Chapter Ten

Childhood never leaves us. Even as painful memories fade over the years and become blurry around the edges, the scars leave their mark and toughen the skin against future injuries.

He couldn’t remember a single moment from his childhood when he had ever fit in. It started when he was a little boy, always the outsider, always bullied. Always weak. Then one day everything changed.

He’d been swinging on the playground, alone with the thoughts in his head like he always was. He never knew who had violently pushed him from the swing, but he hit the ground and found himself looking up at Bubba, the biggest kid in his class.

Something in him snapped. He rose to his feet and beat that boy so bad that it took three teachers to pry him off, even though the kid was twice his size. Years of pent up frustration were unleashed on Bubba’s face. He’d beaten Bubba’s head against the concrete so hard that he knocked him unconscious.

That was the day he resolved to never be the target of a bully again. That was the day he learned fear was power. If he could make people afraid of him, he had control. Once he got just a taste, he liked it—no, he loved it. But it would be a long time before he got a chance to taste it again.

Of course, it was difficult to contrive opportunities to get his hands on people, but animals? That was a different story. It all started years later with his neighbor’s cat. He had watched that damn cat, Petey, kill birds for years. One day when he was fourteen, he decided ‘no more’. That fucking cat was a bully. He knew the cat was probably acting on instinct, but it didn’t even believe in a clean kill. No, it had to bat the mouse around on the ground with its intestines trailing behind it, delighting in letting the creature believe it would be allowed to crawl away. Watching the process over and over again brought back all the bad memories from the boy’s past, when picking on him had been his classmates’ favorite game.

Petey was Sheila’s cat. She had lived next door to him since they were little. Many times she had watched as the schoolyard bullies had their fun at his expense. She and her giggling friends had pointed and laughed while he suffered. Now she was a stuck-up cheerleader who never acknowledged him even though they’d grown up right next door to each other.

So, in the end, there was a certain poetry to his plans for ol’ Petey.

He lured the unsuspecting cat into his yard with a can of tuna. Then he spent a few minutes rubbing its tummy and scratching behind its ears before settling in to rub under its chin. Eventually, he wrapped his hand around the little fucker’s neck and began to squeeze. He slowly exerted more pressure on the cat’s neck, observing dispassionately as its tail bushed and it began to struggle. In the end his strength had been too much for Petey.

He arranged the cat’s lifeless body on the ground and was studying it in various entertaining poses when an idea struck him.

He slipped around to the side laundry room door and kicked his shoes off for fear of his stepdad hearing him. When other fathers were working, his was usually home drunk because he’d gotten fired from another job. He’d learned the hard way that staying away from the angry drunk was the best way to avoid an ass beating.

He tiptoed upstairs, avoiding the telltale creaky step at the top. The television blared in the background as he padded along the old flooring past his grandmother’s room until he reached the bathroom. He reached under the sink searching for the First Aid kit his mother kept there. He eased it out and retraced his steps. When he got back downstairs to the laundry room, he picked up his shoes and eased out the door. He could put the shoes on later. For now, the most important thing was getting away from his house undetected.

He worked his way around the corner to his kill and sat down on the ground to get to work. He opened the small white box and laid out his supplies neatly, much like a doctor would. He was glad to see there was plenty of gauze. He would likely need all of it for what he had in mind.

He began the task of wrapping the cat from head to toe in gauze, keeping the gauze nice and tight. Once he’d made certain to cover its nose, mouth, and eyes, he used the included metal clip to secure the wrapping. He placed all his utensils back in the plastic white box so they wouldn’t get dirty and, wouldn’t you know, there was plenty of gauze left so no one would ever be the wiser.

He set the box to the side and scooted over a few feet toward the rosebush. He began digging in the soft dirt next to the bush, making a grave for his first victim. The memory would stay with him for a lifetime, but even better memories awaited him as a result of his good work.

He woke up the next day to the sound of Sheila calling for her cat. Sweet, sweet music. There was something inordinately satisfying about having a secret about her beloved pet. As the days passed, he used the cat’s disappearance as a conversation starter. He repeatedly asked her if she'd found Petey. When her daily negative responses became increasingly grief-stricken, her baby blues brimming with unshed tears and those bee-stung lips quivering pitifully, another plan hatched in his mind.

When it had become clear the cat wasn’t going to return, he and Sheila bonded as friends over his solicitous concern, although she still wouldn’t acknowledge him at school. They met up often out by his mother’s rosebush, a discreet location that enabled her to keep the friendship just between the two of them. And that was important because, as she explained to him one day, a cheerleader couldn’t very well be seen with the school nerd. She was sure he understood her predicament. He assured her he did.

He became a shoulder for Sheila to cry on. He became a frequent source of comfort and increasingly long hugs. He endeared himself to her so deeply that, during one of those friendly embraces, she couldn’t bring herself to object when his hands suddenly began to roam over her ass and squeeze her soft, round teenage tits. She was taken by surprise when he held her against the paint peeling on the clapboard wall of his house as he shoved his tongue in her mouth. And in her confusion, she couldn’t find the words to tell him to stop when the hands on her shoulders pushed her down to the ground…and her knees sank into the soft dirt by his mother’s rosebush.

A boy never forgets his first blowjob, and he sure as hell never forgot giving that stuck-up bitch her first mouthful of dick juice—even if he'd had to do most of the work as he yanked her head back and forth.

Petey never did come home, of course. Sheila never told a soul about what happened. She couldn’t bear the shame of anyone knowing that she’d had a nerd’s dick in her mouth. And she never suspected that she was living next door to a serial killer in the making.