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  On the plus side for Jessica, she had won a scholarship in poetry. That was what brought her south to D.C., to Georgetown. Jessica was originally from a small town in Maine. She grew up in a farming community.

  Georgetown was not really known for its English department.

  Her advisor explained to her that the school was trying to beef up some of its lesser known fields. So that was why they had offered her a full scholarship to study English.

  Since her mother had made it very clear that the family would not pay for her education, what choice did she have?

  Jessica had been at Georgetown for only two semesters and already she was ready to meet a guy and have some fun. She was sick of being single.

  She liked older guys. And this guy, her secret date, was an older guy and successful. He was not old old, she had told herself. He was in his thirties, just the right age for her. Jessica still had stars in her eyes and innocence in her heart.

  She was the perfect prey.

  |||||

  The night finally arrived. She had bought a new outfit from bebe. She thought it was perfect to impress this older guy. It was slutty, but borderline. And that’s what she wanted. She wanted to show him that she was more than nerdy glasses, that she was fun. She wanted to show him that she was more than a small-town girl. And she really liked him or at least the idea of him.

  To pay for the new outfit, she had dipped into her college money. She also used $200 on a new hairstyle. No one who knew her from back home would have recognized her. That’s for sure.

  She looked the part of rich man’s wife. That was the part that she wanted to play.

  When it came to her sorority sisters, she lied to them. She had said that she was going to hit the downtown clubs.

  She had even used the phrase “party like a rock star.”

  Jessica walked out of the sorority house and through the campus. She made her way to a path near the park. She walked near the edge of the path along the border between gravel and grass. She followed it down to the street, where she waited for him to pick her up. She had agreed to meet him there instead of on campus. He told her that he was going through a divorce. He didn’t want anyone on campus to see them together. He claimed that his wife worked on campus. She taught some courses in finance. Her name was Dr. Martina Simon.

  Dr. Simon taught a class called Economic Crisis of the European Union, a class that Jessica would never be interested in taking. In addition to finance classes, she also taught a couple of political science courses.

  Since Jessica had started seeing her new boyfriend, she had snuck into three of Dr. Martin’s classes on political issues. That was why she was positive that she would never enroll in any of Dr. Simon’s courses. To her it was complete nonsense.

  Jessica kept her new relationship a secret from her friends, from her parents, and from Katrina. That was the hardest part, keeping such a big secret from her best friend and closest sorority sister.

  Her new boyfriend told her that they could reveal themselves as they became more serious, but for now he wanted it to remain a secret.

  The wind picked up, blowing briskly through the trees behind her. She trembled in her short skirt. Her long, slender legs gave way to the breeze and her knees bent slightly. However, the wind wasn’t the only thing that caused her to tremble. A sliver of terror crept over her from out of the darkness.

  The scene alarmed her. The campus P.D. had posted several bulletins and sent out numerous e-blasts warning the coeds of Georgetown to be wary of suspicious strangers walking around the campus. Tonight she ignored their warnings and walked near the empty park.

  Her date was successful and well known around D.C. So she felt safe enough to trust him.

  |||||

  A killer known as the Woodsman watched with feral eyes as Jessica clumsily walked out of the park. He sat in a black car parked on the side of the road. Jessica didn’t notice the car at first because it rested under a broken street light.

  The man in the car had broken the light an hour earlier.

  The Woodsman watched from inside the car. The vehicle was hidden perfectly in a shroud of darkness. As Jessica neared the car, she didn’t even notice it. He had picked the perfect place to ambush her. He could have eased the door open and slid out. He could have quietly snuck up behind her and snatched her. But he had an even better plan.

  First he studied her. Her long legs led up to a red skirt. Her long, blond hair waved in the breeze. She wore a dark jacket. Her earrings sparkled just slightly.

  He peered down in his lap and gripped his gloved hand around a sharp and odd-looking knife. It had a bent handle and a serrated blade. It was a special kind of knife. It had been custom made for his wood-carving habit.

  In his other hand he held a half-completed wooden sculpture. He’d spent the last hour whittling it. The finished result would be a young coed with some of her limbs missing.

  For now, the wooden sculpture would have to wait. Soon he would have a real coed to whittle into something.

  Jessica froze mid-pace in the street. She felt afraid, like one of her farm animals alone in the pasture at night. Then she saw the black car’s outline in the darkness.

  She gazed into the tinted windows, only barely able to make out the figure inside. The passenger side window rolled down and the figure leaned over.

  “Jessica?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, inching closer to the car.

  “It’s me. Get in.”

  She recognized him as soon as a sliver of light fell across his face. It was her date. She smiled and walked closer to the car. She opened the door and slumped down into the seat.

  The engine hummed to life and the headlights came on like a beast opening its fierce eyes. The car slowly drove off into the darkness, into the perfect night for carving, for killing.

  |||||

  The Woodsman held onto Jessica’s right hand as they found a secluded spot in the shadows; they sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  She snuggled next to him. Every so often, a passerby glanced over in their direction. The two of them appeared to be a normal couple out for a late night rendezvous.

  Jessica never suspected that he was anything but what he had claimed to be. She never suspected that there was something dark and menacing lurking in his brain.

  He threw a blanket over their shoulders and they stared out across the National Mall.

  Jessica listened intently as he explained the history of D.C.’s architecture to her.

  “Much of the city’s designs are Masonic. Of course, you probably knew that. I am sure that you read Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’ since you’re an English major,” he said, excited to explain architecture to her. In his real life, he enjoyed architecture. It was his passion. Well it was his second passion anyway. Carving up young girls was his first.

  “Masonic? Like the secret society? I haven’t read that one. His book about the Mona Lisa and Jesus, I read that one,” she said.

  The Woodsman smirked and said, “Okay.”

  He shrugged off his need to sound condescending and went on to explain to her the creation of the city of D.C.

  “Did you know that the city planners designed our capital to both intimidate and to humble the world’s heads of state?

  “They wanted foreign Presidents and Kings to feel at home when they visited, but they also wanted to scare them into submission to make it easier to manipulate them,” the Woodsman said, as if lecturing.

  Maybe you should have been the professor in the family, she thought.

  Jessica pretended to be fascinated by the history lesson.

  Then she thought, guess that you really are kind of a boring, older guy. The thought made her smile.

  The Woodsman must have taken this as a sign that she enjoyed his speech because he rambled on. By the end of his lecture, he realized that he had been wrong. She possessed zero interest in what he had said.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to g
o on and on,” he said.

  She leaned into him. “I love this. Really. The way that you explain it is perfect. But I am an English major. So I am just not familiar with all of the architecture stuff,” she said.

  She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. Then her head fell across his small, but chiseled chest.

  He was smaller than average size, just a few inches shy of six feet, but his frame was proportionate. He exercised rigorously every day. At least he looked as if he must do so.

  Most successful serial killers possessed an adequate workout regimen. The ones who were good at not getting caught stayed with a certain routine. Many found that a rigorous routine helped ensure that they would continue to remain undetected.

  According to the FBI two types of serial murderers exist. Type A was methodical, organized, and extremely hard to catch. Type B was more of a rampage type of killer. They were messy, random, and just careless. However, type B was not always easy to catch because there was no predictability.

  Type A was hard to catch. They used caution. They usually possessed high levels of intelligence. They were also methodical, territorial, and ritualistic.

  But it was much easier to garner an accurate profile of type A because they rarely deviated from their SOP.

  Type B was more likely to get caught for something reckless like leaving a witness behind. Or they were careless, getting pulled over for a traffic stop.

  Ted Bundy was a Type A killer. He was caught once due to a broken taillight.

  The Woodsman was a type A killer.

  “Perhaps we should open the wine now,” he suggested.

  He leaned over and picked up the bottle. He used a stainless steel wine key to pop out the cork.

  He poured two glasses and gave one to Jessica. She grabbed the stem firmly, swished the wine around for a moment, and took a swig.

  She tried her best to make it look as if she knew how to drink red wine.

  The Woodsman smiled sinisterly. The monster inside his head watched through the dark tunnels of his eyes as Jessica drank the sedative that he’d injected through the cork and into the wine bottle earlier.

  This was why he had picked an expensive bottle of wine. Some of the cheaper wines didn’t use real cork anymore. Wine companies were moving more toward synthetic corks or twist caps. And he needed a real cork so that the needle would pierce through it.

  He lifted his wine glass in front of his face. Then he said, “A toast.”

  He gestured to her to lift her glass. She raised hers with her left hand and it met his.

  The she asked, “Sure. To what?”

  She felt her legs going numb from sitting on them. So she shifted, raising herself slightly.

  “To architecture,” he proclaimed.

  Jessica nodded and they clinked their glasses together. She took a big gulp.

  The Woodsman stared at her, not drinking any of his wine. He watched her.

  “Aren’t you going to drink?” she asked.

  The Woodsman stared back at her, his eyes turning lifeless and cold.

  She shrugged and said, “Well, I’m drinking.”

  Then she took another big gulp.

  She looked back at him. His cold gaze grew like an ice storm, piercing through her.

  She began to feel uncomfortable. Then she felt something else. She felt the numbness in her legs return.

  But I already moved them, she thought.

  Then she thought, Wait!

  The numbness was spreading. She felt it in her hands. The glass began to quiver as her hand trembled.

  She nudged him slightly like she was trying to wake him from a trance.

  “Why aren’t you drinking?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to get drunk. I’m driving. Here, you have some more,” he said. Then he poured more wine into her glass.

  “I don’t think that I should,” she said.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe with me,” he said.

  “I like you. Wait, are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked. She leaned in closer to him. The effects became more pronounced. She assumed it was from the alcohol.

  “Do you like me?” she asked. She began to rub on his arms and chest. Her hand quivered the whole time.

  He did not respond. Instead he leered at her.

  Again she asked, “Why aren’t you drinking?

  Again, he said nothing. She began to panic.

  Jessica realized what was happening. He had drugged her.

  She stood up. She had practically jumped up. As soon as she had gotten on her feet, she felt the potency of the drug.

  She said, “What? What have you done?”

  “I drugged you,” he answered.

  “Why?” she said. She felt woozy. Her head began to spin.

  He set his glass down and stood up. He got closer to her. She thought that he might reach out and help her stay steady, but he did nothing.

  Instead he leaned in closer to her ear and whispered, “Do you know about that serial killer? The one that the news is calling the Woodsman?”

  She tried to reach out and grab him for balance, but her arms didn’t respond to the signals from her brain.

  She muttered, “Yes. Yes.”

  Her eyelids fluttered as if she struggled to keep them open.

  Then he said, “I am him.”

  Alarm rang across Jessica’s face.

  Run! Run! She thought. But her legs still didn’t move.

  She turned away from him and looked out over the Mall.

  Her vision blurred. She tried to move. Her knees buckled beneath her weight. And she crashed against the concrete. Her wine glass, which she had forgotten that she was still holding, shattered against the ground.

  She couldn’t feel it, but her lip was bleeding. One of her teeth had chipped.

  She coughed and gagged. And she fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake. But the drug was too powerful and she passed out.

  Everything was black.

  |||||

  Jessica’s head pounded. That was the only pain that she felt. As she attempted to open her eyes, an overwhelming feeling of numbness coursed through her body.

  It wasn’t the same kind of numbness that she had felt when she was drugged by the wine. This was different. It was painless. It reminded her of when she’d had her root canal. The deadening feeling inside of her mouth and cheek was the same feeling that now reigned over her entire body.

  Numerous smells charged against her face long before her eyes opened. She smelled mahogany, incense, and an odor of burning caramels, which was a very unusual scent. It reminded her of a bakery from back home that went out of business.

  Her father used to love to walk past it every Sunday.

  Then again, perhaps she didn’t smell anything. Perhaps, this was her brain telling her what she smelled.

  The one overwhelming smell that really made her gag was the smell of meat grilling. The whole room reeked of it.

  Am I in a kitchen? she thought.

  Slowly, her eyes twitched open. The room was blurry and she blinked in order to adjust her eyes.

  Meanwhile, sounds chimed through her ear canals. First she heard a constant beeping sound, followed by the sound of suction, like the tool used during her root canal in order to vacuum drool and blood from her mouth. It sounded mechanical.

  Jessica leaned to her left about as far she could turn her head. As her eyes adjusted more, she saw an IV line hooked into her arm. Next to that was a small table littered with unrecognizable medical machines and devices.

  The machines whirred and beeped. The only one that she recognized was the heart monitor. It beeped regularly.

  The other machine, and she only guessed, looked like a breathing machine.

  I must be in the hospital, she thought. How did I get here?

  Then she looked at her hands. They seemed to be strapped into something.

  It was hard to tell because her vision was still blurry. She squinted her eyes harder, trying to focus them
better. She strained them to the point of exhaustion. Finally they focused enough for her to see her surroundings. She could see, but now she wished that she hadn’t.

  Horror burst through her brain as she saw it. Her left hand was completely skinless. A steel rod was fused to her wrist. Bones, veins, and muscle tissue protruded up to her shoulder.