The Confession
Caiden
[A serial killer contacts a reporter to give his story]
Winter had taken up its frosted sewing needle, and stitched the scene together. Gossamer white clung to almost all vehicles that drifted down the road, and their wheels unsteady in cycles to offer momentary slips as they brushed over ice patches. Drivers, ignorant of their own mortality leaned towards the windscreens, their gloved hands eager to wipe away the fog that muted their view. Others would tuck their knees against the roundness of the steering wheel, fingers being attempted to be warmed by their heated breaths that came as puffs of white into cupped palms.
Did a
single one of them slow their pace?
Did
any of them comprehend the danger?
No, of course not.
They had places to be and weather be damned.
The world rushed by, and it was clear that someone would be dead before the day was over.
So assured of their own indestructible nature, women painted their faces in the mirrors and men yapped like untrained canines into their phones. Fathers turned their attention from the road to admonish children in the backseat, and mothers dug through carry bags to find little Johnny's favorite toy. There was no need to call off Jason from some campground filled with ignorant students. No need to fight Freddy in a hellish nightmare. No, people were doing a damned fine job of destroying each other without needing a hand from such Silver Screen creatures as of that.
Poetry tells of souls, and how bright humanity is in an infinity of darkness. That peoples existence is to be equated against that of stars, glowing in the nothing, like sparks of manifested hope. Mathematics reduces the concept to numerical values, assigning probability for easy understanding of importance. Yet, for Caiden, there was no better way to describe people as a whole, then the road he had just pulled off of.
People are idiots, ignoring the ice and snow that lay crusted on life. People are just fools, acting as if they were center and most important. Humanity at its core was just an abandoned thing blinking from the bottom of a ditch, with a single question on their lips...
‘How did this happen?’
The man of six feet three, draped in an off the rack black jacket and a pair of same colored shoes moved across the parking lot. The sounds of his weight crunching against the salts laid out to ease travel were whisked away by the sputtering breath of the wind. Dark brown eyes were laden below the same shade of hair that poked out from the bottom of that knit dark cap. Hands sheltered themselves, though gloved, inside the side pockets of that freshly purchased set of clothing. It was important to change your look, or at least for those like himself.
Movies, television, and books all commit the sin of making people believe in things that weren’t there. No dark shadows lingered at his shoulders, nor was there a look in his eyes which would stall an attack from an animal. Caiden was merely another stranger, face, or passerby. There was nothing but someone who you saw a thousand times a day, walking about their way. A face like any other. A man that would neither would be noticed nor remembered in the seconds after. Just a background character in the lives of those who already thought themselves the very center of it all.
The only announcement to his entrance to the Waffle House, after having pushed open that glass pane door, was the soft jingle of the bell that hung over the frame. Scents of bacon, eggs, pancakes, and coffee nullified the cold brush of the outside world that followed him in, and a woman with a yellowing name tag offered a ‘service’ smile at him of welcoming. Music filled in that still space inside his ears, that had been filled with the near gusting wind outside, and though numb even from the brief encounter of weather, still did he manage a smile in return to the woman who spoke to him.
“Morning hun. Just you today?”
The waitresses’s voice was lifted upon the strings of a southern birth, and though there were more than a few with such around these parts, it never failed to dip Caiden into a wider smile. His own voice took upon the heritage to which he was raised, and plunged him into that twist to match that wonderful southern twang that reminded him of home.
“No Ma’am, going to be having company shortly.”
A moments pause as left glove lifted itself to the whites of his own teeth, allowing them to clamp on and remove the casing from his cold stiffened fingers. Attention swept across the diner as hungry as the stomach those eyes sat above, but there was nothing of surprise. Old plastic booths set around old fake wood tables. Five other people bent over steaming coffee mugs or tea minding their own quiet conversations or phones. The heater hummed, spewing dry recycled air, and the morning outside was casting increasing amounts of sunshine through windows as the sun grew more awake in the sky itself.
It was the perfect setting.
“You’re going to break my heart if you don’t have grits on the menu.”
Caiden continued in that casual manner as they moved across the room towards the booth that sat near the window, but after he had taken a seat, the woman gave him a serious look that verged near religious belief.
“Honey, if these yanks had a single lick of sense.”
The woman’s broad shoulders gave a shrug, in an ‘what can you do’ motion.
“Coffee?”
The man did his best not to grimace at the sticky feeling of the plastic covered menu that was placed in his grasp, but somehow he managed to make no sign of it. A slight bob of his head would serve as a nod before he turned attention towards the list of purchasable foods for a moment. There are very few signs of a person's heart, but when someone looks at you, really looks at you, the target can almost always feel it. They will turn to catch those eyes from across a crowded room. They will see an old friend on the other side of a packed mall. So, at this short distance when those eyes of his moved to the waitress that was idly scratching at her pen pad, she almost instantly looked back. At just the corner of his lips was a twitch of a tug, a faint lopsided smile. It was almost… charming.. Though he hated to use a word like that, it had always served him well.
“Please. Make that two. I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”
A scratching sound of a pen against the order pad, and it was her turn to look at him. There was something the way the man sat there with his back almost straight, and the way that he moved. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it sat there at the tip of tongue like a name one could just not remember.
"Okay hun, I'll get those. My names Deb, so if you need anything else, you just holler."
With that the waitress exited the scene stage left, and passed by with Caiden offering a 'Thank you Deb' smile in payment for taking his small temporary order.
Now, once more left to his own devices, Caiden turned himself back inward as those eyes pelted outward past that window and to the world beyond.
He watched the cars drift by.
Listened to the wind curl itself against the other side of the window.
Witnessed as the sun begun to devour the cloud cover strand by bright strand piercing through from above.
Yet, there was only one set of words at the back of his mind that repeated it’s question again and again.
Why was he doing this?
It put him in danger and offered a spotlight to past actions that none had ever noticed.
It put him in cross hairs.
It was very unlike him.
Yet, the answer remained the same, as it had since the start.
He was doing this because he was in love.
He was doing this because of the promise he made.
That is all that mattered.
In the comfort of heaters, the smell of frying breakfast, wrapped in winter clothes, and waiting for the reporter who Caiden had contacted one last thought occurred to him as he watched those cars move by through the 'heavy winter conditions'.
Maybe, just maybe, I'm just as bad as they are.
Maybe, just maybe, I'm sliding on ice and don't know it.
Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)