Without revealing too much, I'm a part-time amateur serial-killer.
I don't have a mentor. I'm self-taught - what I've learnt from studying widely available documentaries, books, and mine own experience. An "auto-didact", if you will.
It's nothing personal.
I mean, I don't derive an ego trip from it. There are practicants otherwise: oozing toxic aspirations to be "notorious" or doing unseemly things with their subjects for a short-lived power trip. You know, stupid stuff like lending physical discomfort or menacing, keeping ghastly trophies. The gamut. Honestly, they're mentally unwell.
Myself, I wouldn't near suggest I'm a professional, as in making a livelihood from it (that's a step I haven't considered nor explored - yet) but I do
conduct myself professionally, with starched dignity. That definitely carries over into my relationships with my subjects: I confer them with a firm grace, an equitable respect. If we happen to share some unscheduled intimacy, their
vêtements are always properly
remplacés.
My parents raised me right, instilled manners
propres, "Yes, sir" & "Yes, ma'am", and all that jazz. Not to put a boast on it, but I might charitably characterize myself as a "good person", from a certain perspective™.
I simply happen to "
kill" (cue air quotes, eye-roll) people without a
government licence. There, you've got your reliable law enforcement thugs aka officers, mlilitary "just following orders" martinets, heartless medical workers prescribing an opioid epidemic and executing countless abortions, ungodly politicians wreaking global crises - all sending hapless millions and gorillions into unasked silence.
Me? Pretty benign by comparison, wouldn't you agree? Most certainly an utterly banal amateur.
It's a craft.
To me. At least, that's my approach (see afore). Has been from day one. Day one... more on that later - there's so much to unpack yet.
A small confession: I don't like blood! Not in a squeamish way, which I'm not at all - this craft obviates such a tendency. More precisely, I don't like things out of place (many can relate), and blood belongs inside the body, amirite? Yes. Maybe I'm a neat freak? Anyway, it seams well with keeping project sites bereft of tells. "Project site" is my own term for the common parlance "crime scene". I say "project" since I'm a craftsman, a person plying a craft. Simple logic. We like logic, right?
Ergo, since I don't like spilt blood (drips and splatters are "tells", evidence, and those require minimization for obvious reasons), I don't use guns, knives, hammers, the generic toolkit. I've done my research. As to what I
do use, I won't say because I'd end up giving the game away. And that's no fun. We have to have fun, we should enjoy our work, live with passion!
I digress. Where were we - ahh, no blood. Not using run-of-the-mill implements burdens one with having to plan ahead more carefully than the next bumbler. Meticulous planning on one hand, but decisive action on the other. You can plan, plan, and plan till the cows come home, but at some point you gotta pull the proverbial trigger. Isn't all of life like that? Maybe serial-killing is a metaphor for life, of life's ephemerality and potential. In the movie
il postino (
The Postman), the titular Mario opines, "
Maybe life (itself) is a metaphor?", to the poet Pablo Neruda, who meets it with a deep silence.
Oops, I did it again™. Let's get back. Decisive. You have to be decisive, confident. Once all the planning is done, the excitement then starts to build. You've set out the candles, put on some music, dimmed the lights, iced the champagne. The foreplay now. Here, you can have a specific subject (eg, at a domicile, in minecraft) or a specific location (eg, a parking lot off camera, in minecraft).
One sec. Someone's at the door.
Just Amazon™! Some supplies I ordered for tonight. I'll take another stab at this later, it's getting anfractuous and long-winded, anyway. Drop some comments or questions, always glad to share!