“I think it’s great when stories are dark and strange and weirdly personal.” — Robin Williams
“Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.” — Aldous Huxley
Edgar Pace, Northern Texas’s most notorious serial killer, rode the highways and byways of the state in his black Ford Escape SUV. Pace was hunting for hitchhikers this time around. Before, it had been prostitutes — a long run of them. The prostitutes, working skid rows in towns like Laredo and San Antone, were lured into the Escape with promises of an easy $50 for a blowjob — a fortune for these gals. The knife at the throat and the slitting motion was something they hadn’t bargained for.
All the seats in the Escape were covered with easy-to-clean synthetic sheeting which were stapled onto the too-comfortable seats of the body of the vehicle. When a victim died, the bleed out was usually minimal because Pace was an accomplished slaughterer by now, but in the rare event where there was an explosion of blood, it still only took about 15 minutes to clean up.
Now Pace was driving near the Oklahoma border, his license plate reading STRANGE1, his eyes darting left and right to check out the resident signs of habitation. Slowly, steadily, Pace cruised down the secondary route off the main highway. It was here he would find his prey. It was here the hitchhikers would feel comfortable climbing in with him.
Sometimes, he talked to them. He told the truth: he was a traveling salesman who sold high-end computer equipment at excellent commission. He only made commission — no base pay. But that was a good deal for someone like Pace.
Pace liked to talk. It passed the time nicely. And he was good at it. The prey he hunted, brought to him by the random vicissitudes of fate, liked to listen to this slightly chubby, big 6’4″ man ramble on about his life. It gave them some context in the last minutes of their existence (although on occasion he would string them along for as much as an hour as he passed through the godforsaken wasteland of North Texas).
Now there was a pair of hitchhikers up ahead: a teenage boy and his girlfriend. If it had been two guys, Pace would have passed. But he did the natural calculus in his mind: first dispose of the male, then take your time torturing the female in the back of the Escape. Yeahhhh … let’s do it!
He slowed before the breakdown lane, which was where the lovebirds were walking. Their thumbs were out, but their backs were to passing traffic, so they were surprised by his approach. One minute it was empty space beside them, the next the hulking outline of the Ford SUV seemed to be blotting out the very sun. Pace was the moon’s dark baby and had no use for solar love.
He powered down the window. Smiled. “Can I give you guys a lift?” Pace asked in a neutral-accented voice that would have been at home in Ohio or Illinois.
The boy perked right up. He made an okay symbol with thumb and forefinger. Then he began to climb into the front of the SUV. His girlfriend made a beeline for the back. Perfect. Couldn’t be better.
They sped off into the horizon.
It was difficult to engage with them. It turned out they were both lightly mentally retarded. They were running away from their state-sanctioned “home.” They were hoping to get to Florida. (Pace had been heading east when he spotted them.) There were jobs there for “special needs people” as they proudly called themselves.
For some reason, Pace was vaguely disappointed by the facts of their low IQs. It took some of the thrill out of the hunt — like butchering a limping deer in the forest.
“Today,” Pace said, “is your lucky day. For I am on my way to Florida too.”
Just like that, on the spur of the moment, Pace decided he would shift hunting grounds from Texas to Florida. And after all, Floridians needed computers too.
“Yippee!” said the boy. “Yay!” said the girl.
Pace felt a thread of affection for the 2 of them worm its way into his heart. It was hard not to be charmed by them. They were clean-in-appearance with no tattoos or nose rings or weird constellations of earrings on the girl. They were, notwithstanding the intelligence problem, good-looking young people, about an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. Pace felt himself getting aroused by thoughts of raping the girl. He could do her by the side of the road in one of the Deep South states — maybe Alabama or Mississippi. Or hey! maybe he could book a motel room and creep into her bed at night … naw, let’s not get overly ambitious. KISS — Keep It Simple Stupid.
But something very odd happened to Edgar Pace. He began to develop genuine feelings of rapport for his 2 riders. The more the 3 of them talked, the easier it was to relax around them and let down his guard — something he hadn’t done around strangers in years. To be relaxed was a bliss-some thing, like when he was a preteen and snuck into the movie theater and fell asleep in the warm womb intoxicating environment so different from his hyper-abusive home life where he was always on egg shells around his no-good, super-violent father … sometimes Pace got sad thinking about the past. He decided to share with his new friends, see if they would be judgmental.
“He beat you with a belt?” the girl asked gape-mouthed.
“Around the face and groin,” Pace confirmed. “Hurt like a mother, too.”
“Did you love him?” the boy asked, curious.
“I … I don’t know. He was my pa, see. I had to respect him at the very least.”
“Yeah, but you said he died when you were in grade school. Did you miss him after he was gone?”
The truth was, the man his mother had replaced dad with was even worse a bastard than his father, initiating Pace into kinky bisexual sex. The man made videotapes of Pace having sex with the bastard daughter he had brought into the marriage. Pace enjoyed fucking the girl, but she had always been terrified and made pained noises as the camera was rolling. Oh well. Can’t win ’em all *cheerful*!
Past Mobile, Alabama, not far from the Gulf of Mexico, they stopped at a fancy Marriott hotel. Pace wanted to show them how real successful people lived, not that Motel 6 crap you got dished out when you was poor. But the real deal.
He led the way to their mutual bedroom, bouncing up and down the key card that let you into your room. He was feeling great. The young lovers were awed by the size of the room. They rushed to try out the deluxe showers. Innocently, they showered together. Pace stood outside the bathroom door, listening to the rushing of the shower water, the giggles of boy and girl as they platonically played with each other. There was no hanky-panky. Pace didn’t think the kids had even had sex. They was good ‘uns.
In Mississippi, Pace took them to an all-black community on the poorer side of the tracks. He wanted to show them how savages lived. As a savage himself, he took a certain ironic glee in the act.
But the kids felt sorry for the black people. They emptied out their pockets and gave away their last dime, which irritated Pace in a nameless, formless way. He supposed he was typecast as the guy who would pay for their meals now. But then he realized the kids didn’t see the future the way normal people did. For them, only today existed. They had money now — the black people needed money now — therefore now they would dispense with all of it.
The girl looked out the window of the devil-cruisin’ Escape, seated on synthetic blood-blocking sheets, her legs crossed one over the other demurely. She watched the black community recede into the distance, a sad look on her face. “They were so needy,” she said. The boy nodded agreement. Pace chewed on his inner cheek.
“I wish we had more money to give them,” the girl said. “Mr. Pace, why didn’t you give any money?”
Because I’m not a fool?, he bit off before it could burst out, like a malign black phoenix from an angry red egg.
“I’m a salesman,” Pace said slowly. “I convince people to give me their money. I guess I’m not used to handing it out like Easter candy.”
Pace then tried to cheer the kids up. But they would not be cheered. They passed the line into Florida, and not even that broke the young couple’s black funk.
The thing which snapped Pace out of it and had him thinking of them as victims again was a simple tampon. The girl, seated in back of the SUV, bent forward, put her hand between her legs and pulled out a used red tampon. She replaced it with a clean white one. This act was done nonchalantly, but it infuriated Pace and drove him into a blind rage. She changed tampons in my holy vehicle! he railed inside, silently. I’ll gut her! Make her pay!
But they were in Sarasota before the opportunity arose to do something about it.
Pace parked at a camping area by the interstate. He drove to the least attractive, farthest-out-of-the-way part of the campgrounds, hunching his shoulders and building up a murderous intent against his young retarded love birds. The SUV was bouncing around on uneven, ruinous ground. The girl kept moving her hand toward her groin, then stopping when a new bounce announced itself. Then she would reach for herself again, unsuccessfully. Pace was past noticing what the stupid girl was doing.
He parked the car. The girl switched tampons. Pace pulled a knife on the boy — serrated, gleaming in the faint light interpenetrating the vehicle. The girl swatted Pace’s wrist with her used tampon — Pace looked down, saw the foul effluence and shrieked. He dropped the knife accidentally. The boy, seated next to him, bent and picked up the blade — and stuck it in Pace’s chest. By great good fortune, the blade slid between two ribs and entered the heart, where it stuck like a death’s wand lightning bolt, killing Pace almost instantly.
The boy and the girl slid out of the SUV, their feet relaxing as they found purchase on good Florida soil.
“What a strange man,” the girl said.
“Everyone gets what they deserve,” the boy insisted, taking the girl’s hand gently. The 2 of them walked into the sunset, looking for a ride to hitch to Miami.
Dark Sport 