Might Be a Murderer

Lost Blonde Literary/Existence/Fall 2025

Pushcart Prize Nomination 2025

Might be a Murderer

Even then, when I was so little, I feared him. He held me in sunshine beside the linden tree in the front of my mother’s rental. Sometimes his lips came close to my ear and he kissed me, leaving saliva on my cheek. I waited for him to turn before I wiped his residue away.

***

“Everyone says he’s weird, that he looks at them funny. All my girlfriends do. I know what they mean,” I said.

My mother clipped coupons. Her cigarette burned in an ashtray.

“He’s not that weird. He’s just, like, a nerd. He’s on the spectrum, I think.”

I was twelve by this time. I never told my mother the truth, that he’d put his hand under my bottom when I sat down, more times than I could count, telling me he liked to feel my blubber, my extra padding.

Every Friday, he showed up for dinner and Mom put on a nice blouse and perfume and made him a ziti. Then he slept with her, in her room. I made sure I had other plans those nights.

***

At Patti’s and other friends’ homes, I saw what real nerdy fathers were like. They smiled, ruffled their daughters’ hair, called them Sweets, Pattikins. Their daughters rolled their eyes at them in annoyance, embarrassment over dumb jokes and strict rules. Everyone avoided mention of my father. It was always, “How’s your mom?” and “You’re always welcome, here, Candy.” Pity rained down in the forms of comments and invitations, by softened eyes and downturned mouths.

Once, Patti and I had a séance. She called forth the spirits of the dead.

“Let’s try to bring that college student, Maria Winters, back. Let’s try to get her to tell us who her murderer was.”

“Maria who?” I said, legs folded beneath me, hands spread out on my knees meditation style, my back straight as a stick.

“Maria-the girl they found strangled in the dorm,” Patti said it flat and matter-of-factly, like she was ordering at a restaurant.

“I don’t know. I never-”

Patti’s voice dissolved into my crowding thoughts, racing heart.

“What’s up?” she said.

“I feel. I feel like. I don’t know. I’m scared. Like something like that could happen to me.”

“Well, yeah, right? It could happen to anybody.”

Patti pulled out a beer from under her bed, cracked the tab.

***

Before my father disappeared, my life felt like a roller coaster creeping, creeping, creaking to some unknown precipice which would end in a violent, terrifying swoop to a merciless ground. When he stopped showing up on Fridays, the roller coaster stopped, brakes slammed, sun overhead baking into my defenseless skin. That was a new kind of terror altogether.

***

Sophomore year of college a girl on my campus was murdered in her dorm room. Beaten, then strangled.

“Who does that?” my roommate Zoe asked, as though she was asking something low-key disturbing, like who puts mayo on spaghetti. My mind went blank at first, then a disgusting sickness rose up inside me. I’d never forgotten the girl Patti tried to raise from the dead during our séance. My heart began its wild drumbeat. Something in my head clicked into place.

My father, I wanted to say. My father would do that. My father does that.

The thought formed and it wouldn’t fade.

I hadn’t seen him in years, but still I googled my father’s name repeatedly, trying to connect him with some crime, searching fruitlessly until hitting someone who matched my exploding fear: Ted Bundy.

Ted had a method.

He pretended to have a broken leg, asked some poor, about- to- be -murdered college girl for help. She’d agree, then he’d drag her off and beat her to death. He killed at least 30 women this way, probably way more, and even his long term girlfriend didn’t suspect. I held an old photo of my father up against the glowing computer screen, his and Ted’s faces blurring together.

***

First, I walked briskly along the sidewalk, avoiding eye contact, moving from dorm to cafeteria to classroom and back. Then I was afraid to go out, afraid to talk to guys, to anyone, afraid to leave the window open, unlocked. I cut off all my hair. Ted crawled through windows, preferred girls with long hair.

“Why don’t you just go home?” Zoe asked, “You don’t seem very happy here.”

I didn’t want to tell her about my home, my father who could appear there any minute. Instead, I scheduled online classes, ordered food delivery, hid out in my room.

Zoe called Mental Health Services.

Mental Health Services called my mother.

***

“No! No!” I screamed, spitting, flailing. My mother grabbed my shoulders.

“Candy! What in God’s name?”

I kicked and bit. “How could you? How could you?”

“How could I what?”

“How could you choose him?”

“Who?”

“Dad! Ted! Ted Bundy?” I slid backwards in the bed, straight and staring like a corpse.

“Ted Bundy?” she sat down, lifted a glass of water to my lips.

My attention drifted to a man standing at my door.

“He’s here! That’s. That’s him!”

“No, honey, that’s Matthew, the counselor.”

I looked from his face to hers. Back and forth. Sweat trickled from my hairline.

My mother wiped my brow.

“I got myself together, Candy. I got a new job, stopped drinking. I’m doin’ better.”

“But what about him? Did you know he’s here?”

“Who?”

“My father. Ted Bundy.”

“Your father isn’t Ted Bundy.”

“Yes, yes he is.”

“No. Ted Bundy is dead. Your father is Patrick Gravels and he’s living in Fort Lauderdale with his cousin. He works at a liquor store, I think. He’s not a murderer.”

She smoothed my spikey hair.

“But how do you know? How do you know for sure?” I screamed over and over, so many times, until my throat was raw.

She never gave me a good answer, never, not once.