The Reading Room: Web Fiction

Serial Kiddie
by William Ollie

I didn’t want to do it. After all nobody wants to die, especially a kid, but I couldn’t live with it. Oh, I could live with what I had done, that didn’t bother me at all. It was the getting caught that I couldn’t live with. And there was no doubting that I was going to get caught, not anymore.

Why did I kill her? I don’t know, same reason I killed those cats, I guess. My parents were gone for the weekend and there wasn’t anybody there to stop me, so I just did it.

I buried her in my backyard, in front of the basketball goal. The grass there has long ago been ground away, nothing there but dirt. I buried her really deep and I flattened out the dirt and packed it hard over top of her. There was no way anybody would know she was there. I cleaned my room really good, too. I followed the directions I found on that web site to the letter. All of the blood was gone, and I’m sure that I wiped down everything she touched.

Then I laid down…and started to dream:

She’s screaming, begging me to stop but I don’t stop. She’s only twelve years old but I don’t care. She thought we were going into my bedroom so she could pet my kitty. It’s not my fault if she believed me. Hell, I don’t even have a kitty; she’s my kitty.

   I look down at her body. Blood is seeping out of the hole I ripped across her neck, dead fish-eyes staring up at me.

   She’s twelve years old and I’m fifteen, not old enough to drive but old enough to kill. It’s nothing new, not the first time I’ve killed, just the first human. I’ve been killing animals for years, frogs, the neighbor’s cat, birds and all manner of insects. I remember the time I caught a turtle and tossed it off the overpass and it landed on some old geezer’s windshield. I see him panic and swerve, causing a seven-car pile-up. The old geezer doesn’t survive. That wasn’t my fault either; he shouldn’t have swerved.

   I look out my bedroom window to where I buried her. The full moon is illuminating the area and the ground isn’t flat anymore, it’s round like the top of a grave.

   Now it’s morning and the sun is out. My window is open and a rotten smell is filling my bedroom. My parents are coming through the front door calling out my name. I shut my window to block out that awful smell and see a finger poking out of the mound.

Now the police are knocking on our front door. They tell my Mom that a little girl is missing and they’re searching every house in the neighborhood. She lets them in. Before they come into my bedroom I look out to the mound and her whole hand is sticking out of the ground. I close the curtains right before they come into the room. They don’t see anything out of place and they don’t smell anything, but right when I think they’re going to leave one of them walks over to the window…

and I wake up.

It’s early Sunday. A full moon is illuminating the area where I buried, her but the ground isn’t flat anymore; it’s round like the top of a grave.

That’s when I know I’m going to get caught. In the morning a finger will be protruding from that mound and the police will come.

So I go into the bathroom and rummage through the cabinets. I take Dad’s straight razor and stand before the mirror. I wonder if there will be a white light like they talked about on Oprah the other day, or just shadows and whispers… and darkness.

Š2003 William Ollie

Send all comments on fiction to the writers, they'd love to hear from you, just click on their name and send mail.
All Rights Reserved By The Author! If You Want To Use Something You See Here, Write Them And Ask!