Summary: A murder that Beyond Birthday was never credited as to having, and he's determined to tell someone since Kira's begun his reign and he may not live much longer.
Rated: T for course language, extreme violence, and brief sexual references.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN DEATH NOTE OR IT'S CHARACTERS! I DO NOT OWN THE LOS ANGELES BB MURDER CASES OR IT'S CHARACTERS, EITHER! DARN, I HATE NOT OWNING THINGS!
Author's Note: Bahahah. If you read the disclaimer, you'll understand why I'm laughing... because I try to make my disclaimers laughable. I'm just like that. XD I felt like writing something with Beyond Birthday in i for once, and this was the end result of two hours of brain-straining. XD Enjoy, my strawberry jam jars.
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Another laughably boring day in the prison Beyond Birthday was residing in, the prisoners came in for lunch at the cafeteria. His hair, without the dye, was a beautiful honey color, his face was sunken from years of nutritional glop, and his shinigami eyes let him see every single person's name and date of death above their heads. It never changed - prison, vision, or life in general.
Beyond poked one of his friends - no, just acquaintances, serial killers don't really have "friends" - in the back and whispered, "Hey, Skippy, I wanna talk to you at the lunch table."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Skippy grabbed a plastic tray. "A nice conversation over a warm tray of rat guts."
And a nice tray of rat guts it was. Typical prison gruel, what they had every day, every meal, with a carton of warm milk. Sometimes there were maggots in their gruel, and that obviously put everyone off their meal every once and a while.
Sitting on the plastic seats of the cafeteria tables, Skippy slammed his tray down.
"I think I'm gonna go on strike, demand better food. Damn, this stuff is disgusting!" He just stared down at the food, not moving much as he dreamed of steaks and burgers and fruits and vegetables and anything but gruel. Suddenly, he looked up at Beyond, who was staring at him, looking almost like a teenager with his extremely tiny figure. He probably had stopped eating this stuff for some time now, just eating what he had to to stay alive. "Wait, what did you want to talk about?"
"Skippy, how long have we been in prison?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know? It's not like I keep count."
"Well, I do. I've been in here for almost 2 years. And that's nothing compared to what I have left. I was put in here for 3 murders. But I murdered 4 people. And with this Kira stuff going on, who knows when we'll all die?"
"But can't you see when people die?"
"I can't see it if it's a Kira killing. All your numbers go down in less than a minute and then... you're just dead."
Skippy gulped, but his throat was dry.
"But the fourth person, who was really my first, was my best murder. Not because I didn't get caught, but because it was the most creative. It spurred me on, all of that blood..." He looked at his gruel hungrily. "It was indescribable, how I felt. But it was something great, like one step above Nirvana."
"What's Nirvana again? Ain't that a band?"
Beyond glared at him. His name, Roger Gristal, floated about without a care.
"Yes, it's a band. But it's also the most blissful stage in the Indian religion. Do you care if I tell you? It's just, I don't want to go uncredited."
"My ass, you don't want to go uncredited. You're afraid Kira's gonna get you!"
"I'm not!" Beyond looked so much like a teenager.
"Yeaaah, you are. You're terrified. You don't wanna die!"
"Look, I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but Kira's stupid enough to think that he's right in killing us. We're people, too. But that doesn't stop him from killing you or me this very second. So can I just tell you the story?"
"Who you gonna tell if it's not me?"
"I'll tell my pet rock. Who the hell else am I supposed to tell?"
"Whatever. Just don't ask questions."
"Thank you, Jesus Christ!
"Anyway, this was 4 years ago. I had run away from Wammy's... I told you what Wammy's House was, right?"
"Huh?"
Beyond sighed. "Never mind. Just try and pay attention.
"Well, I decided on murdering to get my idol's attention, but it would be when they would usually die, so in my mind, it would be like I was supposed to kill them. I saw a man walking his dog, and I saw that the numbers above his head were indicating he would die in about 3 days. He was pretty young, maybe 20-ish, must have had a nice job, he had a nice hair cut. Cool dog, too. Had a Brad Pitt look to him. Had a wife, I noticed his wedding ring.
"So, I come over to him and say, 'Hey, nice to meet you. I just moved in down the street.'
"And he says, 'Oh, yeah, good to meet you. I saw that house for sale a few months ago. So you bought it?'
"I looked down at his dog and said, 'Yeah, it's a nice place. You wanna come by and see?'
"And of course, like any dim wit, he agrees, and I bring him into my house. It was a really nice house, had a wood-floored sun room in the back, with a fan, and I sat out there every morning, saw the sun rise. And the kitchen was all nice, if I had had a wife, she would've fallen in love with it. And it also had a two-story basement, where I kept all of my... things.
"Well, he comes in, and he says that he really likes it, so I tell him that he should stay for some iced tea. He's starting to get real suspicious, and his dog keeps on whining. Next thing I know, I whipped out my only gun, 'cause I don't really like guns, they aren't all that fun, and I shoot his dog, and then I tell him, 'You really should have just stayed for iced tea.' And I shot him in the leg.
"His name was... oh, Lord, what was his name? It was German or something... oh, yeah, Keehl. His last name was Keehl. K-E-E-H-L... I remember, that was something odd that I liked. But his first name was something not so great, nothing so memorable as Keehl with an H. At Wammy's there was another kid with that last name, they might've been related... But, then again, if he had relations, he definitely wouldn't be in Wammy's, he'd be living with them. Maybe it was an unknown relation?"
"You're getting off-topic." Skippy sounded bored, but really, he was quite entertained, and Beyond knew so. Anyone else would have been offended at how emotionless Skippy had sounded.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry.
"But, I shot him in the leg, and he's pretty much crippled. And I drag him downstairs, to the basement, the lowest level, and I give him enough drugs to keep him out for five whole hours! And while he's out, I do this absolutely spontaneous surgery, and I put a bomb in him. A bomb! It was the kind that detonates with a remote, so I had complete control over what happened. I put it in his stomach, and it was big enough not to pass through, but small enough not to notice once I sewed him back up if he escaped. Yeah, people would hear it if he was in the house. But he was two stories underground, surrounded in cement. Who was going to hear there?
"I loved seeing all of that blood. It was such a temptation not to kill him then and there. But, I waited it out, and three days later, I sat in my sun room, watching the sun rise.
"It was bright red, and I knew that it was his time, and that his blood would be darker than what the sun looked like, and with all of that blood just waiting, I had to. The remote was right in front of my chair, on the little coffee table I had placed. It was as simple as leaning over and flipping a switch. I heard a soft thud, and after a few minutes, I went downstairs to see what was left of Keehl.
"There was absolutely nothing left of him. Not even a single little bit of him. Just a terrified head, eyeballs opened as wide as dishes. He felt that fire in his belly, and he didn't like it. He was all over that room, a bloody mess."
Skippy's stomach seemed to fall to the bottom of his abdomen, and his heart almost jumped out of his throat. This was his "friend," someone he thought he knew, doing something this sickening? All he'd done was shoot his girlfriend's lover, and he regretted taking a life, but Beyond, he seemed to enjoy it, he enjoyed the blood all over your hands, running your hands through their hair, shutting their glazed eyes to the world. Who he had thought looked like a teenager just now looked like a maniac. His murder had aged him and almost everyone else here, but Beyond defied it, the murders made him feel and look younger. Beyond looked younger every second of telling this story.
"It was the greatest thing I've ever seen. The greatest feeling I've ever felt. I kept the head, it's under the floorboards of that sun room. Probably smells like hell now, if anyone ever went back to that house. I cleaned up all the blood in the room, made sure nothing was left. And no one ever said anything. He was aired as missing on the news, and after a week, the family gave up on him. They went around the neighborhood asking people what they were doing that night, and I told them half of the truth.
"'Officer, I was over at my girlfriend's house.'
"Of course, it was all a front. She's never even visited me." Beyond gave a toothy grin. His teeth were still white. Just as white as Skippy's face. "I never really cared for her, anyway. The only good part of the relationship was when we had sex."
Skippy blinked a bit, and he looked back at his gruel. He hadn't touched it at all. His stomach growled, but he didn't eat. He saw something moving in there, and even after all of this time, seeing all of the insects in the food, he still felt nauseous when there was something in his gruel.
"But, yeah. That was my fourth murder. No one has ever confronted me on it. Not with charges, not without charges. Nobody ever knew except me and Keehl, and now you. Once I die, you gotta tell someone, 'kay?"
Skippy, who was still stunned into silence, just nodded his head. He picked up his spoon and poked a bit at the gruel in front of him, but he didn't eat anything.
Skippy lived only 3 months after Beyond told his story, dying of a severe case of pneumonia. Most suspected it was another Kira killing, but there was no way to be certain.
Beyond Birthday died two weeks later of a heart attack. He was smiling. Not a creepy smile, like he had flashed Skippy when he told him about his girlfriend, but one of bliss. He was satisfied. A note was found in his pocket, written in his loopy, girlish handwriting:
Remember the fourth.