A Good and Useful Hurt Read Online Free PDF

college—Phil would have said that before college, and he sure as hell knew it afterwards. His mom worked as a secretary for the same company he delivered rugs for, and she’d gotten him the job after the mess at college, the mess where he’d fucked that chick and she said she was passed out but she wasn’t, not all the way, and he was going to leave anyways because of grades. Just a damn mess any way you spun it.
    Things had been OK since then, but they’d gotten a lot better after he’d discovered hunting. It started out with just following women; they never noticed him, and he didn’t even know how he was doing it. It was a pretty good time, and even with the new hobby he still missed it. They were so stupid. If his father had imparted one bit of wisdom on him it was that women were just so dumb. Phil had known about his dad’s other women growing up—how could you not?—but his mom never got it. And if she knew and ignored it, wasn’t that worse?
    It had been too long, that was just all there was to it. Phil was able to play other games in between the killings: follow a girl without her knowing about it, masturbate thinking of past conquests, plan the next event, and, best of all, the dreams.
    Phil had been able to control his dreams ever since a nightmare he had when he was about eleven. He’d been scared, running from some knife-wielding thing, when he’d decided not to run anymore. He found there was no knife thing, or dinosaur, or anything at all unless he wanted it to be there with him. And he wanted the women with him. He wanted to relive the power and the suffering and make it better over and over again. It was always better in his sleep.
    The dreams with the last girl were running thin, though. Usually they would stay strong for at least a few months, but lately they’d been fading faster and faster. After the first rape and killing, Phil had wonderful dreams for almost a year, recalling the event in exquisite detail. The longer it got from the crime, the more sure he was that there wouldn’t need to be any more, that his personal thirst had been well slaked. He had been wrong.
    After the first girl wore off, Phil had gone through a week of nightmarishly empty sleep. It was as if she’d never been in his mind at all. “Never again,” he’d said at the time, so now the death of a new girl just meant stalking of the next soon after, so that the well of bloody memories never went all the way empty. That way he could kick the old one out of his head when the new one arrived. It was a good system, and it had worked great for the next two, but the one after that had been a bad death, plus she’d been a prostitute and the police had yet to find the body. Without pursuers, it seemed the dreams weren’t as powerful, either. He needed the chase, needed to see the family anguished on the television to really get a charge—the death on its own wasn’t good enough.
    It was like beer, Phil figured. One day one can was enough, and the next you were due for two. It didn’t really much matter, though. If he needed to off a few people to keep that itch scratched, then so be it. He finished rolling the soiled rugs—no worse than usual today, and no better either—and walked them to the truck. He tossed the oil-stained mats into the bin in the truck and walked back inside.
    Hladini gave him another smile when he walked back in, this one over a customer’s shoulder. Phil nodded politely and grabbed the fresh rugs from the floor by the counter, then walked back towards the pit to replace them in the filthy hallway that led out of it.
    The men in the oil change ignored him, or at the very least gave him a wide berth as he quickly laid down the clean-not-for-long mats. That done, Phil went back up the pit stairs. He nodded at Hladini again— See you in a few hours, cunt —and walked back to the truck. He fired up the diesel engine and got moving to stop number two.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Mike and Deb went to