I Slept With a Serial Killer

I love true crime. Obsessively so. Far too much, probably. There’s something deeply comforting about sitting safely under a blanket while listening to a softly spoken narrator describing dismemberment as though reading for an especially traumatic episode of CBeebies Bedtime Stories. But I should have known better than to watch it before bed. Especially with a side of cheese. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was allowing my imagination to run riot while my husband was out with “the lads.” And when I say the lads, I mean middle-aged men who absolutely should know better by now, but who will still somehow end up drinking sambuca at midnight and discussing starting a podcast together. So I’m already on high alert before I even close my eyes. Already mentally preparing myself for him to crawl home at stupid o’clock smelling of stale lager and regret. Already anticipating the immortal screech of the metal doorstop being booted violently down the hallway. It takes me a while to drift off. A meditation whispers softly into my ear while I lie there in the dark, trying to unclench my jaw. You are calm. I am not calm. You are safe. Questionable. Then comes my usual mantra. I remember my dreams. I write them down. Again. I remember my dreams. I write them down. And then— Bam. Dreamworld. Snow has fallen during the night, painting everything in an eerie blanket of white. It softens the entire world somehow, muting it beneath a frozen hush, like reality itself has been tucked beneath a bedsheet. It’s beautiful in that unsettling sort of way dreams often are. Too quiet. Too still. The cold bites straight through me, sharp enough to feel intimate. The kind that slips beneath your clothes and settles into your bones. I pull my scarf tighter around my face. Kylie is waiting for me at what used to be the old playing field. Except it isn’t a playing field anymore. It’s an ice rink. “Wanna go ice skating?” she asks casually, as though the past three and a half years of silence were merely imagined. As if we’re still us. As if time hasn’t happened. “Sure,” I say. “Why not?” Because in dreams you never ask the important questions. Like: Why are we here? Why is the field frozen? Why do your eyelashes resemble a yeti? We launch ourselves onto the ice immediately, skidding everywhere and clutching onto each other for balance. We’re laughing so hard we can barely stand upright, the sound echoing strangely across the frozen air. Kylie goes arse over tit first, her legs flying out from under her, and naturally she drags me down with her. Then— CRACK. The ice splits beneath us. The sound is so loud it silences us instantly. Another crack follows, deeper this time, and suddenly we realise this isn’t a frozen field at all. There’s water beneath us. Dark water stretching endlessly below the ice. Black. Depthless. Waiting. One wrong movement and we’re gone. The cold suddenly feels alive. “Oh fuck,” I whisper. We move carefully now, inching towards what looks like a narrow bridge cutting through the frozen lake. Every tiny creak beneath our feet sounds deafening in the silence. I can practically feel the water waiting beneath us. Patient. Eventually we reach the bridge, breathless and shaking, only to discover a tall iron gate blocking the end of it. Padlocked. “Oh fuck,” I mutter again. The words vanish into the frozen air. “Looks like we’re going back the way we came.” “Nah,” Kylie says immediately. “We’ll climb it.” Of course we will. Because apparently dream-me has no survival instincts whatsoever. Kylie gives me a leg up first. The freezing metal burns against my hands as I haul myself over the top. Then I lean down and grab her wrist, pulling her over after me. For one brief ridiculous second we cling to each other on the other side, laughing breathlessly. But the woods beyond the gate feel… wrong. The silence isn’t peaceful. It’s watchful. The trees loom around us like witnesses, tall and skeletal beneath the snow, and I get this horrible sensation that something is following just out of sight. Every true crime documentary I’ve ever watched suddenly starts playing simultaneously in my head. Woman found wandering woodland. Woman last seen entering forest. Woman never seen again. “It’s creepy out here,” I whisper. “Let’s just keep walking,” Kylie says quietly, already moving ahead. So we do. Deeper and deeper into the woods. We walk for what feels like hours, snow muffling our footsteps. Dawn is beginning to arrive now, slowly peeling the darkness back from the sky, pale grey light leaking weakly through the branches overhead. Eventually the woods open out into a clearing leading onto a road. Civilisation feels impossibly far away. Kylie checks something invisible on her wrist. “I’d better go,” Kylie says. “Still need to buy Christmas pressies.” Of course she does. The dream casually throws in festive errands after nearly killing us beneath a frozen death lake. “This was fun,” she says, hugging me tightly. And then I smell it. Kenzo Poppy. The exact perfume she always used to wear. The scent hits me like grief. Years of laughter, chaos, late-night conversations, and stupid adventures come flooding back all at once. The strange intimacy of friendships you think will last forever until one day they simply… don’t. God. I miss her. She smiles, waves goodbye, and disappears down the road. Leaving me completely alone in the middle of nowhere. Or so I think. Further along the road sits a silver car idling quietly. A battered old thing with rust blooming around the wheel arches like some slow mechanical disease. Naturally, because true crime has apparently taught me absolutely nothing, I walk straight towards it. The driver’s side window rolls down. And there he is. Dark hair. Tattoos. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful smile. The kind of handsome that instantly makes you trust him despite every survival instinct in your body screaming absolutely fucking not. “Need a lift?” he asks. Now listen. I’ve watched enough true crime to know that the correct response here is: No thank you, mysterious woodland man. I enjoy remaining alive and undisassembled. Instead, I climb straight in. Up close he’s even more attractive. There’s something magnetic about him. Something warm and dangerous all at once. “Can you take me back into town?” I ask. He looks at me for a moment. Then suddenly leans in and kisses me. The whole thing catches me so off guard that I simply go along with it. The kiss becomes urgent almost immediately — fierce, messy, reckless — and before I know it his trousers are down and we’re tangled together in the back of this battered Nissan while dawn slowly bleeds across the horizon outside. It happens frighteningly fast. One second he’s smiling at me. The next we’re having sex in the backseat of a suspicious vehicle. And afterwards— Everything changes. The warmth drains from him entirely. The smile disappears. In its place is something colder. Something empty. Menacing. I pull myself together awkwardly, heart hammering against my ribs. “Maybe I should—” Click. The doors lock. My stomach drops so hard it physically hurts. He starts driving. And suddenly the enormity of what I’ve just done crashes into me like a freight train to the chest. I’ve cheated on my husband with a complete stranger in what is very obviously a murder car. A stranger who now looks exactly like the sort of man they describe in documentaries using phrases like: Quiet but charming. Neighbours said he kept himself to himself. The silence between us feels suffocating. All I can hear is the grinding of gears and his ragged breathing. “You can just drop me here,” I stammer weakly. “Shut up.” He says it calmly. That somehow makes it worse. So much worse. Fear crawls coldly up my spine like icy fingers. I stare out of the window at the endless woods flashing past, utterly convinced I’m about to end up as Episode Three on Netflix. I imagine the divers searching rivers. My mother crying on local news. A grainy Facebook photo beside the words: Have you seen this woman? Eventually civilisation appears ahead of us. Streets. Shops. Traffic lights blinking lazily in the early morning gloom. People wandering around carrying takeaway coffees like this isn’t the most terrifying moment of my life. The normality of it feels surreal somehow. I want to bang frantically on the window and scream: HELLO? I’M IN A MURDER CAR. But I stay silent. The car slows beside a curb. “You can leave,” he says casually. I stare at him. That’s it? No murder? No woodland burial? No turning me into a six-part documentary on Netflix narrated by a man called Dan with unnecessarily dramatic pauses? I sit there and stare at him in disbelief. Then he smiles again. And suddenly a tannoy appears strapped to the roof of the car. Because dreams are completely unhinged. A loudspeaker crackles violently to life. “AMANDA JUST SLEPT WITH A SERIAL KILLER.” Oh my God. The words explode across the street. People stop walking instantly. Heads swivel towards me in synchronised horror. One bloke actually pulls out his phone and starts filming me. Of course he does. Public humiliation apparently doesn’t count anymore unless somebody uploads it to TikTok with ominous music and captions. “AMANDA JUST SLEPT WITH A SERIAL KILLER.” The car crawls slowly down the road, repeating it over and over while people openly stare at me in horror. And somehow the shame feels worse than the fear. That’s the truly awful part. Not that I almost died. Not even that I cheated. But that I trusted him. That’s the bit that sticks. Then I see Kylie standing beside what looks like an old wishing well near the edge of the square. She smiles at me strangely and holds out a penny. “Throw it in,” she says softly. I look down at the coin sitting in my palm. Dull copper. Completely ordinary. “What for?” I ask. Her smile widens slightly. “You’re part of the club now.” Something cold prickles through me. “What do you mean?” “I shagged him last week,” she says casually. The blood drains from my face. Then suddenly I notice her stomach. Pregnant. Undeniably pregnant. Massively pregnant. How the hell hadn’t I noticed before? “I’m carrying his baby,” she says. I can barely breathe. “But how—?” “He was convincing, wasn’t he?” she says quietly. “That’s how he does it.” A cold breeze rustles the leaves of a tree overhead. “He just pulls you in. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Then she glances towards the well. “I’ve turned him into the police. He’s been on a murdering spree. Innocent women walking alone.” My knees nearly buckle beneath me. Suddenly I picture them all. Women climbing into that silver car. Women trusting the wrong smile. Women never making it home. “I guess we were the lucky ones,” she says quietly. Then she throws her penny into the well. We stand there listening. Waiting for the splash. One second. Two. Three. And then— SCREEEEEEEECH. The bloody doorstop. My husband is home. The sound tears through the dream like a knife through fabric. One second I’m standing beside a bottomless well listening for the splash of a penny. The next I’m ripped violently back into reality. I wake with my heart hammering against my ribs, tangled in the duvet, disorientated and breathless, while downstairs my husband crashes through the hallway with the elegance of an intoxicated rhinoceros. A cupboard door bangs. Someone mutters “shhh” to absolutely no one. Normal life. Safe life. And yet my pulse won’t slow down. I lie there staring into the darkness, somewhere between relief and lingering dread, while fragments of the dream continue clinging stubbornly to me. The frozen lake. The tannoy. Kylie standing beside the well, heavily pregnant with a killer’s child. The shame of it all. The fear. The strange intimacy of being understood by someone dangerous. And slowly, as my heartbeat begins to steady, I realise dreams rarely invent anything new. They simply gather the loose fragments already living inside us — fear, loneliness, desire, nostalgia, guilt — then stitch them together into something grotesque enough that we’re finally forced to look at them properly. Sometimes the monsters in dreams aren’t monsters at all. Just ordinary human hungers wearing a different face.