Beth

Chapter One

She was pretty. Everyone knew that. Not the prettiest girl they'd ever laid eyes on, no. But she was pretty. She had warm eyes and a smile so wide it made her eyes scrunch up. She was bubbly and kind to everyone.

And that's why everyone was so grief-stricken when she died.

But that's a story for later. For now, let's start with where it all began.

SEPTEMBER 8th, 1986

I remember that day so clearly. I was eight years old and nervous as hell for the first day of third grade. I had only one friend (no one ever really liked me) and honestly, I preferred sitting at home all day with him playing on the NES my sister got me for my birthday. It took all of her allowance and a little bit of extra money she had swiped from my mother's purse, but she told me it was worth it to see the look on my face when I tore off the shiny blue wrapping paper.

I was sitting with Steven talking about pokémon or whatever the fuck we were into back then when I saw her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. Her long brown hair was in two braids that cascaded over her petite shoulders. Her eyes met mine and she smiled a toothy grin, waving. My eyes never left her as she sat down with a group of girls whose conversation I could hear from my seat all the way across the room. It was only when Steven pointed out that I was turning blue that I sucked in a giant gust of air with a, "Sorry. I forgot to breathe."

PRESENT

            And that was when my "obsession" (or so my therapists call it) started. I learned her name one day when the teacher called on her. Beth. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. After that, she was all I ever talked about for months. It drove Steven insane, but somehow he managed to put up with it until I started to ease back into my other interests, too.

I've mostly remained quiet about my love for her, though. No one ever found out until it was too late.

The only other person I ever told about Beth was my sister Charlotte. She caught me circling her picture with a heart in my yearbook one day and I begged her not to tell. She agreed, but not before making fun of me for writing "Mrs. Beth Martin" in my diary well over a hundred times. And she took my secret to her watery grave. I won't tell you that story just yet though. For now, we're talking about Beth.

    I mean, that's what you came here for, right? You probably saw an article online about the Millersburg Killer and just about died when you saw that he had written an autobiography before he died. You saw what it was called. And I bet you instantly recognized her name from the countless true crime documentaries you've already watched. I'm you know who Steven is too. Do you know what happened to my sister? Here's a hint: check the obituaries from 1992 and find Christine.

    Anyways, back to Beth. Flash forward a couple years and I was still just as in love with Beth as I had been in third grade. However, I think the thing that sent me over the edge was in middle school when the girls started to get curves and the boys started to drool. Beth remained in her bubble of innocence, blissfully unaware of the perverts that stalked her every move.

    Some may call it evil, but I call it love. I didn't mean to hurt the boy that had smacked her ass as she stood at her locker, but the second I had pushed him into the locker room and wrapped my hands around his throat, it was like something in me had changed. My soul twisted and convulsed and turned in to something sinister. Everything I did was for Beth. Every breath I took was for Beth. Every boy I slaughtered and every girl I massacred was for Beth.

    But that time, while my fingers grew tighter around his windpipe and his face started to turn blue, I hadn't meant to hurt him. He fainted. I thought he had died and my heart began to pound louder and louder in my chest. I let go of him and pushed what I thought was a corpse away from me. He collapsed to the ground and hit his head on a bench.

    That's when I saw the irregular rise and fall of his chest.

    A choked sob left my mouth as I stared down at him. Blood was oozing out of a large crack in his head and I clapped a hand over my mouth, gagging. I stood there for a moment. I could've saved him if I had just ran to get help. There would've been time. But after a few minutes of watching him bleed to death, I started to smile. There was a peace blossoming in my heart I had never felt before.

    I leaned down, gripped his hair in my hands, and slammed his head onto the ground again. I took my time taking a shower, getting every last drop of blood off of me before putting my clothes back on and leaving him to die.