The story was basically a serial killer that just picked five names and decided to kill the first girls he met with those names. I didn't really go into motive. I just wanted him to be a man who killed because it seemed like a good idea at the time. No motive. Just anyone. It came out sounding really unrealistic.
Basically, my professor hated it, and I kinda did to. Against my better judgments, I let a friend of mine convince me that it was a good story, even though it wasn't. Between me wanting to get it done and some false confidence, it bombed. The two peer-reviews I got were pretty good, but the professor hated it. Character development was shitty. The were a lot of things that needed more explanation. I still like the serial killer thing, but I need to really work on pulling it off.
I ended up forsaking the story because it was shit and I didn't want to look at it again. It didn't make the final cut of my portfolio.
But, after seeing the Starz thing, I feel like it deserves another shot. Too bad I didn't think of do it this summer. But, I need to give this guy a life. A bigger voice. More quirks. I think I'm going to get rid of his best friend because he's annoying me. I need to commit to the depravity of the main character. I want him to be a little more Patrick Bateman and a little less Palahniuk because everything I write ends up sounding like a bad imitation. I can't help it, the man knows me through and through. Anyway, here's the half-edited first 3 and 1/2 pages:
......
Two days from now, a neighbor of my mother's will say "He was always an odd child. He wore black a lot." My freshman English professor will say that I often wrote "deeply disturbed poems." My trainer at the gym will say "I just knew there was something off about him." It's all horse shit. This is what they'll run on the evening news.
I'll make the front page of the newspaper, wearing a suit and tie, looking more like my lawyer than myself. Charles Manson said "Look down on me, you will see a fool. Look up at me, you will see your Lord. Look straight at me, you will see yourself." We are all capable, for better or for worse.
My first day at G-link, I sat in the indent of my desk chair, in the ass-imprint of a man twice my size, typing "flesh eating parasites" into Google images. Employers block social networking, porn and shopping sites, but the real entertainment is Google images. Quickly, I click the tab to the company's website as my boss, coffee-stained teeth wearing his only good suit, looks over my shoulder. Username: DellawayBenH. Password: neb.
I get my first call, on the headset, I said "Good afternoon ma'am. My name is Ben, I'll be assisting you today." The computer said she was Emma Young, from Massachusetts, 71 years old. We talked for 57 minutes, I told her how to reset her modem, just in time to see that she had won a cut-glass bowl on Ebay. She told my manager how much of a "sweet, young boy" I had been.
Next, I went to Google images, typed brunette, and printed out the first picture that wasn't of a model, celebrity or porn star. I put her in a frame on my desk. Every sweet young boy needs a sweet young girl. To anyone who asks, her name is Sarah, she is my girlfriend, we've been going out for two years, she works at Old Navy, she loves dogs, indie music and Greek food. I make up other little points about her life, just in case anyone asks. No one does.
On my first break of my first day I opened up Word to make a list:
1. Jennifer
2. Jessica
3. Ashley
4.Amanda
5. Sarah
These are the girls I am going to kill. Wait, back up.
My name is Ben. I'm an only child. I had a decent childhood. I lived in a solidly middle-class home with pastry-colored walls. My parents are in their fifties without any cancers or abnormalities. I wasn't forced into potty-training. I broke my arm when I was seven. I had friends. I kept clean. I had muscle tone. I had girlfriends. All of it. I bet I'm more normal than you; and yet I've done these things. Why? We'll get there. Rewind.
I don't know the girls yet. They are just names right now, without owners. I picked women and not men because the quarter I flipped landed on heads, not tails. I picked the names because they were the top five girls names from the year I was born. I decided that I would kill them in the order of their popularity, just to make things a little more challenging. I don't care about their ages. Their marital status. Nothing. I am going to kill five girls because five girls had the five most popular girls names. That afternoon, I walk home from the office with a sense of purpose. From this point onward, I'm a man on a mission. A regular version of Hercule Peroit or Sherlock fucking Holmes.
It's incredible how long I had to wait for a Jennifer. I almost decided to off the whole plan, then she called.
On January 11, Jennifer Dungall calls G-link to fix her network connection in her small business, called "Leah's Cards and Gifts." Leah is Jennifer's daughter. She had leukemia or something. I stopped at the business before I killed her, stuck a dollar in the paper-wrapped coffee can, pathetically asking customers to donate change to some fund represented by a picture of young girl with sunken eyes and stringy blonde hair with skin nearly the color dried bacon grease. She had a smile that looked like someone held up the right corner of her mouth with a string. I waited till Jennifer Dungall left the counter and I stole the can, picture and all.
Jennifer's friends in the community will say that they "Never saw it coming." Her suicide will be the stuff of Lifetime movies. The poor mother. The terminally ill little girl. The marriage that ended because neither parent felt whole without the child. Lifetime would jump on that shit.
As for Jennifer, I crept in, held her down, and slashed her wrists with a paring knife that I found in her kitchen drawer on the way to her bedroom. I left no marks of force. I slid out of the back window. It took her 45 minutes to die, meaning I had to listen to a dying woman for 45 minutes. Clearly, I had not planned for that. I would've just slit her throat or cut her tongue out or something, but I wanted a suicide. My mistake. I played solitaire on my cell phone while she pleaded with me to call the ambulance. Ten, jack, queen, king. Red five, black four, red three. Three numbers and a few radio waves to save her life. She told me she'd never tell, and I said "But how could you ever forget this face?" Jennifer prayed to God as I stood watching her, listening to him, she even asked for my forgiveness. Christians never learn.
After I killed her, I took off my clothes in the woods behind her house, where I left a bag of new clothes to change into. I used a rubber band to tie my old corduroy pants and plaid shirt around a large stone. I put the whole thing in a triple layer of white plastic shopping bags that have "Thank you" written on them, with red ink, six times each. I lob the bag, with the stone and clothes, off of a small bridge a mile away with a rusted railing and a 15-foot-deep piece of river running under it. I sleep in the woods another mile and a half south. I sleep soundly till morning when I wake up and feel the thin dollar bills in my pocket, destined to take me to my mom's house, where I go every Sunday morning. She microwaves freezer-burned French toast while my father reads the paper, not even noticing the grinds in his coffee or the distinct smell of Jennifer's cheap perfume still clinging to my hair.
....
I still don't know how I feel about it, but I'm tired and I'll do more with it and the other 5 pages tomorrow. I know I have some tense issues and the timing is off, but I'll mess with it another day.
