When Olivia Gaines was told by her dying father that he was a serial killer, she took it pretty well.

Olivia had initially bristled at the thought of being called to her father’s mansion that night. She hadn’t really spoken to the old fuck in months and didn’t have much desire to sit by his bedside and watch him die. The message she had gotten from her brother Jason was that Winslow, as she had taken to calling him in her teens because it pissed him off, had something important he needed to tell them. Jason, innocent and naive and clueless as he was, had no idea that Olivia hadn’t been speaking to their father and she didn’t see much point in bursting that bubble. The old man would be dead soon and was unlikely to cause a scene in front of precious Jason, the apple of his eye, so eventually she talked herself into going. Maybe the important news was about their inheritance, so that could be something worth listening to. Although, knowing her father as she did, she knew she was going to be lucky to be left anything more substantial than their mother’s collection of antique silverware. It would certainly be worth something, but it was important to their mother, meaning it would be the sort of thing that Olivia would wind up getting shit from Jason about if she sold it. Even though she had no memory of their mother or her affinity for old silverware. It would end up being more of a burden than anything else. Hell, the old prick probably knew that and this convinced Olivia that this was exactly what he was going to do, as one last way of sticking it to her before he croaked.

All this is to say, when Olivia sat down at Winslow Gaines’ bedside, she was fully expecting the worst but knew she had to put on a convincing show for Jason’s benefit. He’d probably be bawling his eyes out and holding the old bastard’s hand the whole time like a weirdo. He always did that now when they went to see him and it made Olivia’s skin crawl. What kind of 41-year-old man holds his daddy’s hand, even in this situation? Gave her the heebie jeebies. And then she knew Jason would want to hug her and tell her everything was going to be okay and she’d have to stand there, head held tightly into his chest, pretending to cry along with him like she gave a shit. It was just easier to pretend, but that didn’t make it any less aggravating when she was playing the part of grieving daughter/emotionally available sister.

But then everything changed in an instant.

Winslow Gaines dropped the bombshell on them and they were both stunned into silence.

Olivia felt what can only be described as a sense of euphoria when her father began revealing the sordid details of his vicious double life. In the space of a few seconds, her entire view of her father changed. It was altered irrevocably and she knew it would never be the same again. Unlike Jason, though, who looked like he was about to have a complete nervous breakdown at any moment, Olivia’s reaction was entirely positive. Everything made sense now. The fact she had never really seen eye-to-eye with her father; that sense that he always kept her at arms length, but embraced Jason. It was because of this all-consuming lie he was living. Olivia had never gotten along with him because the father that was presented to her was never his real self. He had always kept her at a safe distance emotionally because he just didn’t feel emotions the same way ’normal’ people did. He had always seemingly loved Jason more because he was weak and easily manipulated; feign some interest in his life and he was like a puppy desperate for a belly rub.

Winslow knew how to work Jason, but he didn’t know how to work Olivia.

Because Olivia was just like him. He just didn’t know it.

Olivia Gaines had made her first kill at age nine. Like many burgeoning serial killers, her first was an animal. A stray cat had been wandering into the Gaines’ back garden for weeks, sleeping under the cover of their rose bush. Olivia had noticed it from her bedroom window and watched it for those weeks. Every night the same; in it would come, always taking up position under the rose bush to sleep. It didn’t look particularly malnourished, so must have been getting scraps from nearby houses, but for whatever reason it had chosen that bush as its favorite place to sleep.

One night Olivia ventured into the back garden when Jason and Melinda, their housekeeper, were asleep. Their father was away on business (which Olivia now knew meant he was probably torturing his latest victim) so he wasn’t there to disturb her, and she knew Jason and Melinda were heavy sleepers. She padded across the grass to the cat, who had been roused from sleep by her approach and was looking wary of her. It backed away slightly, burying itself deeper into the bush, but when Olivia produced a piece of ham from behind her back, all of a sudden it seemed interested. She’d figured that the cat mightn’t be starving, but it wouldn’t turn down food either, and she was right. It began to edge out from beneath the bush, never taking its eyes off Olivia. She smiled at it and set the ham down on the grass between them, encouraging it to have a taste. After a few moments it began nibbling slowly, while still trying to look at Olivia, suspicious of her motives. She slowly reached out her left hand and lightly patted the cat on the head, telling it that there was nothing to be afraid of. The cat began to relax, eating its ham and accepting Olivia’s affection. It then began to purr loudly when she stroked her hand from the top of its head and down the neck. Olivia knew that the animal trusted her at that point, so, while it was eating, she slowly produced the scissors from the pocket of her pajamas. She’ll never forget the satisfying noise the animal made when she plunged the scissors into the back of its neck.

Olivia then took to killing countless stray dogs and cats over the course of her adolescence and teen years. As she got older and conducted research into people like her, she found it was very common for serial killers to start by killing small animals; cliche even. She remembered feeling a distinct pang of disappointment when she read this. It meant she wasn’t unique, like she thought, and that most other people with the same compulsions she had were following a similar path. When you’re young you believe your story is the most important thing in the world, when in fact there are hundreds and thousands of other people experiencing the same things you are. Oh well.

By the time she left for college, Olivia had taken her first human life. A homeless man had made the mistake of approaching her in the park late one night, asking for change. With no one else around and under the cover of almost complete darkness, she took the opportunity to stab him to death, before simply leaving the body where he lay. The murder of the homeless or otherwise transient population was yet another serial killer cliche, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

Listening to her father now, grimly recounting his crimes to his children, Olivia felt like she wanted to leap out of her chair and give the old man a hug. Or, at the very least, look him in the eyes and forgive him for being a shitty father her whole life. She would never do that, obviously, because it might cause her brother to have an aneurysm, but there was no mistaking the complete 180 she’d done in how she viewed her dad. He was like her. The dark compulsion ran in the family. She then wondered if there were any other Gaines’ out there who killed people? That might be worth looking into. Then she began to ponder if her father had any inkling of her true nature. Is that why he separated himself from her? Because he knew and didn’t want his daughter to be like him? No, that didn’t make any sense. Surely if he knew she was like him it would’ve been something they could’ve bonded over. Shared daddy and daughter trips to prime kill locations. ’Bring your daughter to work’ days where they’d take turns cutting bits off people. You know, that sort of thing.

Perhaps what was more likely was that Winslow subconsciously recognized something within his daughter, something that made him pull away. Like how if you put the North pole of one magnet to the North pole of another, they will repel each other. You can try with all your might to make the two magnets connect, but it simply won’t happen. Olivia smiled to herself, happy with the analogy she had just conjured. She and her father were like two North poles, too similar to ever truly fit together.

Olivia glanced over at her father again, a strange warmth still filling her heart. He was looking back at her now, brow furrowed slightly as he spoke. He looked mildly perplexed, but wasn’t going to stop his confession for anything. Olivia wondered why he looked confused and then realized it was probably because she was smiling like an idiot about magnets. Shit, she thought, has Jason seen me smiling?

She looked over at her brother but, thankfully, he was looking down at his feet, completely lost in a world of his own. Olivia could see he was actually trembling all over. A light sheen of flop sweat had formed over his forehead and was beginning to drip down his cheeks. He looked like he about to vomit and this time Olivia managed to suppress her smile at the idea of him barfing all over their sick father in his deathbed. She figured she needed to do something to calm him down now, otherwise he was going to lose it. So she reached over and put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a light rub. She worked her face into her best approximation of empathy and tried to add a bit of sadness into her eyes as well; it wasn’t easy, but she’d gotten good practice in other the years and knew she could fool Jason, at the very least. She then nodded her head understandingly as the poor sap started to cry, rubbing her hand up and down his shoulder awkwardly. Emotions were so weird to Olivia.

After a few moments she actually edged her chair closer to Jason, and held his hand as their father revealed his piece de resistance. In all honesty, she’d seen it coming as soon as he began confessing, but she admired the man’s commitment to a sense of storytelling theater and drama. He saved his tastiest nugget of info for last.

Jason and Olivia’s mother Cheryl didn’t, in fact, abandon the family when Jason was six and Olivia two. Rather, she was Winslow’s first ever victim. He had bludgeoned her to death one night after she’d had a few too many cocktails, dismembered her body and hid the remains in the garden. It was a crude kill, but a satisfying one, and the fact that he got away with it emboldened him to continue saying ’yes’ to his dark urges. In truth, he couldn’t really remember why he had murdered Cheryl on that particular night. The motive had long since disappeared, lost to the fog of his memory, so he simply put it down to a convergence of opportunity and a desire for death that couldn’t be ignored anymore.

Olivia was intrigued by this revelation. It meant that her father hadn’t started killing until he was in his late-20’s. How had he been able to quash the urges until that point? She was 17 when she killed the homeless man and she felt like she’d been on the verge of killing every single hour of every single day for years in the lead-up to it. How the hell did he last over a decade longer? She wanted nothing more than to ask the old man if he’d started with animals, like her, but she knew she couldn’t. In a few minutes she was going to be dealing with the emotional cyclone once known as Jason Gaines, so her questions would have to wait.

She glanced at Jason out of the corner of her eye and, for once, liked what she saw. The knowledge that Winslow had murdered their mother must have changed something in him, because he didn’t look like he was going to keel over at any moment anymore, or puke all over the floor. Instead, his face had gone dark, anger replacing the shock and sadness, at least momentarily. He looked like he wanted to leap out of chair and strangle the old man to death right then and there, and Olivia respected that. She knew he’d never do it, of course, he was too much of a coward. But she liked that he was showing some fight in his own way.

There then came a few moments of silence. Winslow seemed to have finished his confession; Jason was too destroyed to speak; and Olivia kept thinking about the visual of Jason strangling the skeletal old man to death in his own bed. It would’ve been entertaining, that’s for sure.

Winslow then pointed a thin finger at his ornate desk, in the corner of the room. He said there was a single white envelope, containing a key, in the false bottom of the desk drawer. The keys were to a storage unit filled with trophies, pieces of evidence and journals detailing all his crimes in more explicit detail than he was able to go into on this night. He said the unit was not included in his official last will and testament and that Jason and Olivia were to do whatever they saw fit with these materials. He’d said what he wanted to say and that was all that mattered to him.

Then he died.

Next Chapter: Chapter Three - Jason