The Janus Project

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Thursday 01 January 2032

Alone in his frugally furnished two-bedroom house in the lower part of the city beyond the river, John Henry Foster pushed his feet against the wall beneath his desk and propelled his tatty executive chair backwards just far enough to allow his legs freedom of movement. He didn’t use the main bedroom – which he always kept locked – but preferred to do his divine work from the sparsely furnished second bedroom.

Rising to his feet, he wriggled out of the tight-fitting blue sequined dress that he always wore when updating Anna Claire Johnson’s social network page. As the dress tumbled to the floor, he removed the gaudy faux-gold clip-on earrings one at a time and tossed them onto his bedside table. One slid onto the floor. He’d pick it up later. Now dressed only in a black matching b*a and pantie set that was at least two sizes too small for him, he didn’t feel uncomfortable. He needed to be wearing Anna Claire’s clothes to get himself into the zone to allow him to transform into his main female persona, the honeypot that brought him his victims. Although he didn’t use Anna Claire’s identity to communicate directly with his victims – to rely on one character only would be to provide the police with a commonality that they could use to trace him – it was the intimate knowledge of the female psyche gained from creating her character that he channelled when seducing his victims.

Kicking off his blue high-heeled shoes, he unfastened the lacy b*a and peeled himself out of the equally lacy panties, before screwing the two pieces of discarded underwear into a ball and tossing them towards the open laundry basket. More often than not he scored a direct hit but this was not one of those days. He was forced to walk over to where the underwear had fallen and pick it off the floor before dropping it inside the basket and putting the basket lid back on. On his way back to his computer desk, he picked up the fallen earring and threw it back onto the bedside table. It stayed there this time.

Now unashamedly n***d, he stood by the desk ready to switch off the computer, stopping momentarily to browse a private messenger conversation between him and Linda Black. He’d leave it a few days before contacting her; he’d only recently satiated his l**t for killing.

He switched off the machine and strolled over to his single bed, opening the top drawer of the bedside cabinet and removing his well-thumbed copy of The Creator’s Words. He lay down on his bed and reached across to close the drawer before settling down to read the wisdom within the book. This was how he preferred to unwind, lying on his bed digesting the words of The Creator, words that were a personal truth passed on to him directly by The Creator himself.

John Henry was content. The day had gone well.