Your Mid-Week Update for 02/24/21

I love lying. My entire life is a lie. When my co-workers ask me what I did over the weekend, I don’t tell them I stuffed boiling rags in a man’s mouth and spent three hours peeling his skin off with a potato peeler until he bled to death from every orifice. I tell them that I spent some time cooking with my family and watched Christmas movies which had been replaying on the Hallmark channel.

It’s such an odd genre, if you think about it. A near year-round obsession with falling in love over the holidays, only to reveal that the attraction that brought them together was fabricated by magic. I’m not against romantic movies – or maybe I am – but I wonder why it’s February, and some people are still trying to relive the glory days of December 2020.

Because that was such a riot for everyone involved.

The point I’m trying to make is: I don’t mind stretching the truth or straight up fibbing for the fun of it. I have spent the majority of my life lying to everyone around me (my parent, my children, my coworkers, my friends). Sometimes, though, I hate it. More importantly, I hate lying to the two people in my life whom I have always been able to tell the truth.

James has been my constant companion for nearly 13 years – holy shit – and I don’t like lying to him. So I don’t. We don’t keep secrets from each other. Except for Casey who is a secret all to herself. Keeping things from her – things that affect her – feels wrong. This girl has put her absolute trust in us. Not to mention, there’s a fear in what she might do if she ever found out that we were lying to her.

But is it really lying?

She’s never asked about her parents; she barely talks about her life in the foster system. And I won’t push her to do so. But I think she would want to know. I would want to know.

Can you imagine if my mother had disappeared when I was a kid and I only learned she was alive a decade later? I think I would be a very different person. Or maybe I wouldn’t be. Maybe we were always going to be these people and we were just lucky enough to find each other so we don’t feel alone.

I tend to flip flop on the whole ‘Nurture vs Nature’ argument. To look at my sister and me, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we come from the same parent (that we grew up in the same household. At the same time, I can’t imagine being anyone else.

Maybe telling Casey about her mother won’t change anything. I’d like to think she’s happy here, she certainly seems happy for the way she eagerly describes the woman she gutted while going for groceries the other day. Would knowing the truth change her?

And, of course, there is the selfish little paranoia that she’ll lash out when she finds that out that she’s been lied to. I know this girl: quiet and subtle are not her best traits as a killer. Though her aggression has never been directed at me, I can’t presume I’d be safe if that were the direction she took.

I think I know Casey. I think I know James. But I am living proof that you can never truly know anyone.

Is it bad that I’d rather watch another Hallmark movie than talk to my daughter?

I know it’s bad that I’d rather try to skin someone’s elbow with a carrot peeler. The flesh is so tough. And for what? You bleed the same as anywhere else.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

Your Mid-Week Update for 02/17/21

Casey is a lot of things, but subtlety has never been her strong suit. From her first kill – even before I knew it was hers – I knew she was made to be loud and strong. I love that. I love that she has that adventurous spirit, a need to be independent. She’ll need that later in life but right now, it means she frequently gets written up in school for talking back or ditching school (which, seems less rebellious when it’s all performed online).

At least there are no trips to the principal’s office. Just Zoom meetings were the wi-fi “conveniently” cuts out after twenty minutes. I don’t have time for people who feel the need to micromanage children. So long as they aren’t being arrested and they’re learning something, what should it matter if their homework is late, or if they want to work with their camera off, or they (in my opinion, rightfully) call out their teacher for making them write a paper on family history – a rather insensitive topic in this and other houses.

I know who Casey’s mother is. Not sure if I talked about it last year, when I found out who she was – not James’ daughter but a girl escaped from a juvenile detention on a charge of attempted murder. Faking her death and changing her name was easy. Taking her across the country to be with us and create a new life was easy. Knowing who she was and keeping that secret from both of them, has been incredibly difficult.

Casey’s family history is a little unclear. The reason she was imprisoned in the first place is because she was convicted of stabbing her foster father “for the fun of it” (as per the court transcript). Unfortunately, he recovered and named her as his assailant and she was given no opportunity to learn, only punished for her crime.

Apparently, this was her fourth foster home in six years, consistently cited as “difficult to manage”. I don’t know what child they were “managing” but that little girl has been a dream. Although, I suppose I shouldn’t call her a little girl any more, she’s sixteen now. It’s hard to believe the girl we brought into our home all those years ago is growing up.

I can’t lose another one.

Anyways, her mother was apparently murdered by her father when she was eight and then he killed himself in front of her, but the notes from the lead detective on the case suggest that he wasn’t 100% certain that was the case. He believed that Casey had slit her father’s throat while he slept and when her mother woke up, she killed her as well. It’s a reasonable theory (and one I may be inclined to believe) but she was an eight-year-old girl, and it was a lot easier to imagine the alternative. But I know the truth: my girl has always been a killer.

It took some digging, but I found something that was left out of the local papers at the time. Her mother survived. She had lost so much blood and was in a near-vegetative at the time of the investigation, so the police declared it a murder-suicide, instead of waiting for her to potentially recover, and they took Casey away.

According to the hospital records, she woke up a few months later and checked herself out of the hospital – and by that, I mean she snuck out during a nurse rotation – and no one has heard from her since.

I found all of this with a few months of research and seducing an administrative assistant for access to patient records (I was very bored on my road trip with Heather, and the hospital was on the way). I can’t help but wonder what Casey’s mother might be able to find with a few years and a lot more free time.

But if that’s the case: why hasn’t she contacted anyone? Not the police, not her daughter; as far as I know, no one has heard from this woman in nearly nine years. Why?

This girl – this sixteen-year-old living in my house – has my name and my trust and my love. But I am not her mother, and a part of me is wondering if I should tell her the truth.

You didn’t see the look on her face when she asked me about her family history project. The sadness in her eyes, thinking that she had nothing and no one. I told her to use us (James and me) as the branches of her tree, but should I have told her what I know about her real history? Would it hurt her or help her? Is it even my decision to make? Her mother disappeared and never came back for her, why should we feel obligated to give her anything?

Keeping secrets in this family has always been disastrous and I can’t imagine this will be any different.

Part of me is hoping that she won’t care. That she’ll tell me that we are her family and she wants nothing to do with the life she had before. Another part of me is terrified she’ll go off in search of her mother and I’ll never see her again. The truth is: I don’t know what will happen.

She has always been her own person – defiant and curious and loud – and I have to face the fact that nothing I say or do will stop her from doing exactly what she wants to do.

Is it wrong to admit that I’m scared?

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe                    

Your Mid-Week Update for 02/10/21

English is such a strange language. We don’t have a word that describes the butterflies in your stomach, we willfully chose not to called a “Pineapple” “Anana”, but we have a word that means both “disembowelment” and “eye surgery”.

Needless to say, I’m very glad that my search history is not tracked in any way. I don’t think I could handle the embarrassment.

On the plus side: my murder den is officially up and running. I took James on a tour of the place last week and we christened it before heading out to find our first victim. It seemed only right that I let him choose the inaugural human whose life whom I would experiment upon.

I also hate English grammar – in case you never noticed before. It’s just ridiculous. So long as the other person understand what you’re saying, who cares if I end my sentence with a preposition or dangle a participle? I’d much rather end lives and dangle bodies.

…

I am so sorry. The joke was right there and demanded that I make it. Please keep reading.

I’ve always found it very sexy when James picks out victims for me. It’s a kind of foreplay, it helps to build the anticipation. Over the years, I’ve also discovered how much James likes to watch me work. I’m grateful he hasn’t done too much hands-on work – I like to think I’m keeping him as safe as possible by keeping his hands clean (relatively speaking). It also means there’s a sexual tension weaved into our murders which I used to find off-putting.

Look, I know a lot of people think there’s a sexual element to serial murder. And for a lot of murderers, there absolutely is. But not for me. Genuinely. I don’t find sexual satisfaction from gutting someone. Fascination, curiosity, satisfaction, joy. But the only thing I find sexy is the way my husband comes up from behind and whispers his orders in my ear. The way I’ll drive slowly down the street until he leans across my body to point at the stranger coming out of a shop and definitively says: “him”.

The way I can feel his eyes on me as I stumble across the street, taking on the guise of a woman in distress, knowing that my husband is watching me. Only the two of us know our little secret. I’ll admit, I get a shiver of anticipation upon seeing his smirk of pride when I successfully pull the stranger into the back of the car, closing the trap door.

Many times, James won’t dictate how I kill or what actions I take once I’ve t successfully captured my victim. He knows that this is my element and he trusts my expertise (which is an aphrodisiac in and of itself) but every once in a while, I like letting him take complete control.

Tonight was not this night.

Tonight (and by “tonight” I mean Saturday night), he helped me drag my victim into the murder den and then sat back and watched while I went about my work.

Which brings me back to my hatred for the English language. I went and Googled “evisceration” for instructions on how to disembowel someone and found information on removing an eyeball and naturally got distracted. I never knew I had a dream of removing someone’s eyeball with an ice cream scoop but now I do.

It feels nice to achieve my dreams. Even small ones.

This year has been so shitty when it comes to feeling a sense of freedom and normalcy so it felt like a treat to myself. I got to have a night of fun with my husband, a stranger, and an ice cream scoop – and, just, so much blood.

So much blood.

I love it.

My point is…

Make yourself attainable goals and English is a stupid language.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

Your Mid-Week Update for 02/03/21

I hate technology.

Obviously, that’s a very broad statement and patently untrue – you wouldn’t be reading these if I hated technology on a fundamental level. But sometimes…I miss dial-up. Cassette tapes. VCRs. Oregon Trail.

Mostly, I hate when my laptop gives up on functioning properly for no apparent reason. I was on the phone with tech support for two hours yesterday and they had no idea what was wrong with it – just that it would no longer read USBs (despite everything functionally normally). It’s not like I can just take it in to my local repair shop and have the so-called ‘expert’ look at it. There’s some high-level encryption software on here that I barely understand because my sister is the one who installed it in the first place.

I like to think I have above-average knowledge of technology as part of the many skills I picked up in my years as a functioning psychopath, but apparently, this seemingly very basic error has stumped everyone.

It was not how I wanted to spend my Tuesday night.

I wanted to spend my night showing James the newly renovated Murder Den – we finally settled on a name. I got the last of the equipment moved in on Monday night and I added the finishing touches then. There are tarps, bleaches, medical-grade disinfectant, various tools (from scalpel to table saw), an ice box, sound-proofing, chairs, tables. I even got a solar panel on the roof so I could charge my phone while I work. All in all, I’m very proud of the work we put into this. I’m very excited to get started. In the meantime, I nipped out for a quick kill over the weekend. Just to keep myself satisfied until the real work could start.

I was feeling a little old school, so I drove around until I witnessed a man walking down a busy street without his mask on, and so I followed him until he turned off into a residential area. It was easy to coat him into my car – seriously, men you should not be so trusting of strange women; either get to the same fear-level as women, or be better people – and I just drove off. I took him to some farmland outside the city and pulled off the road, just out of sight. Obviously, he tried to fight me but Ketamine works very fast. 5.4mL of Ketamine Hydrochloride injected into the exterior carotid artery and he’s gone in minutes, hallucinating all the way.

‘Special K’ isn’t used as a club drug as often as it once was. And unfortunately, the injection site means I can’t make it look like an overdose.

But I can burn the body in the field and, because it’s so cold and dark, no one will find his burnt remains for at least a few months. I took special care to remove his eyes, teeth, ears, lips, and fingers before lighting everything on fire. Identification technology – like everything else – has come a long way since I started.

I’m learning so much about anatomy.

It’s nice to know that what is, essentially, a really involved hobby still brings me joy after all these years. That’s so rare to find something you’re truly passionate about in that way. In that way, I’m very blessed.

Still pissed about my laptop, though.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe