Chapter 9

        I was getting pissed off.  This guy had been staring at me all night.  I hoped I could be a little obscure in this crowded bar yet somehow I always managed to attract attention in some form.

        The guy was beyond creepy.  He never seemed to blink and his eyes were a steely grey sort of color.  And he seemed to have a never ending smirk on his face.  As I looked at him closer I noticed this was because he had a Glasgow Grin.  It gave him a very eerie look.  Of course he wasn’t the only one giving me attention.

        Unfortunately two women had decided to take a fancy to me.  Both blondes, both gorgeous in a very common way.  There was nothing special about them.  They had noticed how the bartender had gotten a little upset when all I ordered was water.  He chilled out a bit when I showed him the two X’s on my hand that indicated I was not old enough to buy alcohol.  The two girls offered to buy me a drink, but I graciously declined.

        For some reason they still felt it necessary to keep me company.  At that point I noticed the gentleman down the bar staring at me.  He made a chill run down my spine.  I was going to kill this m**********r that was for sure.

        I got up and started walking to the back door, for some reason the girls were following me.  What the hell were they expecting?  When I got outside I took out my iPod and put it on shuffle and looked at the girls.  They were holding hands and smiling expectantly at me.  I gave them a little nod in what I thought was a dismissive gesture, but for some reason (alcohol?) they took it as a sign to start some kind of sexual engagement and started kissing each other.  I figured I was going to have to kill them as well.

        He came out silently from the shadows wearing a large black overcoat.  He was flicking a switchblade from hand to hand deathly quiet.  He then knocked out both girls by bashing their heads together.

        I looked at him with death in my eyes and took out my ear buds.  

        “What do you want?” I asked him.

        “I just want to have a conversation with my idol, Johnny Sikow.”

        “Don’t know who you’re talking about, my name’s Andrew Blake.”

        “Ho, ho, ho.  Ha, ha, ha.  That’s a good one, but I know the truth about you.  You’re the most notorious serial killer in the nation.  But you’ve got so much attention because the whole country knows your name.  Do you know how much people try to give you credit for my work?  I tell you it’s quite annoying.”

        “Like I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Why don’t you get lost before you get hurt.”

        “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then why the f**k would I be afraid of you?”

        I pulled out my dagger, “Because my knife is bigger then yours.”

        “Ha, ha, ha, now that’s the blade of Johnny Sikow.  He, he, he.”

        “Let’s say you’re right about who I am, what’s to stop me from killing you anyway?

        “Because I’m just too much fun,” he said with a large smile and laugh.

        I smiled a little at that.

        “Well I’m gonna go, cause I have no idea what you’re talking about or what you want,” I said and started walking away.

        “Maybe next time, eh Johnny?”

        I stopped for a second and kept walking.

 

        He stalked me for about a week.  Anytime I turned around there was his Glasgow grin staring at me.  Sometimes when I was holed up in a room I’d be sure I saw him at the edge of my periphery.  He was always around.  He wanted me to prove to him that I was Johnny Sikow.

        Normally I would have confirmed his suspicions, killed him and moved on with my life.  But something staid my hand when it came to killing this guy.  There was something about him that made me almost not want to kill him.  Fear?  I didn’t fear anything.  I was Johnny f*****g Sikow, people feared me.  So what was going on?

        After about a month, he’d leave me presents after he killed.  Like a dog that caught the perpetual car, he brought it to me cause he didn’t know what the f**k to do with it.  He left me really random things.  An eyeball, piece of a kidney, fingernails, stretches of skin, lockets of hair.  I burned them all.  

        The next month he’d leave me bloodstained notes.  Apparently he told his victims to write a short essay on why he should spare their lives.  I never read them after the first, it was kind of disturbing.  I was starting to hate this s**t.

        The final straw was when he started leaving me videos of his killing.  There was a series of about twenty on one recording, each one only a couple of seconds long.  Did he think I wanted to watch him kill people?  I didn’t want to watch him kill people, it did nothing for me.  Did he think all this s**t would get my bloodlust going?  It wasn’t as simple as that.

        When the nightmares started again, I knew it was time to have a chat with this maniac.  All his crap had brought them back.  I’d been able to repress the nightmares for a while and now because of his f*****g bullshit, they were back.

        It was time to settle things.

 

        Standing in the back of a dark alley can be dangerous.  It’s not so bad when you’re the most dangerous thing out there and you want the next most dangerous thing to come talk to you.  I knew he’d come, he pretty much shadowed me.  What was the f*****g appeal here?

        “Who are you?” a voice from the shadows asked.

        “You know who I am damn it.”

        “Tell me your name.”

        “I am Johnny Sikow.”

        He started clapping then and emerged from the darkness, that smile lighting up his gruesome face.  “I knew all you needed was a little prodding.”

        “Thanks for using a cattle prod for the prodding.”

        “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

        “What do I call you?”

        “Hmm…I think today I’m going to be…Jack!”

        “Well Jack, what the f**k do you want?”

        “Why Johnny, I just want to share the experience of killing some poor sap with the best ever.”

        “Why don’t you try and become the best?  You don’t seem like a very notorious fellow.  It’d be hard to forget a face like that.”

        “He. He. He.  A face only my mother could love.  But then I killed her, so I guess I’m unlovable.”

        “And I’m the psycho,” I mumbled to myself.

        “Hey!” he exclaimed suddenly, “Let’s go to the club.”

        I really didn’t want to go anywhere with this crazy son of a b***h, but at the same time I was really intrigued at where the hell this whole mess was going.  So we went to the club.

        

        We snuck in.  I didn’t have any kind of I.D. and even if I did, I wasn’t going to hand it over to some doorman to look at and then decide to turn me in.  I seriously doubted Jack had any form of identification either.  Why would homicidal lunatics on the loose carry any at all?  The club was packed to the gills as warm bodies bumped and grinded together while they played 3OH!3, Breathe Carolina, Blaqk Audio and other alternative electronic bands.  I was enjoying the music, but the atmosphere of the club was definitely not for me.  

        As we moved among the crowd, they instinctively knew we were not people to bother or in any way mess with.  Jack had a huge grin on his face (besides the obvious one.)  That crazy f**k was enjoying the sick fear and attention he was getting.  How the f**k was he not up there with me on most wanted?  It seemed insane that police were not looking for this guy.  I generally tried to avoid attention and look where it got me.  He craved it, was starved for it.  Jack needed it.  I’m sure he’d sent messages to police.

        S**t.  For all I knew this guy was committing murders like me.  He said he was an admirer of mine, what if the reason he wasn’t being hunted was that police thought it was me doing all his murders?  Maybe I’d been wrong.  Maybe he didn’t crave the attention.  Was it possible what he really wanted was for me to get caught?

        I was getting extremely paranoid now.  I knew nothing about this guy except all the s**t he had sent me, trying to get me to come hunt with him.  I studied him as he bobbed his head to the music at the bar.  He was enjoying himself so much it was disgusting.

        He turned and looked at me and then looked past me and smiled more, if that was possible and tapped me on the arm.

        “Two s***s at the end of the bar, eyeing us like they want it,” he said over the music.

        The way he said it made me a little nervous, by ‘it’ I doubted he was talking about sex.  I looked down the bar and noticed the two girls he was talking about.  They were attractive in a very stereotypical way, blonde, large breasts, slim bodies and nice asses.  It was almost as if they had gone to a plastic surgeon and asked to look as predictable as possible.  I had always liked girls that had a unique quality to them, these girls did not have a unique bone in the their plastic bodies.  I decided to go along with Jack’s sick game, whatever that might be.

        “Go get them then,” I said with as little emotion as possible.  He smiled and went over to the girls.  About five minutes we were outside the club moving to a dark alley way out back.  It’s amazing that people, even while intoxicated would still agree to go down a secluded dark alley with guys that looked like us.

        The girls kept looking at Jack’s scars and looking away nervously, but giggling a little too.  He seemed to pick up on this a bit.

        “Say, do you girls want to know how I got these scars?”

        I rolled my eyes at that.  This guy thought he was the Joker or some s**t.  Amazingly the girls were interested.

        “Well…how did you?” one asked nervously.

        He smiled at her, then grabbed her face, “I’ll show you.”  Jack then cut her mouth up the sides while she tried to scream.  I had come up behind her friend and was holding her and muffling her with my hand.  I got tired of her struggling and cut her throat.  Jack had done similar to the girl he had.

        “Always nice to see a smile dear,” he said gleefully.  “Now for the coup de grads.”  He then turned her over and smashed in the back of her skull.  I was taken aback since I was not expecting a full on mutilation.

        “What the f**k are you doing, man?”

        “Chill, fella.  It’s Halloween, I’m making a f*****g Jack-o-Lantern,” he said and laughed manically. 

        As sick and insane as it seemed, I was fascinated.  I watched as he gouged out her eyes and pulled out a candle he seemed to have had the whole time and stuck it in the back of her skull and lit it, making a human Jack-o-Lantern.  It was revolting yet so intriguing.  Then he turned to me and the dead girl at my feet.

        “Gonna do anything with her?” he asked as if she was a piece of meat that was on my plate that I had yet to touch.

        “No, I’m good,” I said.

        He grinned and pulled her body towards his and started feeling her dead body up and started making low moaning sounds.  This shocked the f**k out of me.  I ran up and kicked him in the ribs.

        “What the f**k do you think you’re doing!?” I screamed at him as he lay on the ground holding his rips, whining and laughing at the same time.

        “Ha ha ha, I’m gonna f**k me a dead girl, ha ha ha!”

        “Like hell you are you sick son of a b***h.”

        “S**t, Johnny, I’m not gonna make you watch or anything.  Calm the f**k down.”

        “No, f**k that s**t mother f****r, I’m not gonna be a part of your sick f*****g games.”

        Now he seemed a bit upset.  Maybe he was pissed that I was ruining his fun.  I’ll never know what exactly did it, but his grin disappeared.

        “Then do something, b***h,” he said getting in my face.

        We stared at each other for a little while, each waiting for the other to make the first move.  I made the first move.  I swung a right hook at his head, but he ducked and gave me a couple of body shots.  I shrugged them off and sent my left knee up into his chin.  This staggered him a bit and then we abandoned hand combat and drew our blades.  We parried and stabbed, each of us trying to draw blood.  I went for his right leg while he went for my left arm and we connected at the same time.  This was more than just a fight based on skill.  The outcome of this fight was going to be who could take the most pain and walk away, because we both knew, only one of us was going to be walking away.

        Circling each other, we alternately struck out at each other, always trying to gain an edge in this battle.  Our blades danced in the night and stars erupted from the sparks they gave off as they bounced and grinded against each other.  Then I saw an opening and took it.  Jack had left his left leg unguarded and I kicked him in the knee throwing him off balance.  With one quick slash, I cut his throat.  It was finally over.

        I stood over his dying body, blood pooling out from his throat.  He looked up at me as if he couldn’t believe he’d lost.  I finally understood what had happened.  The crazy f**k had hated that I’d been getting attention as a serial killer.  It was attention he wasn’t getting.  So when he’d seen me in the bar, he’d decided to kill me.  Everything he’d done had been an elaborate effort to get me in death match.  He underestimated me.  We locked eyes and with his final breath, Jack gave one more maniacal laugh.

        

        I never found out who Jack really was.  I doubted I ever would.  I don’t think I’d ever want to know.  Some things in life should remain a mystery.  It’s when people snoop and decide they had to know everything that something was taken when they did.  People knew who Jack the Ripper was and probably who the Zodiac killer was, but they kept their mouths shut.  Out of fear?  Doubtful, but maybe.  If we knew who they were, the mystery would be gone, the allure of them would no longer exist.

        I moved on to another town the same Halloween night.  No need to stick around longer than necessary.  Of course it became national news when the bodies were discovered.  Some people wanted to call it a double murder, suicide, but the smart ones knew better.  I saw some brief interview with Fox as he was leaving his office about the incident.  He didn’t have enough information to know if there was any connection between me and the murders, but from the sound of it most of it did not seem like my style.

        Of course they were able to piece together that Jack had murdered the one girl and then mutilated her, but the police were certain there had been another assailant who had killed the other girl and the as yet still unidentified dead man at the scene.  After a while I got bored with the speculation.

        I sent a video message to every news station.

        “My name is Johnny Sikow.  You all know who I am and you all want to catch me.  But you can’t catch me, you can’t kill me, you can never stop me.  I am here to bring an end to your mundane existence.  On Halloween night, there was a brutal triple murder.  Some of you may have believed it to be a murder, suicide situation, but that is not the case.  I killed one of the girls and the man who told me his name was ’Jack.’  I believe this to be a false name.  He killed and mutilated the other girl, claiming he wanted to make a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween.  When he tried to sexually use the body of the girl I killed we became involved in an altercation that ended with his death.  A serial killer I may be, but I have moral boundaries just like everyone else.  There is only so much that even I am willing to stand.  Necrophilia is something that I do not condone and so I killed him.  Thank you for your time.”

        That video was played on every news station in the country.  I heard it even made some international news.  I went to sleep smiling that night.  But then the nightmares came back.