I’m at a diner, looking over some case files I’d stolen, printed out on a scroll from a dot matrix printer. I sip my coffee and look over the seven active serial killers operating in Los Angeles in the year of our Lord, twenty twenty five.
1 - Stream Killer
A 23-year-old man who streams his murders on Kick. 2m followers.
2 - Hydra
A 29-year-old conjoined twin who gets away with homicide as half of him is innocent.
3 - Vampire of Compton
66-year-old property developer who pays poor people to consent to murder by drinking their blood.
4 - The Monk
A 40-year-old man who commits Buddhist-themed killings.
5 - Charles Manson 2
A 32-year-old man who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Charles Manson.
6 - Mirror Man
A man who enters people’s homes dressed as a cop, kills them in front of a mirror.
7 - Duck Killer
Unknown identity. Dresses in a yellow duck costume, murders
parents in front of their children.
I examine the case notes for these pieces of shit when someone sits across the table. I look up to see a young man with a freshly shaved head, wearing the same clothes as me.
“Who are you?” I say. My doppelganger repeats what I said a few times.
“I’m going to play you in the Netflix film about the Duck Killer. It seems the case just got a lot more complicated, so the director sent me down to shadow you.” He says.
“You’re an actor?”
“Yeah, I was going to be in the Harry Potter reboot but they said I was too American.”
“Look, kid. This case is going to get dangerous. I can’t promise you’ll survive. You okay with that?”
“Sure!” he says. We both laugh. I pay for the coffee and we get in my Hyundai Sonata.
“What’s this?” he says, holding up the statue of Shiva with the skull mounted on it. I shake my head.
“Don’t worry about that right now. We’re going to go meet a serial killer.” I say. He takes out a notepad and writes down what I’m saying as we head up to Hollywood.
Dick Doss killed his first victim in a YouTube short a few years ago, going around the city to see how many Covid vaccines they could get in a day. Turns out having 86 vaccines was the limit for his friend, with Dick starting his first livestream by his bedside in hospital, doing pranks for a dollar. In the following months his viewers started dropping off, inciting Dick to kill again. This time he orchestrated a challenge where 100 people were to go potholing in a complex cave system in Mexico, with 99 of them getting stuck in a crevice as wide as a cellphone. Since then he’s made a living from his lethal stunts, amassing a huge online audience, sponsorship deals with gambling companies and even having Drake play Roblox with him. I pull the Hyundai up outside his mansion on Mulholland Drive, me and the kid scale the fence and land in a rose bush. Covered in petals and thorns, we creep past his entourage, snorting cocaine by the outdoor pool, go through an open door and up a flight of stairs. I had his livestream on my phone, watching silently as we crouched by the door to his room. He was playing an online slot machine and shouting slurs behind the door. It was coming up to the hour where he’d run an ad. I look over to the kid and start counting my fingers down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
The ad starts. I burst through the door, run over to Dick and pull a plastic bag over his head, yanking him from his gamer chair and drag him out of the room. We had less than a minute until the ad would finish and his audience would notice he’s gone. We’re in a tiny bathroom. I look at the head inside the bag, the plastic contouring to his face and blowing back out again with each breath, I yank it off.
“What are the Los Angeles serial killers planning?”
“Bro! What the actual fuck?!” he starts yelling. I strike him in the throat.
“Don’t yell. What are the serial killers planning?” I say as he coughs. I start running the bath and dump him in, face down, getting the kid to put a cable-tie around his wrists.
“I don’t know any serial killers bro. You got the wrong guy.” Dick says, coughing. The water isn’t coming out fast enough so I turn the shower on as well, blasting him in the face with cold water.
“I don’t mind if you don’t talk to me. We’ll just leave you to drown in this bathtub. But if you want to do any more livestreams, well, you need to be alive for that.” I say. The kid is taking notes behind me. I stop pointing the showerhead at Dick’s face.
“I can give you money. I got a million dollars-“ he says before getting blasted in the face again.
“You know you can drown in an inch of water, right? Kid, hold his legs up.” I say. The kid obliges, forcing the streamer to thrash around in the bath like a salmon. I pull his head up.
“Last chance. What are you planning?” I say. On my phone, the stream has started up again. Millions of people are asking where he is.
“Okay, okay. We’re sacrificing people. If we kill enough, we save America.” Dick says. I shake my head.
“How do you contact each other?” I say.
“We meet every full moon. Up in the country, near Death Valley. We do rituals.”
“Where?” I say. I can hear someone calling his name downstairs. Dick smiles.
“You aren’t going to find out bro. We’re going to hunt you down. We’re going to kill you. And you.” He says, looking over his shoulder at the kid.
“Keep hold of his legs, I’ll take this side.” I say, lifting the streamer out of the bath.
“You should have let me go earlier. We’re still going to kill you.” He says. I laugh.
“C’mon kid, let’s go this way.” I say. We march back to the streamer room, go over to a window overlooking L.A. and throw Dick out. There are footsteps coming up behind us, so me and the kid clamber out too, holding to the side of the wall so our knuckles turn white. I look down and see Dick bounce off a tree, against rocks, sliding further and further down the valley side, unable to stop himself from rolling as his hands were tied behind his back. I lose sight of him in the dust.
As me and the kid are driving in the Hyundai later, the kid seems concerned that we just killed a guy. I shake my head.
“People like that have an unfortunate way of surviving. He’ll still be alive, he’s probably notified the others.” I say.
“But what are we supposed to do now?” says the kid.
“I got an idea. But you’re going to need to phone Netflix.” I say. Dusk begins in the distance, the day ebbing away, and the Sonata seems to be the only car in L.A.
Me and the kid are waiting in a saloon, the kid’s nervous, checking out the window every two minutes. I throw some cards down and take a sip of whisky.
“You sure they’ll come?” he says. I nod. I had been taunting Dick on Instagram all day, leaving clues in the background. We were at the Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show at Universal Studios, though the performers and audience had left hours ago, leaving us alone in the street stage. I take a sip of whisky and the kid starts jumping and pointing out of the window. They’re here.
I walk out into the main strip between the fake buildings, looking up the road at the seven men that have arrived. I’ve decided to dress as a cowboy, though the others haven’t. Dick Doss is in a wheelchair and a neck brace, even in the dark I can see him grinning. There’s a man with two heads, an old guy wearing sunglasses, some sort of Tibetan monk, a scrawny bearded guy, a man holding an enormous mirror and at the end is a figure in a yellow duck costume. Seven killers and me. I look in my pockets for a vape but can’t find one.
“That’s him, that’s the guy!” Dick says. A man who looks like Charles Manson, though unable to grow a beard, steps forward.
“We heard what you did. We’re gonna have ourselves some fun!” he screams, pulling a knife from a leather sheath by his waist. Each of them takes out a weapon, except Mirror Man, who seems content that I would see whatever was done to me with the reflection he held between each hand.
“You can’t save America through killing. It’s over.” I say as the men approach.
“We’re going to build a tower of bodies up to heaven.” One of them whispers.
“There’s power in death.” Mirror Man says. They stand around me in a circle. I look over to the saloon and whistle. The kid comes running out, wearing the same cowboy costume as me.
“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” He says. The neighbouring door also opens, and out steps another actor wearing the same clothes as me.
“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” He says. Then another door opens. And another. More and more people pour out into the fake Wild West street, all saying the same line. The serial killers look around, confused.
“What the hell?” says Charlie Manson 2. I laugh to myself, drawing a line in the dirt with my foot.
“They are making a film and that kid is playing me. But now he’s involved, someone has to play him. And then someone else has to play him. And so on.” I explain, as more and more cowboys keep arriving, some emerging from buildings, others popping up out of barrels or from behind chimneys, each of them repeating the same sentence. The murderers look around at the hundreds of cowboys that have now appeared around us, continuing to grow each second.
“Netflix have hired every actor in Hollywood to come down.” I explain. Somebody pushes through the crowd of cowboys, stepping ahead and he raises his head.
“If you’re going to kill him, you’ll have to kill me.” Says Nicolas Cage. We share a glance, a nod.
“Well we’ll just have to kill all of you.” Dick says. I shake my head, brace my legs and throw a raised fist in the air.
“Cowboy punch!” I yell, throwing a right overarm haymaker at Dick’s forehead, making him snap his head back in his chair as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Over a thousand actors then shout ‘Cowboy punch’ and run towards us, throwing fists at the serial killers. I walk away from the melee and back to the saloon, pouring myself a whisky. The kid joins me, then his understudy, then his understudy, and so on, until we end up having a cowboy party that spills out onto the street. There is barely a trace left of the serial killers besides the twisted frame of a wheelchair, a few rags and a puddle of meat that looks black in the moonlight.
As the sun rises and the crowd disperses, I climb into my Hyundai Sonata and begin to drive away. The kid runs next to the car.
“Say, where you going?”
“I got one last thing to check.”
“Take me with you!” he says. I stop the car and turn to him.
“Your role is finished kid. You’re a free man. Go out there and live your life.” I say. Tears well up in the kid’s eyes.
“But I don’t know how.” He says. I smile in the light of the dawn.
“Nobody does. Take it easy.” I say, slowly accelerating away, watching the kid shrink in the rearview mirror.
There was something leftover. I’d stolen Dick’s phone earlier, traced his Cybertruck’s destination along with the phases of the moon. I drove along a freeway, following signs towards Death Valley, taking a turning a few miles away, get to a building out towards the desert. The sign outside reads ‘Los Angeles Police Department Mental Hospital & Treatment Centre’. Bedlam. This was where they sent cops when their minds broke. Apparently, it was also where the serial killers had been meeting. Dick had said something about a ritual, so I park the car up and start walking towards the hospital. The guard station outside is abandoned, I pass the empty lot, up towards the gray entrance doors. It looked like nobody was there, all the windows were dark, but I could hear noises inside. I push the door, finding it open. I enter. The foyer is a large cage that reaches deeper into the building. I pause, patting my pockets for a flashlight, a cellphone, anything that brings light, but find nothing. I thought to myself that I’d just check past the next set of doors and go back. There was probably nothing there anyway. As I walk towards the doors, I can hear something, but can’t quite identify it. It seems so familiar. I rest my hand on the rusted door. A part of me wants to turn back, to run away. But I needed to see. I push the door open and see an octagonal room with the patients silently turned to its centre and in the middle of the room there is a black hole. Reflected in the wet eyes of the living.
