Inside the Mind of BTK

138 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
Something about the spinning motion lulled and calmed him, allowing
that wall that existed between his mind and his fantasies to dissolve.
All he needed to do was stare into that blurry rotor for a few
moments, and all those things inside his head felt much more real.
He wrote that it was as if his thoughts were a snowball rolling down
a hill, gathering speed and energy with every inch it moved. In his
journal, he wondered if this sensation was one of those so-called hypnotic
. . . stances? He knew that wasn’t the correct term, but it never
occurred to him to try to figure out just what the proper word actually
was.
That wasn’t how his brain operated.
So he’d sit there in class, daydreaming about the girls seated
around him, wondering what it would feel like to capture one, two, or
three of them, then tie their hands and legs together with a heavy rope.
Next, he yearned to bind their bodies to the icy cold iron train tracks.
I rubbed my eyes for a moment, leaning back in the chair I’d
pulled up to the little desk in my room, staring at the screen of my laptop,
not quite believing what I was reading. It felt as though I’d taken
a radial saw and sliced away the top of the skull of this man I’d been
chasing for decades, and now I was peering inside. The view was ugly,
but was helping me understand how this monster evolved.
He loved to imagine how the ropes would bite even deeper into
the girls’ soft flesh, causing their wrists and legs to turn a bloody shade
of pink. But the best part was when the locomotive came into view.
And as it bore down on his victims, he grew so excited that his heart
would practically rip out of his chest. The pitiful way they’d attempt
to raise their heads in order to catch a glimpse of the thousand-ton
steel monster hurtling toward them was absolutely priceless.
But the best part came at that moment when his victims realized
that he’d bound their necks so tight to the tracks that their heads
couldn’t move. All they could do was listen as the locomotive drew
closer and closer. It was all so wonderful, he told himself. They were
his captives, completely at his mercy. And when they tried to scream
(they always tried to scream at the end), when they attempted to make
their voice heard through the gag he’d tied across their mouths, all he
ever heard was a soft mumble. Because by then the train was on top
of them, and it was too late.