Watch the News

There's a killer loose in New Braunfels.

News segments love to start a show with that tagline, as it draws the viewers in. Fear sells and ratings soar when people are sitting at home with their pants soaked in piss from the very thought that a killer could be in their house right now at that very moment.

Freedom of the press!

The problem is, it doesn't really encapsulate the entire story. What's the motivation for the killer to roam down the streets of an old German town, roving and raving on the corners of Schlitterbahn while the children play in the waters? What's the justification for someone to take the life of a woman who was waiting for her first date? Who were the victims--all saints or all sinners?

I don't like the news very much in this regard. You never know the full story and if someone makes a movie out of it, it always features the victims in some endearing role.

But don't take away any importance from the first line: there is a killer loose in New Braunfels, Texas.

This isn't one of those stories where I describe a situation and in a very predictable twist, I'm the killer or the cop or the dumb kid who investigates the spooky old house down the corner and wind up dead.

No, I'm going to tell you upfront: I'm the one they're referring to. The newest hit in the newswaves for all of fifteen minutes.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">This is a different way of doing things because you're going to understand me. You're going to listen and read to me and you know deep down inside, you have the option to walk away from my words and voice but you can't stand the idea of laying awake at night. Wondering. Driven mad with curiosity, with fear, with the thought that you were too fucking weak to stomach me.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">This is your choice. And it will get worse from here.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I wasn't bullied or tormented by abusive parents so don't try to victimize me. I was never a victim of any circumstance I couldn't control.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I was entitled to circumstance.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">What I want, I received in normal doses: good schooling, good parents, good toys...but I'm entitled. I'm entitled to everything the world should offer and more.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Why? I'm special. I'm lucky. I'm stronger than you, smarter than you, and more deceptive than you. I was born at a faster pace than everyone else and by law of Darwin, I should survive better than the rest of society.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">She was just fourteen years old and she wouldn't throw herself at my feet, begging to give me an ounce of my worth to her.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">So I took her self-respect from her.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">She must be twenty-four now, still walking around and telling herself that it was all her fault, because it fucking was all her fault and I got into her little slow brain and I remain there for all of eternity.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">There was once a science teacher who taught at New Braunfels High School who wouldn't give me the grade I wanted, the honors I deserved just for sitting in class and listening to his stupid drivel. He thought he was the next Stand and Deliver kind of guy with the patronizing passionate speeches and dispositions.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">No matter what I said or threatened, he didn't take me seriously.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">So I knew his kid was in sixth grade and I knew what websites he went to and I knew what stupid pictures he'd put up for the whole world to mock and grin and point at. I knew that kid had a bubble surrounding him since he exited the womb.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">After six months of incessant harassing and screaming and tears and threats of leaving him alone on his safe space and blasting his social media to a pile of ash, the kid killed himself with a knife and I made him livestream it so the whole world sees it and we could mock his half-blown off head and how the remaining stump slumped to the side on the floor, how stupid his half-mouth gap looked like.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">And then I made sure that the camera stayed running until the teacher burst into the room, screaming and crying and begging God.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">He probably still teaches. There's a light out inside of him now, like a robot. His dead son haunts his dreams and I puppeteer that like a Broadway show that never ends.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">At this point, the movies and film and TV shows say I "escalate". I disagree. I just get better.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">There's a lot of hookers buried behind Buc-ee's. At least, I think they're all dead hookers. Runaways and minors are not exempt from the clause. I like to go back there when it's that gray area between 2 A.M and 4 A.M and when the small group of employees are smoking and cleaning and leaving that back door unlocked.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I think I'll eventually go through that back door.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I went to the Alamo Drafthouse just the other day and I paid the bartender a visit but I didn't watch a movie. It's too expensive to watch movies but I do know that Drafthouse isn't very good with the security when they take out trash and my, there's just so many girls and boys that wait for the trash to compact and play on their phones and not pay attention and it's just so easy to take their employee like I have and keep her here until she stopped sweating and crying and shaking.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">That's my patronage to you, Drafthouse. Check your employee records.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">There's the news again.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">See, I remember that kid. He's a young lad about the age of five but his dad didn't take him. His dad was nowhere near him, like any deadbeat father with a grudge.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I took him on an traditional New Braunfels run: tubing. Except I replaced his tube with a tire tied to his legs and he went into the Comal River with very little fight.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The kid is what I like to call "sharpening the chops". You have to practice to keep strong. Weak games equal weak muscles.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">So there's a killer loose in New Braunfels.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">They caught on when I kidnapped a journalist from San Antonio, covering a puff piece of summer activities. She didn't want to put me in her piece, even though I lived in this city my whole life and knew every crevice of the town. That wasn't what her story was about, she tried to claim as she snapped photos of couples on kayaks.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">So into the night  she sleeps at her hotel and I break into her car. She bolts, fleeing downstairs and seeing her broken window.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">In a moment, she's gone. Into the dark trunk.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">She tried to apologize. Multiple times. Begged for mercy, begged for death eventually.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I won't say what did her in--I made sure to switch up the techniques to give the old coroner a headache. Sherlock Holmes is going to have to solve her cause of death at this point.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">But she was indeed done in. And she was found after two days, laying on the bank of the river far from home and far from help.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">One murder found and the news crew goes crazy, as if they found Jack the Ripper himself. They didn't find anything but they sure love to report it.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">My fucking life right there. All my hard work overlooked for sensationalism.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I'm not in your house. The story doesn't end that predictably.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">But I am in your life. I'm the person you walk by when you don't realize it. I'm the monster who makes you afraid to watch the news. I'm the example why people want to ban guns and I'm the perfect reason why people get guns. I'm your stranger you warn your kids about. I'm the man you worry for your daughter's safety.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I don't have horns under my hat or hooves on my feet. There's nothing wrong with me physically.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I'm the guy who wakes up and deserves the whole world as my vehicle for outlet and control.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.89;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13.333333333333332px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">And quite honestly, you ought to be afraid of that.