The Killer Across The Street

She was obviously drugged. It was in her posture, and the way that she could barely stand on her own. Her head lolled from side to side and all of her movements were labored and deliberate. Unfortunately Jerry knew all too well what the girl was in for. Mr. Greene was back to sadistic hobby again. But this time he wasn’t going to get away with. No more girls would die at the hands of that madman.

Jerry crept out his back door being careful not to wake his parents. Sixteen was hardly the age to dish out vigilante justice and they definitely wouldn’t allow him to go through with it. Yet he had no other choice because none of his anonymous tips had lead anywhere. As far he knew they had never even shown up at Greene’s house. That left him to put a stop to it. All’s he had to do was save the girl and then she’d be able to testify.

He was nowhere near stupid enough to just walk right up to Greene’s lawn. There was a reason that the man got away with so much. He was a careful, and the moment someone walked by his place at night he hid the girl away in a cupboard. Paranoia allowed him to continue his sick craft, but apparently it wasn’t good enough to clue him in to the teenager who had been studying him for three months. Jerry had known from the very beginning that the guy was weird. What he hadn’t expected was that Greene was a serial killer.

Jerry crept through the Robinsons’ backyard doing his best not to attract any attention to himself. Mr. Robinson was watching television in the living room, and he was screaming at the character on one of the shows he followed religiously. Gingerly pushing his way through the bushes which served as border between theirs and Greene’s yard, Jerry tiptoed into what looked like a personal junkyard. Tires, old cars, bikes, and pretty much anything else he could fit back there that looked like it belonged in psychopath’s yard.

He crept over to the window and peered inside. It wasn’t the first time he had done this. Jerry had watched him kill several girls now, and each time he had come away without evidence of Greene’s crimes. He stood facing away from the windows, and covered himself from head to toe so that there was no way he could be identified. The room he did his work in was purposefully bland, made to look like pretty much any other room in the world. He was thorough too, never leaving a stain behind. Wherever he was taking the bodies, they weren’t being found so the murders just ended up as unsolved disappearances.

The problem was that disappearances were common in the area around Atlantic City. With so many tourists it was hard to pinpoint who commit what crime and when unless it occurred within the confines of the casino. The police force was stretched thin as well, forced to deal with gang violence and prostitution, crimes which reoccurred on a nightly basis. Greene could get away with pretty much anything as long as he didn’t cocky, and he knew it. There was no one who could stop him – at least not that he knew of.

Greene was an animal, and the one time that one of his victims got free and tried to escape, he brutally tortured her. Jerry had to hold the vomit in his mouth for twenty minutes as he watched every fingernail and toenail torn off, eyelash plucked out and various other acts too horrible to speak of. It was this feral brutality that made Jerry certain that he couldn’t win against him in a fight.
The answer came in the form of a can of pepper spray that he stole from his older sister’s bag while she was home from college. If Jerry could blind Greene long enough to save his victim, he was screwed. It was risky, he knew, but he couldn’t let this continue. Sure, everyone else in the neighborhood could turn a blind eye to it but he couldn’t. He tried to after seeing Greene kill someone for the first time, but it haunted him at night. The pleading of the eyes of that poor defenseless girl always peered at him from the shadows.

He peeked up to make sure Greene wasn’t looking and caught a glimpse of the girl he had tied up. Her hair was brown and wavy, and her face was perfectly sculpted to the point where she looked strikingly like a model in a magazine. She was the kind of woman that got all of her drinks for free because men would just throw money at her in hopes of getting to take her home for the night. Greene wore a yellow rain slicker and a ski mask with a pair of gloves like nurses wore at the hospitals.

On a table next to him was a bag which Jerry called the nightmare box. It was filled with the various tools that Greene used to torture his victims. There were scalpels, screwdrivers, hooks, bottles of various chemicals and needles. The girl was still out of it so he wouldn’t start his slow, perverse process yet. He liked to see the pain in their eyes, and hear their muffled screams through the duct tape. Jerry snuck up to the back porch and slid his hand behind the potted plant next to the door. He felt around in the dirt until he finally got ahold of what he was looking for. If there was one thing Greene overlooked, it was where he hid the spare key.

Jerry slid the key into the lock, well aware that Greene would be too busy droning on and on to the victim to hear the door open. As he crept inside he heard Greene’s unfiltered voice for the first time. It sent a chill down his spine. Up until that point he had only heard muffled words which he could never make out, but hearing and understanding him was terrifying. His voice was dull and lifeless, as if what he were about to do had no effect on him.

“Are you religious, honey? No, of course you aren’t. Look at you. You’re practically on the way to hell already the way you’re dressed. Don’t worry, I won’t send you there to quickly sweetheart. We’ll have plenty of fun, I promise,” he said. He wasn’t excited, angry, or nervous at all. He spoke as if it were a normal conversation.

As he continued speaking to her, Jerry crept around the corner. Greene took no notice of him as he watched the man speak from the door way. He was so embroiled in his own thoughts that a train could hit him and he wouldn’t know the difference. Jerry pulled the scissors out of his back pocket and readied himself for what would happen next. He had played violent video games all his life like most of his generation, but the thought of facing down a serial killer in real life made his pulse quicken.

I have to keep calm. That woman’s life is depending on it, he thought bravely. Before his more logical inner voice could try to talk him out of it, he lunged at Greene, who reacted just a little too late. As he turned his head a blast of pepper erupted from the can. He grunted and stumbled backwards as it stung his eyeballs like a swarm of microscopic bees. Jerry ran over to the victim and cut the zip ties that had bound her arms and legs. As she began to untie herself Jerry felt a hand close around his forearm. He turned quickly and jammed the scissors into Greene’s shoulder.

Greene’s yelp of pain was muffled by the mask he wore. As he struggled to pull the blade out, Jerry rushed over to help untie the victim. Just as the ropes came loose, a fist collided with the back of his head, causing him to crumple to the ground. His vision became blurred as he struggled to stay conscious. Greene stepped over him with the scissors and forcefully inserted them into his victim’s abdomen. She cried out in pain. In response he twisted the blade inside of her, causing her pleas for help to intensify.

Jerry reached out and grabbed his leg, pulling Greene to the ground. The girl was trying to pull the blades out of her stomach but each time she touched them she yelped in pain. Jerry started to get up to help but Greene lunged at him, pinning him to the ground.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing kid? Who is this girl to you? She’s just some slut I picked up in a bar. Nobody’s going to miss her. She’s worthless trash, preying on the weak minded men,” Greene snarled.

“You’re a psychopath. These girls have done nothing to you! I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else. I’ve been watching you do this for a month. There’s no way to justify what you’re doing!” Jerry replied. The last word barely escaped his mouth before a fist collided with his cheek.

“Don’t you criticize me, you little shit!” Greene roared. Jerry knew then that his life was over. The animal that existed inside of Greene had gone berserk, which meant there was no way of escaping him. He could hear the girl across the room gasping for air, and as he felt the hands enclose around his throat he silently apologized to her. At least he had tried to do something. In whatever life came after that one, the eyes of that first victim would no longer haunt him.

The room started to blur, and he swore he could see a bright light in his peripheral vision. At least he wasn’t a bystander. Unlike the rest of the neighborhood he had allowed himself to see the monster that endangered them. Sure, they wouldn’t look as hard for a twenty-something tourist who was last seen in a bar, but the police would search high and low for a kid, he thought. Greene was pretty much screwed anyway, it turned out. Maybe he had completed his mission after all.

Then the hands suddenly loosened and Greene’s eyes began to bulge out of his head. Jerry used all of his strength to force him off, and climbed to his feet, still slightly dazed from the lack of air. He turned to look at who saved him, expecting to see the girl, but instead it was… Greene? But how was that possible.

“The ambulance is on its way for this young lady. I think I’ll be going to prison. If I’m lucky maybe they’ll execute me. I’m tired of playing this game,” he said. Jerry looked down at the masked man on the ground. A knife stuck out of the back of his neck, and he was gasping for air as he drowned in his own blood. Greene’s eyes were ashamed and a little bit disgusted. There was remorse in them as he looked over at the girl clutching her stomach.
“What?” Jerry managed to sputter.

“I know that you think I’m the one killing them. I know you’ve been watching me, and you probably assumed that I was the guy in the mask too. I could have warned him at any time, but I’ve grown tired of his games. I’m tired of my goddamn older brother acting like I owed him something for taking me in. I just want to pay for my crimes now. He’s already paid for his,” Greene said sadly, slumping down into the chair. For the first time Jerry felt pity for the man. He wasn’t a raging psychopath at all. He was as much a victim as the girls he drugged. It didn’t excuse what he did, but Jerry couldn’t hate him for it anymore. He had done the right thing in the end, and he was prepared to face the judgment he deserved. At least now he could call Greene a human.

The police and the ambulance arrived five minutes later. The girl, Casey Jordan, was rushed off to the hospital to be treated for her wounds, which were luckily not that serious. The older Greene was dead, not the paramedics really cared to bring him back anyway. The younger Greene was hauled off to prison. There was word that he might get parole for coming clean the way he did, but not for a long time until he was an old man.

Jerry never forgot that night. It was the night that he finally stopped seeing the pleading eyes in the shadow of his room. He finally felt like he had done the right thing. He didn’t know it yet but this would be the driving force behind a stellar career in law enforcement. For the time being, he was just happy to get a good night’s sleep.