Scott Wittenburg - The May Day Murders

Stanley breathed a long sigh before removing the telescope from the tripod. He now had his plan solidly formulated in his mind and tomorrow he would carry it out.

He retracted the legs of the tripod and stashed away the telescope with a smug grin on his face. He loved the feeling of exhilaration he was experiencing right this moment-that adrenalin-induced high he always felt just before the completion of a mission. By this time tomorrow, he will have succeeded in accomplishing what he had set out to do and be on his way back home.

Did he really want to give all of this up and retire? he wondered. It was all so challenging, so gratifying. Would he truly be happy settling down with a wife and family? Maybe he would only semi-retire, on second thought. She would be able to understand that he was absolutely driven to go out on these missions and how important they were to him, wouldn’t she?

His heart suddenly sank for a moment as it dawned on him that there would no longer be the motivation that had been driving him all along once he settled down. He will have completed his master plan and no longer feel the compulsion to murder again…

Or would he?

Stanley had read somewhere that murder was just like an addictive drug and he was beginning to see what they meant by that. The experience felt so awesome and the high was better than any of the acid he’d dropped in college. And what better way was there to get a point across to some fucking slut than putting a sudden end to her existence? To relieve the world of yet another ungrateful bitch that thought she was so above everyone that her shit didn’t stink? They needed to be taught a lesson, by God! And who better to teach them that lesson than Stanley Jenkins, who had been shit upon his whole goddamn life?

His teeth were now clenched in total extreme rage and Stanley realized that he had just smashed his fist into the concrete wall. He brought his bloodied hand to his mouth and licked at the blood on his knuckles, savoring the salty iron aftertaste. He smiled to himself as he recalled what the shrinks had kept telling him while he was in the nuthouse: “You have got to get a handle on that temper of yours, Stanley, or someone besides yourself might get hurt someday.” He had always hated the way the doctor and entire staff seemed to be talking down to him, as if he were some kind of sick person or total moron. Like, did they really think that he wasn’t already quite aware of his temper? Or that he didn’t know exactly why he had been committed to the institution in the first place? They of course thought he was nuts, but Stanley knew better. He had been sent to the institution because he’d fucked up and that was basically the whole ball of wax. There wasn’t any more to it.

Stanley had played their game though, only because he knew that he’d be in there forever if he couldn’t prove to them that he was “safe to return to society.” It had been a breeze, actually, because he had known just the right things to do and say to the shrinks to win them over and eventually convince them that they weren’t dealing with some lunatic asshole here, but a perfectly sane and intelligent young man who had fooled around and gotten himself just a little too stoned one night at college then pulled a little harmless prank on someone.

He soon realized that the only reason they had kept him in as long as they had was because they had grown fond of him and didn’t want to let him go. Especially that faggot, Doctor Flagg. Christ, were his consultations ever a humdrum! The way he would always try to psychoanalyze him with all that Freudian bullshit about mother-son relationships, latent homosexuality tendencies, insecurity and lack of self-respect. It was all x-amount of bullshit and the good doctor knew it, too. But finally the doctor’s true colors started to show and the game suddenly took on an entirely new twist. Hell, if Stanley had known that all he had to do was let the doctor give him an occasional blowjob, he would have been out of that hellhole one fuck of a lot sooner!

But that was then, and this is now, Stanley thought. No sense in crying over spilt milk, ha-ha.

In retrospect, it was probably to his advantage to have been locked up in the nuthouse as long as he’d been. It had given him plenty of time to read, research and figure out what he was going to do with himself once he was released. Had he gotten out sooner, he probably would have done something rash, with his temper and all, and ended up getting thrown right back in there.

But instead, he’d hung tight and devised his master plan. And when he finally had gotten released on that glorious May morning, he knew that he had the added plus of his father’s life insurance settlement to help make his plans materialize.

Rest in peace, Pop-you wimpy little son of a bitch!

Stanley glanced over at Sara Hunt’s faintly lit window and felt a renewed surge of excitement. He was really going to enjoy making her pay for what she had done. By the time he was through with her she was indeed going to wish that she’d never shit upon Stanley Jenkins all those years ago. And unlike Cindy Fuller, Sara was gong to suffer some before he did her in. He’d knock her around a bit, make her feel some real pain in her fucked up life before she bought the farm. After all, that bitch had purposely screwed over Stanley Jenkins. Hell, it was not only premeditated but down right cold-blooded what she had done to him! Cindy Fuller had been an innocent casualty, in a sense; and for that reason Stanley had gone easy on her.

But Sara was an entirely different case. And this time the whole world was going to know who brought her to justice. No covering his tracks as he’d done with Cindy. The whole fucking world was going to learn that you don’t fuck around with Stanley Jenkins and get away with it. And finally, after all these years, he would get the respect that he by God deserved! These gorgeous two-faced sluts weren’t going to push Stanley Jenkins around anymore!

He glimpsed at the luminous dial on his wristwatch. It was 11:40. Time to split. He wanted to get a good night’s sleep for the big day tomorrow.

He went over his plans one more time in his head. He would get up early tomorrow morning-no later than 6:30-eat a light breakfast before taking his shower. Then he’d get dressed: white polo shirt, gray sport jacket, faded blue jeans and a pair of loafers. Then he’d pack up his belongings, leave his hotel key on the dresser, then take the stairs down to the lobby and slink out of the hotel.

He would take a cab over to Penn Station and place all his belongings into the locker he’d rented except for the clipboard and Rolling Stones CD he’d just purchased. Then he’d hail another cab to Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village and get out a few blocks from the coffee shop where Sara worked. It would be around 8:00 by then and much of the breakfast crowd will have already cleared out.

He would enter the coffee shop and sit down at one of Sara’s tables. When she came over to take his order she would notice the Stones CD laying there on the table as well as the clipboard with the made up script he’d created, which he would be pretending to read.

Sara’s interest would of course be aroused when she spotted the Stones CD, not just because the Stones were her favorite rock and roll band in the world but also because she didn’t own this particular CD. It was an extremely rare bootleg copy of a concert they’d played at the Fillmore East back in 1966 (which he had been able to procure with the help of the internet and a few hundred bucks). It was something that Sara Hunt no doubt would die for and if luck was on his side, she would promptly initiate the conversation while salivating over this rarity: “My god! I don’t believe it! I’ve been trying to find that recording for years!”