Christmas Pickle: What to Give the Serial Killer Who Has It All?

It’s that time of year: Christmas. Like so many procrastinators, I have been in Yule log denial. “At least I got the gifts for my nieces and nephews,” I tell myself.  Otherwise, I’m a terrible person–a blight on the cheery, winter landscape. I have not bought gifts for my siblings.  My elderly parents are entirely neglected. My wife is not even going to get a lump of coal in her stocking. She’ll have to make do with just me…

Christmas Gift

Suddenly, I realize I haven’t bought a gift for the most important person of all, the one figure who has consumed my life for months: my serial killer. This is an oversight that is unforgiveable. Such poor form! Dear God, I have become a monster.

Of course, I don’t really know a serial killer. But I’m writing a detective novel with a serial killer in it. That crazy fool has been victimizing the beautiful young interns working in some of the finest design studios in the garment district of Downtown Los Angeles. He’s a crafty fellow with impeccable taste.  And yes:  his victims are all kinda hot.

Even if this man is entirely made-up, thinking about what I would buy him is a good exercise in character development—a variation on one what writing workshops do all the time. What flavor ice cream would your character eat? This was the question written on a mimeographed worksheet in my first Creative Writing seminar.

What flavor is your ice cream?

True, fictional characters can’t eat ice cream but this doesn’t invalidate the exercise. Having to think about their dietary needs makes these creatures of my imagination more concrete. You need to believe in your character as if they are flesh and blood in order to have them act like they’re not just paper and ink.

I guess buying gifts for your family and friends, then, represents an act of imagination: it’s writing at the most fundamental level. Aren’t you just inventing your friends and family as characters populating your own head? You buy them something because you have a fantasy about what the folks in your life truly mean to you. Dad gets a tie; Mom, a cookbook; Bro, a subscription to Sports Illustrated; Sis, that Britney Spears perfume you just know she’ll love.

Of course, the day after Christmas is exactly the moment you realize that those very real people have existed mainly as fictions. So much gets returned. Stuff is packed into the closet. The truly egregious gift is laid aside to be put into the pile at a white elephant gift exchange. It’s value will come belatedly next Christmas not as a concrete artifact but as a joke.
So what does every serial killer need? What wouldn’t he buy for himself? What would flatter his sense of personal taste? What would speak to his class and social position? What would address his burning ambitions and desires? What will help him become an even better serial killer than he already is? What is that one thing he is missing in his life? Of course, I’ve got it: cuff links!