The Online Profile of a Serial Killer

Posted on September 22, 2022

I felt a drop of rain on my wrist and another on my lip. I walked faster down the row of townhouses heading to Marie's place. It was almost noon and the darkening clouds looked the way clouds look before it pours. Focusing ahead, I walked faster. Marie wasn't answering my emails anymore, but if I could just speak with her directly, I thought, perhaps she could forgive me.

For two days straight, I hadn't slept, reading all of Will's posts for the second time. Once again, I was obsessed with an online profile, and I lost everything I had gained with Marie. I should never have let her leave. All she ever wanted from me was intimacy – for me to tell her everything and hide nothing -- and I failed. But that was going to change.

Reaching Marie's place, I banged on the door louder than I had intended and was worried the people upstairs might be alarmed. Waiting a moment, I knocked again, this time softer.

A minute passed. She wasn't home, I thought. I sat on her doorstep under an eave and lit a smoke. Looking up at the moving clouds, there was no doubt it would pour – but when? Then distant thunder rumbled and rain fell hard, drumming on the eave above. On my fourth cigarette, the pouring stopped as quickly as it came, leaving behind globs of raindrops hanging from the edge of the roof.

Then I heard someone behind Marie's door and I quickly stood up.

The door opened and Marie, holding a long umbrella, looked at me, surprised. I expected her to say something, but instead, she looked at me curiously, waiting for me to say something first.

"You're home," I said.

"How long... long were you out here?" she stammered.

"You didn't hear me knock?"

"I was in the shower."

"Oh, I just got here." I looked away, awkwardly.

"I'm going to get some bread." She stepped out of the doorway, forcing me to back up.

I followed her down the sidewalk, offering to hold her closed umbrella, but she refused. We hardly said a word all the way to the store.

Walking back home, the thinning clouds above exposed patches of blue. I carried her plastic grocery bag holding two loaves of white bread. We passed the swimming pool and the park before arriving back at her place. She opened the door and walked down the stairs without inviting me in, but I followed anyway.

In her kitchen, she put a kettle on the stove and gave me a saucer for an ashtray.

"Thanks," I sat down at the table.

Waiting for the kettle to boil, she lit an incense stick and waved her hand through the smoke in a scooping motion towards her face. "I don't... understand," she said, opening a cupboard and pulling out a box of oatmeal cookies. I pinched out a cigarette from my pack. She acted distant, and I didn't blame her.

She dropped the box of cookies on the table, a spark of attitude in her eyes. It surprised me. She sat down and glared at me. "Are you... even ready?"

"What do you mean?" I said, worried about saying something wrong.

"I mean, if you're not ready... you just have to tell me. You don't have to play games," she said.

"Is that what you think?"

"Then what is it?"

I put the cigarette back into the pack and stared at the table for a long time.

"Well?" she said.

"There's..." I stuttered, careful with my words. "I know you want me to tell you everything, and I know I haven't been doing that. But, I'm ready to do that now."

She held her stare. "I've told you everything about me. Everything. I... I deserve the same, don't I?"

"You do. And that's why I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone, okay?" I shook my head. "It's just that..." I paused.

"What?"

"If I tell you, I'm afraid you might leave me."

"I won't... leave you that easily. Now have a cookie."

"I'm not hungry," I said.

"Have one anyway. It might cheer you up," she said. "So go ahead then. Tell me everything."

"Okay," I said, crunching on the cookie. I was sick of the secrets anyway. I swallowed and braced myself. "I'm on medication. I mean--I was."

She was taken aback. "Since when?"

"Recently. I got off them around the time we met."

"What was the medication for?" her voice softened.

"It's hard to explain," I said. A look of sympathy grew on her face. "I can't remember when it started."

The kettle burbled and then wheezed.

"Shoot," she jumped. "Hold your thought. I want...I want to give you my full attention." She grabbed two cups from the cupboard as the wheezing turned into whistling. She poured the boiling water into the cups in such a rush that I was worried she might burn herself. Sitting back down, she added a teabag to each cup, placed one in front of me, and I suddenly felt like changing the subject. But it was too late for that, I knew. She would never let me. So I just said it.

"When I was a kid, my father—he killed my mother. And then he killed himself," I paused and then pushed on. "I got over it eventually, but I was never the same after. I never felt anything again. I couldn't get myself to feel anything."

Marie's eyes saddened.

"I felt numb. No, not numb," I said. "I felt nothing."

"How are you feeling now?"

"When I'm with you? I don't feel that way at all," I said. She reached her hands out to me. The incense on the table was almost burnt out, a long line of ash threatening to break.

She bent low in her chair, her elbows touching her knees, and her head tilted up towards mine. The rain started up again, pattering on the windows. Then suddenly, the consecutive days of staying awake took its toll and pulled at my arms and eyelids like led. I was very sleepy, and very happy to be feeling anything at all. There was so much more I needed to tell her. I had to tell her about Will – about his page. But I was so sleepy, and Marie was mine again.

"Let's take a nap?" she pulled me passed her computer desk, the elliptical, the hanging cross on the wall, and into her purple bedroom. We dressed down to our underwear. I felt her body slide under the covers next to me. I indulged in the softness of her legs and cotton t-shirt.

"Now, I have a secret... to tell you," she breathed, putting her leg on top of mine, pressing her face onto my shoulder, smelling me deeply. "Before I went on meds, I tried to... kill myself. I needed an escape from the anxiety. There was just no comfort... or pleasure... hour after hour, day after day. No one could... could explain it to me. I was so scared of it, and the more I feared it, the... the stronger it got.

"So one night, I swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol, and woke... woke up in a hospital bed. It... it was there, when I walked to the chapel in the morning. I stood under a large painting of the Lord. In the painting, there were... lights of different colors... shooting from his heart. And there were words written by his feet that said 'Trust in God'.

"At that... that moment, I just gave up, giving all my will power to God, and let the anxiety happen. And with that... the anxiety flowed out of me... and onto the floor. I had been fighting the anxiety for so long, but when I finally decided to accept it, it...it went away. I decided right there that my will was not my own will, and that it was God's will. I learned to let go of everything. I still...still take meds every day, but at least I can say I'm okay now. I can say that now...I'm okay."

I kissed her forehead. "We're a couple of weirdos, aren't we?"

Marie smiled and closed her eyes. "Can you rub my back? And put me to sleep?" She flipped over onto her stomach. I slid my hand up the back of her shirt and massaged her shoulder blades, slowly, gently,for several minutes, until I heard the gentle rasping of her sleeping breath.