Happy Hunting

If you're not doing it for the Gram are you really doing anything at all? Gerry Prim, known online as axeman1600—a moniker left over from the days when his channel focused more on guitar tutorials and is somehow even more fitting for its new direction, doesn’t think so. He’s amassed an impressive following, generating content on how to pull off the perfect murder. From videos showing his step-by-step process of how to select a perfect victim, the art of stalking, DIY weaponry and binding, to tutorials covering dismemberment—4 easy steps in less than 30 min, one of his most popular to date, he takes a special pride in eluding authorities despite showing everyone every detail. Of course, it helps that most of his fans believe that his channel is strictly for entertainment purposes, assuming that no real murderer would document their crimes. Tonight, under a full moon in an undisclosed stretch of wilderness outside of New Jersey, Gerry is excitedly filming his latest work.

A blue pickup trundles along an overgrown dirt road, its suspension squeaking as its knobby tires splash through muddy puddles and kick rocks out of shallow potholes. With only the orange dots of its utility lights illuminated, the road is still plenty visible under a silver full moon. A light in the cab pops on.

Tonight, Gerry has foregone his usually playful clown mask, deciding to don something less stylish and more utility minded, considering the heavy lifting ahead. No, tonight he’s gone with a perforated, black mouth cover and utility glasses, deciding that there’s something just as menacing in the simplicity of the getup. He adjusts his dash mounted ringlight, clips his lavalier mic to the lapel of his jean jacket, and opens his phone, clearing his throat and pushing record. 

“Hey, chat. Welcome back. Just a quick reminder to all my new viewers to smash those like and subscribe buttons, and be sure to comment and share. Every view really helps this channel out a lot. A lot of you have been requesting that I cover more of the tedious work I do after the murder. And I agree. What’s the point of executing a seamless abduction, bringing your victim to the peak of terror before slaying them, and expertly dismembering their corpse, just to get caught in the end? That’s why tonight we’ll be covering one of the most important parts of pulling off the perfect murder… the grave.”

Gerry thumbs the stop button, gives a nod of satisfaction and drops the phone into the console. He clicks off the ringlight, and shifts into a lower gear as he brings his nose closer to the windshield, squinting as he searches the brush for the well hidden turnoff. “There we go.” He spots it and brings his pickup to a crawl as he pulls it off the road, branches scraping the hood as he pushes it through the thicket. 

The blue pickup’s brakes squealed as it pulled to a stop, the engine sputtering a few coughing backfires as it died. The headlights finally flicked on, washing a small clearing amid a thick grove of pines in a pale yellow glow. In the middle of the clearing, the headlights illuminated the dark, rectangular edges of a fresh excavation. To one side, a pyramid of loose dirt stood, taller than a man, at its base wider across than a prone corpse splayed akimbo. 

Gerry jumped from the cab, quickly gathering his things. He set up a tripod and light, flooding over the blue and bloodied tarp laid over the lumps in the bed of the truck. He turned his camera on, walked around the pickup a number of times, shooting b-role to splice in to the final edit. He swiped through them and nodded, pleased with the images. He cleared his throat and pushed record.

“You’ve executed the perfect crime, dotted every i and crossed every t, outsmarted both predator and prey, and now you find yourself with a body,” he turned the camera toward the bed of the truck and whipped away half of the tarp to reveal a bound and beaten cadaver. He turned the camera back on himself, “and nowhere to put it.” He turned the camera off and slipped it into his back pocket.

Gerry grabbed the bindings wrapped around the twisted ankles of the dead body and grunted as he yanked it from the bed of the truck. It slapped into the mud and dirt with a squelching thud. “You’re one heavy Hattie, aren’t you, hun?” He readjusted his grip and whistled as he dragged the body, its hooded head plowing a shallow trough through the pine needles and soft earth, around the truck and into the throw of the headlights. Gerry pulled the body alongside the grave with a few final tugs and let its feet slap against the fresh soil. 

He made his way back to the truck, took out his camera, cleared his throat and turned it on. “Here’s the real pro-tip you won’t hear from any other full time serial killers. The best place to bury a body is beneath another body. Of course none of us want to go rooting around in a graveyard, and besides, another human body will raise suspicions of its own. That’s why I like to use…” he whipped the rest of the tarp away, “wild game.” He wrinkled his nose and waved away the stench of the dead deer, already crawling with maggots. “Whew. This one’s gotten a little ripe. But you can’t wait until the night of. Sometimes it can take days to bag a beauty like this and you don’t want to leave your grave site unattended while you're off galavanting around in the woods.” He grabbed one of the deer’s hooves and yanked it free of the bed in the same fashion. This carcass, less than fresh, splattered as it hit the ground and painted a trail of viscera behind it as he dragged it to the grave.

“Now with all of your mise en place, pardon my french, in order, let’s put together the perfect burial site.” Gerry stepped to the edge of the grave and shone his camera light into its depths. “Now, I like to dig my grave ahead of time. I know that can be challenging if you’re working on the fly, but just remember, if you’re going to dig your grave on the day-of, add a few more hours. This puppy took me around three hours, but I really lucked out with soft dirt and a minimum amount of roots. Another tip here; a lot of people say a grave is supposed to be six feet deep. I say if you're going to do it, do it right, so I recommend a depth of eight feet. I hit some bedrock at the bottom of this one, so I wasn’t able to get to eight feet, but I was close. I think this one came in at just over seven. Should be good enough for tonight.” He turned the camera back on himself. “No time to waste. Let’s get to work.”

Gerry went back to his truck. He pulled another tripod from the cab, made his way back to the grave and took his time as he set it up just right. Once he was satisfied with its placement he started recording again. “Okay. First things first, start with the body.” He sashayed over to the corpse laying alongside the grave and with a series of heavy, thudding blows, kicked it over the edge. He made his way around to the other side, grabbed the shovel sticking out of the pile of dirt and continued to narrate, slightly winded as he shoveled. “At this point I recommend adding at least two feet, or more, of fresh dirt. Remember, after we throw our carrion in here, even the more enthusiastic law enforcement officers will give up once they get a shovel full of rancid deer guts.”

He worked about a third of the pile of dirt into the hole, unable to hear the rustling in the pines over his labored breathing. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve, sunk the spade of his shovel into the earth with the stomp of his boot, and leaned against its staff as he took a moment to catch his breath. 

He made his way around the grave standing in front of the camera and next to the decaying deer. “Next step is; you want to add your—”

Gerry barely heard the whoosh and zip from the treeline, though he did hear the fleshy zip in his throat and found himself unable to talk beyond a choking gurgle. He brought a hand to his throat and found a thin shaft sticking out of either side of his neck. He gave it a tug and hot, sticky fluid gushed out onto his hand. He tried to cry out and still could only produce thick gurgles. He grasped the shaft with both hands, coughed a spray of blood cast bright crimson in the glow of the headlights, and fell to his knees. He tried to struggle to his feet, lost his balance, and instead fell back and into the grave.

A figure, clad in camo, stepped out of the forest. In one hand it held a crossbow at the ready, with the other, reached up and turned on a light attached to its headmounted gopro. “And that, chat, is what we call… a hole-in-one.” The figure walked cautiously across the opening to the edge of the grave, pointing its crossbow down into it as it did. The light illuminated the grave. Gerry was still spurting the last of his blood in his final death throes, clutching his throat and staring up at his assailant with wide, confused eyes. The figure leveled its crossbow on Gerry and shot a bolt into his chest. The spurting blood subsided to an oozing gush as Gerry’s eyes glazed over.

“Oooh. That one had to hurt.” The figure slung its crossbow over its shoulder, flipped off its headmounted light, and slipped a phone from its back pocket. It pulled down its camo mask, revealing a young, girlish face, turned around and held the camera up, highlighting the freshly dead Gerry in the background. “Hey, fam. Well that was a fun one. If you’ve been following along, make sure to leave a comment letting me know what part of the hunt was the most exciting. I read them all. And if you’re new here, make sure to like and subscribe, and follow me, killerkillerkyla on all your socials. We’ve got some great ones lined up, don’t miss out. Til next time.” She stuck out her tongue and held up a peace sign. “Happy hunting.”