So You Wanna Be a Serial Killer [Fiction]

A snippet opener for a new story eating my brain with a spoon.

Phillip Denton wasn’t what I expected, but then your heroes usually aren’t. He was more gangly than broad, but with the kind of wiry muscle that still left him capable of being a bobcat in a bag to handle. I could imagine him overpowering them, one at a time, then carrying them away for his own purposes.

I know what those purposes are. I’m not going to repeat them here. We’ll get to that.

The day we met, it rained until the streets turned from blacktop to rapids. I shivered outside the Robin’s Egg Diner waiting for him as he had his pancakes with extra butter and syrup. He always had the same thing. I checked. No eggs. No sausage. No coffee. Just pancakes.

He stepped outside, black coat with an equally black umbrella though it would do little good in the downpour, and prepared to go to his car. I put my hand on his arm.

In that moment, I remembered the clippings, every one of them, and how they made it clear he was an unstable and dangerous man.

Good.

“Hi, I’m Amanda Lawson,” I said when he turned. “You killed my parents.”

–“So You Wanna Be A Serial Killer” 2017?