The Online Profile of a Serial Killer

Posted on *date blocked* (Sixth Post)

Naked in the cramped cottage bedroom, I sit up and take a deep breath of musky air. The mattress is wrapped in clean, flower-patterned sheets. The room is dimly lit by my iPhone charging in the corner. Creeping out of bed, I hear Marie wake up. She turns over onto her back. I feel the floor's wooden grain on my bare feet as I lumber over to my pile of clothes beside the bed.

"You're awake?" Marie asks groggily and with a hint of surprise. I pull my pants up. "Where you going?"

"I can't sleep."

She stretches and moans. "Try praying," she says. "That always helps me."

Buttoning down my top, I stare at her peaceful face, her lips slightly parting into a smile.

"What do you say when you pray," I ask her, curious.

"I say thank you for this and that, mostly."

"Does he ever say anything back?" I say, sarcastically, but without malice.

"Of course he does -- in everything -- in the sun rising and setting every day, in the people we meet..."

"What does he say?" I smirk.

"He says, hey, Marie, I'm right here, okay. I got you," Marie closes her eyes and her voice trails off. I disconnect my iPhone from its charger and see that it's 3:13am.

"Okay then," I say. "I'll give prayer a try."

She beams and turns over to her side to face me. "Use the Rosary I gave you."

"The Rosary?" I say.

"The green one."

I look at her puzzled – a vague memory of a green Rosary seeps into my mind. "Okay," I say, struggling to remember where I had last seen it. It was at the hospital, I think, hanging on the footboard of the bed. The metal cross was clinking on the steel bars. I may have left it, but it doesn't matter now. "Go to sleep, sweetheart," I stroke her hair as she drifts into sleep.

In the darkness, I feel my way out of the bedroom and into the living room where the drapes of the large window are pulled wide open, letting in a very faint glow from the starlit sky outside. My eyes adjust quickly. I see the outline of the table where two flashlights stand upright. I grab one of them.

The screen door creaks open, followed by more creaks from the wooden planks on the old porch. I grope my way down the staircase to the dirt ground below, continuing on down the hillside towards the lake. I shine the flashlight on the earth before taking each step, making sure the ground is even there. A wind blows dry dirt onto my face and I clench my eyes shut. The autumn night is void of summer cricket noises and mosquitoes buzzing in my ears – there is only the relentless rushing of wind.

As I descend the slope, the sound of small waves smacking against wood gets closer. At the foot of the hill, the ground levels out, and I find myself at the mouth of a boat deck floating in the water. Stepping onto the deck, it wobbles and I shift my weight side to side for balance. Ahead of me, the stars reflect off the lake like wavering white dots. I turn off the flashlight and see my own body vanish in the blackness, as if I'm just a pair of eyes hovering over the lake, encompassed by stars above and stars below.

I know that the stars are millions of miles away, its light taking thousands of years to reach my eyes, and I wonder if the actual galactic orbs of gas are even still up there at all -- or are they ghosts – remnants from another time, like the Facebook pages and blog posts left behind from people who have already died.

Turning back, I step off the unsteady deck onto solid ground, and I sit on a bench a few feet away from the water, resting under the hanging branches of a maple tree. The bench is like a miniature version of a city park bench, as if it was made for children, and perhaps it was, placed there by Dad decades ago for me. Compelled by the peacefulness, I try, in the darkness, to recall everything I knew before I had deleted my childhood from my mind. I struggle to recall the faces of all my grade one classmates from shortest to tallest. Gradually, I remember a time when Dad carried Mom into their bedroom, both of them laughing hysterically, and once again, I come to possess what is already mine.