Beginner’s Luck
Dan McGirt
Copyright © 2008, 2009 by Dan McGirt
All rights reserved.
Published 2009, 2010 by Trove Books LLC
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Smashwords Edition 2.0, October 2010
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Beginner’s Luck
It was a dark and stormy night.
Cliché? Yes, but also an undeniable truth. A hard chill rain slashed down on Arkwen College, beating against the slanted roofs and square neo-Gothic towers of Lansmoor Hall. Dark gouts of water gushed from the stone mouths of the gargoyles ringing its mock battlements, eerily backlit with every cold flash of lightning. The grassy quad below was a brown sea of mud. Wind howled through the creaking treetops and rattled the poorly caulked windows of the old student dormitories. Here and there behind the glass, candles flickered and flashlight beams danced, for the electricity had failed and the phone lines too.
Remarkably, cell phone service was also out.
There was little for the students to do but huddle together in the hallways or hunker down in their beds and wait for the storm to blow over. It was not a night for any sane person to be outside.
Which made it perfect weather for the Hatchet Man. Bundled in a hooded rain slicker, his heavy boots impervious to the small rivers washing over his feet, he stalked across the darkened campus with a lovingly sharpened hatchet in his hand.
The deranged serial killer hadn’t always been the Hatchet Man. He was fairly new at it, in fact. Still looking for his first victim actually. Which meant he wasn’t technically a serial killer yet, or even a killer at all. But he was deranged and he had a hatchet, and that was a start.
His decision to become an insane killer was a recent one. Given his poor grades—who knew a fractional GPA was even possible?—his parents’ dream of him attending medical school was looking less and less likely. As this realization sunk in, he wondered what direction to take in life.
Then it hit him.
What did he enjoy most? More than anything else?
The answer was obvious:
Murder and mayhem!
At least the virtual kind—he could play Soulslayer Online for hours on end. His 99th level Warmongrel Assassin with Sinister Gaze Visor and +8 Doomreaver Blade of Woe was not only ranked among the top ten players worldwide, but was also a High Arch-Captain of the Nightchillers Guild. Why not apply those finely-honed killing skills to the real world? Insane killer was the perfect job. Make your own hours, answer to no one, get your name in the paper.
As for going insane—how hard could that be? It was just a matter of wanting it badly enough.
Of course, there were also certain necessary preparations to be made.
All the best psychotic killers had a gimmick, a theme, a creepy nickname. Or at least a mask of some sort. He knew this from watching his slasher movie DVDs over and over and over.
His first thought, with Halloween so near, was a seasonal theme. He didn’t want to go with an obvious and boring accessory like a goalie mask, so he tried carving himself a jack-o’-lantern helmet. He would become the Pumpkin Killer, and use a pumpkin carving knife to carve up his victims. That, he figured, was plenty creepy.
The first step was buying a pumpkin big enough to fit around his head. But once he got it all scooped out and carved and fitted, he discovered that the heavy gourd hurt his neck. Also the pumpkin tended to slide around so that the eye holes were somewhere near his ear. Even when it was on straight, his peripheral vision was almost nil. He kept bumping into things. Like the wall. Plus the pumpkin helmet smelled like—well, like the inside of a pumpkin. It would get rank after a while, and attract those annoying little fruit flies.
Maybe Pumpkin Killer wasn’t the way to go.
In fact, on further reflection, the seasonal theme was a bit limiting anyway. A pumpkin was well and good for October, but what was he supposed to do in, say, February? Valentine’s Day and you’re the Pumpkin Killer?
Even senseless killings had to make some sense.
And what about the summer? Senseless murder was a year round calling. Who wants a big, sweaty pumpkin on your head in July?
Becoming the Hatchet Man was much more practical. The name already had an unpleasant connotation and it indicated right up front what you were about.
Like that urban legend guy.
The Hook.
He killed people with a hook.
Easy. Effective. Scary as heck.
Sometimes simple was best.
Hatchet Man. Yeah.
What he figured he would do with his victims, once he found one, was cut off their heads. You could cut off other parts, sure, but nothing screamed deranged killer like cutting off heads. And the best sort of heads to cut off—based again on the movies—were those of teenagers, the stupider the better, and preferably at a summer camp or some other isolated location. But failing that—and it was October, so the summer camp thing was out and he was highly allergic to poison ivy anyway—failing that, college students would do. The Hatchet Man was on his way to Avesley Hall, the girls’ dormitory on the quad.
He figured he could get in through the fire escape door. It was supposed to be locked from the outside, but residents usually left it propped open for more convenient entry to the building. Now their carelessness would get someone killed.
At least it would if everything went well.
The Hatchet Man crossed the darkened quad, darting from tree to tree between lightning flashes. Except a couple of times when his feet got stuck in the mud and he couldn’t move quickly enough to reach cover before the next stroke of electricity lit up the sky. But no one seemed to notice him. He reached the side of Avesley undetected.
He paused to consider his next move. His first victim should be a blonde. He knew that. A well endowed blonde co-ed wearing a flimsy nightie, like in the movies
Preferably a psych or education major.
He tightened the grip on his hatchet excitedly. His palms were sweaty inside his leather gloves. His pulse pounded in his temples. And his nose was cold. This was it. The first blonde he came across—whack!