by Rich Boucher

I’ve had the news on since 9. The television screen has been yapping, of course, nonstop screeching about the horrible news. One more murder, another killing by the serial killer on the prowl in this beautiful, modern, verdant and once-peaceful city I’ve called my home. This hip town. This chic burg. A paradise turned to landfill in a fortnight. In the basement, where my laundry is done, I heard at noon from the radio I keep going down there that the police have no new leads. A total of three things is what they only now know. The killer uses the same type and brand of hatchet for each job. They know this. They know he’s a he. And the killer, they know, always catches the victims in the lemon-scented, blissful privacy of their own homes. While the latest, this last night’s killing, is still hot, so fresh in the buzzing, dusty mind, the others keep one on the edge of the couch as well. In the last several weeks, the killer, visibly irritated, has butchered a left-handed mime known well in the international district for busking, a breastfeeding rights advocate woman with albinism, an overweight, alt-right conspiracy nut infamous for blogging the phone numbers of the members of city council, a redheaded college girl known and beloved throughout the community and under investigation for her volunteer efforts for the exploding homeless veteran population, two schoolchildren waiting in the morning rain on their porch for the bus to arrive, and a gay, wealthy real estate magnate who just happened to be in the kitchen of one of his many homes at the time of his execution. The pattern couldn’t be clearer. There can be no doubt; the killer goes after a specific type. Everything fits. I’m next.

 

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, Soft Cartel, Menacing Hedge, Cultural Weekly and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others, and he has work forthcoming in MoonPark Review, Broadkill Review, antinarrative journal and Street Poet Review. For more, check out richboucher.bandcamp.com. He loves his life with his love Leann.