One of many faces

Looking, never seeing. You see their eyes scan around the carriage, but are they really looking for anything in particular? Are they searching out the eyes of someone who they could perhaps fall in love with? Are they searching for the eyes of a long lost love or relatives? Or are they just looking? Minds so consumed in their other ‘more important’ issues that they couldn’t care to look. Who could be staring back at them? Staring back into their blank faces actually looking, actually taking things in. 1

I pity them; I pity them for the ignorance and naivety. My eyes are looking; my eyes seek out all on that carriage and take in their every essence, for this could be any of our last moments. 2

I catch her eye and I know she’s looking. I know she can see me. She turns away, as if my gaze has somehow told her all she needs to know, as if the ugliness inside shines through. I can tell she’s seen me. I know she took notice and maybe she understood. She looks down and busies herself with absolutely nothing. There’s nothing there. She grips harder at her bag and fiddles with her bracelet but I can tell she’s not paying attention. Her mind isn’t even dabbling with her ‘more important’ issues now; her mind is on me. Purely and fantastically focused upon me, the one of many faces in the carriage. The one with the briefcase clutched in his hand, the one with the harsh eyes and the dark hair. The one who would blend in with the usual businessmen seen on these trains. Except, this one isn’t normal, and I know she has figured it out. Surely she could not be so naive, so out of touch with reality? For that is what all of these fellow travellers are, so caught up in their own lives that they would not know anything of the real world. I know that she has seen the truth. I allowed her to see the hate in my eyes. Just for looking she has chosen herself, she has sacrificed herself for the cause. For they will wish they had looked. By god they will have wished they had looked, if only for an instant. 3

Their eyes continue to avoid my own and I have to stop myself from laughing. It seems so perverse but all I wish to do is laugh at them for their own self-righteous ways. So ignorant and so self-obsessed, but they will be taught. They will learn their lesson in perhaps the hardest way, but that is how it must be. They have chosen for it to be this way, not I. 4

In an instant I have stopped the train to a halt in the darkened tunnel and I am pulling her out of the carriage door. My hand is over her mouth and I can feel her hot, quickened breaths against it, her fear increasing with every second. She struggles, but her strength is no match to my own. I whisper to her not to be afraid. She is facing a much better fate than they are. She will not have to live with the guilt like they will. I tell her that she will be one of the lucky ones, perhaps the only lucky one, I don’t know if she believes me or not. But that does not matter, she will not know of anything soon enough. 5

I push her into the wooded area a little way away from the tunnel and wonder if anyone on that carriage noticed us slip away, if any of them had any other thought but what affect the train stopping would have on their ‘more important’ issues. 6

I can hear a stream flowing somewhere off into the distance and store that into my mind for later. Looking into her eyes I see the same look of fear I saw in the train, except now it is magnified a thousand times over. I do not pity her, not even for a moment. For she is lucky, they will think that. They will know that. Her eyes do not try to avert my gaze, she seems to have realised that it would be pointless now. No one can save her. Her fruitless attempts at struggling earlier revealed to her my strength, my hidden strength. I had not bargained for her to cry, but I am not thrown off. It only shows that she is emotional. She is not crying for their pain though, she is crying for her life. She ought to be crying for them. They will shed a thousand more tears; they will wish that they met her fate instead of her. Those eyes that would not meet my own, those minds so caught up in their own lives. Those eyes will cry, those minds will be thinking of nothing but her and that journey, trying desperately to remember. Wishing hopelessly to find a face in their minds that will lead them to whoever did this. But they will never find it, because they did not look. However much they tear apart their brains they can never go back and look at all those faces that they missed. If they had, then they could have saved her. They would have been able to save her life and see the hatred within me. Her death can only ever be down to them. 7

I remember their faces though, so very clearly in my mind. If ever I see them again I will know that her death was their fault. Hopefully they will know too. I can sit back and watch as they torment themselves over and over about her death. And I can laugh. I can shake my head in utter disapproval and let them know that it could have been another way. 8

My cold hand grips her pale throat and she gasps. Such a delicate girl. The murder is so intimate, so close and yet so cold and heartless. I know that is how they will sit and work it out. They will gather together the people and draw endless profiles on me. ‘He got close to his victim, he killed her with great intimacy’ they will say. But how can you draw from that and match it with someone you shared twenty minutes with in a carriage? How can you match it with someone you didn’t even look at? Their minds were so consumed in themselves, but they will never admit it, not to anyone. For, to them, admitting it is like pleading guilty to her murder themselves. 9

Her legs go weak and she slips down the tree that I am holding her to. I know then that it is over. I have administered the coup de grâce. This will be the end of so many lives, not just her own. I drag her lifeless body across to the river where I submerge it in the water, placing rocks on her chest to hold her there. Her grey eyes stare up at me through the clear water and I feel that they are thanking me for choosing her. She is glad to have been the one who looked and was saved the terrible fate of living in constant guilt. 10

I walk away, turning my back on the forest. I know I can never return. The urge of a killer to return is far too strong, the profilers will know that. I will not be caught out. 11

The train has gone as I approach the tracks. It will not be long before they know. I will be waiting for that moment. 12