Page 6 of Mayhem and Minnie

Or I used to, anyway. I’m supposed to turn a new leaf and all that, no?

When I turned eighteen, I got access to the trust fund my grandfather set, and I was able to buy the house with cash. It’s a five-bedroom Victorian house with a sprawling basement—or, better said, dungeon. It is, of course, my favorite place and why I bought the house in the first place.

Even better, the basement is split in two. A small section is directly underneath the house. But there’s another, secret section, of nearly three thousand feet that’s underneath the land, which ensures that even if by some stroke of misfortune the police got wind of my activities, that room is well hidden away. But of course I’m not one to trust that alone, so there’s a mechanism in place that should the police come with a warrant to search my place, the entire secret basement will explode at the touch of a button.

A scowl pulls at my lips.

I shouldn’t be thinking about my dungeon. Not when it hasn’t been used in one hundred and seventy-four days.

Soon-to-be one hundred and seventy-five days. An odd number.

I hate odd numbers.

I have purposefully kept myself from even going inside for fear I may give in to my urges and fall back into old habits.

See, I try to be a good boy. It just doesn’t always work.

And since my therapy isn’t going as well as I planned, maybe it’s time to reassess.

You may be wondering why I went to therapy since I crave murder so badly.

Even I wonder about that and whether it was a good idea to change in the first place. I was doing fine before. The only downside was that I was slowly getting out of control.

I was feeling myself slip and didn’t like what I was becoming.

From my first kill, I prided myself on being the picture of calm.

Murder was not a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was a methodical process. It was a puzzle to be worked out.

Who? When? Where? Why?

I had to find an answer to all those questions before I even made the first step. After that, it was all a matter of how. Every piece had to fit together. From the method, timing and precision of the kill to the disposal of the body. There was no room for error.

And I’ve been so successful at it for so long because I did everything by the book.

I chose my victims carefully so I had no connection to them; most usually by using a back door into the police’s database. It was always people who would not be missed, people society would be far better off without.

But it all changed two years ago.

Something set me off, making me go off my script and throw caution to the wind.

That’s not who I am. That’s not how I operate.

That failed incident has haunted me ever since.

And for a perfectionist, failure is inadmissible.

Somehow, that one faux pas has stained all my subsequent attempts, and despite trying to put it out of my mind, it has turned killing into something…I’m no longer confident in.

It pains me to admit to it. It’s even more painful because killing comes to me as naturally as breathing. And to wake up one day and realize I can no longer breathe as smoothly as before was akin to a death sentence.

My last attempt ended up with a botched kill. One that stained the walls of my basement—something I didn’t intend to do.

And that lack of intention is the problem.

How can I trust myself to toe that line of danger without confidence?

It’s better to abstain from it altogether than do a poor job.

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