Jeff the Killer: One by One

Introduction
My name was Keith Moore. I was Irish, I grew up in Oak Grove, Minnesota. I loved cars, horror movies, and I was looking forward to my twenty-first birthday. But now, I'm dead. The last few miserable days of my life were spent huddled in my room at an Akron, Ohio mental institution, living in constant, paralyzing fear, waiting for him to appear.

His name was Jeffrey Woods. But nobody calls him that anymore. By now, the whole country's heard of him. They all call him "Jeff the Killer." His story spread like wildfire. What he did, the people he's killed, the news was all over it. His tale has spread around everywhere, like a virus.

He destroyed my life, he killed all my friends, he'll kill again, and the worst thing about all of it is that I know it's all my fault. He's a goddamn blight on the world, and he'll never go away now. The pain won't ever stop, and it's all because of me.

Prologue
There was a time, about three years ago, when Jeff wasn't the monster he's become now. He was a normal kid, about 14 years old I think. At the time, me and all my friends were High School seniors, all around 17-19 if I'm remembering it right. Not that it matters anymore.

Jeff was relatively normal, but not that happy. He had a hard life. He didn't go around starting fires or torturing small animals or anything. He was just a loner. People didn't like Jeff, and he never had that many friends.

He came from a broken home. His father left him and his family when he was around four, his mother was an alcoholic, and his brother ended up in juvie. All of this left Jeff pretty introverted, but he didn't seem miserable.

He was one of those dorky, kinda gothic kids me and my friends liked to pick on. He had long hair he dyed black and never took very good care of, he always wore dark clothing, and his skin was really pale.

He was into all kinds of creepy stuff that me and my friends all thought was pretty silly. He was into Slenderman mythos, black magic, and cheesy 70's music. I think that last thing was just a way to connect with his absent father, but I'll never know. His favorite song was "Don't Fear the Reaper." A fact he would remind of us constantly. It got pretty annoying.

If it were up to us, we would have hung out with the little twerp, but Lisa, our friend Troy's sister, insisted on it. I guess she felt bad for him, thought we needed to be his friends. So Jeff started tagging along with us, and we absolutely hated it.

We never treated Jeff right. He was the butt of all our pranks, we constantly insulted him, loved to make fun of him, and sometimes just straight up told him to get lost. There were more than a few times he went home crying, but he'd always show up the next day like nothing happened. Even though we treated him terribly, we were the only friends he ever had.

He had enough in common with us that he could fit in alright. We all liked the same movies, similar taste in music, we even had a lot of the same hobbies. One cool thing about Jeff was his huge collection of knives. Looking back, it should have a major red flag for us, but we just thought it was awesome. His brother, Liu, was in jail for stabbing someone, so I guess the knives were his way of feeling close to him again. If we had spent more times focusing on the good things about him, if we had been better friends, maybe none of this would have ever happened.

But we were selfish, thoughtless teenagers. We didn't care that Jeff was lonely or depressed or even that he had a hard life. He annoyed us, he made us angry. So we wanted him gone. There were even a few times we told him to kill himself. I remember Troy once told him to "drink a whole thing of bleach." He probably should have said "bottle" but Troy was never very articulate.

I never thought we had ever taken it too far, until that day.

We decided we finally had enough of Jeff. We were going to get rid of him. There was a tall cliff overlooking a massive ditch. We weren't gonna hurt, or at least that wasn't our plan. We wanted to scare him. Make him think we'd kill him if he didn't leave us alone. We were gonna dangle him over the cliff and pretend like we were gonna drop him.

Me and the gang were all together, Randy, Troy and Katey. Lisa wasn't there, and I'm sure if she knew what we were trying to do she'd have our heads. We picked up Jeff at his house. He never bothered to ask his mom permission, but he never had to. She was always passed out on the couch after downing an entire bottle of whiskey in an afternoon or whatever. Jeff could get away with pretty much anything he wanted.

He had this outdated MP3 player with him loaded up with all of that silly Dad Rock he liked so much. He dressed like he always did, black combat boots, a pair of blue jeans, a Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt and a gray hoodie wrapped around his waist. We told him we were gonna down to the lake and race boats. It didn't matter what we said, we could have told him we were going to eat dirt and he'd tag along.

He was like a dog, in a way. Very excited to be with us, always very loyal, and even pretty obedient. He'd eat bugs if we told him to, and had. I really do regret how we treated him, even after what be turned into, and all the horrible things he had done.

When we arrived at the cliff, Jeff seemed a bit confused. We told him that there was a great view of the city from there and he just had to see it. He didn't question us, he wasn't the least bit suspicious. He put his hoodie on and practically ran out of the car to get a look. We followed behind him. He became even more confused when he saw absolutely nothing but rocks and trees.

We all circled around him. Me, Jack, Katey and Jared. He turned to us with an utterly baffled expression on his face, totally oblivious to what was about to happen. I grabbed him by the collar, everyone else grabbed his arms. He shouted and screamed as he leaned him over the cliff. We were laughing at him, telling him we were gonna drop him. He cried harder than I'd ever seen him before, and I'm ashamed to admit I was really enjoying it.

It all started to fall apart when he managed to get one of his arms loose. He had a holster under his shirt with a huge butcher's knife in it. Jeff was the kind of kid crazy enough to carry one with him wherever he went. He grabbed it and started swinging it at us. He sliced my face open and I fell back in pain. Everyone was freaking and trying to stop him.

Katey, scared out of her mind and operating on her lowest survival instinct, freaked out. She shoved Jeff away, just trying to get him to stop. It was an accident. She never meant to hurt him. But he stumbled back, he could regain footing, and he... fell down. I'll never forget the scream he made when he tripped. The absolute agony and betrayal and terror in his voice as it echoed louder than anything I ever heard before it slowly faded away and was finally silenced by that loud "thud" sound will haunt me forever.

Katey was completely broken. She fell to her knees, screamed like a banshee and started crying so hard it seemed like her throat was about to collapse. The rest of us just stood there, completely in awe. No words, no movement, nothing. Just complete and utter shock. Jared grabbed Katey and we all ran back into my car and drove away.

I'll never know how it happened, but no one ever found Jeff's body. He was declared missing, and the authorities searched for him, but the investigation ended with no evidence. I'd say we all got lucky, but after the events that transpired years later, calling it "luck" is a gigantic misnomer. It was more like cosmic irony, a cruel joke to compound our punishment.

I was the only one who ever went back to the spot. It was about a week later, I was having nightmares about the incident. None of the others would dare go near that cliff after what happened, but I had to be sure Jeff was dead. I had to be sure it was all real.

I made my way down to the trench in the middle of the night. I felt like I needed to see Jeff's body with my own eyes. I'd regret the hell out of it for the rest of my life after I did. His body looked like it had begun to decay, his already pale skin had faded into a macabre shade of grayish white, he messy hair had become even more unkempt, and his limbs were twisted into unnatural, inhuman positions that made it obvious they were completely shattered. His clothes were raggy and strained, completely ruined by the rain and the dirt. His eyes had these thick, black rings around them that made it looked like they were completely carved out.

I approached his body slowly and carefully, trying my best not to make a noise - as if it mattered. There was no doubt in my mind he was totally dead. In just another act in a series of sincere and painful regrets, I dug around his body, looking for whatever little things he had on him to keep as mementos. Something I could always look at and remember that he's really dead.

I grabbed three things: the MP3 player he always carried with him, a little sketchbook of drawings he made, and a picture of him and his entire family. It was the only picture of them all together, with his older brother as a toddler, Jeff as an infant, and his father still present. Looking at the picture made a pit in my stomach. Seeing Jeff's family happy and together, only to be utterly destroyed years later, made me sick with grief.

I remember seeing Jeff with his sketchbook a couple dozen times. It was the only time we didn't try to mess with him, because he'd be quiet and out of our way whenever he pulled that thing out. His drawings were the kind of crude, juvenile you'd expect from someone his age. He liked to draw knives, skulls, scribble little musings, write down song lyrics he liked, and he even doodled a couple monsters. He was clearly a fan of Slenderman, since he kept showing up more than anyone else in his drawings.

The MP3 player was filled with a couple classic rock songs, stuff my dad would have liked, even a few ones I enjoyed. He listened to The Eagles, April Wine, The Doors, and of course Blue Oyster Cult. I looked carefully at his playlist, and I winced when I noticed the last song Jeff listened to was "Don't Fear the Reaper." His favorite. I didn't appreciate the irony.

I couldn't bring myself to take his knife. Looking back, it was the only thing I should have taken. But I didn't wanna even touch it. Something about that thing seemed evil. Like it was burning with it. I almost thought putting my hand on the thing would give me third degree burns.

Before I could take something else, Jeff's body started to move. I was stunned. It couldn't have been the wind, or an animal moving him around, or anything else. It looked like organic movement, like it was coming right from Jeff. His eyes opened wide, and I had finally noticed he was still breathing, it was just incredibly weak and slow.

Jeff was alive. He had been completely paralyzed by the fall, but he had somehow lived for an entire week all alone down there, completely unable to move. It was easy to tell he suffered.

The look on his face was the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life. There was something in his eyes - not anger, but hatred. Pure, absolute hatred. Like nothing I'd ever seen before. He abhorred me, and I could tell if he could still move, he'd try his hardest to rip my guts out.

That's when I did the worst thing I'd ever done in my life. I didn't call an ambulance or try to go get help, because I knew if people found out what we did, me and my friends would all go to jail and our lives would be ruined. Looking back on it now, that would been way better than what actually happened to us all.

I covered Jeff's mouth with my hand and pinched his nose closed tight. He struggled, but clearly didn't have the energy to fight. The breath slowly faded, he stopped breathing entirely, and he began to close his eyes. I pleaded with him to stop struggling, to just let it all end. I begged him, with tears in my eyes.

"Please, just go to sleep."

Chapter One
It had been three years since that day. I still thought about what happened every single day, but I was so sure it was over.

Then came the day I knew my life was finished.

I was on my way to work. On a normal day, I'd walk about five blocks to the copy shop. It was nice to live so close to work that I didn't even need to buy a car. I never thought I'd ever need one. If I had one, I would have never seen him that day. At the very least, I could have run him over.

I caught a glimpse of him from far away. I was walking the neighborhood he grew up in, and I made the mistake of walking across the street from his old house. Every other house on the block was pristine and well maintained, but Jeff's old home was decayed and rotted. No one ever wanted to touch the place. It was marred with human tragedy. Everyone who lived there was dead, and the very air around it felt possessed. A chill ran up my spine just walking past it.

I'd normally never go near that place, and I shouldn't have that day. But I couldn't walk away from what I thought I saw. It was far away and out of focus, but I could never mistake the sight of Jeff's corpse. It looked like he was standing there in the window, looking right at me. Against my better judgement, I approached the old house and looked inside.

I could have sworn I saw him. He was standing all the way in the back of the house, but I could recognize him clear as day. He looked just like he did back in the pit. The tattered clothes, the white skin, the messy hair, the black rings around his eyes, and the furious, hateful look on his face. I'll never understand how, but I could make out every detail on his face perfectly.

His face was covered in hideous scars of various length and size, the biggest being two symmetrical markings ripped all the way across both his cheeks forming a makeshift smile. It wouldn't have fooled anyone, though. Jeff wasn't happy, and one second looking at his nightmarish visage would make it explicitly clear. The markings and scars looked to be self-inflicted, like Jeff was so anxious to get all the hate out he had to carve himself up.

I was completely frozen. I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was real or just a hallucination. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. The trauma from what happened all those years ago left me in a bad way. My state of mind had become fragile that the slightest of noises would make me jump. I still had nightmares every night about him, I heard and seen things that weren't there - but never this vividly, and never for this long.

The cold, long stare was not broken by me, but by the figure that resembled Jeff. With complete apathy, he turned around and exited out the back door of the home. Curiosity had a vice grip over me. It was stupid to go back there, to try and look for him. It was stupid to hop over the fence and into the backyard. And it was really stupid to poke my head in and look around.

"Don't go in there."

It was a deep, raspy voice, it practically growled at me. My heart skipped a beat. I snapped back away from the door as fast as I could and looked behind me. There was nothing. Almost immediately, my common sense seemed to return and I realized nothing good could come from standing around here anymore.

I ran away from the old house as fast as I could, like I was trying to outrun some predatory animal. I made it all the way to the far corner of the next block over before I stopped to catch my breath.

Jeff was nowhere to be seen, but I knew he wasn't gone. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him. I could feel his eyes on me, like they were burning holes in my skin.

I decided I couldn't leave myself open anymore. I had to take the bus to work today. I needed big metal walls to protect me, and a huge crowd of people around me. More than anything, I needed some sense of normalcy. A clear sign that I was still in reality.

I waited at the bus stop, fidgeting around and looking in every single direction, just waiting for Jeff to pop out of a bush or from behind a tree. I couldn't find him anywhere.

When the bus I arrived, I practically shoved two people out of the way and tossed my fare into the bucket like it was on fire. I made the mistake of taking a seat by the window. Because of this, I had the misfortune of seeing Jeff one last time.

He was standing out on the far end of the street, glaring at me. Maintaining perfect eye contact with me, as if he was staring right into my soul and snatching up all the intimate little details of my life that I didn't want anyone else to see.

As the bus slowly pulled away, he made an obscene gesture at me and slowly walked away. He wasn't frustrated because he couldn't catch me, he wasn't angry that I escaped. He was in perfect control. He was letting me leave. He was toying with me.

The very next day, Jeff killed his first victim, a dear friend who I hadn't spoken to in years. Her murder made it all too clear that Jeff was real, and he was coming for me soon.

Chapter Two
Her name was Lisa Beacon. Out of all of us, she deserve to die the least. She was always nice to Jeff, always the first to speak up when we took the teasing too far, always the quickest to defend him, and never joined in when we picked on him.

But she was the first one he hurt. He didn't just kill her, he left her mortally wounded and disfigured. She was in the hospital's intensive care unit for two weeks before succumbing to her injuries.

In the interim between her admission and her death, Lisa had spoken with a detective from the police department. Despite of the ghastly disfigurement she was suffering from, she was somehow able to speak perfectly and recount every detail of her story vividly.

She was at a party at a friend's house and had stayed too long. It was about four in the morning, and the whole neighborhood was pitch black. Even with every street light on, you could barely see your own hand in front of your own face.

The first warning sign she recieved was the sound of a knife scraping against glass. The horrible creeking sound echoed all throughout the block. She was the only one there, all alone. She looked around, but couldn't find anyone.

Lisa made the unfortunate mistake of following the sound, and that was how her undoing.

The sound would stop completely and start up again, even changing directions a few times. It would sometimes be frantic and rapid, and other times be slow and painful.

She followed the sound all the way into the backyard of a decrepit house she had never even seen before. It wasn't Jeff's house, just a rotten building scheduled for demolition.

The awful scraping sound was the sound of a large butcher's knife lazily dragging across a dirty window. That's when she saw Jeff, standing there, knife in hand.

They locked eyes for a brief moment. She barely recognized him, she had never seen him down there in the pit, she didn't even know what happened that day.

"Jeff?"

He turned around and ran right at her, knife in hand. He bared his teeth at her as his eyes expressed a kind of hatred she had never seen before in her life. Her better instincts kicked in, and she ran away as fast as she could.

Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you were being chased by someone, and you couldn't bring yourself to run? Like you're trapped in molasses and you can't get away? It doesn't work that way in real life. You run like a wild animal. Your body starts pumping adrenaline into all of your veins and you move faster than you ever have before.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was still faster than her. She never felt the knife enter her side, but the trauma of the wound caused her to fall over in a pile of own blood.

Laying right under a street light bleeding into the gutter, she began to cough and hack as her mouth filled up with her own blood.

Jeff was looming over her, griping the knife so tightly in his hand she swore he could have snapped the handle n two. Tears ran down her face as she screamed so loud she felt like her vocal cords were about to rip apart.

She called for help, from anyone at all. Nobody ever came. Not a single person heard her. The entire block was completely deserted, everyone was either long gone, sound asleep or just too busy to care.

He stopped on her chest, causing her to spit out even more blood. She looked up to him, and she plead to him for some kind of mercy. She begged him to tell her why, to give some kind of explanation.

He leaned in close to her, and he whispered,

"You don't deserve one."

Chapter Three
Word spread fast about what happened. It ran non-stop on every single news station, it was a glaring headline in every newspaper, it was the frightened words on everyone's lips.

She gave a perfect description of him, his mangled face and grayish skin, his frayed hair and tattered clothing, His image, brutal act and apparent connection to the missing child I had been responsible for murdering had created a folk legend akin to the Mothman or bigfoot.

Over the next few weeks, sightings of "Jeff the Killer" bloomed all over Oak Grove and the surrounding area. The police had organized search parties, people were snapping pictures of random shadows and figures claiming to have photographed Jeff.

I found it sickening, to say the least. Not to mention absolutely terrifying. Jeff was slowly turning into some sort of anti-hero. A wronged, abused child who was just trying to find justice.

No one took Lisa's death and the subsequent media firestorm that followed worse than her brother, Troy. After Jeff murdered her, Troy started seeing him everywhere. In darkened alleyways, in unlit hallways, standing in the window of some decaying home or staring through his bedroom window.

Troy was, to put it bluntly, white trash. Him and Lisa both came from the same poverty-stricken family, but whereas Lisa maintained a normal social image, Troy wore his class on his sleeve. His was inarticulate, poor educated and never dressed well. He was always very protective of his sister, and I could tell losing her broke something in him.

Troy had become obsessed with the idea of revenge. He began stockpiling weapons - knives, clubs, even swords - waiting for Jeff to come after him next. He had planned to viciously murder Jeff, and put him through a kind of suffering even worse than his sister suffered.

He would get an opportunity to try one night, but would live to regret his wish. It was three weeks after Lisa's death. He was sitting there in a wooden chair next to the window of his bedroom, a combat knife tightly gripped in his hand, waiting patiently to see Jeff's face again so he could make the gruesome scars that covered it a pleasant memory.

He saw Jeff standing out in his yard with his infamous knife, looking up at him. The two were staring daggers at each other, waiting for one to make the first move.

Jeff walked over to Troy's front door, kicked it down and stomped inside. Troy leapt into action immediately, running out of his room and down the stairs with his knife gripped tightly in his fist.

Troy couldn't find Jeff, but that never deterred him. Without so much as a moment of doubt or hesitance Troy continued to run all throughout the first floor of his house, trying to find where Jeff might be hiding.

Troy followed the sounds of crashing metal and pounding footsteps to his own kitchen, where he could practically feel Jeff's presence.

He searched every corner, under the table, even inside the oven. It became obvious that Jeff wasn't there. He ran out into the living room to find Jeff. He knew he was successful when Jeff tackled him and knocked him to the ground.

There was a struggle, but Troy was holding his own. He managed to shove Jeff off, toss him into a glass cabinet and even managed to slash his face with his knife.

But even though Jeff was vulnerable, he still easily overpowered Troy. Something about the dark, unnatural forces keeping him alive had made him stronger than ever. Strong enough to beat up a grown man twice as tall as him. He punched him, he tossed him, he smashed his head into the ground, and eventually Jeff finished it by pinning Troy's hand to the ground with his own knife.

In a great deal of pain, Troy struggled and screamed and cursed at Jeff, the same kind of intense rage I saw in Jeff's face had consumed Troy himself. He felt exactly what Jeff did.

His anger would quickly fade into fear as Jeff walked upstairs and came back down with an entire container of bleach.

The little bastard made him drink it.

Chapter Four
Jeff's next victim was Randy Barge. Randy was the oldest of all us, and the most jaded. He was easily the meanest to Jeff. The worst pranks, the meanest jokes, the nastiest little gags would always be cooked up by Randy. One time he made Jeff lick an entire sack of batteries one-by-one to save a drawing he made, and then ripped it up anyway.

It's not like we were any better than he was. We always joined in, we never objected, we and never tried to stop him. Nobody but Lisa ever even tried.

Randy's life after the incident wasn't exactly glamorous. He was the groundskeeper at a local graveyard. He lived there, totally off the grid. He hadn't seen even a second of the news, didn't even get the internet out there. He had no idea about Jeff. He could have never known the horror that was about to come.

Randy was used to see weird things at night. When you're all alone and isolated in such a strange, scary place, your mind tends to play tricks on you. You see shadow people shuffling across the walls, tall men in the trees, ghosts floating past the headstones. Eventually, it all becomes white noise. You start tuning out all the creepy things that would terrify most people.

That complete apathy for supposed the paranormal, unfortunately, would be Randy's undoing. When he started seeing Jeff standing there in the graveyard at the middle of the night, he thought nothing of it. He never tried to run, he never went to grab a weapon, he never thought twice about it. He'd seen those type of things every single night, and the natural guilt he was feeling over Jeff's death made him take these sightings even less seriously.

I don't think Jeff liked being ignored. When he saw that Randy wasn't paying much attention to him, he became more aggressive with Randy. Jeff became more physical. Instead of passively stalking Randy, he'd go out of his way to intimidate him.

Randy lived in a beaten-down, ugly little shack only a few yards away from the tombstones and burial plots. Jeff would wait patiently for Randy to go to sleep and then bang on his door or toss a brick through his window. Sometimes he'd just slam something against the wall, or simply tip something over. Anything to make Randy freak out.

Jeff would also do more subtle, little things to drive Randy crazy. He'd sneak into his cabin while he was away and make slash marks on his walls and windows. He'd move things around, he'd steal small objects like Randy's toothbrush or his lighter, and he'd leave dead rodents or small blood stains in the corners or behind the furniture.

Jeff's plan worked. Randy was genuinely scared. He'd see things in the dark, but none of them ever had any physical agency. They were just visions and hallucinations. But Jeff was real, there was no denying it.

Randy never felt the slightest bit of pity for Jeff, or even the faintest hint of regret over what he did. He was only afraid of getting caught. He felt justified in getting angry at Jeff, and to be honest I guess he was. But even with all the horrible things Jeff has done, I still don't think what Randy did next was right.

He was furious at Jeff. He would stomp out of his shack and curse at him. Shout at him at the top of his lungs. Try to toss things back at him. None of it ever phased Jeff. So Randy decided to do something he thought would really piss him off.

This would be the worst mistake of his life.

It was past midnight, and the graveyard was shrouded in an ugly fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. Most of the last days of Randy's life were spent screaming at Jeff and trying to outrun him or chase him off.

But today when he saw Jeff standing in the distance, all he did was smile smugly and wave. Jeff wasn't normal, but he wasn't psychic. He didn't know what Randy was doing with that large shovel draped over his shoulder.

When Jeff saw Randy pierce his shovel into the dirt, and he was confused. Jeff watched him for hours, single-handedly digging six feet into the wet, muddy ground. Jeff watched as Randy grabbed a hold of the heavy coffin and struggled to pull it up to the surface.

Jeff figured out Randy's motivations when the coffin door swung open, and he saw the body. He recognized the person the rotting corpse used to be, even after years of decay.

It had been years, but you never forget your own mother's face.

I don't know what Jeff was planning to do with Randy. Maybe he was going to mess with his head for a little while and then kill him quick and painfully. But any plans Jeff might have had went right out the window right at the moment Randy defiled his mother's grave.

Randy unzipped his fly and began to piss all over her dead body. I don't know what he expected to happen. Randy was a nasty, cruel person without much foresight. I guess he thought if he could hurt Jeff, he'd win. No matter what Jeff did to him next.

Randy was so smug, laughing his lungs out and swearing as he mocked Jeff and boasted about what he'd done. That's when Jeff tackled Randy to the ground hard enough to break a few of his ribs.

There was a struggle, but Randy was grossly outmatched, especially with Jeff as furious as he was. He was beaten in submission, barely able to even move. It didn't stop Randy from running his mouth, even as Jeff was holding his knife to Randy's throat.

Jeff had Randy pinned to the ground, and... well, I'm not going to say what happened next, but if you were a psychotic killer who was furious at someone, and their fly was open... well, you can probably figure out what Jeff did with that knife.

Randy let out the most horrible scream he ever had in his life, feeling the worst he could possibly imagine. He thought it couldn't get any worse. But in just a few mere minutes he'd envy the pain he was feeling right now.

Jeff got up off Randy and walked over to the coffin. The furious expression that was practically cemented on his face had finally faded away, just for that moment, as he looked down at his mother. He looked so broken, so sad. It was the last time he'd ever looked human. He slowly stroke his mother's face. If he could still cry, he'd be an absolute mess.

"Aren't I beautiful, mommy?"

The words were bitter, sarcastic and macabre. Maybe he imagined what it would be like if his mother could see him now. It was a whole lot of emotion Jeff never thought he'd feel again.

With great care, he lifted his mother's body out it's coffin and set it on the ground. Then he turned to Randy, a beaten and bloodied mess in a heap on the ground. As Jeff formed a tight grip on his collar, Randy figured out what Jeff was going to do next, and he started to scream.

Jeff picked up Randy and tossed him in the coffin that used to occupy his mother. He slammed the door shut and lazily flipped the coffin into the six foot trench below.

The fall knocked Randy's already bruised body around like a ragdoll, breaking more of his bones and leaving him totally paralyzed. But he still had the strength to scream at the top of his lungs.

He begged for death. He pleaded for Jeff no to do this. To just kill him, not bury him alive. He wept as hard as he could and screamed for help.

None of it matter. Jeff ignored it all, and there was no one else to help him. Jeff just shoveled dirt into the pit for hours on end, until the screaming was muffled.

The police would show up a week later to respond to a missing person's report. By the time they discovered the body and the freshly dug grave, Randy was long gone.

Chapter Five
Out of all of our friends, me and Katey were the only ones still alive. Jeff had hunted down every single other person and killed them.

By now, the stress of the situation had already taken it's toll on me. I had left Minnesota entirely, but my mind had become so broken from the absolute terror I was living with every day that I still ended up in a mental hospital.

But even before the killings, the incident had already broken Katey. She blamed herself for Jeff's death. She was the one who pushed him off the cliff, after all.

She had become extremely introverted, and never left her home. She developed a kind of acute agoraphobia and had to adjust her life accordingly. No one ever went in her house, and no one ever came out.

So when she was Jeff standing outside her window on a cold, dark night, it only made her already awful situation a thousand times worse. She knew about the other killings, all had been linked to Jeff the Killer by the media. She knew she had to be next in the rotation. Terror gripped her heart like a bear trap on a fox's leg.

She began to board up her windows and doors. She set up booby-traps all over her house. She kept some kind of weapon near her at all times, with knives and clubs she ordered off the internet at arm's length in nearly ever room.

Jeff didn't come for her right away. Instead, he circled her like a shark. Stalking her for days and days on end, hiding behind trees and in bushes, calling her house late at night and hanging up, and sometimes just standing outside her window and staring.

She tried calling the police, but by the time they got there Jeff was always gone, and there was never any evidence he'd ever been there. They took the threat seriously, but there was little they could do. The police aren't bodyguards, after all. They couldn't sit around all night waiting for him.

There was a part of Katey that wished Jeff would make his move already, just for the sake of catharsis. The waiting, the uncertainty, the knowledge she was going to die but the inability to predict when or how it would happen, that was the worst part.

Jeff wouldn't come for her until six weeks had already past. She barely got any sleep. She wanted to be ready for whatever came next when it happened. So when she heard a loud banging noise coming from her basement in the middle of the night, she was already awake and prepared.

Right under her bed she kept a baseball with a cluster of nails sticking out of it. It was hard for her to lift the thing because it was so heavy, and she couldn't swing it all that hard, but it could still tear someone apart.

She grabbed her weapon and rushed out of bed. Katey wasn't a violent person, she hadn't been in a real fight her whole life. But she wanted this nightmare to end, and she was out of options.

She rushed downstairs, determined to face Jeff and put an end to his rampage. As she stood at the top of the basement stairs, Jeff was nowhere to be seen. He was already in her home, and he was toying with her.

But Katey wasn't daunted. She had lived in fear for far too long, and now that it was here she wasn't going to cower and hide away anymore. She gritted her teeth and ran upstairs.

The sudden loud sound of metal clamping and a deep, angry growl coming from the second floor let her know that Jeff had fallen into one of her traps. She sped upstairs, ready to catch him with his pants down.

She finally saw found Jeff, struggling to remove the bear trap from his bloodied leg. Like I said, Jeff had a lot of bizarre new strength, but he wasn't invulnerable.

He ripped the trap off his leg hard enough to snap it in two, and wasted no time charging towards her. But Katey was a bit more clever than Jeff had anticipated - as he lunged at her, she jumped out of the way, sending Jeff rocketing face-first down the stairs and falling clumsily.

Jeff was pretty pissed off. He wasn't used to not having the upper hand. As Katey lorded over him at the top of the stairs with the bat in her hand, he saw the kind of predatory fury in her eyes he had. It was the first time since he began tormenting us that he felt genuinely unnerved.

Katey knew the tables were officially turned when she saw Jeff run away from her. She chased after him, bat in hand, ready to beat him to a bloody pulp.

She chased Jeff downstairs into the living room. Jeff ran into another trap when he set off a tripwire spread out across the entrance to the kitchen, sending a set of saw blade falling down. Two of them missed, but one hit Jeff in the shoulder, causing him to reel in pain.

Jeff turned to find Katey had caught up with him, and with all her might she smashed him with her bat as hard she could, causing the bat to break and Jeff to fall over.

Katey slowly backed away, waiting to see if Jeff was still moving. He sluggishly rose up, battered and covered in his own blood. Nails and wood splinters stuck out all over the left side of Jeff's upper body, arm and face. He sneered at Katey as hard as he possibly could, and rushed right at her.

Katey turned around and tried to run away, but Jeff managed to quickly catch up her her. He slashed his knife across her leg, making a large gash in her thigh. But it didn't slow her down. She was able to flee upstairs like a bat out of hell. Jeff let her get a head start. He must have been toying with her. I guess he wanted to prolong her suffering.

She was completely out of sight, nowhere to be seen. Jeff stomped up the stairs, but Katey was utterly absent. There's a good chance Jeff began to regret little her run away, and he probably thought she escaped.

He checked every room on the second floor, making a very careful effort to avoid the various booby traps Katey had set up. He checked the bathroom, the sewing room, and the empty room she used for storage. There wasn't a single sign of her anywhere.

Even her bedroom was totally empty. The only clue to her location was the bay window across the room from Katey's bed. It had been shattered, presumably with a desk chair or some other large object. It was clear that she was long gone.

Jeff walked over to the shattered window and gazed out to the front yard. Like some kind of predatory animal, he searched for tracks or disturbed soil - any kind of sign of her passing. There was nothing, like her feet never even touched the ground. His theory was confirmed when he heard Katey calling for him.

Jeff turned around, and found out the hard way that the baseball bat wasn't the only weapon Katey had stashed away. She also had a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun, and right now it was aimed squarely at Jeff.

She pulled the trigger, and the thunderous roar of the gun firing shook the whole house. Katey's aim was perfect, she hit Jeff square in the chest, causing him to reel in pain and let out a horrible, almost demonic-sounding scream of pain.

She fired again, and the blast knocked Jeff to over, sending him hurtling out the window as he screamed in pain. The loud yell was the worst sound Katey had ever heard in her life, and it was punctuated with a loud "thud" as Jeff hit the ground, silencing him.

She dropped her gun and ran to the window. She looked down at her yard, and she saw Jeff's limp body lying there, twisted and mangled and soaking in a pool of his own blood.

It was clear. Jeff was dead. It was finally over. She loosened her grip on the gun and let it fall to the ground. She fell to her knees and cried her eyes out. She was filled with so many horrible emotion all at once. Guilt, fear, grief, sorrow, everything washed over her all at once in a terrible, climatic crescendo.

She couldn't believe she had killed a child. Certainly, whatever iniquitous force had brought him to life had long since erased any parts of him that were still human, but it didn't change the way she felt. The way she remembered him.

With the horror finally over, it was time to pick up the pieces and live her life once again. She had to collect Jeff's body and dispose of it. She was sure that the police would never believe her story, and there was no way to explain it. Even with the media circus surrounding Jeff, a dead child on your front lawn isn't something you can just brush off, she thought.

But when she exited out the front door and looked to her yard, her heart sank when she realized he was gone. The spot where he fell was still covered in blood, and dead, brown grass formed a seamless silhouette of where he landed, but his body was nowhere to be seen.

Absolute terror gripped her heart as tight as it could and refused to let go. She began hyperventilating and prepared to run back into her home.

Just as she turned around, she saw Jeff standing there, covered in blood and bruises, looking barely alive. Before she could even move, Jeff lifted his knife and stabbed her in the heart.

The pain was instant and sharp. She felt the life drain out of her as her entire body stopped, and everything went dark. Jeff pulled his knife out, and she fell to the ground.

Her death was quick and relatively painless. I guess Jeff wanted her to suffer at first, but with the fight she put up, he couldn't afford to play games with her.

In fighting to defend herself, Katey died the most peacefully. I guess that's worth something.

Chapter Six
They were all dead. Every single one of them, Lisa, Troy, Randy and Katey. I was the only one left, and I would be the last one to die. And knowing that filled me with the kind of powerful dread no one should ever have to live with.

I started seeing Jeff again, just like all the others had. I knew my last days were upon me when I looked out my bedroom window and saw him standing there, gazing at me the same way he did exactly three months ago that very day.

The medication didn't do anything for me. Therapy had no effect. All the specialists believed I was simply delusion. There was no way I could have known as much as I did about all the murders, there was no way they could have all been connected. I fought so hard, but eventually I gave up. How do you explain knowing intimidate details about events you weren't there for? How do you make people really believe you saw it all in a series of dreams? Psychics aren't real. No amount of anecdotal evidence was going to change their minds on the matter.

But you already know, I'm dead. I've been dead for a month now. My spirit still lingers by a thread, and eventually there will be nothing left of me. I will fade away, becoming another mindless part of the mass of existence. But before that day comes, I can still warn you. I can still tell my story.

On the day that I died, the first warning sign came right when I took my medication. I had been told for weeks that the pills I was taking were going to be changed, so when I was given a strange mixture of multiple pills I didn't recognize, I never questioned it.

But the pills weren't anti-psychotics. They were a collection of ordinarily innocuous medication that when taken separately were totally harmless, but when taken together had horrible side-effects.

My movements became sluggish, my mind became muddled, and my speech was slurred and nearly incomprehensible. I was completely aware of my surroundings and what was going on around me, but I had barely any control over my body.

I thought I could sleep it off, but that was a big mistake. I layed down in my bed, and I became completely paralyzed. I couldn't move my arms or legs, I could just barely rock back and forth. I tried to scream for help, but it came out a mumbled groan.

It feels like I'm still trapped in that room. That dark, white, tiny room with just my bed, that desk, that office chair and that pouch full of Jeff's stuff. I remember it so vividly. It's like recalling a vision of hell.

I saw Jeff standing there in my doorway. The look of furious hatred in his eyes only burned brighter since time had passed. I expected him to kick down the door and charge at me like an animal, but he didn't. He slowly opened the door and quietly shut it behind him.

I was trembling, totally unable to move or even scream. Tears were rolling down my face. I was a pathetic, writhing mess of a man, but Jeff barely even reacted. He walked over to my desk and grabbed the pouch I kept his things in.

He unpacked them one by one, his sketchbook, his MP3 player, and the picture of his family. He tucked everything into his jacket without even pausing, except for the picture. He stared for what felt like minutes. There was this curious look on his face, the only time I hadn't seen him absolutely furious since the incident. He seemed... somber.

Then he walked over to me and dropped the picture on my chest, right where I could see it. Then, he spoke.

"Do you see the woman in this picture?"

I couldn't answer him. I could barely move my lips, I couldn't even make noise.

"Her name was Meiling Woods. She was my mother. She was half-Chinese, the youngest child in her family and preferred to be called 'May.' her, she named her oldest son after her father, and she was married to Peter Woods before he abandoned her."

I tried to reply, tried to give my condolences, or beg for mercy, anything that could add even mere seconds onto my life. But nothing could come out, no matter how hard I struggled.

"You never thought about her even once, have you? I bet you didn't even know her name until now. She died because of you. She was already an alcoholic, but she was going to quit when she found out she had diabetes. Then you and your pals came in, like a goddamn miserable hurricane. You killed her boy, and she had nothing left to live for. She crashed her car into a tree. Because of you."

"You and your fucking friends killed everything I ever loved, and then you went on living your lives like nothing ever happened. Fuck you all."

Jeff pulled his knife out from his jacket, and he plunged it deep into my stomach. I hacked up a thick clot of blood, and I let out the most weak, pathetic moan.

"One of the pills you took was adrenaline. It's not a magic immortality potion, you're still going to die. It'll just take a lot longer. So I'm gonna take my time and paint my masterpiece."

"You're gonna wanna go to sleep. But don't worry, I won't let that happen."

Epilogue
Oliver Paul was a forty-something truck driver from Arizona. He had been all over the country and thought he'd seen everything.

He caught a glimpse of a teenage child hitchhiking on the side of the road, and his natural empathy kicked in. He made the worst mistake he ever had when he pulled over to pick him up.

If he had watched the news, he would have recognized the child as the infamous "Jeff the Killer" who police had begun linking to a string of gruesome murders. But when you spend most of your time on the road, you don't have the luxury of staying informed.

He realized his mistake almost immediately after he opened the door and Jeff rushed inside in an unnatural, inhuman way and held a knife to his throat.

Jeff demanded Oliver take him across state lines, to a town far away from there. He'd drive until the gas ran out, or until Jeff was bored of sitting around.

Jeff changed the radio to the classic rock station he liked to listen to, and his favorite song, "Don't Fear the Reaper" started playing. For the first time in years, Jeff smiled. It wasn't a good smile, it was a wicked, psychotic grin. The grin of a killer.

They found poor Oliver's corpse a few days later, lying on the side of the road with his throat slashed. His truck had been crashed into the bottom of a ditch.

Killing us had satisfied Jeff, but it brought him no peace. He wasn't placated. He would never be. He had become something evil, inhuman. A wicked spirit of hatred that would wander the earth forever, always killing, always making people suffer.

He already had a new victim picked out. A little girl, about eight years old. He snuck into her bedroom late in the middle of the night. She woke up to find Jeff sitting on her chest, his knife raised high in the air. That wicked, horrible grin on his face.

"Shhh." He whispered to her as she trembled, tears rolling down her eyes.

"Go to sleep."