Rais

He chuckled lightly as he snapped the lighter shut, smoke writhing around his shadowed face like a slow, coiling snake.  He reached out of the darkness and offered me the pack. Not wanting to seem weak I slid a Marlboro loose, praying he didn’t see the shaking of my hand.

“You’re nervous,” he said, not as a question but a statement of fact.

“Just tired,” I replied, trying hard to sound more confident than I was. “It was a long flight. Why don’t we get started?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out a small digital recording device.

“Put that away,” he growled.

“It’s just how I work, nobody hears these but me. Please, I don’t like to work off of written notes alone. Too much can be missed.”

In less time than it took me to gasp he had me pinned to the back wall, a nine-inch hunting knife pressed painfully to my Adams apple.

“Put it away,” he whispered.

He laughed again, releasing me as I dropped the little machine.

“Never forget who’s in charge here, Damon,” he said, melting back into the shadows of the darkened motel room.

Swallowing hard past the lump that had suddenly developed in my throat, I picked up my pad of paper and sat on the edge of the bed.

“How do you want this to proceed?” I asked.

“You’re the writer, Damon. Do what you normally do.”

“Ok. What should I call you?”

“You can call me Rais.”

“Rais? As in Gilles de Rais, the child-killer from the 1400′s?”

“You’ve done your homework. Good boy,” he replied condescendingly.

Taking a deep breath, I pressed on.

“How do you select your victims?”

“Oh, the usual way. I drive around and wait for somebody to stand out to me. Then I follow them around for the next week or so, learning their patterns, their behavior.”

“And then what?”

“And then I tap them on the shoulder,” he replied. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the smile in his voice.

Rubbing my neck where Rais’ knife had been just moments before I shuddered thinking about what it meant to be “tapped on the shoulder” by this monster.

“Why kids?” I asked.

“Why not? I’ll tell you something, Damon. The way parents coddle their children today sickens me. In the days of blood and glory there were no sixteen year old children. By that age they were fighting wars, fucking any tart that would split their pretty little legs for them. They were kings and warriors. Now they can’t even walk their pathetic asses 4 blocks to school, they must have dear, precious mommy drive them around while they wear their little faggot tight jeans and cry about how unfair the world is because they had to wait 3 days to get the latest video game. They think the world owes them just because they were born. In the old days this world would swallow the little pissants whole. They think their life in suburbia is Hell? I show them what Hell really is. And, Damon, I give them a long, hard look at it.”

Doing my best to control my breathing I stuttered “What do you mean by that, Rais? What…uh..what do you do to them?”

The room was silent for a long time, and just when I thought he might not have heard my question, he answered, his voice like ice.

“You don’t want details, Damon. Trust me, you couldn’t handle it. We’ll just say they are praying for the sweet release of death by the time I’m done with them.”

“What do you get out the killing?”

“Well now there’s the question, isn’t it?” he asked, almost approvingly. “I suppose you want me to say it brings me closer to my mother, or that I get some kind of sexual pleasure from what I do to them.”

“It’s known to be the case with a lot of serial killers,”  I said.

“Not all of them though. Some of us are just plain evil,” he laughed. “Some of us just like to feel blood drip down our forearms. That’s why I brought you here, Damon. That’s my story. I have no purpose other than to be the embodiment of Death. I’m walking, talking destruction. Every civilization that’s ever existed on this planet has fallen, and ours is on the brink. I’m here to give it the final push. To bring about the end of everything our society has come to represent. Filth and greed. Look at the way people act during the holidays: stomping each other to death in a mad dash to get $100 ff on a new TV. Killing each other over the latest toy that their sniveling little brat will be bored with in three weeks. It needs to end so that the next civilization can take their turn and maybe get it right. I’m not alone in my thinking. I’m not alone in my actions. There are more just like me every day. We’re coming, Damon. And we can’t be stopped.”

***

My book was published in the fall of the following year. Walking home from a meeting with the publisher I stopped in at my usual coffee shop for a bagel before continuing home, remembering not to take the same route every day so that I didn’t establish a routine. I had been terrified ever since the book came out, waiting for Rais to show up at my door since I was the only person alive that could identify him. I had moved three times since we first met, most recently two weeks ago. I was finally starting to feel like it was all behind me when I smelled the stale odor of Marlboro. I stiffened, my heart racing, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Turning slowly I looked behind me. I was alone.  Breathing a sigh of relief I turned back to keep walking, and felt a tap on my shoulder.