Page 80 of The Blue Rose
ASTER
It’s only been a day, but I feel restless. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t even want to hunt. I haven’t felt the desire for pain since the little lamb right after I met Serena. I just haven’t had the urge, the need to kill, since she’s walked into my life. Ever since I can remember, the impulse to end a life has always been in the forefront of my life. I have a system, a routine, one that I have never strayed from, until now. Serena has come into my life and created beautiful chaos, she is and always will be my equal and I wouldnevergo back to who I was before her.
I know she said we will talk when she gets back, but how long will that be? Will she be gone for a couple days? Weeks? I pace back and forth in my bedroom, staring at the last message she sent me. My head is sore from how much I’ve been pulling at my hair.
Patience. I need to be patient.She’s getting the answers she needs. The answers I need as well. I need to understand what happened. I want to help her become who she was always meant to be. My partner.She killed Jessica?I thought she was like an imaginary friend or some shit, and my girl was just crazy. Turns out she’scrazycrazy, but in a way that matches my own. I knew there was something about her from the moment I met her, adarkness swirling in her eyes. That’s why I told her my secret. Her eyes; they look like the north sea. Dangerous, yet beautiful. She’s truly a vixen.
My vixen.
My phone bounces on the bed, hitting the pillow and disappearing under the sheets. I collapse onto the edge of my bed, my arms on my knees and my legs vibrating. I take a deep breath, trying to calm my buzzing nerves.
Everything will be okay. She trusts me. I trust her.
Trust. That’s a word I never thought I would use. Let alone truly, willingly, giving it to a single soul. But Serena is different; our souls are entwined with one another. Since I started killing and she started painting, we’ve been connected.
We have always been destined for one another. Her fucked up yin, to my just as fucked yang.
I lay down on the bed, my hands crossed over my eyes. The rain outside is getting heavier, the drops making a melody against the window. The colder days are coming as we inch closer to Thanksgiving. I never do anything for any holidays, aside from Halloween, but I only go to my haunted house and watch as people scream and flee.
The joy I feel watching the fear in their eyes, listening to the terror leaving their lips, makes me excited every year for it. People are strange, paying to be scared shitless. Sometimes, I get lucky and find my next victim at my haunted house, never taking them from there directly. That is rare, though, since I only visit on Halloween.
My birthday is coming up, but I don’t feel like celebrating this year, which is odd especially since I finally have someone to celebrate it with. Every three to four years on my birthday, I pick a victim who doesn’t look like my regular lambs. It isn’t my usual preference, but around my birthday, since it was the day my parents were taken, I become greedy. The compulsion I haveto take another life is so overwhelming I take any girl I deem worthy of my blade that night. I never display them. My birthday victims are for my eyes only. After the life leaves their eyes, I cut them into pieces and throw them into the incinerator. Watching as their skin bubbles and turns to ash fills me with peace. Once the last piece is disintegrated, I scrub the place clean, and even burn the outfit I was wearing, standing in nothing but my birthday suit.
Doing this never connects those missing girls to me. No body, no crime, simply a missing girl, every several years, on my birthday.
No one has connected those dots or even figured out that a girl goes missing every couple years on November thirteenth. If they did, they would probably think it was a different serial killer since the motives are different.
Staying here is doing nothing but driving me crazy. My foot taps incessantly as I make images out of nothing from the popcorn ceiling in my room. The only thing I want to do is go to the haunted house and watch people enjoy and fear my creations. It’s only open for a couple more weeks, the event closes down at the end of November, giving me time to think and create new ideas. Maybe going there is the motivation I need to kill again, to spark what fizzled away with my vixen’s rise.
I’m not liking this feeling to not kill, that isn’t me. I’m a monster. A killer. A predator. I need to reignite that, and maybe, since my vixen is away, this fox can hunt.
Screamsfrom the guests can be heard across the parking lot. I reverse in the spots designated for employees. Taking one of the spots reserved for the higher management.
The rain stopped on the way over, but even if it didn’t, the attractions are open. Unless it is a bad thunderstorm, we stay open. I find running through the forest when it’s raining can be even more frightening for the guests. It makes their adrenaline heightened, and they always come back for more. Plus watching some of them slip and fall is quite amusing.
The door is locked to the employee entrance, grumbling, I take out my keys trying to find the right one.
“Uhm, excuse me? You can’t go in there; that’s the employees only entrance.” I look behind me, gritting my teeth, hands fisting at my sides, and see a petite redhead in zombie makeup, probably for the day of the dead house. Her hands are on her hips, and she nods to the sign above the door. “Can’t you read? It says ‘employees only’.”
Of course I can read, and it’s no surprise I know this entrance becauseI’mthe one who put the sign there.
You can’t kill your employees, Aster.
I take the pack of cigarettes from my pocket, placing one in my mouth and lighting it. Taking a long drag, letting the nicotine hit the back of my throat, I blow it into her face. She waves her hand in the air and has a coughing fit.That’ll show you, bitch.“I know the owner,” I say, taking another long drag.
“Ha! That's funny. No one knows the owner. How would a nobody like you know them?”
I lean down and whisper in her ear, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” She shoves me away from her, her lip curling in disgust. “Like you said, it's a secret.”
She pushes past me to unlock the door. “Well, I don’t believe you, so get lost.” She opens the door just enough for her to fit through and tries to shut it on me.
Big mistake.
I slam my hand on the top, forcing it open and watching in triumph as she falls to the ground. Cigarette still in my mouth, I take it out and tap the ash onto her foot, watching her legs retract into herself. I kneel in front of her and drop the cigarette to the floor and crush it with my boot, killing the flame. She watches in horror, and her breathing becomes labored.
“You know, my birthday’s in a couple days, but I’ve had a really shitty couple of hours, so I was thinking about celebrating early.”
Shock crosses her face, making her eyes bulge, “W-what?”
