The Murder Chronicles

[swivel]

Part One: Reading in Bed


“What are the three rules for murder?”, my wife asked me last night.

“Holy shit. How does my wife know that I kill people?” That was the first thought that flashed through my head. It was only there for an instant and it was sickening and irrational. Like when you see flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror. You KNOW that the cop is coming around you and pursuing someone else, but you get an adrenaline rush anyway, and the taste of tin-foil lingers in your mouth for next 10 miles. That was the sensation that creeped over my body as I twisted around to look at her. There was no way she could know, and yet the question was hanging over our bed, and I felt that my brief pause was growing into a guilty five minutes.

And then I saw her latest thriller book cracked open half-way. Fuck. It was just some bullshit from the author of the book she was reading. Probably a man that had never even accidentally killed anyone.

“Only three rules?” I asked incredulously. The tin-foil was there, but I felt the after-high of being completely safe. Fear was replaced with the excitement of talking about something that I was good at. I started thinking about the dozens of people that I’ve killed. I thought about my very first. I thought about the family of four that I killed last weekend.

“Only three.”, she said. She said it with an air of authority. My wife reads almost nothing but murder-dramas. She Tivo’s every flavor of C.S.I.. She peppers me with forensic bullshit all the time and gets curious when I can’t suppress my laughter.

Three rules. What bullshit. I have several dozen rules. Some are mine, and some are Chris’, my best friend and murdering companion. We started with almost a dozen before we ever got started almost 10 years ago. Which ones are the three that this fuck-wad would list? Not many of mine seem more important than the others. Break a single one and your chances of getting caught go up exponentially. How could I prune them down to just three? Ah, but of course, his list is going to be some phony bullshit. I have to think like Sue Griffin here. What would that bitch say?

“Don’t tell anyone?” I guess aloud.

My wife looks stunned. Like I’m psychic. She looks back to the book to double-check, but I know I’ve already scored. I see the silhouette of her head nodding in and out of her book-light. I roll over and look up at the darkness in the ceiling. Getting the first one right has created a pressure within me to get the next two without missing one. This is just like me, I throw out a brilliant guess which happens to be correct, only to be paralyzed with the obsessive-compulsive desire to bat 1.000 which makes completing a project near-impossible.

“Want to hear the next two?” She is impatient to keep reading, probably upset that she even brought this up now. Now she knows that I’m in one of my perfectionist states, and a mindless game is going to take forever.

Second rule. I want a hint so bad I can hardly stand it. But asking for hints shows weakness. What would the bitch Griffin say? Well, those fucks write the same story over and over with slightly different names, so I’m guessing it will be a re-telling of the first rule.

“Do it yourself?” I ask the ceiling fan.

“Have you read this book?”, she asks me, even though she knows I never go near fiction. She is probably more spooked now than if she knew that the ambulance which whizzed past us a few weeks ago contained two people I killed. Well, one person I killed and another that I was an accomplice for.

Third rule. I’m not going to get any hints now, and I don’t really care. My wife is no longer annoyed with the delays and is fascinated by my good showing here. My brain wanders to weapon disposal, how to dig a proper hole for a body, cleaning up and preparation. For a moment I really want to tell her the truth, I want to tell her about some of the people I have killed. I want to tell her the real rules, the ones that allow you to kill with no fear of ever being caught. And in this frenetic brain-storm I realize which one of my rules is the most important. It is the one that got Chris and I started along a very long line of dead bodies.

Rule number one: Take up Cycling…


I was 22 at the time, and Chris was nearing 30. We were sitting in his dining room one day while my future wife and his current one milled about the backyard looking at ways to spend our money. Chris and I had been neighbors for just 5 months, and even though he was married with two kids and a bit older than me, we hit it off immediately. Here was a guy that didn’t cringe when I made my demented comments, instead he would tilt his chin back and let out a sudden, short, loud noise which I quickly learned was what passed for laughter with Chris. And the more morbid a thing he laughed at, the more revolting my next comment would be.

Looking back, I can see that it was like a gay man trying to come out of the closet, but making sure it would be safe first. It would be like joking about sucking his dick to see what his reaction would be. I was a killer in hiding. I was looking for a partner.

By his reception, I knew that Chris was just as fucked in the head as I was, but he never made bizarre comments himself. It was like being on a first date. Our feet were touching. I was moving mine slowly up and down the arch of his, but only barely. I was waiting for the slightest twitch back, aching for the sensation of movement from his foot, because then I would know it was on.

We were sitting at the dining room table that day when Chris didn’t just press his naked foot back into mine, he practically grabbed my ears and shoved his cock in my mouth by saying, “Do you ever wish that you could kill someone, you know, just to see what it feels like?”

We probably would have written down the first few rules right then and killed someone before the weekend if our women didn’t happen to rush back into the house just then. It was torture. The question was still in the room with us all, the women jabbering unknowingly. I was looking at Chris, my eyes wide, my mouth slightly open, and he was just leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his face dead serious.

Yes, Chris. I think about killing people all the fucking time. I want to go kill someone with you right now, but our better-halves are yammering on about boxwoods and mulch. But I could tell from the calm demeanor of my neighbor that he was in no hurry to get started.

Fuck.

“That’s it, the third rule”, I think as I snap out of my recollections. It would be Chris’ favorite rule. Un-fucking-real. I look over to my wife who has been studying my thinking process. She is holding the book in a protective fashion, her eyebrows are up with doubt.

“Take your time”, I say with complete confidence. Take your time. I don’t even hear her incredulous “Harumph” as I go back to my thoughts. I think back over our own rules. I really want to tell my wife that I know which rule is the most important, now. I want her to know that this guys’ first rule is bullshit, and he got lucky with the last one. Taking up cycling might not be the most important rule, but it is the first one. And somewhere up there is the rule of having a partner that you trust more than you trust yourself. “Don’t tell anyone” is a bad rule. Every killer will tell you that the desire to share the euphoria of murder is not something you can fight. It is like being an alcoholic. You might be able to go a very, very long time without a drink, but you can’t go forever. And the longer you withhold, the worse your binge is going to be.

A few months later Chris celebrated his 30th birthday. After he unwrapped his gag-gifts and the last-minute shit most of our neighbors and friends got him I took him outside to show him my gift. Leaning up against the garage were two Pegorretti Resplendoriums. $3,500 apiece. Carefully arranged around them were all the accoutrements required to belong to the cult of cycling. And with these bikes, nobody would doubt our commitment.

“What the fuck is this?”, Chris said in complete disbelief. You see, I had not yet told him the first rule of murder: Take up cycling.

[swivel]

Part Two: Take up Cycling



The first two people that Chris and I nearly killed together were ourselves. I hadn’t been on a bicycle in seven years. It had been twice that for Chris, who never knew that bikes could have gears. We spent an entire weekend grinding around our neighborhood trying to figure out the Shimano gear-shifts and learning how to clip our shoes into our carbon-fiber racing cranks. It turns out that clipping them in is much easier than clipping them out. Every time we slowed to a stop there was an even chance that we wouldn’t get our feet out in time and would just crash sideways onto the pavement.

It was in just such a pose that Chris looked up at me and asked what we were both thinking by now, “What does this have to do with killing people?” Yeah, I was beginning to have my own doubts. Instead of giving him a good reason for our first rule, I laid my bike down and crouched beside to give him my second one.

“We only talk about this on the road”, I told him. Chris was still inspecting the latest abrasion on his knee, but he nodded slowly. The comedy of two adults learning to ride bicycles was gone for a moment. In its place was the seriousness of what we were really doing out here: taking our first steps towards killing people. Ending the lives of individuals that really want to go on living. Extinguishing the most precious thing known to our species with an act that was ultimate in its finality. Getting a tattoo gives most people pause, and tattoos can be removed.

Chris looked up at me with the same look he had given me months before when he asked me if I ever thought about killing people. He threw his leg back over a very expensive, and now quite scratched, frame and clicked one of his feet back into the carbon pedal. This was one of the traits that we shared and which made our partnership work. We both trusted each other without fail. There were going to be moments in our future when this trust would be tested under extraordinary circumstances, and it would bend at times, but never break. Even after all of our mistakes, that trust remains. And luckily we survived those first few bike rides together or none of this would have happened.

I knew cycling was going to be mandatory because of my best friend in high school. He was an avid cycler. Actually, all cyclers are avid. Cultish, even. Fanatically preposterous in their zeal, you could say. It was what eventually drove us apart before our senior year. If you are a cyclist, you just can’t have friends that aren’t. It’s exactly like what happens when you have kids or get married. You now belong to a new cult and you better not mingle with non-members.

When I first started thinking about how I would kill people, one of the first things I realized was the benefits of cycling. As much as I hated the activity, I knew that to do something that I really wanted to do (kill people), I was going to have to do some things that I didn’t want to do. Sitting in jail for the rest of my life was one of those things. And so was cycling. So I had this choice to make.


At 22, I was already getting a little out of shape. Chris was in good shape for his age, but that really isn’t saying much. Most of our peers are grotesquely fat, but that didn’t mean we could get by with being pudgy. Chris and I would get winded coming back from the mailbox, and murder isn’t a leisure activity unless you want to go the lazy and impersonal route of Muhammed and Malvo and lay in the trunk of a car sniping random people. But cycling isn’t just great for your cardio. Cycling is the perfect alibi. Cycling is an excuse for two adult men to disappear every weekend with a car, go riding past miles and miles of empty woods, and return home half a day later drenched in sweat and exhausted.

Cycling is an excuse to shave your entire body, befuddling the efforts of the best forensic teams. Chris already had a shaved head as he went the modern route of male balding by beating his genes to the punch. My wife was initially shocked until she got addicted to rubbing my stubble. Once she put my perfectly shaved balls in her mouth for the first time, she didn’t complain about my new hobby for a month. Yes, cyclist shave everything. It is a fucking fetish with those clowns. And yes, I continue to call them “those” because I do not consider myself a cyclist. I am a serial killer. I ride bikes for cover. Part of that cover is blending in with a group of spineless pussies that shave their balls and cower when rednecks pull up beside them on the road and curse at them for slowing up traffic. I shave my balls because no DNA will ever slough off of me and be found. “Those” guys shave their balls because they are as demented as my high school friend was. When Chris and I ride in packs, which we frequently have to do, we look at each other knowingly. We want to kill each and every last one of the motherfuckers.

Speaking of rednecks yelling at cyclists, this is one of the best reasons for murderers to take up the hobby. Cycling will teach you to control a furious rage that you never knew you had in you. You will want to drop a nuclear bomb on every car that narrowly passes you. You will want to eviscerate ever cocksucker that flips you off, but you will be powerless to do anything in that instant. You can’t speed up and cut them off. You can’t race them anywhere. You are on unequal footing with them. It is road-rage in a straight-jacket and it makes you one of two things: If you are a pussy, which most cyclists are, it makes you a passive-aggressive cry-baby. These are the guys that purchase “Share the Road” personalized license plates and bring up rude drivers in polite conversations with absolutely no prompting. They are unhealthy. The second thing you can become is what Chris and I were before we even killed our first victim: Perfectly controlled beings of rage.

This is part of our training. When you kill someone, there is a primal switch that is flipped. You are looking at the world down a very long tunnel. Your brain can’t think straight. That’s why people throw the murder weapon behind the hedges. Post-Kill, this seems like an absolutely, perfectly, wonderfully genius fucking thing to do. And then I’ll go throw the body off of a bridge. Bodies sink, don’t they? When I stop treading water, I sink in the pool. So, yeah, I’ll throw the body off the bridge.

When you can knock out a 100 mile ride, narrowly avoiding vehicular manslaughter at least once per ride, and come home and still mow the lawn and fuck your wife, you don’t get the post-kill tunnel vision. After awhile someone could key your car right before your very eyes and your heart wouldn’t miss a beat. You become so accustomed to being over-stimulated that very few things can affect you. And this is exactly where you want to be before you start killing people. And cycling will get you there.

As great as these benefits are, the top tool that cycling provides is intel. When you cycle, you really get to see the land and the people. You get very intimate with your surroundings. You see the stupid shit people do, and how they live, and it reminds you of exactly why you enjoy killing people. It keeps you motivated to kill even more people. And while driving around at 15 mph will always result in a 911 call for appearing suspicious, when you are cycling at 15 mph you are invisible. The only suspicious people will be other cyclists who will wonder why the fuck you are going so slow on a bike that costs as much as a used car. But disdain is as good as being invisible. And everyone knows that cyclists are pussies, so good luck making a line-up.

There are only two things that Chris and I can be doing while we talk about our killings: We are either sitting on the side of a quite road with our bikes in the grass, wearing spandex. Or we are in the act of murdering someone. This is a rule that is never violated. There is no e-mail which mentions our exploits, not even in a humorous inside-joke. There are no utterances over the phone. We don’t even talk about it in the car, with the bikes humming in the wind up on the rack, on the way to or back from a kill. We only talk while we are pretending to fix a flat, or taking a water and powerbar break, or just lounging back in the grass as the rare car goes flying by.

And it was on our third 100-mile ride that we came up with this rule. And as we finalized our list, with our weapon rules and our body-disposal rules and our alibi accounts, our first victim came walking over the hill. Staggering sideways with every third step and dressed in brown corduroys with an old black shirt buttoned up in 90 degree weather, it was one of those old black men that seem impervious to heat. A jobless drunk that probably walks 8 miles from his tenement house to the closest country store that carries liquor in 40oz bottles. He had the gait of a man who was unwillingly sobering up, and he was without a paper bag. Which means the country store was ahead. But he was going to have to get through us first.

I still think of that old man as some wise old teacher. A sensei of sorts. I love him in much the way that a surgical student must fall in love with his first cadaver. Just as that lifeless body can teach so much in a rigid silence, so too did our wino teach us much in his own, less silent, much less rigid way. But the story of our first kill is not the place to start these chronicles. For that, we need to discuss body disposal and the proper way to transplant a tree.

[CPL CHUD]

Awesome so far. Reminds me of American psycho without the social commentary about a nihilisitic, materialistic culture.

[swivel]

http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/5029/tree4kq8.jpg

Transplanting a Tree

“My name is Matthew Daniggan. I have two children. Please. Please. I’m begging you. I won’t tell anybody anything. You don’t have to do this. I have a wife. Please. Why are you doing this? For God’s sake, please don’t do this. I will never tell anyone about this, I swear to God. Just let me go. I’ve never done anything wrong. Please. My name is Matthew Daniggan.”



I was sitting on a log whittling a spruce limb down to a fine point with a steak knife. Matthew Daniggan couldn’t see me with his head a few feet below the level of the ground. He was going into what Chris and I have likened to religious speak. It is a perfectly predictable string of words and phrases that everyone goes into when they realize that they are about to be killed. They either do this, go into shocked silence, or just scream as loud as they can. Usually they do all three.

It is during moments like this that I realize I’m not psychotic. Matthew’s words work on me. They always do. I feel horrible for the guy. I feel shitty about myself. I am not one of those demented characters in a movie or a thriller that is going to knock the guys teeth out and fuck his skull, that kind of nonsense makes me want to puke. Just hearing Matthew’s pleas makes me want to vomit. I must be clear about something: I don’t kill people because I enjoy the act of murder. I kill people because of a mixture of curiosity, genius, and morbidity.

As a kid, I used to lay in bed every night frightened out of my fucking skull to fall asleep. I was terrified of the dark. Paralyzed by the fear that I would never wake up in the morning. I used to write death notes that I would leave beside my bed so that my mother would know that I loved her when she found my cold corpse in the morning. Later in life I would sit in an airplane and try to figure out how I could leave a message when the plane started to go down. I’ve thought about getting in a car accident, and what words I would write on the windshield in my own blood.

And I used to think that these thoughts were unnatural. Until I started talking about them as a young adult. I found that most people thought similar things, but never shared them. It made me feel better, but even more curious. Why do we feel the compulsion to leave an impression as we die? Why do I want to say to my rock-climbing companion, “Tell my wife I love her” as I plummet from a cliff? Why do we all think about swerving into oncoming traffic at least once a month?

The terror I felt at night was the fear of not existing. I know now that this is just an emotional reflex developed from years of evolution. The organisms which felt this the strongest had more offspring. It is a positive-reinforcement cycle that has no end. It has created a planet full of species one would be best served to not corner. And humans, with our awareness of death and its finality, have it the worst. My lack of faith, my complete understanding that no god exists, means that I am aware that the end of my life will also be the end of my memory of ever living. When I am gone, I will have never existed. The memory of me will only last several generations. And this is what kept my child-self awake all night long.

I finally realized how to overcome this fear. It is by understanding that for at least 15 billion years I didn’t exist, and it wasn’t so bad. I am far better at not-existing than I am at existing. But while this has calmed my nerves, it never satiated my fascination with death and our fear of it. And it does not inure me to the pain that I feel for Matthew right now. This almost always happens to me at the time of the kill, I wish I didn’t have to do it. I almost wish I could believe him when he says he will never tell anyone. But of course, he would.

This is another reason that killing with a partner is a brilliant thing. Often, when my will is waning, I find myself carrying through for Chris’ sake. And he readily admits doing the same for me. It is not just important to have two brains at work, but to have two spines as well. Matthew has ended a cycle of pleading and has gone silent. The steak knife curls up beautiful slivers of white spruce that I expertly flick into the hole and atop Matthew’s silent and invisible form. No evidence is left outside of the hole. And beside me there is a young tree sitting upright, its roots wrapped tightly with burlap.


You will never realize what a problem body disposal is until you have a body you need to dispose of. When a person dies, they double in weight. Go pick up a friend who is willing, and you will find it no trouble. Now, ask them to passively resist you. Have them just think about being heavier, and you will find it nearly impossible to move them.

There is nothing metaphysical going on here. It is just that we can’t appreciate how many small muscles the person being lifted is using to stabilize themselves to make their weight more manageable. Male ballet-dancers know that this is true and every company has “good partners” and “bad partners”. There are female dancers who weigh 15 lbs. more than their peers but feel light as a feather to lift. Then there are the dancers who are as much trouble to move as a dead stiff.

You also can not be seen with a body. This is something that witnesses do not miss. And unless you are going to stick to killing homeless people, someone is going to come looking for a body.

Burning and dicing always seem to be logical choices, but once you smell burning flesh, you realize you need to be so remote to do this that you might as well feed the corpse to a pig. Dicing has way too many forensic problems and the tools required are hard to replace and too dangerous to keep around. Burial has problems that we will come to shortly, but it is worth mentioning first that the mafia are the guys who have devoted the most energy to these problems. Their ideal solution was concrete. Putting bodies in foundations is the best solution, but not available to most people. Armatures have tried to steal this technique with disastrous results. When cops come to your home and see piles of concrete bags and a new floor poured in the basement… well, let’s just say that they’ve seen all the stupid movies that you have seen. The mafia have access to unionized work-sites that individuals will never have. Don’t try to copy them.

Instead, learn how to transplant trees...

[swivel]

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/5781/tree5wo2.jpg


The arboreal method was Chris’ idea, and one that he brought into our partnership fully realized. Before we ever had that brief conversation in his dining room, he had worked out every detail of his body-disposal method. It all came to him when he planted a few mature dogwoods in his front yard. The only refinement we made was the treating of body disposal as a second crime. One not to be taken more lightly than the murder itself. Before we even have a victim picked out, we act like we are stealing a tree.

Here’s how it goes: When Chris and I cycle, we dive his Camry with the Yakima roof rack and three bikes on top. Our drive to the start of our ride always takes us past our burial site. This must be privately-owned land as part of at least a 100 acre tract. The site is always half a mile from the road. When we drive past the site we stop the car and one of us adjusts the bikes while the other stashes a shovel, a post-hole digger, and a square yard of burlap with some twine.

Once at the site for the start of our ride, one of us rides off to the burial site while the other rides a short circular route back to the car. This person is just killing time while the other person does all of the work. On this occasion, since it was my kill, I was the person stuck digging the hole. So I made fast time to the stash, made sure no car was on the road before I took my bike into the woods (sometimes you have to pretend to take a leak, but most times you can time it to just disappear). I grab the tools and take them at least 1,000 yards away from the road. We have tested this and found that you can not hear our loudest screams though dense woods from even 700 yards. And now, you steal a tree.

The best trees are the ones you would logically steal anyway. A hardwood at least 3 inches in diameter. Big enough that it has already survived the most fragile part of its lifespan, but small enough that the root system can be managed alone. Digging a circle around the tree with a shovel, you want to gouge out a code which will include the roots. Once you have this free, work the burlap under the ball, tie it around the base of the trunk, and wet the ball down with all of your riding water. Set this guy aside and grab the post-hole digger.

The biggest mistake that people make when burying a body is not knowing how soil reacts over time. If you dig a grave, you are going to alter the density of the soil so much that even though the ground looks level afterwards, the first rain will see that spot cave in noticeably. A scavenger will scent the nutritious, rotting flesh and retrieve its spoils even from a grave several feet deep. And buying horizontally is always a bad idea.

The brilliance of Chris’ idea is that all of these problems go away all at once. Under the spot where the tree is removed, you dig straight down about 3 feet. This is enough space for a crouching human to be buried on their haunches. And over them will go a tree which will stabilize the soil with its roots. It will pose a perfect barrier to digging scavengers, it will never be looked under by search parties, and you will feed the tree the decomposing organic compounds. But the best part is this: digging a grave in the middle of the woods is very suspicious. Much better to act like you are stealing a tree, and face the fines if you are ever caught. And by treating this as a separate crime, we take that risk gladly.

My reverie is ruined by Matthew as he goes into screaming mode. It helps me notice that my stick is plenty sharp, but I test it anyway with the pad of my finger. It is slightly amusing to me that my hand jerks away in pain because I have to look at this reaction with the comparative knowledge that I am about to thrust that same point through another man’s neck. The fact that I sense pain from such a small act seems comical to me when I think about the immediate future.

I stand up to look down at Matthew, who stops screaming to give me his pleading eyes. He is about to go into more begging, but first he squirms around in his hole, his shoulders rubbing against the walls of dirt, his hands tied tight below his bent knees. To one side of him I notice the broken ends of the shovel and the post-hole digger, both of them snapped in half in the crook of a tree and destined to be buried with Matthew, along with my new spear, the burlap, and a small length of twine.

“I am sorry”. I don’t say it aloud, but I think it. I feel like throwing up as I jab the stick into Matthew’s throat. It never ceases to amaze me just how soft we are there. How fragile we are. And how much we can bleed.

I hit him a second time and dance out of the way of an arterial spurt. Very close. The wet dirt will have to be shoved in carefully to not leave any trace. Matthew is making quite a work of this by twisting his head this way and that to guard his neck. I hit him once in the back of the neck just to cause some pain, let him know that I have all the time in the world, but it won’t make any difference. He has gone from screaming to gurgling and now I really just want to puke. If I do, I have to be sure to get it all in the hole with him, and the sight of that has made it worse for me in the past. I hit him one more time, snap the spear in half, shove it down between his back and the hole, and start pushing dirt on top of him. He isn’t dead yet, but I need to quiet the gurgling before I get sick.

This isn’t my first time, but I haven’t done this enough yet to be in complete control the entire time. Over the years, I get stronger, but I know that if death ever stops affecting me, that will be when Chris and I quit doing this. You see, we don’t do this because we enjoy it. We aren’t psychos. We are just morbidly curious. I think about this as I kneel on the side of the road with my bike. I am repairing a flat with a spare tube that I keep under the seat. Soon, Chris will drive over the rise in his Camry to pick me up, just two cyclist out for a Saturday ride.

And it is here, alone, on the side of a road fixing a flat that I feel the loneliest. I feel sad for Matthew, who is dead by now. Sad for his two children and his wife who won’t give up the idea that he is alive somewhere for several weeks. I feel sad for myself for allowing my curiosity to do such damage in the world. For needing the sensation of feeling out of control just so I can reel it back in and make the universe right in my head.

A single car goes by very close and the rush of air pushes me back on my heels and is hot from wafting over the tar for several hours. I wonder where that person is rushing off to. Part of me wishes they would have swerved and killed me just now. Another part of me wants to pull them out of their vehicle and see what it will feel like when I kill them as well. But I know what it will feel like. It will feel horrible. it will make me feel empty inside. And it will make me want to do it again.

[jennylee324]

:p yea, for workout music, you basically need hard-hitting euro-dance music.... nothing else does the job really. Search around on itunes for "euro club hits" or check this link::D http://electricfilebox.com/tracks :)

[Mom of 4]

Pardon my interruption here.:D

Swivel is this your writing or are you posting a book for those too cheap to purchase it??