Thing Fifteen: Diary of a Serial Killer, #3

By Erin Lee

My name is Beverly. I’m more than a Thing. Every town has its legends. I would know, I am one of them. I am the girl they tell campfire stories about. The “well-liked librarian” who was going places until she was kidnapped and eaten by the Ice Cream Man. I am the warning parents tell their children about, the woman whose remains were never found… There’s so much more to my story than how I died. My name is Beverly Watkins. I was twenty-seven years old the day I perished at the hands of a serial killer. For more than a year, Master Jimmie kept me in his favorite freezer and took me out for weekly playdates. I was the cherry on top of his twisted ice cream sundae; the Thing he called Fifteen. It’s only the beginning to my story. You see, justice is haunting. And tonight, I’m in the mood for it. I’m here to set the record straight, to make sure all the facts are tied up in perfect yellow bows like the ones they tied around trees for me. I won’t rest until I’ve told my own story, my way. Which reminds me: I have a visit to make. Care to join me?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crazy Ink
• Release date: Mar 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781544151267

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

Thing Fifteen, Book Three of the Diary of a Serial Killer Series

Every town has its legends. I would know. I am one of them. I am the girl they tell campfire stories about. The well-liked librarian who was top of her class until she was kidnapped and eaten by the Ice Cream Man. I am the warning that parents tell their children about— the woman whose remains were never found...

There’s so much more to my story than how I died.

My name is Beverly Watkins. I was twenty-seven years old the day I perished at the hands of a serial killer. For more than a year, Master Jimmie kept me in his favorite freezer and took me out for weekly playdates. I was the cherry on top of his twisted ice cream sundae— the Thing he called Fifteen.

It’s only the beginning to my story. You see, justice is haunting, and tonight, I’m in the mood for it. I’m here to set the record straight— to make sure all the facts are tied up in perfect yellow bows like the ones they tied around trees for me.  I won’t rest until I’ve told my own story, my way. Which reminds me: I have a visit to make.

Care to join me?

Dedications

For the things we forget to say before it’s too late, and for the people we forgot to say them to:

Probably the most haunting thing of all.

Warning:

This book is dark fiction dealing 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. Thing Fifteen, a sequel to Just Things and Jimmie’s Ice Cream, was born as the result of multiple interviews with 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.

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

This book is a work of fiction, and is not based on one man in particular or one victim’s story alone. Instead, it is a combination of stories fictionalized to give one portrayal of what may (or may not) go on in the mind of a serial killer’s victim....

Chapter One

Beverly Watkins

Every town has its myths. There’s the man with the peg-leg in Springfield who steals children off the streets, never to be heard from again. There’s the monster in Philly who snatches naughty boys out from under their beds and takes them to his cave and holds them hostage, or there’s the tale of the ghost in Portland who lives at the edge of the woods, haunting widows in their sleep but only on nights when it rains or the moon falls too deep behind clouds. In my hometown, it’s the lore of a young woman who was fed to a psychotic killer’s dog, became a living nightmare, and still lives on. It’s just the way it is, and there’s not much any of us could do to change it, even if we wanted to. Even if it kept us up at night that we couldn’t.

Some legends die off or change over time, depending on how many times they are told or who they’re told by. Others stay, woven deep into the hearts and history of places where there’s nothing better to talk about. They are something residents share as a part of their common story— making them a fragment of something bigger than ordinary life.

The legend from my town is four years young, and so far, it’s stuck around. That’s probably because there’s truth to it, but not all of it. I would know. You see, you can’t believe everything you hear in Henderson’s Hardware Store. I’m here to set the record straight on what really happened. Only I would know. Well, Master Jimmie and me and maybe a few others— the women he brutalized and victimized over a more than decade long killing spree, but we’ll get to that. For now, it’s about me. This is my story.

I am the girl everyone still talks about—the one taken and later eaten by the Ice Cream Man. My name was—or is, depending on your beliefs—Beverly Ann Watkins. I was twenty-seven years old the day I died at the hands of a brutal man named James Putnam, Jr. I was the cherry on top of his twisted ice cream sundae. I was the one he called Thing Fifteen. I’m the woman whose blood Escape Colorado’s campfire legends were made of.

The thing about legends is that they leave a whole lot of the details out. They don’t tell you what happens to people after they die at the hands of a monster. They don’t mention that pain that lingers well past the final breaths and the screams. They forget to talk about the afterlife therapy sessions you’ll attend in hopes of getting your mother to let go. They don’t know about the jail visits you’ll make from the dead for answers with a side order of karma.

The rumors like to talk about how I died, what it was like to be kept in a freaky man’s freezers and played with, but they give due credence to the complicated relationships that arise from such horrific arrangements like Jimmie’s and mine. The anecdotes— and people who tell them, too— forget who you were before, because you are forever only the girl—the unfortunate stiff—who was too dumb, too silly, too risky to know better than to follow a strange man to his car. You were too kind-hearted, well-liked and loved to be taken too seriously.

So you become the moral of the story. You are the girl everyone warns others not to be. You become the person people shake their heads about when mentioning your name, or they don’t mention your name. At least not until they finally get the guts to type up your likely-dead obituary, and even then, they get it wrong. They leave the important details—ones they can’t possibly know about anyway—out of every scenario.

I’m here to tell you the truth about me, before and even now. Yes, it’s true. I am that girl. I certainly made my share of mistakes, and I do blame myself for being so gullible, but I don’t think my name should be forever attached to a warning label. I was never toxic. My killer was. I deserve to be known as more than the way I was killed. For this reason, I am here to tell you...

My favorite color is purple. In living form, I was five-feet, seven inches tall, with a medium build. I had almond-shaped, black coffee-colored eyes before my killer plucked them out. Here in the afterlife, they are violet, because why not? One of the very few perks of life after death is the free will to reinvent yourself over and over again, while you wait for something more. It’s exactly how I’ve been spending my time. When I’m not working on plans of how to move forward, I can’t help but look behind. It’s a mistake I make again and again. For me, it’s nearly impossible to avoid. It’s simply who I am and always have been.

Before, I hid behind thick glasses that kept my librarian persona up. I’d take them off for dates with guys I thought could be the one—guys I never found because I didn’t have a chance. I was a die-hard romantic. I still am—literally. I blame that one on my parents. It’s the only thing I really blame them for. I liked horror movies and reading. I never believed in ghosts or any of that nonsense of the sort until I became one. A lot has changed, but many of my earth likes and dislikes have stayed the same. I’m glad for that. I’m not ready to totally give up who I once was.

Even now, my favorite animal is the giraffe. I get a kick out of their long necks. I still love reading and anything to do with books. On Earth, I loved sushi, tacos, and ice cream sandwiches. I spit out olives, hard-boiled eggs, and I never tried a lima bean. Now I don’t have a sense of taste like mortals have. I’m sad for that. I miss eating. My killer stole that from me. He took a whole lot more, ruining the lives of the people I loved, who have no idea how to move forward with nightmares of what happened to me. He took weddings, babies, anniversaries, and other milestones that will just never be.

Before I met the man who took away everything, I took the things that made me unique for granted. Things like the fact that I never got the hang of riding a bike. I liked to run, hated skiing, and secretly wanted to be a novelist. I smelt like lemon and citrus because of the body lotion I kept in my purse. I loved men who rode motorcycles and wore body art. I craved a bad boy, but was afraid to try. Mostly, I was quiet and shy. Very few people knew about my other side, and the one guy who did took advantage of it. After him, I should have stopped taking chances. Life— or mine anyway— is one big regret. I’m working on overcoming that regret.

On Friday nights, I scoured the Internet for bigger, better places to live. You’ll never hear about that in the campfire tales. No one will remember, besides my mom, that I wanted to travel and see the world. I needed to know if the books I got lost in had it right. I was sure they did. I had big plans. I hoped to create a life for myself like something I’d read in the million love stories I’d memorized as a way of coping with living in a tiny town plagued by tourists and the occasional slice of tasty gossip.

Back then, I was tired of overprotective parents, the same old people and cliques. I wanted new friends and a whole fresh start. I planned to reinvent myself, but that can’t happen now. It won’t happen. At least, not in the way God intended it, and technically, it’s all my fault. Forever, I’m stuck being the well-liked librarian from Escape, Colorado.

At least, I often tell myself, my story will live on if I take the time to put words to it, myself. And frankly, I can’t say I didn’t have a hell of an adventure in my killer’s care, for better or worse. I’m just doing this to make sure you get the story straight. I’m tired of other people changing it around and putting words in my mouth. My voice has been frozen too long. Now I want to write my own ending. Maybe even his, too.

My Earth body is long gone—defrosted, consumed, leftovers fed to the dog. I died four years ago at the hands of Crazy Jimmie, the vilest serial killer in all of New England – the place I moved to for a fresh start. He was the law clerk turned ice cream man who got away with the murders of thirty-one women in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont over a twenty-year hunting period. Most of his kills were done in the decade closest to the time he killed me. You’ve probably heard of him. His police sketch, and later, mug shot, has owned the front page of the Union Leader at least a dozen times more than his victims. There was even National news, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Nancy Grace, you name it. His face has been all over. Ours—faces of the woman he referred to as his Things—are tiny blurbs, usually listed together in long lines of verse about memories and never forgetting.

They never really tell our stories. Hell, they only even know of half of us. I think they’ve counted eighteen so far, and to them, we are simply a growing list of names locked together forever by Jimmie’s evil deeds. Victims aren’t as interesting as the guy who consumes them. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of