To Kill for Fame

Side Show: September 29, 1981

The murderer was perfection. Everything was done without a single flaw.

As he walked along the beach he let himself fall into a serene sort of trance. It was four o’clock in the morning and Lake Michigan was behaving like an unruly ocean. The waves were wild with white caps spraying water over his uncovered face as he walked along the shore. His lips were beginning to chap. That wind kept running up to him, gaining speed from far out in the middle of the lake and it seemed to be trying to knock him over with its force. It was trying to defeat him, to keep him from what he knew had to be done. The water, the rain, and even the wind - all the elements of nature were against him. They did not want to allow him to kill.

But the murderer could not be stopped.

It took a while (about forty five minutes wandering through the dark, cold and damp night) before he spotted his prey. The waves were beating upon the sand; they were the soundtrack to his horror film. There was so much power in the night that when the murderer finally spotted his victim (passed out in the sand) he knew instantly that the old man had to die. His elderly body appeared so weak, sticking out in the raging night like that proverbial sore thumb. There was no logical reason that the old man’s life should be spared.

It would not be wrong to use him as a sacrifice. He was nothing more than a bum anyway, just another sleazy derelict of the evening.

As the murderer approached him he thought for a minute that perhaps the old man was already dead. But then a thin sickly arm delivered a brown paper bag covered bottle up to his sandy old lips.

Slurping gulps of cheap alcohol from the concealed bottle, the degenerate seemed to be begging to be killed. His life was expendable. It was not nearly as necessary as the murderer’s life.

Tightening his gloves, cracking his knuckles, and then stretching out his fingers, the murderer loomed over the alcoholic heap in the sand. The moon cast the murderer’s shadow and it darkened the soon-to-be dead man.

The tall, strong murderer inspected his victim, noting the details of his gross condition. God, he was sickening! The clothes he wore were torn and unmatched. They were a drastic contrast to the stiff new clothes the murderer had bought especially for the occasion.

Sand was matted into the old man’s hair. It looked as though he hadn’t bathed or shaved for several weeks. His face alone was probably the carrier of numerous communicable diseases. The murderer commended his foresight to have worn gloves. There was a speck of what looked like rotten dog shit stuck on the old man’s cheek. It made the murderer shudder.

“Ugh,” the derelict groaned, rolling over in the sand.

For some inexplicable reason the murderer imagined the old man’s useless penis decomposing inside of his filthy brown stained underwear. Perhaps gangrene had already begun to infest his crotch.

There was no need to delay the murder any longer.

Pulling the knife from his overcoat pocket, the murderer held it up to the light of the moon. It reflected bright white moonlight into the derelict’s eyes, stirring him slowly awake. Had the police come to rustle him off the beach again? Would they throw him in jail this time?