All of Her Men (16 page)

I woke up just past noon and decided
that I better get a move on all of that damn paperwork. I had a deadline at the end of the week that I had every intention of meeting. Tempting as it was to neglect it all and continue to sleep; I knew I would curse my self-indulgence later. I trudged on through all of the numbers on my laptop as best as I could. I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

L
ast night had really messed with my mojo. I wasn’t in the habit of staying out all night without killing at least one person. Yet, somehow I managed to get through the entire night with no dead bodies to get rid of. It felt so strange. But perhaps it was all due to my lack of sleep. Two hours of sleep was not enough to recover though. And I really needed to take care of some issues with the men in my life.
I really needed to kill somebody.

The issues between
Eric and I were ones that I could fix if I could only get my shit together and stop neglecting him. Believe it or not, there was a time, when I was in fact, a good girlfriend. Lately though, shitty was a more accurate descriptive term. Shit, I would have broken up with me if I were him. But he wasn’t me. He was the exact opposite of me. Eric was more than the loving and forgiving man I needed him to be and I should have hated myself for not treating him properly. I needed to step up my game. Sure, I could have 100 guys ready to pick up where he left off. But none of them would be Eric. Many men have tried but have failed. They wouldn’t even begin to understand my need for affection. And my need for privacy.

Bill was a different story altogether
. I didn’t know what to do or what to think. I had no idea what my next move would be. I couldn’t even be sure if I would ever see him again. I didn’t even have his number. But, I did in fact know where he lived. I couldn’t foresee any reason as to why I would need to know his address in the future, but still. Why would I even want to see him again anyway? He seemed moody and I wasn’t always able to judge where the fuck the conversation was going. One moment he was Casa-fuckin-nova and the next he was the mysteriously brooding stranger who yelled obscenities and who demanded much more than I was prepared to offer. No. I gathered I didn’t need to be associating with a man like him.

I
couldn’t afford him as a distraction anyhow. I had a ton of work that needed to be done. I checked to see if I had any missed calls and I was surprised to see that I had quite a few. My mother of course, who called every few days, if not everyday, was on the missed calls list. Ramos and Olivia, my best friend had called as well. I had one missed call from the IRS, which of course, was my rightful employer and I called them back immediately.

The call was relatively
quick and easy as they had simply called to ensure that I had received the appropriate emailed documents for some upcoming projects and such. I loved working for the government. No one stressed out and no one was in a rush to get shit done. The good people of the IRS found little incentive to get work done as soon as possible or even so much as providing decent work. They punched in and punched out. I fit right in. I had little motivation to make more money and I was happy earning my average salary and going about my day as the crazy lust-induced serial killer that I was. My work was not my life. I did what I had to do to earn a living. I didn’t live to work. I lived to see other people die. For me, it was the only way.

The flow of my workday was in f
ull stride when my phone buzzed. I checked the caller ID and laughed as I read my wonderful friend Olivia’s name. Olivia was one of my favorite people in the world, but I knew that when I got a phone call, trouble loomed ahead. Part of me loved that about her. Sure, she was more than a handful and extremely impulsive, but she was a good friend. As good as they came, in my opinion. In her I had a great friend and a shit load of fun.

“Hello.”

“Jo. What’s good? Where you been? I keep calling and calling and you don’t ever fuckin’ answer the phone,” Olivia spat into the speaker.

“Yeah, sorry bout that. I was out late last night and I lost my phone.”

“Ooooh who were
you
with last night? Do I know him? Did you get some?” Leave it to Olivia to get straight to the point. Olivia demanded the most obnoxious details. She wasn’t interested in hair color or the kind of car he drove. She wanted to know the color and size of his dick and whether or not he had been circumcised.

“Nah, Eric
came over but then he left. We had sex but I didn’t really feel like going to bed,” I explained. “So I went out to a bar and had a couple of drinks and then headed home. Nothin’ maj-.”

“
You’re such a fuckin’ loser Jo! Why the fuck do you keep goin’ out drinkin’ by yourself? I woulda gone witchu. Eric probably woulda gone witchu too. Shit, you got like 10 other guys tryin to eat your shit. What the fuck is wrong witchu?”

Olivia was drunk.
Her words linked together in a never ending stream and she only ever stopped when she was in dire need to inhale. It wasn’t even 5 p.m. but you could usually count on Olivia to find a reason to drink.

Olivia was
under the impression that I enjoyed drinking in bars alone at night. She was my friend and what are good friends for if not for their candid hookup stories. But she didn’t know about my
other
extra curricular activities. I guess Olivia assumed the men I played with went home at the end of the night and I just never bothered to call them. She hadn’t the slightest clue that my dates ceased to exist after a night out with me.

“I dunno,” I said.
“I didn’t wanna bother anyone. I just had a few drinks and came back home.”

“You fuckin lyin
g whore!” she playfully screamed into the phone. “You just don’t want anyone to know about the new dick. Yeah I know you, bitch. Always tryna play it cool.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Olivia always had the funny habit of sounding like a
young black teenager straight out of the ghetto when she drank. No one would have ever guessed by hearing her voice that she was actually a tall blonde with green eyes and a college education. She could speak like a functioning human being but not after the fifth or six beer or shot. I wished I could say that was all that Olivia was into but she loved to experiment. Her drug of choice happened to be whatever was available. To her, it didn’t matter. Whatever you were offering she was willing to try. I smoked weed with Olivia all the time but I never had the balls to try any of her other recreational prescriptions.

I
always had an unnerving fear that I might experience a bad reaction and go on a killing spree and end up ravaging an entire fraternity house. But even more worrisome, I feared what I might say. I couldn’t afford to take a chance playing with her crazy white powders or pink pills and possibly end up telling bat shit crazy stories about this or that. I was probably just being paranoid. But paranoia came in handy from time to time.

“Olivia, I swear. Nothin’ was happening last night. You didn’t miss out
on anything.”

“Uh
huh,” she said unimpressed. “So watchu doin’ now? Wanna chill?” she asked.

“
Eh. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep last night, I kind of just want to take a nice warm bath and relax,” I said. I didn’t have it in me for a night out with Olivia. You never knew with that girl. You could end up doing nothing and just smoking a blunt and taking a ride around town. Or we could end up in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire trying to hitch hike our way back to Jersey. Very rarely, was a night out with Olivia uneventful.

“Waaack!” she spat. “Ok ok I’ll let you get away with that shit tonight cuz I got
a sugar daddy I gotta see later.”

“Oh, which one
? The Jew or the Indian?” I asked with only mind interest.

“Shit I got a new Mexican dude. Dumb a
s a mother- fuckin brick yo. You ain’t gunna believe this shit,” she sounded so excited you would have thought she had won the lottery.

“Spill,” I said.
The only thing that came close to the horrendous things I did to men were the equally horrendous, if not, even more disastrous things Olivia did to them.

Hey, I was the serial killer but what she did was worse. Most of her
sugar daddy relationships involved basically robbing these men not only of their hefty bank accounts, but of their dignity. By the time Olivia was done with a man, there was nothing left but bare skin and bones. By my account, Olivia was much worse than I could ever hope to be. At least I put my poor schmucks out of their misery. Olivia would send these guys home without so much as a dime left to their names. They would trudge on back to their sorry lives with their miserable wives and neglected children. Olivia didn’t care. She got hers and in her book, what else mattered?

“Chill I got somethin’ I gotta do in a few. What you doin’ tomorrow?” she asked.

“Work. Tax season is coming fast and I got a shit load of work I gotta process. I’ll never fin-“

“Fuck that shit. Do
all the work tonight and take tomorrow off,” Olivia demanded.

“I really shouldn’t. I really do have a lot I gotta do. I’ll be lucky if I can finish by Friday.”

“Come on man,” she was full on begging now. “No one works as fast as you do. You know you can get most of that shit done if you stay home today. We’ll go to that spa that you like so much in Fairlawn. The one with the Jacuzzi and the relaxation room you love.”

I fuckin hated
Olivia when she did this to me. She knew I had to work but she knew the levers to pull to get me to do what she wanted.

“Why do you do this to me Liv? You know I can’
t say no to the fucking spa!”

“My treeeaaat,” she
said twisting in the final screw that sealed my coffin.

“Deal,” I agreed before she could change her mind.

“K, I’ll pick you up at 10 a.m. and you better be fuckin’ up. None of that sleeping till whenever the fuck you want. Peace out bitch!”

“Later,” I hung up.

Well there it was. Olivia did it again. That girl was really something. No one had the ability to make people do things that they really didn’t want to do quite like Olivia. The bitch had talent. You had to give her that much.

I glanced at the phone to see the time and it was just about 5 o’clock. I’d gone through a considerable amount of work and I was tired but if I wanted some free time tomorrow I was gunna have to pull on through for a few more hours.

I set up a mini-office in the living room and clicked the remote at the television. I settled on CNN and threw in a frozen pizza into the toaster oven.

I crunched through some numbers while I waited for my food. My job was incredibly dull but it permitted me a certain lifestyle to which I was now accustomed. I loved the fact that I could work at home and at my own pace. There was no boss to complain about this or that. I didn’t have to rush through a morning commute with rude and disgusting commuters stuffed into the
light rail like spam in a can. I couldn’t bear to stand there and smell the strange concoctions of various ethnic odors. It was deplorable.

I headed into the bathroom while I waited for my piz
za and shut the door behind me. I reached into the simple cupboard behind the toilet and pulled out a perfectly rolled joint.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to light up right before a long number-crunching session but I needed something to take the edge off.
It would probably slow me down but I’d get through it. I picked the lighter out of my right pocket and sparked it up. I slowly closed the plastic lid to the toilet and took a seat. After a couple of hits, I felt my body loosen up and I slid back to rest my back on the wall adjacent to the toilet.

My thoughts wandered over to Bill. Of all things, of all people it land
ed on Bill. The man simply would not let me be. He invaded my thoughts unapologetically and it was really starting to piss me off. I’d already decided against killing him. Getting to know him, even just a little, was enough to persuade me against ending his life. He was worldly. He wasn’t anything like the other men. He was different. He was – Beep Beep beep.

The toaster oven was beeping uncontrollably and I flushed the butt of the joint. I ran over to the toaster oven and removed the pizza. It was too hot to take hold and so I let it sit while I aired out the apartment. I was always careful to only smoke in the bathroom. I didn’t really care about t
he smell. Actually, I enjoyed the smell very much but I assumed that most of my guests would not be able to appreciate it as much as I did.

The large windows in my living room were difficult to budge but I finally pried them open and spritzed febreeze
around the apartment. My favorite news anchor, Anderson Cooper, came on screen and I always had to watch when he came on. I had a little crush, I’ll admit, but in addition to his good looks, he did a pretty good broadcast. My friends teased me for years that he was gay but I wouldn’t listen until he finally came out of the closet a while back. It was a sad day for me. My fantasy was no more.

“Just in,”
said Anderson severely. “A grizzly find today as authorities find two more mutilated bodies in the Atlantic County district in New Jersey. It is still unknown if these bodies are in any way connected to the other bodies found near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania earlier this week. It appears that all of the victims in question, though unidentified, were in fact all young males. Atlantic County authorities aren’t speculating but are hinting that there is reason to believe that we may have an extremely active serial killer making his way through the state of New Jersey…” and I shut the TV off.