Psycho

Chapter I

The sound of running footsteps echoed throughout the hallway. Joined by the exasperated shouts for help, every breath from this poor girl's lungs is in vain. A little challenge would be more than welcome, but it doesn't show; Not tonight.

A filing cabinet lying in her path forces the oblivious girl to the ground as her knee makes contact. She buckles to the ground still screaming, again, to no avail. No one will hear her here as no one has seen the inside of this building in decades and lived to see another human face. With six miles from the nearest gas station and another ten to the nearest police station, this abandoned building makes the optimal hunting grounds. The girl attempts to scramble for her balance to keep running through the corridors, but where will she go? She has no clue where she is or where she is going, but I do.

She topples over the side of the cabinet and continues down the hall, limping now, favoring her right leg and pushing herself forward, as if her life depends on it. As she reaches the end of this hallway, her black hair flailing frantically behind her, the girl finds that she has two options to continue: left or right.

Running out of time and energy, she makes the same subconscious choice all people who have made it this far make. She dips to the left, running as far and as fast as her legs will carry her. Until, suddenly, her wounded appendage gives out on her and she falls to the floor again. Crawling now, she slides her body forward into the darkness of her chosen death. No one will ever find out how or where exactly she dies, but I will know. The lighting, now dim enough to obscure the path ahead of her, makes this journey all the more intense. She inches her body toward the unknown, until the floor beneath her becomes a strategically placed hole. By the time her brain registers what's happening in front of her, her body has already begun the plunge downward. The three story fall allows the average person a four percent survival rate as the human anatomy plunges into the concrete basement floor at a maximum of eighty feet per second. Upon impact, the sheer trauma to the body is enough to stop the heart, while for the less fortunate, the pain from the broken bones and external or internal bleeding is the usual cause of death, but I long for the four percent that survive.

Standing over the hole, I watch as she drops to her eventually inevitable end. It only takes six seconds for the deafening crack of human bone and the pleasing sound of skin smacking stone. Silence fills the corridor as I wait for a response from the lump of viscera lying at the foundation of the building.

Nothing.

I begin to walk back toward the beginning of the chase but stop on account of the stunted breathing and whimpering coming from the human death chute. Music to my ears.

Upon arriving at the bottom of the stairwell to the basement, her relentless screaming pursues as I near the site of impact. She's managed to survive the fall, although she had fallen directly on her left side breaking her arm and previously uninjured leg. Bone shows in three different places as she cries in pain. Once she sees my boots in front of her, she stops shouting long enough to whimper one last word as I draw the sword hanging from the sheath at my side.

"Please," she whispers hoarsely to me. Tears well and fall from her eye sockets as the final image she sees is the blade falling down on her neck, cleanly severing the skull from the spine.

Seattle, Washington- North Precinct, Seattle Police Department

Black.

Religiously, without cream or sugar. The only way that Detective Logan Bennett drinks his coffee as he stops before his shift at Cloud City Café, the closest coffee shop to the station. He's not the only officer in the building following this ritual, but he may be the only one trying to overpower this bad of a hangover on a Tuesday morning. The detective sat at his usual spot near the window when his phone started to hum in his pocket.

"Bad boys, Bad boys, Whatcha gonna do?" the stereotypical cop ringtone rang on full volume as he fumbled to pull the device from his pocket. He was beginning to draw attention and embarrassment flushed his face.

"Bennett," he answered swinging his hand to grab his coffee from the counter seat. He read the caller I.D., frustration with the day building in the pit of his stomach, "What do you need, Lieutenant?"

"I need you to get your ass to the bridge under I99 on 125th. There's a body and were gonna need all hands on for this one," Lieutenant James Archer's reputation as the Scourge of Seattle crime made his already frightening stature and persona even more intimidating. Not to mention, he was the first black lieutenant in the city of Seattle.

"I'm on my way, sir," Bennett grabbed his coffee and stood up, hitting his elbow on the counter and dropping the cup of steaming joe directly into his lap.

"Mother Fucker!" he cried in paid from the third degree burns developing on his leg and groin. This act drew the rest of the wandering eyes in the café. He stood in silence for a moment trying to wipe the coffee from his denim jeans then he gathered himself and noticed the crowd watching him, "Take a damn picture and it lasts longer, pricks!"

When he arrived at the crime scene, there was an ambulance and seven police cruisers blocking the path of the road from the civilian public. The detective knew already that this case was a high profile one at the least. Bennett approached the heart of the scene to find there was a body, but this one lacked a certain eleven pounds of flesh most people keep attached upon death. The mutilated corpse wasn't simply dropped and found by someone on the street either; it was staged. Hanging from her feet, this headless female form dangled from the underside of the bridge, her arms dropped parallel to where her skull should have been. Crime Scene Investigation began to bring the body down as the case grew in interest even more to Bennett. One of her arms and the leg to the same side showing exposed bone with some sort of flower sticking from the wound by its stem. Complexion crossed the detectives face and stayed for a moment.

"Roses, Bennett," Alyssa Archer, his partner and the lieutenant's daughter, called to him as she left the vicinity of the body, "No name yet, but we believe time of death to have been last night around midnight. The body sustained quite the fall to its left side, pre mortem, causing compound fractures on both her leg and arm,"

"This is a mess. What time was the body called in? This is a decently busy road, there's has to be a chance that someone saw something," there was something about Archer's auburn hair and light brown skin in the glimmer of police cruiser lights that made her look more professional, or maybe it was simply the way her father had raised her to be.

"We got the call about half an hour ago during first shift rush to work. Still waiting for M.E. to I.D. and determine cause of death and since she had no clothes and no tattoos, there's nothing for us to go on yet. The Lieutenant set up a five-block search grid to try and come up with something, but so far, were just chasing our tails," it was obvious in her eyes that this case was just as perplexing to her as it had been to Bennett. All of the injuries to the corpse had happened before the girls death, meaning she probably died from her head being lobbed off and not the trauma to the body.

"Well in that case, I'm heading back to the office. I have to finish that report for Gomez yet," the Gomez case was an open and close gang-related shooting the department had received a few days prior to this monstrosity, "I don't see your car here, do you need a ride back?"

"No, I'm alright. The boss should be here in a few. He wanted to take me to breakfast to celebrate my promotion to detective," Bennett began to walk back toward his car and Archer followed as they continued talking, "Can't exactly tell your boss no,"

"Well, he's only your father. You could potentially tell him no, if you really wanted to. Me, on the other hand, that would cost me my job," they neared his brand new Chevrolet Impala, the black paint gleaming in the morning sunrise over the east of the city.

"Would you ever try to tell your old man no to something he wanted?" she said with a grin.

"Well, no. My old man would have hit me with a shovel a couple times if I had ever even said the word no," a scenario which had happened on numerous occasions, leaving bruises and scars for all of the public to see on his face, arms, and chest. When Mr. Bennett finally passed two years ago, Zach would have been more likely to throw a party than attend the funeral. Surprisingly he did neither, instead ignoring the fact that the man had died entirely.

As Bennett reached for his car door handle, it happened. Quickly there was a singular scream and a sound not unlike a watermelon hitting pavement. By the time the Detective had realized what happened, Archer had already made her way to the newly fallen object. The assumedly missing head rolled across the road having been ejected from the highway above. The skull was scalped. All of its hair had been removed, but the most disturbing part was the absence of her eyes as they were cleanly removed from her head to be replaced by two more roses, the stems shoved deep into the cranium.

The M.E. moved quickly to bag the head as the rest of the body had already been moved to the coroner's van that arrived moments ago. Bennett stood by his car as the police officers around him moved into action, running to their cars to try and cut off whoever dropped the head down the highway, but chances are, by the time they manage to get on the busy morning highway, the assailant would be long gone. Bennett smiled and chuckled to himself. He always liked a good challenge.

Chapter II

Sirens wailed as the police cruisers worked their way to adjacent street to access the onramp to the highway. From here, they all looked like swarming bees and I had just took a swing at the hive. By the time they flood I99, I'll be half way home and they won't be looking for the cattle truck I stowed away onto.

In 1893, a man by the name of Herman Webster Mudgett began a prolonged experiment on humans he could capture and deliver to his infamous "Murder Castle" where. The man later took the nomenclature of H. H. Holmes as his experiments grew in size and lethality as he was able to accumulate a body count of almost two hundred human kills in his "world fair hotel," in the middle of bustling Chicago. Besides his early demise, hanged nine days before his 35th birthday, the man was my hero and my inspiration. Few serial killers had managed to rack up such a successful attempt on human life as a whole, and now, he lived in infamy.

A police cruiser sped by the truck pushing towards the edge of town. It would be impossible for them to get permission from the higher-ups to set up a road block as no one ever saw me so they don't know exactly who they're looking for. They could attempt to stop every suspicious car on the highway but it would be a waste of time. There's little to no chance of the entire police force finding me in this cattle trailer. Although the copious amount of cow shit makes the ride a little uncomfortable.

Eventually, the truck began to slow and veer to the right as it pulled off an exit toward the owner's farm, which only leaves a four miles walk back to my building. On foot, I would be home by dinner, but I had other plans for the driver and his family of three, his wife and son waiting patiently for his return. It wasn't much longer before the truck completely stopped moving the engine cut off into sweet silence. Although through the quiet came muffled footsteps against the gravel driveway as the man moved toward the back door. The latch on the only way out of the solid cattle crate came undone and the hatch creaked open as the man was facing me standing before them.

"Good job today, son. You handled the busiest day of the year pretty well. Ill have your paycheck after dinner. Come on inside and get cleaned up, my wife made porkchops," Farmer Mitchell said in his heavy Texan accent. Every good killer needs a cover and farmhand for the new cow heard in town made as good a one as any. I hopped out of the cattle car with my cooler in hand, where the head had previously been stored, and we headed inside.

Brand new with a family of three living inside and the house was still seemingly immaculate. There was not a speck of dust or dirty to be found here, and the smell of the southern-style dinner being prepared in the kitchen wafted throughout the house making the feeling of hunger in my body grow all the more. Mrs. Mitchell asked me to help their son, Mathew, set the table and go ahead and take a seat. The only sound in the dining room came from the T.V. broadcasting a local news station in the living room.

"Back to the breaking news of the case of the headless woman found dangling under a bridge this morning..." blood began to rush to my head as my ninth kill swirled in my memory, the sound her body made against the hard floor rang in my mind, but that wasn't as far as my thoughts raced.

The same dark black hair swung from her head as I brought the kitchen knife down on the larger woman's vertebrae sticking out from the back of her neck. The screaming from the older woman filled the depths of my mind as a single tear raced from my eye to my cheek. This would be the last time anyone ever saw my sadistic mother alive. I, as a fifteen year old boy, would be the last witness of her life. I don't remember how we had arrived at this situation. I only remember snapping.

"Jack," I heard a name in the distance that wasn't mine but it sounded so familiar, "Jack," it called again. It wasn't my name but at the same time it was. Jack was my pseudonym I've used since migrating to Washington.

When I snapped back to reality, I realized the calling was Mrs. Mitchell asking if I was feeling alright, when in fact I was not, but I wiped the tear from my face, anyways. I could hear the blood pumping in the room where the three live humans around me were beginning to pray over the food the old woman had prepared.

"Would you do the honors, son?" Mr. Mitchell was wanting me to say something but religion wasn't ever my strong suite to begin with. The idea of eternal forgiveness for the things I've done didn't only seem out of reach but impossible. Especially with the vile acts I felt like committing right this moment. Anxiously, I relented and began to talk through the silence of the room.

"Uh, sure," I bowed my head and folded my hands like mother would make me do every night before dinner," Dear father, who art thou in Heaven, we thank you deeply for our safety on this day and this wonderful food prepared for us. For in your name, we are your humble servants, Amen,"

Dinner carried on as usual until young Mathew Mitchell, a boy around the age of ten, began to talk about the corpse the police had found this morning. My body. His mother told the boy that the table wasn't the place to talk about such things but the boy continued over his mother's warnings.

"What kind of sick bastard would leave a woman headless in a public place like that?" he asked rhetorically, receiving a firm scolding from his father. the rising tension in the room was my cue to leave. I asked Mrs. Mitchell which direction to the bathroom, and as I was leaving I could hear the rage in the boy's father's voice.

"You watch that mouth of yours, boy, or you'll be spending the rest of the night in your room without dinner," further conversation on the topic stopped at the table, but the dialog only just began in my head as I stared at my own face in the bathroom mirror. It wasn't long before the image I was staring at started to morph apart from my own, speaking in a voice deeper than mine. My eyes faded to a solid, empty black compared to their usual brown color.

"They know," the figure preached, "You have to protect yourself, or this whole mission will be for nothing. Kill them all then burn the house down to clean evidence. All you need is right in this room," the figure pointed down to the toilet, where a single candle burned to illuminate the linoleum floor and bathtub as no light spilled in the window from the darkness of the night.

"But it would look too suspicious. I'm sure the first person the police would contact would be Jack Wilker, the farmhand they just hired," I tried to defend the situation with logic, but I knew deep down that the figure was right. I needed to clean up after myself and dispose of the family. I've been too sloppy and there's no way the Mitchells haven't caught on yet.

"Take care of it, Elijah," my imagination started to change back to reality as I realized I was hunched over the counter top and a tear rolled down my face hitting the edge of the sink. I took hold of the candle and brought the tip of the flame to the blinds on the window which immediately caught fire and burned while I ignited the bath curtain as well.

The smoke alarms began blaring as I made my way back to the kitchen and smoke billowed behind me from the bathroom. Mr. Mitchell stood to stare at me as I reentered the dining room, now holding the biggest knife from the kitchen's block. Without hesitation, I plunged the blade into the grown man's heart while watching the life instantly drain from his eyes and the body went limp. screaming from the wife and son followed but I acted quickly, slashing the woman's left carotid artery with a single swing. The boy, being as small as he was, didn't manage to throw me off too much as he barreled into my chest, nudging me across the floor a couple inches. I've never enjoyed killing children, but when the time calls for action, I must act.

Silence, now. The vulgar scene around me looked like some from an art museum. Blood spattered the wall, covering family pictures hung on the wall behind the woman's corpse and the pool of fluid surrounding the man's body was starting to spread to the rest of the dining room, but the boy was my true masterpiece. His body was lain face down across the table, the knife stuck right below his neck, where I left it after slicing through the orphan's entire spinal column. Blood fell from the table top like a steady waterfall joining the rest on the floor.

It wasn't long before the house started to burn faster and faster. Its older structure caved in after only three minutes as the rest of the house was engulfed in fire and my crime scene went with it. Fire squad response time would probably allow me another ten minutes given how far the farmhouse was from civilization.