Tabloid Trix

Prologue

A/N: Hello, Dear Readers, and welcome to Tabloid Trix, my second story in my New York State of Mind Universe. It would help you to understand this story if you read Competition first, as we pick up a couple months after that story ends. A caution first: there are very dark parts to this story, as we are dealing with a serial killer, so if you are squeamish you may want to skip this story. Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: Still don't own Trix and Jim and Co. That right belongs to Random House. Not making any money off my little stories either!

20 years ago

It was December 25 and his big sister woke him early; 5 a.m. to be exact. The tree was all decorated and their mother and father whispered excitedly to them the night before about Santa Claus leaving presents underneath the garish tree. His sister left out some milk and cookies for the jolly fat man, to help speed him along in his journey to treat all the good little boys and girls to their every wish.

At 7 years old, he thought the whole thing was one big crock of b.s.

When he looked at all the smiling faces at school, in the mall, even in his own house, he was perplexed. The lights, the false good cheer, presents, cookies…what did it all matter? It had nothing to do with him. It probably had nothing to do with the birth of an infant thousands of years ago who was supposed to be the Son of God.

Another fairy tale adults told themselves and their children.

When Jody woke him up, that December 25 he would remember for the rest of his days, he was quite put out. He was having the most delicious dream about Missoo, their poor missing cat. He helped his dad put up the LOST CAT! posters all around the village, looking suitably sad and responding appropriately to his dad's running commentary. He knew the drill, how to assume the persona of the upset little boy, pining for his beloved pet. He certainly had had enough practice.

He didn't feel at all sad that Missoo was missing. Jody and his mom were crying about the stupid animal. Even his dad admitted he missed the wretched thing. This, after complaining almost non-stop about the litter-box smells in the house and whose damn cat was it anyways since he had to do all the work? And then suddenly Missoo wasn't there anymore and his dad was acting like he lost his best friend.

It was all very strange.

He observed them all through those big peculiar no-color eyes. They weren't exactly blue, or brown or hazel; they were a weird sort of non-color that made people glance away. Even at 7 years old, it was a power he enjoyed. Eyes were the windows to the soul, or so the poets said. If he had a soul, and he was absolutely certain he did not, he supposed it was a colorless as his eyes.

Knowledge was also power, and gifted with an insatiable curiosity and shrewd intelligence, he soaked up as much of it as he could.

And of course, he knew exactly where Missoo was and exactly what happened to her. He had the power. Not only the power of the knowledge of what happened to their family pet, but the power over life and death.

It was quite exhilarating.

When Jody woke him up on Christmas morn, he reluctantly left the dream behind of the terror reflected in Missoo's eyes as he casually skinned her alive. There was blood, lots of it; he was surprised the small animal bled so much. None of the other small creatures he so carelessly and curiously butchered bled quite as much. He studied the musculature and skeletal frame of the poor, dead cat before removing her eyes. Then he tossed her aside in a dumpster, and watched how the once vibrant blue of her eyes dulled quickly, almost having a milky sort of coating on them. It was always the same. Once out of the body, the eyes quickly lost their luster.

Then he buried her eyes. They served their purpose, his higher purpose. All the poet-speak about glints and gleams and lovelight shining out of the eyes; it was all hogwash. All the glints and gleams can be explained by the simple mechanics of blinking. Blinking kept the eyes bathed in saline tears. Once the blinking stopped, the eyes became dead and dull and no longer of any interest to him.

He dutifully followed Jody downstairs, plastering a happy smile in his face. Oh, he learned very quickly how to mimic others' emotions. He eavesdropped on his parents and the teacher when they consulted about his condition. He knew the teacher was unnerved when he stared at her with those blank, deadly eyes. He didn't participate, she said, only watched the other children as if they were alien creatures under a microscope. She hesitated to say this to his parents, but she always felt like he wore a mask that hid something truly unnatural. And he was only 7 years old.

Then there was the evaluation by the team of experts to see What Was Wrong. But he had grasped what the teacher relayed to his parents; he needed to refine his veneer of humanity. By following their facial cues and intonation, he supposed he passed; he wasn't locked in his brain like an autistic child, nor was he in need of special services. In fact, he was what one might term truly gifted. Just immature, the experts assured his parents. Shy. That colorless gaze, just observing the world around him, taking it all into that brilliant brain. The truly gifted were different, or so they told his parents. And his parents so desperately wanted to believe them, wanted so desperately to believe they had not birthed a monster.

He was different; on that he agreed. He was singular in this world, maybe in this universe. His mind someday would make him a god. He already held the power of life and death over the baser creatures of the earth. Missoo had just been his latest experiment. There were many more before her.

On that very special, never forgotten Christmas, he and Jody ran onto their parents' bedroom, jumping on the bed and awakening them with their high-pitched, excited voices. As a family, they stumbled downstairs to the sight of mounds of presents wrapped up in silver, gold, red and green. The glass of milk was just a dried skin inside the glass, and the plate full of cookies, merely crumbs.

To Jody, 18 months older than he, it was proof positive Santa made his yearly visit to their house. He cynically wondered which one of his parents had the duty of drinking the warm milk and which one ate the cookies – if they weren't surreptitiously placed right back in the cookie jar, to be enjoyed another day by someone other than a bearded, jolly fat man.

His mom made what she called caffeinated bliss out in the kitchen while his sister danced around the tree, vibrating with the desire to open her presents right this very minute. There were rules in their house, however, and although the punishments were not severe (for example, his parents never cut off one of his fingers for taking some candy without permission or held his hand over the gas flame of the stove for not completing his homework) the punishments could be uncomfortable. For Jody. He never minded being sent to his room without the television or his iPod. His amazing mind could take him places he was sure no human ever visited.

Probably, no human would want to visit there.

As they opened their gifts that Christmas morning (Jody tearing into hers like a child possessed, he being more mannerly), he wasn't thankful for the bounty of video games and a real honest-to-goodness laptop, not one of those silly leapfrog things. After all, he deserved these tokens of homage. He was quite put out that he had to share his parents' largesse with his older sister. He should have been an only child.

That thought bore additional contemplation at a later time.

And then, she opened it.

A big box, as tall as she was. The whole front of the box was clear, heavy cellophane. And inside the coffin cleverly disguised as a box was a child's body.

His startled no-color eyes stared at the body until his brain caught up with the fever that was overtaking his senses. Not a body. And not a child. A child-size doll from the American Beauties Collection. He saw enough of the ads on television to recognize the contents. They were the hottest toys for girls this year. The manufacturer promised a doll a year, each from a different geographical area of the United States.

Sure, there were other collections out there, very similar in nature. But the creator of ABC realized one thing the others' did not. It wasn't the kids who created the hottest, most successful toys; it was their parents. Make something the parents want, and voila, instant mega-hit. The American Beauties Collection was not cherubic little girls dressed up in silly little outfits.

An ABC doll was a woman.

The box proclaimed in big red letters: "First in a Series! American Beauties Presents A Beauty from the Northernmost Central States! Open the Box to Find Out Her Name and History!"

She was staring right at him through her cellophane prison.

His colorless eyes fired with something that had no place in the gaze of a seven-year-old child.

She was beautiful.

Her hair was golden curls, spiraling down her graceful neck and framing her face. Her eyes were huge sapphire orbs, fringed with long curling lashes and real, working eyelids. To blink. So they would always stay bright. A slight rose blush tinted her high cheekbones, and her lush, full mouth was a natural darker rose.

She wore a white, peasant style blouse with deep blue rickrack around the hem of the puffed sleeves – and just tight enough to showcase her obvious cleavage. The blouse was tucked into a matching blue skirt that ended just below the doll's knees. A white bib-style apron, with matching blue rickrack around the neck and across the pockets, and a flirty frill at the hem completed the dress.

Her shapely legs were encased in white tights and her delicate feet in blue suede maryjanes. Her hands were small and one might say, delicately boned.

He could have sworn that big blue eye winked at him.

He wanted to rip her out of the box and take her in his room and do…something. He actually took a step forward, until his father looked at him with puzzlement in his eyes. He was so enraptured by the doll he failed to note that he himself was being observed.

His father, not at all interested in dolls, child-size or not, watched him with that dollop of…fear? Loathing? Intuition? His son's eyes, those blank, colorless, creepy eyes, seemed to be lit from within. With something so despicable, he felt unclean just looking. It didn't matter to him what the experts said. There was something in his son, something bad. He could feel it. Almost taste it. What was that old movie again? Yeah. The Bad Seed. Somehow, he knew his genius son wouldn't be contributing an astonishing advancement for mankind. His name would become synonymous with evil.

"Cool gift Jody! She's almost as big as you! "He turned back to his laptop, punching his dad in the arm. "I'd much rather my laptop, Dad," to reassure his father that he was not going to start playing with dolls.

Yet.

Jody thanked Santa Claus for thinking of her, but he knew. She didn't like the doll. Not at all. Jody never was into dolls and all that; no matter how their mom tried, she would never be a girly girl. Their parents made her open the box/coffin and Jody pulled out a birth certificate/history. That's when he found out her name.

Rebecca. But she liked to be called Becky. Becky Jonsson from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a college girl, studying Food Sciences. As Jody carefully replaced the certificate, being quite sure not to touch the disturbing-looking Becky, it happened.

Becky winked at him. It was quick; stealthy, one might say. As he gazed into her hypnotically blue eyes, he was astounded. She knew. Becky knew the power that was in him, being refined until the day it could be unleashed. Her blue eyes begged: let me out of here. Make me alive. Save me.

He promised her he would.

Many thanks to my lovely and talented editor Mylee, who sacrifices her valuable time to provide me with honest opinions and great feedback!