A girl brushed past him as he took a swig of beer. She was the right height and hair colouring. She turned and looked at him. Her face made time stand still and the beer he’d just drank rise up. Someone had sliced and diced what had once been a beautiful face, a face that looked like Angela’s. Blood spread across her white t-shirt where her tits should have been. Her broken-jawed smile revealed toothless, bleeding, gums. 

“Dude, are you okay?” she said. It was Angela’s voice coming from a mouth devoid of a tongue. When he didn’t reply, she frowned, shrugged, and walked away. He clamped his eyelids shut and reminded himself it was just a hallucination. He’d had enough of them over the years of drug use. Although his hallucinations had always been more fun, like fairies and weird little animals, they’d never been violent or bloody. He notched the difference up to his guilty conscience and left it at that.

Alice and her friends had changed their position during his episode. They stood at the bar watching him. 

“Are you some kind of sex freak?” Alice asked him as she walked up to him with an aggressive posture.

“Excuse me?” he said, trying not to spit his beer all over the bar again. He couldn’t help but wonder if his sins were stamped on his forehead. 

“The way you were staring at that girl was seriously creepy.”

“What girl?”

“The one that just walked past you,” she said to his blank expression. “The one in the tight, white t-shirt?” Alice looked at him as though he belonged in a straitjacket or prison orange. She wouldn’t have been half wrong on both counts. 

“Oh, that girl,” he said as inspiration struck. “She was real? I didn’t imagine her?”

“Are you a schizo?” She took a step back towards the safety of her group. 

“No, but I think I took some bad acid, and I’m having a really bad trip.”

He could have killed for a couple drops of acid, just to take the edge off.

“Been there. Don’t worry; I’ll take care of you. You’re safe,” she said, patting him on his shoulder.

Gotcha, he wanted to shout in her face. He knew her type and had taken advantage of many girls like her all through high school. Girls like her were the only reason he’d passed matric and never had to do his homework. They thought they were all tough, but all he had to do was appeal to their protective instincts, and they were putty in his hands. Alice was no different. He just had to appear to be weak and vulnerable, and her guard was down. Serial killers all over the world used that technique every day. And that was now what he was turning into. He was now the harbinger of death to young girls all over the city. It was not the role he’d seen himself in, but it was one he was turning out to be pretty good at.