by Jude Atwood
Old-timers still remember
the summer the serial killer terrorized this town.
Leaving size eleven footprints,
he entered open windows
slit the men’s throats while they slept,
stabbed the women savagely again and again.
The first house was a fluke.
The second, a disturbing coincidence.
It wasn’t until three couples bled out on shag carpet
people started to notice.
Something was amiss
and we had better do something
That meant neighborhood watches
a run on guard dogs from the puppy mill
bear traps outside ground-floor windows
but the murderer
kept coming
in the night.
One year after the last killing
someone noticed that if you drew a line on a map
connecting all of the murder houses,
it formed a perfect seahorse.
If only we’d noticed sooner
we could have saved lives—
at very least the newlyweds at the snout.
Jude Atwood
Jude Atwood’s writing has appeared in Broadside and Literally Stories, but he is best known for creating the viral Twitter thread “Tilda Swinton as Libraries.” His novel Maybe There Are Witches won the Kraken Book Prize for Middle-Grade Fiction and will be published in June 2023 by Regal House/Fitzroy Books. Jude lives in Southern California where he teaches media literacy to college students. He can be found on Twitter (@JudeAtwood) or Instagram (@JudeAtwoodSketches).
