Face to Face with a Killer

My eyes widen as my whole world shifts, trying to take in this new revelation. Geoff the Killer. Is standing. RIGHT. IN. FRONT. OF. ME.

"Oh My God!" I squeak as I practically fall over, and like any great horror movie heroine I drop the flashlight and my only source of light to the leafy ground. The light sputters momentarily and then dies after hitting the ground and I am engulfed in the complete and utter darkness.

I hear a hoarse chuckle coming from all around me, as if he could project his voice like a surround sound speaker.

My heart is racing in my chest, my breath coming out in shallow gasps. I can feel my hands shaking as I fall to my knees searching the forest floor trying to find my flashlight.

My mind is racing, trying to spin around and understand the strange thing that just happened. My whole world is shifting to accommodate for my new revelation. My unexpected revelation. My horrifying revelation.

"They aren't real" My voice shakes violently as I tell myself this false statement, slowly, under my breath.

Shaking my head, trying to get the fear out of my body. "You are simply hallucinating." I add to myself in a mutter.

"What are you hallucinating about?" A stone cold, emotionless voice asks me, tearing the silent darkness apart.

"Oh god, Oh god, Oh god." I repeat to myself, giving up on finding the flashlight as I back up in the crab walk while my whole body trembles. It was real. He is fucking here. IN FRONT OF ME!

My back slams into a tree trunk and my whole body jolts straight up, he's going to kill me and I have nowhere to go! All of a sudden I see the metallic flash of my flashlight right in front of me. At eye level.

I flinch back, momentarily confused, but then I hear the stone cold voice coming again from just in front of me.

"Are you looking for this?" All I do in the face of this question is nod, my eyes widening even further. I would be scared that they might pop right out of my head if I wasn’t more petrified for my life right now.

The pale, white hand drops my flashlight right in front of my knees then retreats. I grab for it and click it to see if it even still works. Luckily it does and it pops on, flickering for a few moments before resting into a steady beam. Of course, the beam rests on the very being that made me drop my flashlight in the first place.

I gulp, and clear my throat.

"You're here to k-ki-kill me?" I stutter over the word kill, my strong-ish facade not even forming as my voice sounds high pitched and terrified in my own ears.

"Funny enough, no, I am not. Not yet at least." He says, a wicked grin spreading across his ripped face.

"Th-then what do you want with me?" I ask boldly, knowing that, that may very well be the last question I ever ask anyone in my lifetime.

But instead of a spoken response he just reaches behind him and pulls a small backpack that I hadn’t noticed before from his back, throwing it down in front of me.

I glance at the bag, then back to him, then my gaze lands on the bag again.

"What's this?" I ask him, curiosity compelling me more than my fear, at least for now.

"Find out for yourself." He tells me dismissively, waving his one hand towards the bag. So, I slowly move my hands towards the zipper and open the bag, praying that some sort of dangerous predator wont jump out and eat my face off.

What I find though might be even scarier.

The first thing I pull from the bag is a hardcover book. None other than my first book I ever got published.

"What? Why do you have ‘Before Midnight’ in this bag?" I demand, my voice still shaky but stronger now. From the killer in front of me; however, all I get is an extra wide grin and a raise of his one eyebrow. As if daring me to keep looking.

Of course, I am stupid and I take his dare, I keep looking. I find my three other published novels, plus my collaborative novel and my short story compendium, and then the next thing I pull out chills me to my very core.

It's a printout of a list of my books I've written on my wattpad and AO3 accounts from when I was a teenager. My profiles are shoved in my face. I finally see a list with all of my stories, all crossed off in red ink, and I look back in the bag.

My stories have all been printed out and bound together. I don’t even begin to comprehend how and why he did this. This bag contains every one of my literary works for my entire life. Every last one.

A deep horror sinks into my gut.

"What the hell are you doing with all of this!?! What the fuck is going on!?!" I rasp a little hysterically at the killer in front of me, the fear I had worked so hard to hide coming back full throttle. My heart pounds in my ears, and I wonder if I’ll even be able to hear this guy's answer when he does respond.

That thought is quickly done away with when he steps closer to me, his harsh and cold voice dripping venom with every word.

"Well you see, Miss Jaden Rayne. Me and my, uh, kinsmen, have been tracking you since we saw your interview for your book ‘Believers’ a few years ago. We realized just how many fans you have, and how many lives you can touch with each of your books and we also realized something else too..." He tells me slowly, as if I was simply a young kindergartner and not a well known author. Leaving his sentence open ended, as if wanting me to inquire as to what he is hinting at.

I don't want to give in to his strange game, I don't want to know that he and others like him are actually out there. I loved living my life in the dark and not like this. I loved scaring myself with horror movies and stories and then going on about my day being able to comfortably believe that they do not exist. I cannot simply live in fear that they will come for me. And the fact that they have been watching me, watching my every move, for years even, that isn't very reassuring.

My next revelation turns my blood to ice. I have nowhere to run. They'll find me wherever I go, rain or shine and it doesn't matter what I do. If I don't play their game I may very well be their next target, but if I do play their game what does that make me? Will I also be targeted after they have their fun? Play with my mind until it cracks and then kill me for their amusement.

"Would you like to know what we realized?" He asks me as he steps one more pace closer, his knife gleaming even brighter as his smile grows wider, even more evil.

I realise that I may not have a choice in playing this game. Maybe I could have prevented it before now, somehow. But now that I am sitting here in the dirt in front of something only hours ago that I thought was a very creative figment of someone's imagination. Something psychotic and murderous, I finally understand that to truly beat the killer, you have to think like them. You have to be calm, cool and collected and you have to play their game until you can flip the table in favour of yourself.

But I am anything but calm, cool, and collected, in the face of my altering reality.

So I open my mouth and utter the phrase that this psychotic killer wants to hear.

"What did you realize?"