How To Catch a Serial Killer -- First pages, Intro to Antagonist, Primary Conflict, & Themes at Play

Thursday, February 9^th, 2023

6:12pm

            “Who are you? What are you doing?”

            Gabby’s voice breaks as that last word comes out. A large figure has just emerged from behind her car, parked some ten yards from where she’s currently standing frozen in her tracks. It’s past sunset and it’s impossible to make out who this person could be.

            But they don’t answer Gabby’s questions. The figure, which Gabby can now see is a man, is striding toward her. He’s wearing a baseball cap tugged low on his forehead and a black hoodie pulled over his head. Whatever he wants, it can’t be good.

            Gabby fumbles in her pocket for her keys, looking for the pepper spray that’s attached to her lanyard— something she never thought she’d have to seriously use.

It’s just her and this man in the gravel parking lot. Behind her is the entrance to a running trail that extends infinitely in either direction along the Scioto river. A single orange, fluorescent light illuminates the trail bathroom across the lot. There’s a road that connects to the trail’s parking lot on Gabby’s right, but it’s not a popular road and used mainly by trail-goers. It’s completely silent besides the man’s feet crunching on the gravel.

Gabby’s just finished her run for the evening: six miles. It’s become her staple run, and a run she does nearly every evening on this exact trail. Her mom had constantly expressed her uneasiness with Gabby going for runs at night. But at this time of year, the sun rises after Gabby starts school and sets before she finishes her homework for the evening. Besides, this is Dublin, Ohio, Gabby would say. Nothing bad happens around here.

“Who are you?!” Gabby’s voice has returned with much more authority. Her palm is grasping the pepper spray with it already half-pulled from her running shorts.

Her index finger switches the safety off. And when the man doesn’t answer her and continues stalking forward, she’s done asking questions. She whips the pink-nozzle pepper spray in front of her face with the assortment of keys jangling violently below it. “Don’t make me use it! STOP!”

A lead pipe slides out from the man’s right sleeve and materializes in his palm. Which Gabby now sees is protected by a black leather glove.

She sprays at the same time the man swipes the cold metal toward her outstretched arm. Barely any spray gets out as the lead cracks over her wrist and sends her pepper spray and keychain flying across the gravel.

White hot pains shoots through Gabby’s wrist and up her forearm as she lets out an agonizing screech. But adrenaline surges through her and masks the pain momentarily. She swipes her leg and connects with the side of the man’s knee. He falters just enough to delay his next strike, which gives Gabby time to turn and make a run for it.

“HELP!” she screams at the top of her lungs.

Her feet carry her to the entrance of the trail before the man’s arms wrap around her neck and jerk her into his chest. Gabby screams again as her initial attempt to wiggle free is unsuccessful. He drags her backward and shoves an open palm over her mouth to muffle her next scream.

“Shut up, bitch,” the man hisses as he struggles to get full control over the flailing Gabby.

With his other hand, he throws a piece of rope around her neck. But before he can get it fully around, Gabby opens her mouth and bites down on his index finger, getting a taste of leather as she feels the material break beneath her bite.

The man screech’s into the bitter night as he clutches his mangled finger. Gabby drops to her knees as her attacker stumbles backward in agony. Thinking fast, she donkey kicks him in the kneecap. He curses loudly and tumbles backward onto the ground with a thud.

With the man on the ground, Gabby is faced with a sudden choice. She could run for the trail again to try and outrun him, or she could make a break for her pepper spray, lying next to a parking barrier. With no time to follow anything other than her gut, she scrambles to her feet and sprints for the pink pepper spray.

“HELP!” she screech’s once more.

She lunges for the lanyard and grabs it off the gravel. But before she can even stand back up, the man tackles her to the earth. Gabby lets out a helpless grunt as her face digs into the gravel, feeling the unmovable weight of the man compress her desperate body.

He grunts as he pulls the rope around her neck, this time much more successfully. He squeezes it tighter and tighter until Gabby begins gagging.

Her hands are pinned under her chest, and her desperate attempt to wiggle them out only drain her energy further.

It’s in this moment, as she struggles for the air that won’t come, that she senses her fate. That this is it. And instead of worrying about how she’s going to get her pinched arm out, or about how she’ll reach her pepper spray, her mind wanders to all the things she’s leaving behind. That cute boy in her calculus class that she was hoping would take her to prom in a few months. One of her few friends, Sammy, who works at the coffee shop Gabby would hang out at, who would surely have Gabby’s staple iced vanilla latte ready for her tomorrow, only to find that Gabby would never be there again. Her mother, who’d been rightly stressed about all the fucked-upness of their life. Those college acceptance letters on the table that she needed to make a decision on (she was going to choose Michigan, she knew. She was just waiting for how she’d tell her mother, who wanted her to stay close to their new home in Columbus). Her younger sister, Emily, who was in the Children’s Hospital here in Columbus, whose leukemia had returned two years prior and whose condition had worsened drastically the past few months. Her father, who’d left Gabby’s mom during Emily’s first bout with leukemia and moved to Chicago, who had only just recently started to try to repair the relationship with Gabby.

Her mind can’t compute that all these things will go on without her. What will her mother do? Will she be able to cope with losing one daughter now, and another one inevitably soon after? Will her father be able to live with the guilt? How long will Emily make it?

Her next gag is more of a whimper. She feels a tear roll down her cheek.

And as the darkness begins to close in, she feels her heart break for all the loose ends being left untied. Somehow she feels that this is her fault. Maybe if she’d just listened to her mother and found a treadmill to run on. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why did she have to find any little opportunity to rebel when her mother was already so worried about Emily and making ends meet to pay for the cancer treatment bills?

As her breath fails to come, in one last futile attempt, she prays to see the light. Prays to feel any ounce of peace. But no such feelings come.

The world fades slowly at first, then all at once. And the last fleeting thought that crosses her mind before entering the darkness, was that none of it made sense.