Before she could respond, a tidal wave of voices poured out of the opening doors of the church beside us. The shadow of the heavy oak briefly obscured us from view, but soon, the congregation had spread out on the front lawn far enough for them to see us.
Instantly, a low murmur moved through the crowd.
Brenda and I remained close, almost like lovers, but the pastel-clad devotees knew better than that.
Suddenly, a half-moon of men in suits and ties surrounded us. It would have made me laugh under different circumstances. I was so used to men in leather cuts defending me—burly alphas with weapons worn all over their huge bodies that were weapons in and of themselves. It was both heartwarming and faintly ridiculous to see these pious, good Christians threaten someone now because they thought I was in danger.
It just proved heroes came in all shapes and sizes.
“Everything okay, Beatrice?” Seth asked politely, but there was an undertow to his tone that threatened to drown.
A spark of interest shimmered through me at that. Seth had always seemed so perfectly dull before now.
“Fine,” I reassured with a broad smile, taking a cheerful step away from Brenda that bounced the curls around my head. “Mrs. Walsh was just inquiring about our church.”
“Ah.” Grandpa appeared just outside the doors of First Light, as unruffled and regal as ever in his cassock. “Well, God’s heart is always open to those who are willing to repent their sins.”
Brenda blinked at him as if she’d never seen a pastor before, then turned to me. “Remember what I said. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to these good people.”
Around me, my community shifted restlessly, the sound like ruffling feathers.
“I learned a long time ago bad things happen to everyone,” I told her as she slowly began to walk away, still facing me. “This time, I think I’ll make certain they happen to the right one.”
Bea
“This is why the Barbie & Ken serial killers are two of the most interesting cases,” I said into the microphone, my voice slightly dry after speaking for almost thirty minutes straight. “They highlight our societal blind spot. They were young, gorgeous, and seemingly head over heels in love with each other. Why would they resort to violence?”
I paused to let my words sink in, and Eric gave me a thumbs-up as he adjusted the sound slightly from his place behind the partition sitting at the soundboard.
“The thing we all need to understand is that for many psychopaths, violence is not a last resort. We need to rewire our thinking so it’s more along the lines of theirs. To a serial killer or a clinical psychopath, violence isn’t something they are forced to do because of unfortunate circumstances acting against them. By their very nature, psychopaths don’t tune into society’s frequency. Their environment does not act on them the way it would you or me. For example, it’s been proven that humans can smell fear in sweat. If you entered a room full of scared people, quickly, without even knowing why, you would become affected by it too. The exception to this rule is––no surprise––psychopaths. For whatever reason, they remain unaffected as they do from so many other examples of social pressure or influence.
“Understanding that, you know that violence is not a reaction, it’s an impulse. The need for it is always there in the hardwiring of their brain. While not all psychopaths are violent, because there is a spectrum as in most things in modern psychology, the ones who are feel possessed by it. They only need an opportunity, an opening, to let that instinct take over.”
I sat back in my chair and rolled my head on my neck to loosen the tension from sitting for too long in one position. Long ago, I’d kicked off my Converse, shed my fuzzy white cardigan and tied my hair up in the pink ribbon I always wore tied to my wrist. My eyes snagged on the poster on the wall to the right of the door. It was a photo of me dressed in a pink A-line mini dress with the same bow holding back the top of my blond curls. I had a finger to my lips, fake blood at their edges, and a poorly concealed knife behind my back. Across it all read “Little Miss Murder”.
It still astonished me that I had my own podcast not least of all because it was actually starting to become incredibly popular. I’d initially worked out of the UBC sound room, but after season one did so well, Eric and I rented space above Honey Bear Café in Entrance and converted it to a studio. We were sponsored and had the money to kit it fabulously in pinks, whites, and vintage horror movie posters.
It was my home away from home. My happy place where the dark and light inside me unified as beautifully as the yin and yang.