Jimmie's Ice Cream: Diary of a Serial Killer, #2

By Erin Lee

Six months is a long time in the life of a serial killer with active cravings. Jimmie Putnam has made a lot of changes. Now, with his own ice cream shop, hiding bodies is easier than ever before. With sixteen kills under his belt, Jimmie is cocky. And the cravings are only getting worse: Have you ever just been in the mood for ice cream? You can't really say why that craving comes on. But you can't sleep, even at 2 a.m. until you get it. So you put your sneakers on . . . Killing's like that, for me. Today, I'm in the mood for black raspberry. Come, take a tour, of Jimmie's Ice Cream shop... Twenty years is a long time to wait for justice. And when you’re so close that you can taste it, you want to serve yourself. Special Agent Florel Ross has made a vow. She has one year, or until Jimmie Putnam is about to kill again before she will confront him—or report him—herself. Now, with his own ice cream shop, watching him will be easier than ever before. With nothing to lose and obsession steering her, Florel is fearless. She takes the sort of risks her twin sister would be proud of. And the danger is only getting worse. Have you ever been in the mood for revenge? You can't really say why that hunger comes on. But you can't sleep, even at 2 a.m. until you get it. So you put your holster on . . . Come, take a tour, of Jimmie’s Ice Cream Shop: It’s due for inspection…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crazy Ink
• Release date: Mar 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781987434149

Erin Lee

Erin Lee lives in Queensland, Australia and has been working with children for over 25 years. She has worked in both long day care and primary school settings and has a passion for inclusive education and helping all children find joy in learning. Erin has three children of her own and says they have helped contribute ideas and themes towards her quirky writing style. Her experience working in the classroom has motivated her to write books that bring joy to little readers, but also resource educators to help teach fundamental skills to children, such as being safe, respectful learners.

Book preview

Dedication

For the cravings we try to push down but persist anyway, to help us feel alive...

They’ll never really leave us, at least, not after we’ve swallowed them

alive...

Warning

This book is dark fiction that deals with disturbing, undiagnosed psychological issues. It dives into the mind of a twisted serial killer and includes violent, graphic material only suited for adults. It is not suitable for minor children.

This novel is intended for entertainment purposes only, not for clinical research, case study or diagnosis. Jimmie’s Ice Cream and its predecessor, Just Things, were born as the result of multiple interviews with three men convicted of murder in three states, combined with years of graduate level research on the pathologies that contribute to violent acts of murder and their architects. Then, they, the stories and events, took on lives and deaths of their own to become Jimmie Putnam.

Interviews, correspondences and all research, including clinical case reviews and professional journal articles, for this project was conducted in the author’s capacity as an author, not as a psychologist.

This book is a work of fiction and is not based on one particular man’s story. Instead, it is a compilation of stories combined and fictionalized to give one portrayal of what may (or may not) go on in the mind of a serial killer during active and dormant killings, and rest periods.

Have You Ever...

...been in the mood for ice cream?

Like really in the mood?

You can't explain why that craving comes on.

You can’t control it, even if you wanted to.

You can't sleep, even at two in the morning, until you get it.

So you put your sneakers on.

Killing is like that for me.

Fear is ice cream.

Terror is the jimmies on top.

Tonight, I'm in the mood for mint

chocolate chip (with cherries on top).

Care to join me?

Chapter One

I can’t sleep. Again. I don’t know why I thought things would be any different after sweet Sixteen. Still, I’ve been good and held off. I’ve done everything I can possibly think of to contain them, the cravings: Stuffed my face with mint chocolate chip instead of going in for Seventeen and Eighteen, kept myself busy with research, gone over memories of my Things. Everything. Even took the dog to the dog park and kept my eyes to the ground. Bad idea. She’s not dumb. She can feel something is very wrong. She may even be having cravings herself. It’s not like she hasn’t been there, beside me, all along.

Like it or not, white-knuckling it is not going to work for long, thanks to Craigslist. That ad, it’s just too perfect. A Thing custom made for me. I can taste her now; butterscotch, hot and melting. Or maybe more like hot fudge; dark, sweet and sticky. I wonder if she’s a screamer. Any woman bold enough to place an advertisement like that might be. Or, maybe not. There has to be some math to calculate the odds. God, I miss it. The screams. The high. The power. The surrender. That final breath. I. Am. Hungry. So hungry. What harm would there be in checking the ad? It’s not like anyone’s watching me. It might even help. She’s another Thing. She’s waiting for me. She may even need me. I can feel it. I can sense her soul, dark like chocolate, tugging at me. Seventeen. Sweet seventeen. She’s calling me. If I close my eyes, I can even hear her say it, Master Jimmie. I can hear her gasps, her mumbles, her, please, don’t kill me ‘s.

The cravings. They won’t go away. They get closer and closer. Part of me wants to stop the collecting forever. To slice the Things up and feed them to Mia, bone by bone, until there’s nothing left of their remains. The problem with killing is that once you get a taste of it, it’s almost impossible to go back. I don’t know of any other way I could ever reach such a high. I’ve tried. If I’m entirely honest, I’ve had access to things. I keep a tiny stash of coke in my nightstand. Took it from Roderick’s drawer a few months ago. Did it once. Not even close. Sure, I felt on top of the world, but that only ended with me going out to the barn and organizing my Things. I combed their hair, dressed them up, even read to them into the daylight hours when I finally crashed. The high, even while screwing them, just wasn’t the same as going out and doing what I really wanted to do, collect new Things.

It doesn’t help that it’s just so easy, accumulating new Things. It surprises me, really, that it’s even easy now, with the police composite sketch out, and it’s not like I haven’t been sloppy. Truth is, I have. At first, it haunted me, seeing a drawing of a face sort of like mine in the papers. The first time I saw it, I panicked. I called in sick from work for a week, terrified to leave the house. If anyone had looked into my eyes close enough, they would have seen the same panic that crosses through the Things pupils when they finally realize there’s no escape and that they will soon rest in my freezers. Now, not so much. In fact, the more I look at the drawing, it’s not even close. My nose is different. My cheeks are fuller. My eyes are anything but dull and dark, and certainly not black. That helps me feel safe, mostly.

You can never feel entirely safe, not when you have a dozen or more Things on your property who are entirely dependent on you. Things you promised you would never leave. Every night, even though it never comes, I still expect a knock on my door from the police. I imagine them telling me the gig is up and making me take them to the Things. Instead, I worry for nothing. Instead, I get nothing. No knock. No sign that they’re any closer to catching me. It’s good, really, but then, it’s not, because this state of paralysis is worse than anything. It means no new Things. I have to do something. No, I need to do something and soon.

I’ve tried to play it safe. Really, I have. I’ve stopped going to the gym, thinking they might be waiting for me, the guy with the twenty-year-old, ragged drippy ice cream cone on his t-shirt. Still, I don’t know why they haven’t caught up to me. They have to be close by now and I’m just missing something. I’ve made too many mistakes for it not to be true. The newspaper articles and those headlines tell me they aren’t completely clueless. They got my ears right. My hairline, too. That should scare me bad enough to make me want to stop.

Instead, it feels like a challenge. We dare you to do it again. Go on, get more Things. We’re coming for you. That’s what the voice in my head tells me. I try to tune it out. If Momma was here, she’d know what to do, but, I wouldn’t tell her. I couldn’t live with the look on her face if she was here to find out. Obviously, with her long gone, that can’t ever happen. Still, with Momma, you never know. She was crazy enough to come back from the dead to haunt me. Sometimes, I swear I see her watching me. Those are the nights I refuse to play with my Things. It sucks. It only makes the cravings worse. If Momma saw what I did with the Things, I’m certain she’d disapprove.

Part of me thinks maybe I want to get caught. I’ve been careless. I’ve let the cravings get the best of me. I hate that side of myself, and I will not let it win. I’m determined to get away with this and refuse to be caught. I’ve come too far and my hands are too bloody to let it go down any other way, and as I’ve said before, if I do get caught, it will all end on my own terms. This is, after all, my story.

Speaking of which, I haven’t been writing much. My notebooks and log sheets are empty. I just can’t get into a groove. I mean, what’s the point of writing when you don’t have anything new to say? I’ve said it all. I need new material...

Lately, the only thing I can do to hang on is to review everything. I go through my files and memories. I play them over and over and over. Then, I go to the freezers and thaw my Things for proof, or relief, or even just company. It’s like a grieving parent who locks themselves up in a tiny room watching old home videos just to go back in time, or it’s the scorned lover with a jaded heart, wrapped in a blanket and sniffing history that can’t be rewritten while saying goodbye to dreams that were never meant to be. When it gets like this, I go out to the barn and spend extra time with Fifteen. She’s a good listener. Just being with my Things, and not always in intimate ways like you think, helps, but it’s not enough, and it won’t be for long. I’m telling you. I’m warning you. Are you listening?

I can feel it coming. It’s like the first whiff of fall in mid-September air. You book last minute trips to the beach, knowing you won’t be able to get your weekends back and wishing you’d spent more time in a lawn chair or gone and seen the fireworks. Too late. So you chase it, what could have been, and pray that you aren’t. At the same time, I’m nagged by a sense that I’m about to get caught. This is like winter. It’s not the pretty snowfall that melts as it hits the ground. It’s the kind that shuts an entire city down, where you can’t get to the store because the traffic lights are busted and even if you did, they’d be out of candles and generators. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can’t prepare for that sort of storm. All you can do is try to prolong the calm. So, for now, I need to stay as still as possible and come up with an alternative. I need to make the most of the time I have left with the Things. I also need to make some changes, and fast.

Keeping my Things here, so close by in the barn, isn’t smart. Yet, where else am I supposed to put them? I have a few ideas I’ve been toying with. I’m not quite ready to share them yet. Planning takes time. I’ve come this far. If I can return to my old ways, pacing myself, I have a shot at moving forward. I have a chance at one day acquiring another Thing. Don’t touch the laptop. The ad will disappear soon enough. Don’t. Do. It. Moron. Momma would flip her shit. I reach for my journals. Inside them, like I always do, I’ll find answers. There’s something about a brain like mine, someday likely to be the subject of science research, that works best on paper. It’s there, and only there, that things become a little clearer. Come, walk with me through my memories. For now, they’re all that I’ve got.

***

A big part of doing this effectively, the killing thing I mean, is learning from your mistakes. I do that, mostly. So far, because of it, I haven’t gotten caught. For me, part of research is about remembering back to how I collected my Things. I look at each Thing and figure out what I did right and where I went wrong, where I put myself at risk, and where I made art. I guess it’s like a scientific log, really. At the same time, it’s research. Here’s a sample of how it’s done. Notice, it’s in the third person (name changed for my own protection) in case my scribblings are ever found. I can always say I’m just doing research on some other guy, while I pack my bags and skip out of town, but it can’t come to that. It just can’t. I promised my Things I’d never leave them and I’m pretty protective. By now, you know that. Fifteen wouldn’t know what to do without me. Who would buy her the lipstick?

Anyway, here’s where I’m, pardon me, Jimmie, is at:

1999 - Number One: The girl from the neighborhood. Eighteen-year-old Jimmie comes back from community college, where he’s been working on his general education credits. A girl he knew in high school is also home. They say she was pregnant, but she had an abortion. He doesn’t like abortion. Killing her is the just thing to do. He has nowhere to put her, he panics. He doesn’t know what to do. Throws her in a river. Eventually, her boyfriend, the guy who knocked her up, is blamed for it and does seventeen years, out in fourteen years for good behavior. Fucking pussy.

(We all know where I screwed up here. Should have kept her. Had no idea about the freezers yet. Just didn’t know what I was doing. Should have played more with her titties, too. Had no idea how lame they get when women get older, saggy and useless. Could have bounced a quarter off those things. Lesson to learn? Always appreciate your first. Find them young).

2005 - Number Two: The landlady who lives upstairs and gives Jimmie shit for leaving his music on and fighting too loud with Shelia. (Left her body in her chair: The perk to old bags). Jimmie is now age twenty-four, married to Shelia. Divorced from Shelia only eight months later, after she becomes depressed that her mother died. (Big, fat, lopsided Shelia. Loud mouthed, not going places, hair dresser who quit her job, Jimmie, baby, support me, who finally ran off with the neighbor, Gee, wonder what happened next? (I wish).

(Wouldn’t change a thing. Who wants to keep an old bag like that in their freezer, anyway? Well, maybe I could have charged her rent. I could have asked her what it was with old people these days? Dammit.