R/T/M Read online

  R/T/M

  Sean Douglas

  FOREWORD

  This was not submitted to me anonymously, although I present it here as anonymous, as it was intended to be presented, if at all.

  The book contained herein was given to me by a friend.

  The kind of friend that you don’t want to have over the house.

  The kind you don’t introduce to your girlfriend.

  The kind of friend you wish you had never met.

  He wasn’t my friend first. He was a friend of a friend.

  My friend thought that we’d get along so he got us together and then he was my friend too.

  We got to know each other over time and when I began to realize what a fucking nut-job he was I told him he should write a book.

  People say that shit all the time.

  “You should write a book.” or “I should write a book.”

  It’s like saying, “How are you?”.

  It’s just something people say.

  They don’t really want to know how you’re doing.

  The people that work at the places you go. They got enough of their own problems.

  They don’t need to hear about the petty drama of your banal little lives.

  They’re living lives of boring desperation too.

  Most people couldn’t write a book if they wanted to, which is good, because no one wants to read your stupid fucking life story anyway.

  Unless you’re Helen Keller or Anne Frank you’ve got no business writing books about your boring ass life.

  But my friend took me seriously and a week later he shows up with a manila folder full of copy paper.

  He held it out towards me and said it was the book I told him he should write.

  I started reading the book.

  I couldn’t seem to get away from it.

  I put it down when I had to go to work or go to sleep, but other than that the book was what I did for a few days.

  I read so much my eyes would get dry and itchy and my ass would go numb and I’d lose track of the time.

  It wasn’t that it was too good to put down.

  Actually it was the opposite.

  He came by the house a couple days later.

  He asked me what I thought.

  I asked him if he was fucking kidding me.

  He just looked me in the eyes like he was trying to read my mind.

  Trying to look right through me.

  Trying to figure out something out about me.

  He asked me if I had read it through to the end yet.

  I said I hadn’t gotten to the end yet.

  I’m not a quick reader.

  He said I should.

  The more I read, the more uneasy I felt.

  Then I finished his book and I read his little message.

  The next time the guy called me, I saw his number on the caller i.d. and I didn’t answer and he didn’t leave a message.

  That same day I went out and tried to buy a gun.

  Just to have around the house.

  Maybe on the bedside table or under my pillow while I slept.

  You know, for protection.

  The gun shop guy told me there was a seven day waiting period.

  I told him I needed a gun today.

  The guy gave me a look and asked me why I needed a gun so bad that day.

  If I told him, he’d think I was fucking crazy, so I said nevermind and left.

  I’m lucky he didn’t call the cops or make a citizen’s arrest right then and there.

  Not that I had anything to be guilty about.

  I just wanted some protection.

  My “friend” called a couple more times, and when he figured out I was avoiding his calls he left a voice message.

  “I presume, since you’re avoiding my calls, that you’ve finished reading my book. In case you were still wondering, it’s all true. I meant everything I said, including the little post-script I left for your eyes only. Hope our paths won’t have to cross again. It’s in your hands now. I’ll let you figure it out on your own. Have a nice life.”

  I will never forget that message.

  I had read the whole thing.

  I knew what he meant about the post-script.

  I packed up what I needed and got the fuck out of my apartment.

  I broke my lease.

  Who cares? It beats the alternative.

  What I didn’t think I absolutely needed I threw out or left behind. It’s just stuff.

  I checked into a motel under a fake name, paying for the room for a week in advance with cash.

  I didn’t sleep that night, despite the fact that I took the biggest fucking knife from my kitchen with me and kept it on the bedside table where I could get at it quick.

  I kept the light on so I could see, and the TV off so I could hear, and kept checking to make sure that I could get to the knife quick if I needed to.

  Reaching out and touching the handle.

  Not that it would help.

  I didn’t go to work the next day.

  I had a little money in the bank.

  I never went back to that place.

  I figured he could find me there too easily.

  Not that I didn’t think he couldn’t find me if he wanted to badly enough.

  I just didn’t want to have to look that guy in the eyes again if I didn’t have to.

  Instead I went to the Attorney General’s office and got my background check done.

  I went to a different gun store and let the owner help me pick out a good gun.

  An automatic is easier to reload than a revolver.

  Not that I’d need that many bullets.

  I put in my order and waited seven days.

  Those were the longest seven days of my life.

  As soon as I got the gun I left town.

  I moved back to the city I grew up in, where I still knew most of the people or knew people who knew them.

  I don’t think I ever told my “friend” where I came from.

  At least I didn’t think I did.

  I stayed with a friend from high school for a month and got a job, and when I got the money up I got my own place.

  I kept the stack of printed pages.

  Manila folder and all.

  I kept them where no one would accidentally pick it up and start leafing through them.

  It was a dirty little secret we shared.

  My friend and I.

  The kind of thing that you don’t tell anyone.

  Anyone.

  But you can’t just isolate yourself and hope that everything will be alright.

  I didn’t read the papers or watch the news, but you can’t help but hear things.

  It was neverending.

  I’d hear about something and wonder if it was my “friend”.

  Out there. Doing his thing.

  Nothing really helped.

  Now I just don’t care.

  It’s been so long.

  Maybe he’s out there doing his thing.

  Maybe he’s not.

  But knowing what I know, I felt guilty.

  Like I was part of his fucked up plan.

  So here it is.

  It’s all I got.

  I’m not telling you anything more.

  I don’t have to.

  I know my rights.

  I’ve already done too much by passing this on.

  Maybe now I can sleep at night without waking up at every little sound.

  Maybe he’ll come for me.

  Maybe he won’t.

  There’s no use worrying about it anymore.

  I’m done with worrying.

  It’s just not worth it.

  It makes life not worth living.

  So just kill me already.

  In my mind I�
�ve died a thousand indescribable deaths.

  I think that’s enough deaths for anyone.

  There’s nothing that could happen now that would surprise me.

  At least I hope there’s not.

  You can believe me or not.

  I don’t fucking care.

  It’s not my responsibility anymore.

  Here it is.

  You’ll either read it or you won’t.

  You‘ll believe me or you won’t.

  You do what you do and then you move on.

  Sean Douglas

  I’m not going to tell you my name.

  So don’t bother skipping ahead and trying to figure out if you know me.

  I’m not one of those guys that has a guilty conscience that keeps him up at night and is just dying for someone to figure out who he is so it can all be over with.

  One of those, “Stop me before I kill again!”, clichés.

  So don’t bother going through this with a fine-toothed comb and trying to put together all of the evidence, hoping that like pieces of a puzzle when assembled correctly you’ll see the big picture.

  Because, really, I’m not that stupid.

  Don’t bother trying to use special solutions and ultra-violet light to try to see if I left any fingerprints on the paper with my natural skin and hair oils.

  Fingerprinting isn’t an exact science.

  That shit’s for cop shows.

  I’ve never been arrested, so my prints won’t be in the system.

  And don’t bother trying to trace the paper, ink, or printer.

  All of which are common as dirt and can be acquired at any major office supply store.

  I’m telling you all of this because I want to save you some valuable time and effort.

  I’m telling you this because I want us to start off on the right foot.

  I’m telling you this because I want us to be friends.

  So maybe you’re wondering what it is that I do that requires that I take so many precautions.

  Maybe you’re wondering if you should waste your time reading any more of this.

  Maybe you’re wondering if these are the idle ramblings of one of the many mentally unbalanced members of your community.

  One of those psychotics living in your community that somehow slipped off their medication routine again, and dashed this off between time spent listening to the secret alien government transmissions coming in over the fillings in their teeth and having conversations with their dog about killing the president to win the love of some famous female movie star because he knows that they have so much in common and they would be great together if only she knew everything that he knew about how they were meant for each other.

  If that’s the case, then fine.

  Stop reading.

  Just go about your daily life like you never saw this.

  Still with me?

  I knew you would be.

  It’s human nature.

  Everyone slows down when driving by the site of a car crash on the highway.

  Not because the emergency response team is there and the lights are flashing and it’s the sensible thing to do. But because they want to see the smashed up cars and maybe a mangled body.

  But you never get to see the bodies.

  By the time the fire trucks and ambulances get there all you ever see are the dinged up cars and car parts and automotive fluids glimmering by the spinning lights.

  Maybe white sheets on gurneys or maybe someone getting fitted for a neck brace if you’re lucky.

  Enough foreplay.

  Let’s get to the fucking.

  I kill people.

  Yes, people.

  I didn’t say, or rather write, “I killed somebody.”

  Not that that isn’t an important enough event that it might weigh heavily enough on someone’s conscience that they’d feel compelled to anonymously relieve the pressure of their guilty conscience on their daily lives.

  And I didn’t say, or rather, write, that I killed people.

  Although I have killed people and I still do when I want to. What I mean is that it’s not like I’m planning on stopping anytime soon, so both the past and present tense are correct in this case.

  Not that I’m killing anyone right now.

  Killing somebody requires a fair amount of effort and attention, at least the way that I go about it.

  And I can’t exactly type and kill someone at the same time.

  Well, I guess I could, but that would just be ridiculously indulgent and I don’t think I’d enjoy it as much.

  So although I wasn’t killing anyone while I wrote this, maybe I’m in the process of killing someone while you read this.

  So maybe I am killing someone “right now”.

  Wouldn’t that be interesting?

  Think about that for a second.

  Let that sink in.

  Maybe you’re thinking, “What the fuck?”, or “Jesus Christ! What the fuck am I doing reading this?”

  Like I said, you can walk away any time you want to.

  Go ahead.

  Put it down.

  Call up your friends or spend some time with your family.

  There’s hundreds of other better things to spend your time doing.

  Maybe you’ve already moved past that and you’ve moved on to the reporter’s mantra.

  The big six.

  The who, what, where, when, why, and how?

  I don’t mean to sound self-important, but it’s a little bit more complicated than all that.

  The who is easy enough, but I’m not going to tell you who I am.

  And it’s not like I’m going to tell you the names of the people I killed or where the bodies are buried.

  This is not that kind of confession.

  And it’s not like all of them are buried anyhow.

  The what is rape, and torture, and murder, so if this reads like a hotlist of things you’re just not interested in reading about then you might as well stop here.

  But it’s also about love and death.

  Hope and disillusionment.

  Beginnings and endings.

  The where I’ll explain in due time, but as I already said, I’m not naming names or drawing maps to where to find the bodies. You’ll either find them and figure out who they are or you won’t.

  The when just doesn’t matter, there’s no one reason why, and the how I’ll tell you in a little while if you really, really want to know.

  But just be sure you really want to know.

  Maybe a better question is, “How many?”

  But to be honest, and maybe it sounds callous, but I kind of lost track of how many.

  Sure. I could sit down and figure it out, but that’s just too much like work.

  I tried that a few times in college when I was really racking up some numbers.

  Working out on a sheet of lined paper, who, and what I did with them.

  Not murders, mind you.

  Just girls I had been with since I had started being with girls.

  I made a list of names and after the names I devised a key to keep track of what we had done together.

  “K” was for Kissed, obviously, although I didn’t differentiate between plain kissing and French kissing.

  A little pentagram star was for fucking, and if I remembered how many times, I put that next to it in brackets, although later on down the list it would’ve been too much work to figure out a proper number.

  In high school when fate smirked down and saw fit to bestow a woman upon me the number of times we had sex was usually in the one to ten range. Then we’d drift apart or whatever.

  Capricious youth.

  “BJ” was for blow-job with a little check mark if I came in her mouth.

  I didn’t differentiate between spit and swallow.

  “C” was for cunnilingus, for the girls that I went down on, though I didn’t bother making any special notation for sixty-nine-ing.

  “A” was for anal sex, but
since I don’t prefer anal, that one was pretty rare. Usually with the girls that would look up at you, their eyes half-closed with passion and would breathily murmur, “You can do anything you want to me.”, which I always figured meant, “You can put it in my ass if you want to, I wouldn’t mind. In fact, I think I’d kind of like it if you did.”

  I mean, what else is that supposed to mean?

  We’ve already gone down on each other and we’re in the middle of having sex.

  I don’t think they really wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do.

  I don’t think they wanted me to bite off one of their nipples, probably the left one, and spit their severed nipple into their mouths while kissing them, or to try and find out what was the largest item in my dorm room that would fit inside their vagina without tearing it, and how far in it would fit before causing serious internal trauma.

  I don’t think they really wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do.

  I kept updating the list for a while, but after a while it just seemed petty.

  It seemed like I was pushing for stuff just to be able to put it on the list as opposed to just letting things happen naturally, so I got rid of the list, tearing it up and flushing it down the toilet so no one would find it in the trash or dig it out of the landfill a hundred years from now.

  I also got rid of it because the last thing I wanted was for some girl I was dating coming across the list for some unforeseen reason.

  Everyone knows that everyone that they get with has a history, but it’s a completely different thing to see the history on paper. In chronological order. To see the notches on the belt or the bedpost.

  I bet if everyone kept a list or there was some public record that you could look up online, a lot more people would make it a point to buy a pack of condoms before that first big date.

  I’m sure the nationwide revelation of that scale would have an amazing impact on condom sales, but as with any major revelation, over time, the shocking would become familiar.

  There are very few things available for people to do to or with each other that haven’t been going on since the dawn of mankind, so the artificial puritanical attitude about sex and sexuality never really made much sense to me.