John Doe

This story is by Raven Major and was part of our 2018 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Hello there,

So I guess if you are reading this then you have already found the body. I’m sure you have a lot of questions right about now. How could I do this? What could you have done to prevent it?

To be honest, I don’t think anyone could have ever seen this coming. There were no signs. No hidden clues in my body language or my speech. I was never depressed. Nor did I act overly happy to compensate for what I was feeling on the inside. None of that textbook nonsense.

I certainly didn’t suffer from a bad childhood. I wasn’t bullied by my classmates or abused by my parents. In fact, my fondest moments are from my childhood. The long summer days spent with my dad fishing on the lake. Or the winters going ice-skating with my mother and younger siblings. We would always make hot chocolate afterwards. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the warmth of that hot chocolate making its way down my throat and settling into my stomach like a warm blanket of childhood bliss. No, my childhood wasn’t bad at all.

Although, if I am to be completely honest with you. I did have thoughts about this as a child. Sometimes I just wondered what it would be like. How it would feel to go through with it and what would happen afterwards? But I could never bring myself to actually do it. I was too young, I needed time to mentally prepare myself for the task ahead.

The thoughts stayed during college. But even so, college was a breeze. I graduated magna cum laude with an MBA from a very prestigious university. So of course finding a high paying job in the cooperate world was a piece of cake. Shortly after getting that job, I met the love of my life and got married.

My wife! I suppose she will end up reading this once you eventually identify who I am. Hi Ashley, I hope I haven’t left you in too much of a state. Do be a good girl and tell the police and media what a wonderful husband I was.

I mean, I really am the perfect husband. Not only do I work every day so that Ashley can stay at home and do whatever she wants, but I also cook every night when I get home from work. Ash never has to lift a finger in the house either. I hired a maid to clean the house twice a week.

Now, I haven’t told you all this just to brag about my perfect life. I have told you this so you know what to write in your reports. None of that mess about how maybe if I was loved more or treated better, this could have all been prevented. Or something about my “mental health”. I assure you, my mental health is just fine. A little different than yours perhaps, but just fine nevertheless.

So now that I have addressed the why, I suppose I should address the how. Although, I imagine you have figured out most of it by now anyways. Or at least I should hope so. You are supposed to be Malibu’s finest right?

Like I said, I have had the inkling since childhood. To decide the exact moment when to end a life is very powerful feeling. Wouldn’t you agree? But I still kept thinking about the consequences. What would my wife think? My parents? My sisters? What would their families think? Would they be able to carry on with their lives normally afterwards? At first this stopped me from taking my thoughts any further. But then I decided that they would indeed move on with their lives. All of them. Eventually. I mean people die all the time right? Yet the earth keeps on spinning and the sun still rises.

In the end, I decided to move forward with my grand plan. Like I said, my life is perfect. But to be honest, it is also very boring. And I must say, I had grown awfully tired of this boring life. I couldn’t just sit around being the perfect son, the perfect husband, and the perfect employee anymore. This just wasn’t a life I wanted to live anymore.

My next step was to decide how to do it. A simple gunshot would be the easiest course of action. But would it be as fun as a knife to the wrists? Poison was also an option. It would work slowly and I could watch as death takes his time on collecting the soul. But poison would also be painful, and pain isn’t really what I wanted. No, I just wanted to feel the power. After much debate, I settled on the knife. It would be fast, like a gun, yet powerful. Just thinking of how a knife slices through the skin like butter makes me smile.

Once I had my plan and my knife, I looked at myself in the mirror and gave myself a pep talk. “You can do this.” I told myself as I stared at my greenish yellow eyes in the mirror. Looking closer at those eyes, I could see that there was no fear in them, only excitement. What was I doing? I didn’t need a pep talk; I was born for this. I grabbed my keys and went out to my car.

I drove around for 3 hours talking to myself. Formulating a plan that would be fool proof. Eventually I pulled into a quiet little neighborhood and picked a house that I thought felt right. I suppose by now you know that it was Mr. Guthrie’s house. He really was a nice gentleman. Letting me into his house to use the phone. I don’t believe he ever suspected a thing. As he walked towards the kitchen to show me where the phone was, I crept behind him and ever so professionally reached my arm in front of him and quickly slid my knife across his neck. It was glorious.

Anyways, you know what happened after that. Even I have seen some of the leaked crime scene photos on the internet. Those photos do no justice to the beauty of what I created. A man who up until that point had been living and carrying on with other souls. I changed the very course of human history when I took his life. Someone else will buy that house and live a completely different life than him in there. His family can no longer call to check on him or stop by to visit. Eventually they will stop talking about him all together. I did that. I have that power. Now my life has meaning.

I have also seen online where you suspect a few of the other killings in the area to be by the same man. You would be correct of course. After killing Mr. Guthrie, something opened up inside of me. I knew that this was my calling in life. I had the power to choose who lived and who died. I have changed so many more lives than you can even begin to imagine. My will shall be done.

No, you haven’t even come close to finding all the bodies yet. But I’m sure you will find them eventually. But that isn’t why I have written you this letter. I have written to you to ask you a favor of sorts. Now that you understand a little more of who I am and how I operate, perhaps you could speak to those friends of yours in the media? I have seen the name that they have given me. The Malibu Monster. I am sure you can see now that I am no monster. I am just a simple man who has set out to fulfill my destiny. I am doing what I was born to do. Could you let them know? That I am not a monster?

Please tell them that I am just a normal guy, who has a nice car, a nice house, and a loving wife. The perfect guy living the perfect life. You wouldn’t even know who I was if you were to pass me on the streets.

Be sure to say hi when you do.

Yours truly,

The man next door