7 Steps in Becoming a Serial Killer

Step 1) Deliberately have no contact with any formal parents whether on the mom’s side or the father’s. As a child, hold pent up anger and blame the world for your misfortune. If you’re in a foster home, yell at your caretakers that they’re not your real parents.

Step 2) With all the time in the world, lay your curiosity on dead animals. Handle their corpses. If you can withstand the guts and gore, inspect the insides further by slicing through the belly of the creature and caring for it. It can be a squirrel, a rabbit, a possum, a cat, or a dog—it doesn’t matter. In the end, taking the head as a souvenir can be cathartic for your morbid fascination.

Step 3) Watch humans interacting daily. Watch from park benches, café seats, or bus stops. Imagine carving the skin of these people like a pumpkin on All Hallows’ Eve. Picture their blood drying on wallpaper, splotching on your clothes, their listless eyes turned up to show first snow.

Step 4) Create an alter-ego. Fantasize you are the most important person amongst a thousand of your body guards. You are the leader of forty legions of phantoms who shadow you around. You are worth something, no matter what anybody else says. You are one of a kind—and those others are nothing but a fleck of mote circling around your stratosphere.

Step 5) Remember: practice small and expand your horizon. By killing humans, you are doing them a favor. They’ve always wanted to die, you see. Their meaningless, drab life of waking up, going to work, returning home to rinse and repeat, straddling the night air like a tailcoat wanting to end, only to discover their cure for their ailments hides back in a clock on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday that comes along all too slowly. It’s the same as your never-ending torment that winds itself up and ticks toward its bottomless chasm.

Step 6) Select your victim. Follow her to her car. Appear lost; befuddled, pretend you are not of the area. Approach her slowly, smiling. Explain you need cash since your car is broken down at an intersection and is out of gas. You need a lift. Her hair maybe auburn, black, brunette, or blonde. Whatever the case, she steps back, hesitant. You notice her skin under the light, soft and supple. She denies your request. She runs, but before she can get any farther down the street yelling for help, you yank her hair and pull her back as she screams. You clamp a hand over her mouth. You muffle her, of course, to prevent drawing attention. Count the seconds. Slide the knife across the throat without puncturing and feel the pulse throb in her neck, oh how rapidly, begging to live. You pull her in; throw her in the vehicle, as you drive, the sharp instrument gleaming out in the open. She’ll cower and weep for her children, but do not be swayed. She’ll yammer on about her family history and how she must live, please don’t hurt her. Please don’t—I won’t tell anyone who you are. I swear, I swear to God. Assure her you’ll let her live if she complies. And she will—they always do.

Step 7) Make it quick. Hear how the heart beats so wildly. When you are finished, feel the life seep out of her slowly with glazed eyes. The face stiffening from rigor mortis, the stench of blood tickles your nostrils. Do you as you please with the body, because dead is dead. No one will find about your depraved acts until your next victim. You are God. Let them promise you. Let them swear. Eventually, detectives will come knocking and ask you questions. News reporters’ bulbs flash in your face as you are taken into the station. A movie is scripted in your name, inspired by you. In court hearing, a jury decides your fate. You plea insanity, but you know the truth: you can be sentenced for a lesser charge if you reveal the bodies of the rest of the corpses, which you should, even though some of them have passed through your stomach. You can lie about how many you’ve killed—stretch the truth—or never reveal where they were buried. But do not tell them about the phantoms or the voices or even I. You will become a legend.

Before the electric chair calls for you, I must congratulate you:

You are officially a serial killer.