The Doctor Of East Hadena [MXM] [SERIAL KILLER] ✓

07 | RED

I met Willow five years ago.

It was the middle of the night, and I was in an interesting neighborhood. See, due to the demographic I choose—criminals nobody will miss—I'm used to my victims living in the... not so great parts of the city. I'm used to mobile home parks and rundown apartment complexes, cracked and broken streets in areas of Hadena most people avoid.

The thing that is different in Hadena, comparative to other cities, is how blatantly visible the wealth gap can be. You can be standing in the worst neighborhood you've ever seen in your life, but right over a large row of bushes and a fence, are mansions. There are multiple areas in Hadena where it's obnoxiously clear, and I was in one of them.

I was going after a guy, and if I remember right, his crime was some sort of violence on children. At this point in time I only had myself, and the way I'd find deserving people was usually by means of my job. Something I was trying to get away from, since it was much harder to remain anonymous.

He lived in the less fortunate part of the neighborhood, and I'd already finished knocking him out with a baseball bat... and then some. He was pretty close to death already.

I put him in a bag, and was in the process of dragging him across his backyard to my truck, which was hidden in the trees, when a sound scared the absolute shit out of me.

It came from the bushes, and I immediately dropped the bag, hand flying to the holster on my hip that stored my knife. I didn't pull it out just yet, instead searching around the darkness for what that could've possibly been. When I saw no movement for a minute or so, I decided it was probably an animal, and prepared to move on.

Then, someone burst through the wall of bushes in an explosion of leaves and branches. They fell to the ground immediately, and now I had my knife out.

I just watched the dark silhouette lay on the grass, face down, crumbled in on themselves. Eventually I decided they probably weren't dangerous, and put my knife away, instead favoring my flashlight.

I clicked the button at the very back until it bursted to life at its lowest setting, before finally beginning to take slow steps towards the figure. I didn't shine the light directly onto them, so as to not make my presence that obvious, until I was right in front of them.

When I finally bathed the figure in the low, focused light, it was revealed that the person was a girl. A young one, judging by her size. Her body was shaking, the faint sound of crying echoing through the air. Beside her was a knife, blood covered, which glinted when I shined the flashlight on it.

"What're you doing?" I asked her, beyond confused. What the hell kind of business does a child have, running around the bushes in the middle of the night? With a knife? She had no idea whose backyard she was in, it was a good thing the guy had already been neutralized.

The girl looked up at me shakily, and she had tears streaming down her face. She held up a hand to block the light, and since she was obviously not threatening at all, I decided to shut it off for her. She was difficult to see until she sat back on her feet, and the nearby street lamps were able to cast her in some light, though not much.