Wednesday 31 August 2022

Your Midweek Update for 08/31/22

How in the fuck is it already Wednesday. Time has been blurring together more than normal and it’s making me feel… anxious? Like, I’m losing hours and I’m not keeping track of the days and what if I’m missing something really important? What if I’m forgetting something that could change my life? The last few weeks have gone so quickly and I don’t really remember some of it and I’ve just been so tired lately.

My immediate thought is that I’ve been sleep walking – sleep murdering if we’re going to stay on brand – but James would have noticed something, right? He’s been working crazy hours and picking up other’s shifts to make up the extra income. Funerals are expensive. Didn’t know that before. I’m usually gone before the body is discovered (or too young to be expected to worry about such things) but now I know that the business of burying the dead is a lucrative one.

Maybe I could get a degree in mortuary science. Then it wouldn’t seem odd if I smell like death and end up covered in someone else’s fluids. That seems so cliched, though. The undertaker who creates work for herself. The next step up (or down?) would be taxidermy or something else involving formaldehyde but again, it will just make it more obvious.

My initial point is that James would have noticed if I’ve been leaving the house or walking around so I don’t know what’s been causing the exhaustion and that’s frustrating in and of itself.

I just want to go to bed and sleep for a hundred years. We’ll see how this week goes.

Sincerely,

Casey

Saturday 27 August 2022

Excerpt of Favorite Daughters by Laurel Osterkamp

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the FAVORITE DAUGHTERS by Laurel Osterkamp Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

Wednesday 24 August 2022

Your Midweek Update for 08/24/22

School starts next week and I don’t know the type of person I want to be. It’ll be my last year of high school and I just realized that my mom isn’t alive to see me graduate so that’s a fun thought spinning around in my head today. But it’ll be my last year and then I won’t have to see any of these people again. I won’t have to wear a mask for 8 hours a day while I learn about things that are genuinely interesting with people who are generally not.

I like learning – and not just because more knowledge affords me better ways to kill people. The world is insane and overwhelming and, especially right now, it’s terrifying. But when I learn something, I understand it, and when I understand it, it’s not scary anymore. The more I learn about the world and people the more in control I feel.

As much as I’m really looking forward to no more 8am calculus with Mrs. Fletcher (who tries way too hard to be relatable that it’s just cringey), I’m going to miss having something to focus on. It seems like graduation is ages away but I have a feeling this year is going to fly by.

On top of my general teenage woes, I’m also going to have to spend the year getting sympathetic looks from everyone. At least, if mom had died doing what she loved, I could have made up a lie about her running off so I wouldn’t have to stomach everyone’s “compassion”. Because she had to die like a pedestrian, I am going to have to spend the next ten months dodging people’s not-so-subtle glances and pretending to be heartbroken when most of the time, I’m just tired and angry.

Maybe that’s what heartbreak feels like.

I’m going to have to see the councilor. James assured social services that hey would be taking me to see a therapist and then we went to see Bullet Train which was so much better than therapy. I don’t want to talk about my feelings. I don’t want to think about my feelings, I don’t want to feel my feelings. I wouldn’t even know how without talking about the murder stuff and apparently murder is frowned upon in civilized society.

I just want to get to the part when I can start the next chapter of my life. Whatever that is. I wish I had a vision of my life. Even just a glimpse of myself a year from now would be preferable.

I’m tired and I’m angry and I don’t understand why I don’t have the answers.

I kidnapped someone on Sunday. I didn’t kill them – which is new for me. I have them chained up in the basement. James had to help fix some of the soundproofing that had come off the windows. They’re just down there, waiting for me. I make sure they have food and water and I clean up after them a few times a day. It’s like having a pet. Except I can kick this pet, and punch this pet, and strangle this pet within an inch of its life. I can stab them and smother them and clean their wounds when they get infected. I can make them bleed. And for a little moment, I feel better knowing there is someone in the world who feels my pain.

I don’t know how long I’m going to keep them. Maybe until I feel better? I think that could take a while. In the meantime, I have this plaything that distracts me from all the things I’m starting to dread.

It’s not enough. But it’s enough for now.

Sincerely,

Casey

Wednesday 17 August 2022

Your Midweek Update for 08/17/22

It should come as no surprise to anyone that murder has been a comfort to me in the weeks since mom died. I’ve gone out hunting about three times a week. I don’t even necessarily have to kill them. I do. I’m really not into the catch and release. But my point is: it’s not about them.

The victims.

Yes, I tend to look for older white men because punching up is always preferable and slightly confuses my karmic balance. I also don’t tend to stalk or get to know my victims before I go in with a pen to their eyeball – that was so messy! I don’t care who they are, just that I’m in the mood to kill and they’re very killable.

I think, for me, it’s a bit about control. Being able to determine someone’s death (the what, where, when, why, and how of it all), it makes me feel calm. Like, everything might be falling apart and I’m being sent to another foster home, that bitch at school outs my friend, or the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mom dies in a random car accident, but only I get to decide how and when the old lady at the co-op will choke on the bleach I put in her tea.

No one else gets to decide how their life ends but me.

I don’t really know what to do with my life.

I’ve been reading old entries and doing way too much math and it’s just made me feel… lost. In a few months, I’ll be the same age as Sandra when she died. At my age, Jason was in the process of escaping “the family curse”, and mom had committed her first murder. I have more than a few kills under my belt but I don’t have the support system she had, or the future Jason had, or the past Sandra had. I’m graduating in June and I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do after that.

All I’ve ever been focused on is death and I can’t exactly make a career out of it. I’m not as closed-off to the idea of assassination as mom was. I would not mind make a few thousand dollars to do something I already do. What’s that old saying: do what you love and the money will follow.

Even if I did go into the incredibly lucrative business of murder for hire, I still need a cover job. I need skills and knowledge that help me blend in to society. And despite all the shit I’ve been through, I feel like I know absolutely nothing about how the world works. I can throw a kitchen knife and have it land in a man’s jaw from 50 feet away. I know the exact blend of ethylene glycol and soda that makes the poison undetectable.

Neither of which I can put on my resume when applying for college. Not that I’m sure I want to attend college. I just don’t know what I want to do. And why, the fuck, do I have to figure it out now?

I’m seventeen-fucking-years-old. Why do I have to have my entire life mapped out? It’s not fair.

Nothing that ever happens in fair.

That’s why there’s people like me in the world. For every bad person and bad thing that happens, someone else gets to smile. I just kind of wish I got some of that happiness, too.

Sincerely,

Casey

Wednesday 10 August 2022

Your Midweek Update for 08/10/22

When I was in juvenile detention, I had one really good friend: Zainab. She was really loud and kind of pushy but she always looked out for me and he bonded over our love of Shawn Mendes. I never had to hide myself from her. She understood why I killed my foster father, and I understood why she robbed a supermarket afterhours using her shitty older brother’s manager keys. I found a kindred spirit in the most unlikely of places. A few months into my stay there, I wanted to do something nice for her. But it turned out to be one of the worst things I’ve ever done.

I gave Zainab one of my shivs. And I taught her how to use it. I taught her how to find the floating ribs and dig into the fleshy part, I taught her to never go straight for the heart because you’re more likely to hit breastbone. I taught her that cutting off their means to cry or flee was more important than surprising them. I taught her how to defend herself and live her life.

Well one day, a fight broke out in the yard and a guard got hurt.

I say “he got hurt” but he actually tripped and scratched his cheek on the wall. But the administration was out for blood and some people got brought in for questioning. They took Zainab – even though she wasn’t anywhere near the fight – and while they were questioning her, they searched her bunk and found her shiv.

She got blamed for “attacking” a guard and sent her to a “proper” institution. She got sent to a women’s prison down south even though she wasn’t legally an adult and she didn’t do what they thought she did. But she was a threat and a problem they didn’t want to deal with so they just threw her away. My only real friend in that place.

I stabbed that guard less than a year later and I made my escape. But I never saw Zainab again.

And then yesterday, I see her face on a wanted poster in the post office, saying she’d escaped from holding and was wanted for the assault of three officers on top of her original crime. I couldn’t believe it.

I didn’t actually realize that people still put wanted posters up. I thought that only happened in movies from the 50s. And before you ask: I was buying packing tape for mom’s boxes – that’s why I (a Gen Z) was in a post office.

But there was my friend posted up there for the world to see. It said she’d run about two years ago but had recently been spotted in the area. I’m still just kind of stuck on the idea that I could possibly see my friend again and I can’t stop smiling. I screwed her over so badly when we were kids and I just want to make it up to her. Even if she hates me or tries to kill me, I just want a chance to apologize.

I could really use a friend right now.

So Zainab, I have no idea where you are but I really hope I find you first.

Sincerely,

Casey

Tuesday 9 August 2022

Excerpt of The Seven Hungers by Morgan Quaid

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the THE SEVEN HUNGERS by Morgan Quaid Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

Wednesday 3 August 2022

Your Midweek Update for 08/03/22

I was thinking about this today so I thought I would share it with y’all. I love killing men. Obviously, I love killing everyone but I especially love slaughtering middle-aged men. It’s something I don’t think my mom really understood. She was much more indiscriminate with her kills because it wasn’t about making a conscious effort, it was about the physical and emotional release that comes with wringing someone’s neck until their skin turns blue. I still really like that part but I do make some small effort to target men.

In addition to the high you get from murder, there’s also a bit of a release that comes from disrupting the power dynamic. The one advantage to being a female serial killer is that people – especially men – disregard your presence. If they don’t think of you as a threat, they will let their guard down. But despite some people’s thinking: I am not committing murder 24/7. It’s actually only 3-4 hours a week. So the remaining 164 hours of my week are still spent being disregarded and treated as lesser. And with laws being written and overturned all the time (both here and abroad), it doesn’t look as though it’s going to get any better.

When I feel the urge to hunt for a victim, I actively seek out those who are in a position of power or authority. It’s one small thing I can do to bring a little balance to the world. Plus their shocked face is so much more satisfying.

I’m not trying to make a political statement or anything but also… I am?

Everything we do is a political statement, isn’t it? Just by existing, there are lawmakers who would see us punished – I’m talking about women, not killers (though some lawmakers are also against what I do on the side) – and everything from our identity to our clothes and our jobs has been fought for and won. So yes, even casual murder is a political statement and I want to treat it as such.

That doesn’t mean I won’t stab a Karen in the neck with her own pruning sheers if she tells me to turn my music down on the bus. But those are for my happiness and not the betterment of our society – well, it’s a little of both.

The point is: I want to be more deliberate in my choices because they don’t just affect me. Whether or not I like it, I am out here representing all of womankind as a female serial killer in a traditionally male position. The least I can do is use my abilities to make the world a slightly better place.

By clipping a CEO in the Achilles Heel with a scalpel I stole last time I was at the hospital.

As always, dear readers,

I’m still looking for a catch phrase