How to Cut a Deal with a Serial Killer In Transit (SKIT)

This is an excerpt from my Chick Lit/Thriller/Murder Mystery novel;

“You just KILLED your boyfriend!” I said, pouncing out of the closet, my supreme hiding spot; not realizing that now she would perhaps have to kill me to shut me up about the whole thing. That incidental thought bridged itself morosely in the back of my mind…as I attacked her vehemently with my words, brazenly, dangerously…

“Oh, Chryssa!” She jumped, but then stepped forward, IN MY FACE. “You really got me there!” She tossed back her head and hyena laughed. She was so close to me, her purple eyes dilated, her breath quaking, her body shaking.

I thought she’d be speechless. Oh she was clever, this one. I gulped my fear and faced her, murderer that she was.

“You have MURDERED boyfriend!” I repeated. I stared at the blood on her hands. I could not move, and my eyes stuck to the splotches on her hands.

“Chryssa, I told you, about a jillion times, he wasn’t my boyfriend. Just a boytoy, you know?" she smiled again, as if we were at a garden party, discussing prized daffodils or roses. She laughed, a tinkly sound like bells in wintertime, merry little sleighbells on a sled. “Mind if I just step in the loo to wash up?” She held up her bloody hands. She winked. “It’ll just take a nanosecond, I promise.”

I grimaced. “Sure, uh, that’d be fine.” I mean, what was I supposed to say to that?

“I used to be a serial killer, but I got better.” She said, flicking her Liz Claiborne jacket over her princess Dolce Gabana ivory colored sweater and avant garde demeanor. She smiled and turned to step into the bathroom. She came out a moment later and smiled again. It was a million dollar smile, and even her violet eyes flashed. “Now I just kill people for money.”

I just looked at her. I’d just caught her killing her boytoy, with blood on her hands, dragging his clunky body down the staircase, out the front door, and plunking it into the trunk of her silver Mercedes, like it was a mere sack of potatoes, and now, here we were talking about killing, like it was just another quilting hobby. She was so mundane and nonchalant about the whole thing.

“What! Like a mercenary? Like you go to the deepest darkest pits of places, like East Africa and kill people for money? I said.

“That sounds really dramatic…and bad.” She said, as if I was accusing her of doing something terribly wrong.

“Duh! News alert: Killing people IS bad.”

“Chryssa, I HELP people. Don’t you see? I am the equivalent of an exterminator. I get rid of rubbish, of bad, ugly, horrid people. Those who are in the way of others’ happiness. Don’t you want to be happy? Don’t you even have a tiny problem of your own?” She smiled again. “Whiskey? John Powers?” She said, indicating that we go downstairs for some refreshment. Her voice was calm.

“I am what people call a hired hit woman.” She continued as we sat on the couch downstairs a moment later. Sipping whiskey. Conversing about killing. “I used to have a temper, but now I can cool it. I just do it for the money now. So technically, if you want to strike a deal, you’re going to have to pay me and we’re going to have to have a contract. By the way, I’m also not going to kill you because I actually like you. I don’t kill my friends.” We sipped our whiskey and she patted my hand.

“Gee thanks a lot. But…ex-serial killer?” This was just now hitting me, this massive array of information, of who she was, what she did, what she possibly had done. How many people had she killed?

“Yeah, I used to kill my ex-boyfriends in college. But I am a serial killer in transit. I don’t do it any longer. You probably want to know how many are dead because of me. I’d say I’m up to forty-five now, but I’ll have to get back to you on the number.”

“How’d you get away with it?”

“I changed my identity. Got plastic surgery. It’s easy to kill…” Her voiced trailed off, her eyes glistened, and she smiled at me, just beaming. A radiant smile. As if nothing was wrong with what she’d just done, our morbid conversation, a dead bloody body in her trunk.

“No way.”

“Way.”

Huh. Changing her identity? I’d like to change my identity. Disappear. It’s actually part of my fantasy. I really do dream about it. Simply diappear. Now there was a thought that I certainly liked. With all of my problems, that would really work.

“Speaking of which, wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could get rid of your problem, that stalker, old whats-his-name?” She asked. Here was an alternate solution, or maybe part of the solution to my biggest problem.

“That would be like too weird to have you get rid of him for me."

“He’d be out of the picture, never stalk you again, never cause you any more harm.”

“And he would never bother me again.” I said, smiling for the first time that day.

“Nope, he would never bother you again,” She repeated.

"Never. It's a dangerous word," I said.

“There’s a way…” She said.

I put down my glass of whiskey and leaned in. “Go on…I’m listening…” I said.