1
Jackson MacAfee crouched behind the cherry oak wood of his next victims’ closet. Musty clothes taunted his nose, threatening him to give himself away. He brushed the clothing away and sat, waiting.

Suddenly, he heard the garage door open from below, grumbling. His muscles tensed, anticipating what he had to do. A few minutes later, a woman’s high pitched giggle echoed through the house. Her husband soothed her as she laughed drunkenly. Jackson could not see, but the young couple staggered through the bedroom door. The scent of alcohol was prominent, even within the closet.

He heard the girl lay down on the bed. Her husband urged her to go to sleep, that she needed her rest. Jackson fingered the rope in his hands. Sighing, the girl’s husband opened the door to change out of his clothes.

Jackson struck. He leaped up and threw the pre-made noose around the man’s throat. His eyes, startled, seemed drugged. He must have been under the influence as well. Therefore, his reflexes were sluggish. He barely put up a fight as Jackson, who was larger than he, managed to pin the rope up on the ceiling fan.

The man grasped at his throat as his airway became restricted. Pulsing, the roadmap of veins in his neck protruded as he lost oxygen. Gradually, he slumped. His wife, lying on the bed beneath where he hung, slept a drunken slumber. Jackson gazed at her for a moment. Her stringy hair was the color of dulled gold, with cinnamon strands. It was spread out on the pillow. There were no lines on her face, as the woman was only twenty-three years old.

Jackson had done his research. Her name was Ava Gelding. She had been married to her husband for two years. That night was their anniversary. Her husband was Joseph Gelding, and he was twenty-five years old. Their entire relationship had been filled with happiness and bliss. Jackson had stalked them from the date of their marriage. He wanted to know if they were the perfect couple; it became obvious that they were.

Jackson marked them on his hit list. He planned their deaths carefully. This was his fifth set of victims in this town, and he had managed to escape from the police for five months, when he had started. He wasn’t about to be caught now.

He took out his knife. Made of pure silver, it was a seven-inch menace. After each murder that involved this knife, he soaked it in a secret concentration that was adopted by the Japanese samurais, thousands of years ago.

It reflected in the pale light of the bedside lamp. Jackson could see his face in the silver. His dark eyes peered back at him. The slightly bent-out-of shape nose fell beneath the hard eyes, and the tense mouth with the dark lips were shut beneath them. His hair was wild, dark and coarse. Jackson blinked and looked away from himself.
The clock ticked onwards. It was eleven-thirty at night. Without hesitation, Jackson thrust the knife into the woman’s chest. It sunk deep, the sharp blade becoming coated in deep red blood.
She screamed, and Jackson shoved a gag in her mouth. She struggled for a moment. Blood poured from the wound, seeping into the bed’s sheets. It flowed like red wine. In Jackson’s eyes, it was a kind of sick, twisted beauty. She struggled, trying to scream through the cloth in her mouth. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. After a few minutes of Jackson staring at her while she died, Ava’s eyes became still, and her body relaxed.
Jackson gathered up his belongings and turned to leave the room. As he was about to pass through the bedroom door, he pivoted to look at his handiwork. A twisted smirk was barely traceable on his face. He turned and left the house, not looking back.
2

“Hey, man.” Louis Gunther nudged Jackson as he walked past him at the bar. Jackson was seated at a barstool, slouched over his beer. Jackson gave a nod of awknowlegce.

“Nice to talk to you too,” Louis said. He took a seat next to Jackson. “What’s wrong? Kids driving you nuts yet? This is your weekend, ain’t it? ” Louis ordered a beer. A large man, he spoke through his scruffy red beard.

Jackson shook his head. “I pick them up tonight. Annie wanted to take them to the park yesterday. She just kept them through the night. It was good; I needed to get some work done anyway.” Jackson didn’t specify what his “work” was. Not a soul knew that the notorious Covenant Killer, as the media dubbed him, was the thirty-year-old man who worked at the cable company and had had two children with his ex-wife, Annie.

They were the reason that he murdered content couples. In his head, their marriages were replicas of the life he felt he deserved with Annie. Their marriage of eight years ended when he had come home from a business trip one day to find Annie in the arms of another man.

For the children’s sake, Jackson and Annie decided to be civil to one another and share the raising of the children. But Jackson became deranged, hiding his out-of-line emotions from his friends and family. When his children, twins Samantha and Lucas were at his house, they were not permitted to go into his room. Within, Jackson had cut out newspaper clippings of hundreds of couple’s anniversaries, engagement proposals, and marriages. He investigated every single article, hoping to find a couple that he felt would live a life similar to the one he had envisioned with Annie.

When he found a couple, he circled the article with a blood-red permanent marker. He added them to his hit list. Then, he selected his choice of murdering them; whether it be a shooting, stabbing, hanging, or poisoning, Jackson would not rest until the pair were dead.

At night, Jackson slept soundly. He had no conscious to keep him up at night. There was once a time when Jackson went to church every Sunday. He was a devout Christian, putting total faith in God. That faith turned into hatred and spite when God allowed Jackson’s father to die when Jackson was fifteen years old. Something in Jackson snapped, and he became a cruel person. However, he managed to push this side of him down within him, and he maintained a normal attitude on the outside.

Jackson formulated a plan to get his revenge on society. Once a month, Jackson targeted a couple. It didn’t matter whether they had children or not; Jackson would stalk them. He planned when to kill them, where, and how. He made all of the preparations necessary to escape from prosecution. Then, he would strike. The next day, he would live his other life; the unsuspecting one. He would even indulge in gossip about the Covenant Killer. He thought of it a sort of game.

“How old are the twins getting to be now?” Louis asked.

“Seven,” Jackson replied, taking a sip of his beer.

“Boy, but the time flies,” Louis raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “I remember when they was little.” He chuckled. “Even though they ain’t identical, they sure do look alike! Used to be, you couldn’t tell ‘em apart.”
Jackson grinned. “True.” He tried to raise his children the best as he could. He only had limited time with them; he was legally only able to spend every other weekend with them and alternating holidays. He was closer with his daughter, Samantha. She looked just like her mother. Sam, as he affectionately called her, was sweet. She had a mean streak, though, and it shone through when she argued with her brother. Most of the time, however, she was a bubbly, bright girl with a lot of imagination.

Lucas was sullen. When he was at his father’s house, he wanted to be at his mother’s and he never let Jackson forget. Despite this, Jackson still loved his kids deeply. He convinced himself that he killed for them.
3

He was still in love with Annie. He hated and loved her at the same time. She was petite, with caramel hair and hazel eyes. They had met in college, where he studied interior design and she was hoping to obtain qualifications to become a guidance counselor. She was outgoing, whirling through life like a tornado. He proposed to her after three years of courting.
The day that he found her with that other man was the worst day of his life. He had come home early to find them together. The man raced out of the house. Jackson tried to run after him, but Annie restrained him. Apparently, she had been having an affair with him for several years behind Jackson’s back. He was now her fiancé, and they were set to get married on the anniversary of the day they met, November twelfth. The date was approaching fast. It was then October sixteenth. The leaves were just beginning to change in Winston, Massachusetts.


4

The next morning, the air was brisk, but the wind had a faint stale feel to it. Jackson zipped up his daughter’s jacket and tied Lucas’s hat around his small head. They were going to go for a walk in the park.

The car ride on the way to the local park was silent. Jackson glanced at his children in the rearview mirror, wondering why they were not talking. Lucas seemed fine, but Samantha had a troubled look on her face. Her eyebrows were pressed together, and her tiny nose wrinkled up ever so slightly.

“Something wrong, sweetheart?” Jackson asked, shifting lanes.

Samantha slouched, abashed, in her seat. Her eyes shifting, she said, “Nothing, Daddy.”

Jackson pondered whether to question her further or to just let it go. Samantha was hardly ever unhappy. She was his happy child; Lucas was the withdrawn one.

“Are you sure?” He asked. As he looked at her in the mirror, he saw Lucas give her a secretive shake of the head. He seemed to be signaling to his sister to not say what was wrong. Whatever it was, Lucas knew.

Samantha mumbled in the backseat. Lucas slouched with relief, until Samantha blurted, “Mom and Mason are getting married,” she said.

Jackson almost swerved. “But didn’t you know that, Sam?” He asked. In fact, he was sure she knew. She was there when Jackson and Annie had talked about it. Mason had proposed a year ago.

“Of course I knew,” she said. “It’s just coming up so fast.” She paused. In the mirror, Jackson saw his daughter’s eyes fill with tears. Behind the tears was something else: fear. Jackson always saw it in his victim’s eyes. Suddenly, he was angry. He didn’t want his daughter to feel fear. That was something he needed to protect her from at all costs.

Just then, they arrived at the park. “Come walk with me,” Jackson told Samantha as they exited the trailblazer. Lucas strayed to the left, where the playground was. As he walked by them to go to the swings, he slightly nudged Samantha with his shoulder, meanly. Jackson watched him depart towards the rusty swing set before he put his arm around Samantha and led her to the wobbly brick path that led around the park.

“Are you upset about it?” he asked her. Samantha shivered with cold, and he drew her in closer.

“I don’t want them to get married!” She said, suddenly. Her small body tensed up, expecting to be reprimanded by her father.

Instead of the angry response she was expecting, Jackson only asked her why.
“Mom said that Mason would be our new daddy. I don’t want any other daddy but you.” Her voice cracked on the last word. Jackson’s little girl was about to cry. Her nutmeg hair blew with a sudden gust of wind.
Jackson stopped her. He knelt in front of her on the path. He put his hands on her shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. The fear was still present.
“Samantha, I want you to listen to me.” She nodded, wiping away an escaped tear with a grubby hand. “Mason will never replace me. You hear?” She nodded, and Jackson shook her gently. “You hear? No matter what, you’re always going to my little girl. Mine. Not Mason’s, not even your mother’s. You are mine. You may spend more time with her, but that is only because the law says you have to. If I had my way, you and Lucas would be with me all of the time.”
Samantha shivered in the sudden gale, and Jackson hugged her tightly. He wanted to squeeze the fear right out of her.
5

After he had returned the children to Annie’s house later that night, Jackson sat at his dining room table alone. He had a mug of beer in one hand, and with the other, he was running his hand through his scraggly hair. His eyes were bloodshot, as it was almost midnight. He murmured under his breath. Over and over, he replayed his day with Samantha.

He really hated seeing her scared like that. He needed to do something, to protect her. Unable to take it any longer, he stood, automatically shoving his chair backwards. His eyes fell to the wedding invitation held to his fridge by a magnet. On the invitation was a picture of Annie and her finance, Mason. They looked so happy together.

That was the life that Jackson deserved.

LOOK OUT FOR PART 2 -- COMING SOON. THANKS FOR READING.