Layne Damaged .chapter 1.

Chapter 1

I had been planning this trip for years. Six years, to be exact. Research, studying, practicing my methods, collecting extra money and hiding it in cash in my jewelry box, finally getting my drivers license by age eighteen. That took for fucking ever. And there I was, a week before the trip, about to go into a completely different kind of trip.

“Cough syrup… like legal acid,” John said, opening his bottle of purple.

“Cough syrup,” I argued, “like what I take when I’m sick.” 

I flipped my hair out of my face to take the first gross gulp of purple, liver-murdering shit. I thought for a moment about my hair and how recognizable it would make me; blonde hair with black streaks had been out of style for a while. Oh well, I thought. Braids, pony-tails, scarves, and a new lipstick with trucker hats are a girls’ best friend. Fuck diamonds.

“Shut up and finish the bottle, Layne,” he interrupted my contemplation. “I’m done with mine.” It was true. John sat with his back against the wall in the dark room we were in; his apartment was pretty empty, and he was pretty much addicted to cough syrup ever since his boyfriend cheated on him.

“Should I take him back?” he asked. I stretched and dropped my now empty bottle onto the floor near John’s. He removed his beanie from his jaw-length brown hair, perfectly straightened and highlighted. He tossed it against the wall. I felt itchy on the white, purple-stained carpet.

“Think about it on the road trip,” I replied. I couldn’t have my naïve accomplice back out on me to make up with his unfaithful boyfriend, and it would be good for John to be too contemplative and depressed on the trip to pay much attention to what I was going to be doing. “I’m thirsty. Do you have any whiskey?”

“I have a bottle of wine. Well, half of one.”

“Fucking wine?”

“Alcohol doesn’t help you if you’re thirsty anyway. You really want to be drunk and robo-tripping at the same time?”

 I thought for a quick moment.

“Half a bottle of wine won’t get me drunk. You’re already tripping if you think that. Have we met?”

 I stood up and walked the whole seven feet over to the refrigerator. I was beginning to feel tall. A half-empty bottle of red win looked at me from inside, and I gripped it around the neck, daring it to slip away from me. I sat next to John.

“I feel loopy,” he said, smacking his head against the wall. I downed the wine and gagged slightly.

“I feel ready,” I said, “for the road trip.”

“You have everything packed?”

“Just about. Just need to change my oil and rotate the tires.”

“I still need to pack…”

John spread out on the floor and so did I. R.E.M was playing loudly through the apartment. I felt insane from the cough syrup and made sure not to talk much; I just made short replies which took forever to escape my mouth whenever John asked what he should do about his boyfriend. He eventually grew quiet and began humming the songs. I daydreamed about the trip. Zigzagging across America in my dark green car with John. Eating at truck stops, sleeping in dirty hotels. I told my parents that I wanted to take a trip to California during the summer before starting college. They were surprisingly fine with it and what they didn’t know is that I wasn’t going anywhere near California on this trip. I wasn’t going to stay in one state for more than three days; that would be far too risky. They gave me an extra one-thousand dollars to go along with the several thousand they didn’t know I had saved up. After penny-pinching for two years and not buying a damn thing except a gun silencer, bullets, my nice knife collection, and liquor, I had just enough for this road trip.

I sighed loudly. I was going to be better than my idols. I would be so good they wouldn’t even be my idols anymore. Dahmer, Bundy, and Gacey were going to be rolling in their graves. My tactics would be better, my plan was more than sufficient, and, most of all, I wasn’t going to get caught. From my Louisiana home-town all the way up to the Canadian border, death would be striking, and striking, and striking until I ran out of venom or just got plain bored of it. And I doubted that would happen. If I get bored of that, well... there's not much left to alleviate it. 

“Layne, are you sure you’ve got enough money for this?” my dad asked. I was at home for once, instead of drifting around like I usually do, playing music, trying to score alcohol or whatever else I might find. Alcohol, I thought… that could cause problems with this whole mission.

“I’m pretty sure. I’ve been saving for a minute there.”

“Well, I put a few hundred extra dollars in your account just in case,” he said, putting his trucker hat over his less-than-full head of hair. “I know you’ll want to be getting souvenirs and all that.”

“Not much of a souvenir person, but thanks. Maybe I'll get a shot glass.” My dad shot me a wary glance.

 I wondered what kind of souvenirs I would be picking up from my victims… hair? Teeth? I’m thinking, pinky finger bone. I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring back shot glasses from every state I’d been to where someone happened to be murdered or missing.

Aside from the looking forward to fulfilling my plans, I was looking forward to being somewhere other than my town. Spending my whole life tied down to this humid hell hole was not the plan, and even though I’d be returning, a vacation was much needed. I was going to end up killing someone I knew if I didn’t get away. Getting this need out of my system before coming back home would be crucial. Going on a frenzy in a town where everyone knows who sneezes when wouldn’t work out to my benefit.

John had packed more normal things for the trip and I was putting his bags into my car while he sat on the curb in front of his apartment. We would be leaving in the morning.

“Man, you don’t even have stuff in your apartment. How do you have so many bags?” I asked. He sighed.

“I have to have things, you know… what are you taking?”

“Just clothes, really.” And weapons. And hats. And maps. An extra gas can.

“No drunk driving,” he said.

“Fine. You drive.”

“No! I will some but you have to drive too.”

“We’re taking a lot of back roads,” I said, looking at the main map, “because I hate the interstate.” And because there are more cops on the interstate.

“It’s going to take forever to get to Canada.”

“This isn’t all about Canada, it’s about the actual trip.”

I stayed at John’s apartment that night and he talked little about his romantic issues. This was a good thing for my blood pressure but I wondered if he was over it somehow. Probably not; John was very sensitive to his love issues, although not sensitive to much else. He never was the type to sit and cry over things, unless, of course, it was a boyfriend.

I barely slept which was annoying. I woke up suddenly when I thought I heard someone breaking in – I guess the trip was getting to me. John was asleep beside me. I ended up staring at the ceiling for several hours before I started falling back asleep and then the alarm startled me. Great, I thought, a long night of startling noises before I spend months driving around.

“Bro, wake up,” I said, shaking John. “The alarm is going off.” John opened his eyes slowly.

“No it’s not.” I looked at him like he was a retard and the alarm stopped. I looked at it. “It’s only three.”

“Well I must have set it too early.” I continued to stare at it. John rolled over onto the floor to face the wall.

“Well if you’re going to get up, remember to take your Xanax.”

I took my Xanax and stared into the mirror because as it seems, I have outburst of anger. I was going to run out of Xanax if I kept taking it several times a day – something John never saw me do. So I put it in my bag and tried to ignore it while I marked off hotels on the map. The first stop would be in Little Rock, Arkansas. John would hopefully still be distracted and wouldn’t be annoying me the whole time. I had wondered before if John had sensed I was a bit off – he never acted weirded out even if I slipped up and said something really strange. It was a good thing, because without sleep, I’d probably say several stupid things. I knew everyone was just like me except their interests were different. This is my knitting, art, my hammer and nail. It’s just illegal.

“Tell me again why we’re up at four?” John asked, walking slowly into the room. “My boyfriend is an asshole,” he said. He stared for a moment, looking me in the eyes with a strange glazed appearance.

“You don’t have a boyfriend. And I’ve been up all night. You’re up at four because we’re leaving at four,” I retorted.

“Okay. I’m going to need to go get coffee if you expect me to stay awake.”

“That’s fine. I probably need it too.”

We moved like sloths at the truck stop while making coffee. John was rather simple about his. I put white chocolate in mine and a ton of sweetener and whipped cream.

That’s more sugar than caffeine,” he said, watching me.

“No it’s a pretty equal amount. I’ll be way more hyper than you.”

“Because hyper driving is a good thing?” He brushed his hair aside. He was smiling a bit, which I hadn’t seen in days. Really must be over that boyfriend, I thought.

“Shut the fuck up, we need to go.”

With a full tank of gas and a lot of coffee, we left town. I felt like turning around and pointing at it and cussing it out when we crossed the parish line but I decided against it. I played really loud music instead. It was lucky that we had such similar taste in music or he would have had to walk home. I spaced out on the interstate, which was fairly empty. Whoa, I thought, I’m going to kill people all month.

“Layne...” I heard someone say. It sounded really distant. “Layne…” The sun was barely up. “Layne!”

“What!” I screamed. I had forgotten John was in the car.

“You’re going eighty!”

“Eighty wha… oh…” I was driving eighty miles an hour. I slowed down to sixty to appease John and to avoid cops.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he squealed.

“Lots of things. I was spaced out.”

“No spacing out and driving.”

“Okay, Mr. Take-Your-Xanax.”

I didn’t space out like that again for a while. We were about four hours away from Little Rock, and I was excited. When stopping at truck stops or going through parts of Louisiana and Arkansas towns I had never seen, I watched people. I wondered what I would say to lure them away if I were alone. I wondered how easy it would be to sneak into their cars which they left unlocked usually. I saw a million drop-spots, saw a million potentials. John was clueless. And in the way. He didn’t seem so upset about the boyfriend at all; he was excited about the trip and therefore distracted.

How the fuck do I make him fall asleep?

Layne