying it’s closed from dusk to dawn, but the lights are so bright I could always tell the cops I thought the sun was up. I hopped the fence and stayed in the shadows as much as possible till I got to the jungle gym.

  I climbed up and hopped into the plastic cube on top of the metal spider legs and slid inside. No grown man could follow me in here. There are holes in every direction and I didn’t see anyone moving anywhere. I’ve got on a pair of flannel pajama pants under my jeans and I’m wearing half the t-shirts I own under my jacket, but it’s still cold.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  The only personal items I brought from the apartment are my knives, Robby’s gun, my tape player and headphones, my school stuff, and the tapes. And this diary.

  I can’t talk to James anymore, but I can still listen to the tapes. Carl would say I have transference issues. Carl’s a creep. James is just the only person I ever really talked to, in a meaningful way. He’s the only one who sort of knew me. Even though he stopped talking months ago, I’m still listening.

  D: I wasn’t abused.

  J: Your father…

  D: I wasn’t abused.

  J: You didn’t get to go to school.

  D: I didn’t get to go to school? Where have you been? Kids don’t want to go to school. They hate school. Besides, I went to school sometimes. I wasn’t missing anything.

  J: You didn’t have friends.

  [static]

  J: Your father kept you away from other people.

  D: You know what he thought of other people.

  J: He didn’t think everyone was bad.

  D: No, but someone always was. And you can never tell who it’ll be.

  I don’t want to leave town. I can’t believe Robby and Ramón are making such a big deal. My apartment’s burnt now and on top of a new job I have to get another place to stay. I left the door standing open. I figure that will invite some level of vandalism, which is what I’m going to report to the institution. They’ll want to know why I didn’t call the cops, and I’m going to say I panicked and ran off to a friend’s house. Girls panic.

  I don’t want to leave town.

  Robby pushed me and I pushed back — maybe a little harder than he did, sure, but not as hard as I could have. (Voice of my father in my ear: Some people need killing.) Is he going to let it go now? I’m changing jobs and moving, that should be enough.

  I need a place to stay.

  When the sun came up I was running to catch the first bus back to campus. I thought about Robby and his bruised man parts tucked up in a warm bed last night and ground my teeth. That playground plastic was ice cold.

  I couldn’t go to the cafeteria and use my student ID to get cheap breakfast, so I went to McDonald’s. There’s a pay phone on the wall back by the restrooms. A pay phone is a rare amenity in these technologically advanced times. They’re almost impossible to find now that most people have cell phones.

  The privilege of being able to make a phone call whenever you need to used to cost you one thin quarter. There were pay phones conveniently located on every block and you could step into a booth, close the door, and be talking to someone a moment later. You could even call collect if you were lacking that thin quarter.

  Now the same privilege of convenience costs you fifty dollars a month. Progress?

  Society trims away the excess from the bottom. The very bottom, that’s who needs public phones. The Others shell out their money and shove a cell phone in their pocket, then go on about their day. The very bottom — bus didn’t show? Car broke down again? Bad neighborhood? Sorry, you’re on your own. For the Others, a public phone is just a convenience they don’t need and not a very pleasant one at that. Phone booths smell like homeless guy piss. Someone hacked on the receiver. Gum in the slot where your quarter goes. Who needs it?

  I didn’t have a phone in my apartment. Too much money considering how many calls I make: none. Order a pizza? I learned my father’s lessons too well. Invite a stranger to come to my home? Stand in my open doorway while I hand him a wad of cash? Let him look past me and scan the room, see that I live alone and the only thing keeping my windows shut is 16 layers of paint? No. I pick up my food, walk home. Varying routes. Daylight. Aware of who else is on the street. Aware of anyone who looks at me too long, pays too much attention, shows too much interest. It’s a curse. It’s a habit. It’s the kind of thing that keeps you out of harm’s way.

  Ninety-nine percent of not being a victim of a crime is staying on the statistically good side of chance.

  Don’t want to die in a car accident? Never ride in a car.

  If you’re poor, you’re already playing with a stacked deck. You’re more likely to be a victim. Female? Sorry. Your odds just got worse.

  I’ve been going to college for the better part of a year and I am still amazed by how students play fast and loose with their own safety.

  They get drunk and stumble around vulnerable to whoever wants to rob them or rape them.

  They walk around at two thirty in the morning, impaired.

  They get into cars with people they don’t know. They get into cars with people they don’t know who are drunk or high.

  They put pictures of themselves half naked on the internet. They let the internet know when they’re going on vacation, when they’re home alone eating ice cream on the couch. They let the internet know where they are 24/7 and what they’re doing and who they’re doing it with.

  A little girl disappeared here last year. The last time anybody saw her, she was playing in an empty lot full of junk and broken glass. She was playing in garbage and somebody mistook her for garbage. They found her body two miles away in a drainage ditch. Her
father didn’t teach her about the Bad Men.

  A college girl got grabbed last year, taken on a long car ride she didn’t want to go on by two guys who burned her with cigarettes, raped her, beat her to a pulp, then dumped her in the woods outside of town. She couldn’t remember any details to locate the Rapists. Her brain was pudding. Her daddy didn’t teach her about the Bad Men, either. She was walking home from a girlfriend’s house in the middle of the night, tired from studying, thinking she was safe because it was such a short walk. She was wrong.

  Statistics are already against me. The deck that deals out pain and anguish is stacked in favor of the Others, the ones with real houses in good neighborhoods and cell phones in their pocket. I live in a dodgy area in a cheap apartment with paper-thin walls and zero security measures. My bus ride is long and I can’t vary it. I spend a lot of time standing on street corners waiting for buses that are forever running late. I have a small physical stature that sends a message of weakness to would-be victimizers. Often, when someone gets within range, they smell something in the air and decide to let me alone. I do have that. Girls in public bathrooms make like they’re going to maybe pick on me a little then close their mouth and move away. Scuzzy guys at the bus stop sidle up to me and then change their minds. But I have to swim around in the dirty end of the pool; that’s just how my life is right now. I’m working to better my situation, same as everyone else.

  Despite all these problems, I make good decisions where decisions are possible. I never travel at night. I never give anyone the wrong impression. No one is ever going to get a mixed signal from me. I walk with strength and purpose and keep my head up and my attention on the alert. I’m never too weighed down to run or fight. I’m never in danger of being boxed into an alley or a corner. I’m never at a bar or a party, and I’m never impaired in public. I never trust strangers.