It was the way she locked eyes with me in that mirror and looked into what she thought were my cold, dead orbs before driving away.
Getting myself off that pavement was a most difficult feat that took me until morning. Luckily, that stretch of road isn’t one that many travel, and it afforded me enough time to drag my near-lifeless body to the shoulder.
I knew she had to be a local. Only someone in the area would know that road even existed. Typically, the only people traveling it at night weremykind of people: college kids with everything to lose, drunk on alcohol and a life they’re not funding themselves, reckless enough to drive through the middle of the woods and risk it all to get home without getting in trouble and having to tell Daddy.
She was my type, but something else lurked beneath her depths. Beneath her beautiful light eyes lay an equal—a killer in her own right.
Her friend knew I wasn’t dead. My pulse hammered in my throat in anger.
Nothing had ever shocked me like Greer Allen had that night. And it became my favorite obsession.
So much so that from that night on, I killed every single girl who looked like her. Not on the side of the road, not using my typical method. No, if I saw someone who resembled her, even a sliver, even if it was broad daylight, I lost it.
She broke me like the wind ripping through a door on its last hinge. She was all I could think about.
Night and day.
Sleep or wake.
I didn’t know her name at the time, and didn’t know where she lived. Didn’t know that my pretty little poison was right beneath my nose the entire time.
Until one day, fate intervened.
Two Years Ago
Coming out of the electronics store, I shove my receipt in my jacket and toss the box for the burner into the trash on the sidewalk.
The wind blows and nips at my nose as I pocket the phone.
Winter is looming, and the changing leaves down Main Street give the bleak world more color.
I scan my eyes over each passerby, out spending their Saturday keeping consumerism alive. It’s been weeks since I’ve killed, and I’m getting itchy. There’s an ache settling into my bones the longer I let Oakland settle back into their routine.
Nothing around me is suitable, however, so I grumble low in my throat and turn toward where I parked my car down the street.
The beat-up Ford from the late 1980s lent to my motive when I stopped on the side of the road, seeking help. However, I haven’t used that one in quite some time.
Not sinceher.
I grind my teeth, hearing my mother scolding me loud and clear as I loosen my jaw and stretch it some as if the bitch might rise from the grave and thwack me upside the head with her cane as punishment.
It’s been eight years since I crossed paths with the little poisonous creature that left me for dead. For eight years, I’ve been looking for her in the faces of everyone I pass, searching for her in the depths of lifeless eyes after I come out of delusion and realize it wasn’t her.
I’m so preoccupied with thoughts of her that I can barely function. I thought it would improve over time, but it’s only gotten worse. It only becomes more of an obsession I can’t shake.
Turning a corner without caring to watch my surroundings, I knock my shoulder into someone and hear the softest gasp that zings through my soul.
“I am so sorry. I have to be better about watching where I’m going,” the raspy voice says, catching my attention when I’d usually keep walking.
My eyes lock with those of my killer—the girl who nearly ended the Nightstalker.
“That’s alright, sweetheart,” the term of endearment from my lips sounds cunning and dipped in malice.
As if she senses the danger of me, she clears her throat and steps back, swallowing hard and looking for her exit.
“Sorry again,” she sputters, turning and racing for her car.
Her hair is a beautiful brown, with streaks of sunlight bleeding through it. Her eyes are a gray color that almost looks white in the sunlight.
