After writing "Flirt", I was pretty sure I'd be done with Red John as the protagonist of a story. Then this month's prompt "new beginnings" of the Jello Forever challenge and the quote below inspired me to venture into his world a second time. Writing this was a struggle, so I'm glad I finally finished it and am now (hopefully) able to focus on Jane/Lisbon again.
Disclaimer: Not mine, which is probably a good thing seeing how evil my plot bunnies currently are.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov
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In the strict seclusion of his austere prison cell, the man gazed at the sheet of paper in front of him. He had inserted it into the old typewriter over an hour ago and it still stared back at him blankly, its whiteness mocking his inability to write his story down. Not too long ago he used to make a living writing books, but now he just didn't know how and where to start.
Partly the old, rusty typewriter was to blame; he had asked for a laptop instead. He missed the sight of the cursor on the screen, which silently guided him from one word to the next and encouragingly blinked when he stopped typing. But, considering his current situation, he couldn't afford to be picky and would just need to make the best of it if he ever wanted to be a free man again.
The other reason for his writer's block was the fact, that - unlike with all the other books before - this time he wasn't writing to play a game of cat and mouse with his readers. He wouldn't use one of his killings as the basis for his newest bestseller, changing name and gender and personal circumstances of the victim and the details of the crime out of recognition and only retaining the essence of the murder. No fictitious blond inspector, who was modeled after a very real person, would fail to catch the infamous killer. Today he was determined to write pure non-fiction.
The amount of money he was offered for writing his memoirs was incredibly generous, but easily explainable by the general public's craving for gory details. He wanted to give them what they wanted and he also needed the money to ransom himself. His footmen saw his imprisonment as a chance to gain fast profit and a part of him couldn't blame them for it. It would be hard enough to get him out of jail, so he agreed to their conditions. For now. He would make them suffer the consequences of their greediness later, after he would be done with those who put him behind bars.
Spurred by his thoughts of revenge, he started typing. The sound the device produced with every stroke annoyed him, but he unwaveringly went on until he committed the sentence to paper.
"I came into this world on a mild November day."
He examined the result, tested the words on his tongue. No. Too pathetic. The page with his first try turned into a wadded ball and landed in a corner. His birth had nothing to do with his story. His mother had survived it, so he couldn't even call her his first victim. That he broke his arm when he was five years old was just as irrelevant as his filial aversion to broccoli or the fact that he once had a dog named Trevor.
His actual life and the story everyone was interested in began much later, when he turned into the serial killer commonly known as Red John. But to convey how he became this person, he would have to begin a little earlier than that. He would have to speak of her, a beautiful woman of only twenty-one who had the honor of being his test object. She was the one who made him realize that his happiness was woven of crimson beads of blood.
Red John slowly stretched his whole body, loudly cracked his knuckles to accentuate the importance of the moment and then started telling his lurid tale.
"After finishing college, I decided to earn my bread and butter with writing. My first lucrative short story, published almost twenty years ago, dealt with a kid who found his suicidal father dead in the bathtub. With ardent zeal I described the sudden realization of endless dismay that my protagonist felt and I knew then that death would inevitably be the main topic of all my stories.
Making up scary things was never really a necessity as fragmented, media-hyped dreads were delivered to my door ever since I could remember. Reading the paper on the metro, watching TV in pubs, I was confronted with verbal bits of real-life violence. I listened when criminologists and profilers commented, when therapists analyzed. Still, right from the start of my career I succumbed to the temptation of planning my very own fictional crimes for my publications.
On the pages I filled with words I created coldblooded murderers and naive victims and engaged in uncountable varieties of deliberate effacement of human life. Nevertheless, I was also inspired by other writers' works. I orientated myself by the bloody deeds of a certain Macbeth, by Woyzeck's raging jealousy or by the lethal malice and lust as described by Arthur Schnitzler. Patricia Highsmith was an author who I admired for her ability to make the reader feel sympathy for the killer. Traditional, bloodless mystery stories weren't my cup of tea.
Soon I published in magazines, in newspapers. I gained a reputation, my work was in demand. People were longing for dark stories as a reliable, and most of all harmless, outlet for their own deadly appetite. Being not picky about where my stories were published guaranteed me an adequate lifestyle and I was able to afford the loan for a little house. Back then, however, I was still far from being the famous author whose books were translated into forty-three languages.
In order to achieve universal fame, I wrote day after day. My fictional crimes got more reckless, my writing style became more distinguished. Interpersonal relationships that ended in disaster were my specialty. Talks at cross purposes. Touches that left the other person involved shivering. Coldly calculating thoughts. I lead my readers from apartments to public spaces, icy corridors, cool fields and back to private rooms. My characters often started out as strangers, clearly defined by their distance to each other, but in the end they were connected by a crime. Following invisible lines, they revolved around and inched towards each other until they collided.
However, murder demands a lot of the author. Research. Planning. Finesse. Comprehensible actions and emotions are required. Nothing should be left to chance. You probably heard of method actors who immerse themselves in their characters to the extent that they continue portraying them even off-camera. My experience with writing is comparable to this. Writing is like acting, with different means and on a different stage.
I shared my life and my house with my fictional heroes and they slowly became more real to me than my actual friends and relatives. The creation of main figures and secondary characters took up so much space, time, energy and emotion that it inevitably turned into the main purpose of my being.
Needless to say, my personal life suffered. When I began writing, I had a girlfriend and countless friends. On a spring day ten years later, I realized that I only had a half-starved cat left. But that wasn't the worst realization of that day: After all those years of writing, I still didn't get the attention I was convinced I deserved. I reached a blind alley, unable to go on like before but incapable of improving myself further. I had put fictional characters through every thinkable cause of death and I was exhausted. A bombshell, that's what I needed, but my mind was blank.
After two days of frustrated musing, I came up with the idea to change perspective. All my previous stories were told from the victim's point of view, now I decided to put myself in the murderer's shoes. As an artist, I was fascinated by the beauty, uprightness and charisma that the evil displays so often. Dazzling, overwhelming and seductive, but still gruesome. I wanted to experiment with this apparent contradiction.
Excited and full of confidence I got down to work, but soon I was stuck. It seemed impossible to find the absolutely right vocabulary for the blazing, uninhibited and very personal rage of a killer. I was certain that those emotions lurked beneath my sophisticated surface, but they refused to break through when I tried to capture them.
It wasn't until I went to the bathroom that night, that I discovered the source of my restraint: two small bottles in the mirror cabinet. Their presence in my life was so natural, that I didn't even think about them anymore.
Two green pills and a white one.
Every morning before breakfast.
Every night after dinner.
to protect my mother from black eyes and my classmates from bleeding slash wounds and my dog from angry kicks and myself from being tied to beds in windowless rooms
I closed my eyes, pressed my lids tightly shut, to shoo away the unwelcome pictures. It had been years since I had last thought about this. Those memories were my past. They were not me.
But maybe they could be me again, my subconsciousness suggested.
My eyes snapped open. I brushed my teeth, washed my face. I hung up my towel. I went to bed. No green pills, no white one either. I dared an experiment. All night I lay awake, waiting for the first signs of aggression.
There was no change, not during the night and not the next day. I started to worry that I had taken the pills for too many years and was now miraculously healed. But then, on the morning of my second pill-less day, I gnashed my teeth when my scrambled eggs turned out scorched.
Over the course of two days my anger increased. Something as minor as the buzzing noise of a fly was enough to put me into a rage. I sat down for writing, I jumped up again. The emotions I needed were available now, but they were too vague and aimless to be useful. Like a caged tiger I roamed the rooms of my house. Wall paint stained my knuckles white. Spatters of my blood tinged another wall red.
Eventually I wasn't able to be in such a confined space any longer. I stormed out of the house and dashed across the street to my car. Driving around without direction for what must have been hours, I was longing for a chance to blow off steam. I was waiting at a red light, when a sign caught my attention. Mad Dan's. A bar seemed as good as any place to start a brawl, so I parked the car and went inside.
I scanned the crowded room for potential opponents - drunks who mumbled into their beers, wannabe billiards players, business-style guys - when I unexpectedly set eyes on a completely different kind of creature. Long brown hair, eyes like daggers that contrasted nicely with the fragility and forlornness she exuded. She was young. Too young, maybe. A girl like her looked completely out of place in a bar like that, clinging to her soda bottle and softly swaying to the blaring rock from the music box, but nobody else seemed to even notice her. I, however, was intrigued. She seemed to be saddened by some unknown tragedy. So vulnerable. Easy meat.
Something else overlaid my burning rage: My libido - neglected for months and decreased by the pills - piped up and tightened my jeans. Breaking some random guy's skull with bare hands suddenly wasn't a priority anymore. The urge, the need, to touch and taste and hold and have and fill and claim and mark her as my own overshadowed everything else.
I approached her. Not with words; I knew from experience that they were only hindering in a situation like this. Instead I started swaying with her, matching her rhythm and indecorously invading her privacy by getting closer to her than necessary. If you saw me in interviews or on the cover of one of my books, you know that I'm not a bad looking guy. Even back then, before fame and wealth made me irresistible, I usually appealed to women. The fact that this certain woman, whose hips I was just busy stroking, neither fled nor slapped me, illustrated my victory.
So I took her home. We hardly spoke on the way to my house, nor when I led her inside. She looked as if she might consider changing her mind about us when she was standing in my messy living room, but I didn't give her any time for further contemplation. My lips barred her mouth from spilling over with unnecessary words. My hands skillfully undressed her and soon she returned the favor. Once inside the bedroom, I tried to back her up against the wall, but she didn't like that all too much. I was stunned; she didn't seem like the kind of girl who restricted sex to only the bed. My anger flared up again, reared its ugly head for a few seconds, before the sight of her naked breasts distracted me.
I surrendered and carried her to the bed. There was still time for the more kinky stuff later. I'm not a fan of long-drawn-out foreplay, so I was pleased to discover that she was already ready for me. She spread her long legs, inviting me in, and I willingly obeyed. There was nothing sweet or tender about the act we shared. We were like animals, grunting and panting and defined by pure carnality. Only later, when she silently lay next to me and stared at the ceiling, it felt actually nice to have someone to share the bed with. Her hair cascaded in flowing waves over her shoulders and the pillow. The shape of her face, her eyebrows, her lips was just perfect. I asked her for her name, because suddenly it seemed very important to know things like that about her.
"Madeline." She breathed without looking at me.
Madeline.
A name like spring rain. Sweet as honey. Enchanting and addicting.
A voice inside my head whispered that she wouldn't be able to fully appreciate a man like me. I chose to ignore it. Instead I considered a foray into another book genre, writing that wouldn't be filled with death and gore. Man meets woman... that kind of thing.
I also contemplated taking the pills again.
My arms around her, her name on my mind and her scent filling my nostrils, I fell asleep effortlessly and awoke the next morning after a dreamless, peaceful night. She was still sleeping and even though I was tempted to wake her up and roll her over to lie on her back (or her stomach) to have my way with her, I decided to do the gentlemanly thing and make us breakfast.
I just poured steaming coffee into two mugs, when Madeline joined me in the kitchen - fully clothed and purse in hand. Warning bells started ringing in my head.
she's a whore a liar a nothing she used you she mocks you she'll leave you
I clutched the handle of the coffeepot so tightly that my knuckles turned white and my nails dug deep into my palm. The nagging voice inside of me was immune to pain and still didn't want to shut up. Ignoring it I tried to be funny, telling her in a shaky voice that she shouldn't have bothered finding her clothes as we'd spent the rest of the day naked anyway.
She didn't say anything, just continued staring at me with an unsettling, unreadable expression. Eventually she gave in to my breakfast invitation and sat down on the table across from me. We ate and drank in silence while she alternately studied her fingernails and the inside of her cup and I observed her every move. I waited for her to break the silence, to either release me or make me snap. After ten minutes of staring, slurping and munching, she cracked.
She sputtered, confessed, gestured, apologized, even had the effrontery to ask for absolution. At the end of her monolog I wondered why the hell she was smiling. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The smoke was meant to penetrate every cell of my body in order to make me feel alive. Madeline began to tear up. She wasn't supposed to cry, but she did anyway.
Did I just tell her that I'm in a relationship with someone else?
Did I confess that I only slept with her to give my spouse a taste of his own medicine?
Did I behave like an unfaithful little bitch?
No, dammit! It was the person across from me, who was now for some mysterious reason bawling her eyes out. Even though I am the victim. She, not I, ended things between us before they even began.
I took another deep drag on my cigarette, wanted to die, but then I went to get her a handkerchief. Not out of pity, no. I did it like a machine, automatically, because I was trained like that. It hurt. She blew her noise, for half an eternity, looked at me with her eyes red from crying to make sure I saw how miserable she was.
"You should have just left me alone last night."
The woman, who only seconds ago behaved like a sobbing helpless child, accused me in an aggressive tone that gave me chills. She got up, walked away from me. When I finally was able to move again, she already reached the door.
A hug? One last?
She stopped. Turned around. She cried again. I joined in. We got closer. Embraced each other. Loosely, at first. I felt her breath against my cheek. She smelled lovely. Like spring rain and honey. She cried harder.
Whore.
I embraced her tighter.
She mislead me.
It felt good. Like last night. Only better.
She wanted me to write sappy romance novels.
My arms entwined her neck.
Slut.
She groaned. Grasped my hair. The cigarette fell from my hand. Her scent disgusted me. She moaned louder. Not out of lust. Not like last night. The cigarette on the floor burnt up.
I pressed my lips against her hair, her neck, as her body slipped through my arms to the ground. Her head produced a muffled sound as it made contact with the floorboards. The silence was cold. I lit another cigarette and studied her silent figure beneath me.
Madeline.
So beautiful.
And very dead.
The bruises on her neck didn't suit her, yet my pill-less self knew no regrets about marring her perfection. Taking her life felt as natural as breathing, and just as essential as well. But quite frankly, killing her was pretty boring. Maybe I just expected too much and the emotions of a killer weren't as complex as I had imagined all those years. The anticipated feeling of superiority and euphoria didn't come. For a minute I took satisfaction in the fact that I had the power to condemn somebody to death, but then I already turned my attention to more practical thoughts. What should I do with the dead body in my living room?
I postponed finding a solution and retreated to my desk. Seeing the world through a murderer's eyes was much easier now, but I didn't like my re-narration of Madeline's death at all. It was too unspectacular and much less fascinating than I aimed for. Eventually I realized that I would take more than one foolish girl's passing to write my book. Killing her had simply been too easy and I already longed for a second chance to improve my performance.
But first I had to get rid of my first victim. I didn't worry at all that anyone might link her disappearance to me. All the drunks in the bar had ignored us, as far I could tell. Madeline had only been on vacation in town and her trip to the bar had happened spontaneously after a fight with her boyfriend. I whistled a happy tune, fueled by the prospect of getting away with murder so easily.
Kneeling next to her, I began to gently undress her. I neatly folded her clothes. I looked through her purse. For several minutes I studied her ID card and was briefly hit by the realization that she would be missed by her family and friends. Determined to not let something that minor ruin my good mood, I committed her stuff to the flames in my old tiled stove. It was spring, but the nights were still chilly enough that the remains of Madeline's belongings mingled unsuspiciously with the smoke of my neighbors' chimneys.
I wrapped her in a blanket and involuntarily chuckled at the thought that the woolen material would fail to warm her up. The unkempt garden behind my house, hidden from the view of neighbors and passers-by, became Madeline's final resting place. For any law enforcers, curious after reading my story: You'll find her under the big oak tree. I buried her there while the light of the waning moon shone down on us and made an overlooked piece of jewelry around her neck light up. The necklace became my first (and last) trophy and I wore it constantly, until it was taken from me after my unfortunate arrest. I used to touch the delicate chain after each killing. My fingers always traced the face-shaped form of the childish pendant while I complacently looked at the bloody equivalent I had drawn at the wall.
After disposing of Madeline's body, I went back into the house to make plans for the future. In the bathroom, getting ready for bed, I made two decisions. The first one was caused by the realization that I felt so much more alive since I stopped taking the pills. I celebrated by flushing the remaining ones down the toilet, piece by piece. I wouldn't need them anymore, but I would still go to my doctor regularly to get new prescriptions. It is so easy to mislead a psychiatrist; they tend to just stick to their preconceived opinion and to ignore the little clues that indicate something else entirely.
A single drop of blood on a razor blade triggered the second revelation of the evening. Still exhilarated by the toilet bowl dance of green and white pills, I cut myself while shaving. Red blood and silver metal – what a beautiful combination. My blood dripped into the washbowl.
It glistened in the dim light.
Formed runnels.
Drops connected.
Spread out.
Fascinated and immune to pain, I wasn't able to tear my eyes away or to treat my wound. That's why killing Madeline had felt so dissatisfying: It was too painless, too fast and way too clean. The lack of blood and messiness made it impossible to revel in her death for long. Taking her life was a quick flirt with sublimity, but it didn't provide anything substantial.
I realized that I needed to shed blood. I longed to observe the moment that marked the transition between life and death. I wanted to look into horror-struck eyes and be unimpressed by them. My way to fame was meant to be paved with dead bodies. I wanted to be admired for my books and feared for my killings without the world being able to connect the writer with the serial killer.
In the end I got everything I wanted. Two dead girls later I finished the book that became my first bestseller and can probably be found in your bookcase as well. Another dead girl later the media and the police acknowledged me as a dangerous serial killer and nicknamed me. I had a good laugh when they picked the name Red John and therefore incorporated my real first name.
I had a splendid life.
I killed.
I wrote.
I observed.
I won awards.
I teased.
I gave interviews.
I mislead.
I traveled.
I mixed my two lives by modeling my famous Inspector Gene after my alleged nemesis.
I dated glamorous woman (who are still alive now).
I wormed my way into people's confidence.
Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to go on like this forever. I don't regret anything, but when the handcuffs clicked shut around my wrists, I accepted my defeat and silently applauded to those who were smart enough to catch me."
Red John sat back and grinned smugly. He did write down the truth and he quite enjoyed the trip down memory lane. That last sentence was utter nonsense though, written only to lull certain people into a false sense of security. They probably wouldn't believe him, but lying was better than to admit that they were his next elect victims.
Despite all their smartness and wariness, they probably thought it was over. The agent and the consultant most likely wanted to believe that concrete walls, bars and security guards were enough to ensure them undisturbed togetherness. Oh yes, he knew that their collaborative efforts to catch him had bound them together. He had seen the concern for each other in their eyes, all those little unnecessary touches.
When Lisbon had handcuffed him while Jane obviously had rather wanted to resort to violence, Red John had believed that their budding relationship had been thrown for a loop. He had been wrong about that; their feelings for each other went apparently deep enough to overcome even such a severe disagreement. In the courtroom he had seen them again, wearing similar expressions of impassivity. But he had looked behind the masks.
Cheeks, drained of color.
A hand that reassuringly covered the back of another hand.
Glances, so worried and affectionate.
Silent tears that were furtively wiped away by loving fingertips.
Observing the two of them had been a revelation.
He imagined how the chain of his reclaimed smiley face necklace would cut deeply into the tender flesh of Agent Lisbon's neck before the blade of his knife would do the same to other areas of her body. He would force Jane to watch her torture. Killing his wife and daughter while Jane was away was one of the few regrets Red John had and he wouldn't make the same mistake again. It would be a blast to revel in Jane's agony. Maybe his nemesis would even beg to be killed as well, but Red John planned to delay this delicious culmination of their long-lasting game of cat and mouse as long as possible.
Red John knew that his outgoing mail would be screened, but he licked the flap of the envelope - that contained the first (and only) chapter of his autobiography - anyway. His career as a writer ended today, but his life as a serial killer was far from being over. Sealing the letter, he smiled in sheer anticipation of the paycheck that would ensure his artistic comeback.