Soul Seeker

There he is. He seems normal enough. A normal citizen enjoying the beauty around him. But no, he’s not. He’s a predator. He reads you. He spots you from afar. He watches your body movement. How you walk. How stiff you are. How you respond. He enters your mind through your eyes. He reads your personality. Your self-esteem. He examines you carefully. Are you an easy target? Are you worthy enough to be his prey?
He makes his decision. He’s on the move. He walks over to you. He gives you his greetings. All the while he’s still scanning you. Analyzing how you react. He shakes your hand. He could feel how tense you are. Lovely! There’s nothing else he can do now. So he moves on. He already knows where to find you next. That’s just him. The Soul Seeker.
Life for you is just difficult. Just overbearing. Everything seems to always go wrong. If it’s going great it’s just too good to be true. Something bad just has to happen. He loves that. He loves the mentality. You need someone to talk to. But no one understands. Trust me, he’ll be waiting.
You enter the café. He’s already there. He was expecting you. He smells your depression as you enter. He comes to sit next to you. You shift uneasily. He likes that. He speaks to you in a soothing voice. His facial expression is soft. But yet something about his wavy hair, beady eyes, pointy nose and casual grin gets you thinking. He senses your suspicion. He likes that too.
He introduces himself as Jack, Jack Turner. You introduce yourself too. You remember when you first saw and met him. He starts a conversation. Little by little you get interested. He tells you you’re beautiful, smart, funny and unique. He says things must be going great for a teenage girl as yourself, life must be amazing. He grins and you see his beady mouse like eyes light up.
You give in. Things were hard this morning. He’s listening so why not give it a shot. You tell him all your problems. Your life at home. Failed friendships and relationships. Near poverty situation. How you fake a smile every single day. He understands. He gets you.
From then on he stays in close contact with you. Brings you up when others bring you down. Buys you gifts. Gives you money. Comforts you. Makes you feel as though you’re on a cloud. He’s a real father figure that you never had. But that’s when you’ll stop knowing him as Jack but as “The Soul Seeker.”
One day Jack invites you to come on a little trip with him. You’re excited, wondering what surprise he has for you this time. You all drive until Jack turns into an abandoned dirt road. You start to get nervous and ask where you’re going. He snaps at you aggressively and you see the other side of him. The real him.
He holds you by your long black hair and drags you out the car. You scream and fight but the place is deserted except for a locked up barn. You smell sewage and something awful like dead animals. The dry leaves crunches under your feet as you wonder what’s gotten into him.
He opens the barn and throws you into the dark. Then he’s gone. Your eyes become accustom to the dark. Your face is tear stained. What you see next strikes you. Huddled up in a corner are about over a dozen girls around your age. All of you can tell that you all have the same story.
He befriended each one of you. Won you over. But that was all part of the plan. He’s known to all of them as the ‘Soul Seeker.’ He’s going to use all of you in a prostitution ring of underage girls. The journey has just begun.
Over a one year period you’ve been sexually abused by old, perverted desperate men. Hundreds of men. It hurts so badly. Life was better than this. Sometimes he had you for himself.
Oh how you wish you had your old life back. You thought it was the worst. Now you’ve changed. That’s what he sought. Low self-esteem girls who wanted to get away. They were easy. Opening up to the first sight of love and comfort, easy prey. He seeked out your soul and stole it.

Very soon it ended. Jack led you through a track in the back of the barn to a valley like area. A pungent, rotting odor filled the air even stronger. What you saw made you scream. You tried to run but he caught you and tackled you to the ground.
Bodies of naked girls hung from trees. Some blood was still fresh on the ground. Some was dried unto their bodies. You puked, some were even mutilated. It was now your turn. He was fed up of you. You fought hard, desperately. You fought with all your might, but it wasn’t enough. He plunged a knife into your chest as you fought on the ground. Blood oozed out. That was it. It was the end. He hung up your too and looked at his work with approval. Last but not least he stripped your body. It felt cold and stiff. Just how he liked it. Then just as most serial killers do, he left his mark on your body. He branded “SS” on your breast as though you were some kind of animal.
Let us all beware, there all kinds of “Soul Seekers” out there in various forms. But “he” wasn’t just the “Soul Seeker,” he was also the “Soul Stealer.” Rykiel Belfon