Revelation

Hello, I'd Like to Report a Murder

"Meow"

"Hello to you to, James," said Bernard, smiling at the black cat.

He fell onto the couch right next to James. James blinked, and jumped onto Bernard's lap, curling up on his thighs.

Bernard turned the TV on and surfed through the Netflix options. James purred, and Bernard scratched his tiny head in response.

It was 7:01 in the evening, and Bernard had just gotten back to his small apartment in downtown. They had gotten nowhere on the case and decided to call it a night. Something was pulling on the back of his head about these murders, but he couldn't quite click. They were bizarre in that they all happened in peculiar ways and at the same time.

He decided to give it a rest, and he turned Sherlock on. His phone chimed about five minutes in, scaring James away to the other side of the room.

It was an email. Bernard swiped his phone open and took a look at it. There was no sender.

Bernard squinted at this. There was also no subject. There was content however:

"Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, "Come." I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer." - Revelation, 6: 1-2

Bernard could make no sense of this. Maybe it was some kind of Bible verse? He wasn't religious. White horse? He decided it didn't mean anything, and closed it.

He didn't, however, delete it.

* * *

A man sat at a table in a bar, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He drank his scotch silently, but eyed two men down the aisle, heatedly arguing about the game on TV. He had been watching them for a while; it started out as a small disagreement but was becoming something more. He was getting impatient.

He waited for a few more seconds until he heard the unmistakable sound of skin hitting skin. He looked at his watch; it was five to nine. He smiled, put his scotch glass down, and pulled a semi-automatic handgun out of the duffle bag.

* * *

He shut the metal door close. He was getting tired of their moans. Hey, at least it was less annoying than the screams. They were almost gone, but not quite. He was hoping they'd give up and die by the scheduled time, but it was already five to nine.

He put his ear next to the door; they were barely making any sounds anymore. He took another look at his watch, and decided that he might as well stick to the schedule.

He waited outside the door until 8:59, then shoved the great metal door open one last time. He walked in to find the family of four dead on the ground.

* * *

He stared at the dead woman on the bed. Half the time, he didn't know what he was injecting her with, but whatever he did, it was doing the trick.

He looked at the other bodies in the room. Truthfully, not all of them were the most artful, but they were effective enough.

He pulled out his phone and called the number. A woman picked up.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Hello, I'd like to report a murder," he answered cheerfully. "9, actually."

"Sir, where - ?"

"Oh, I'm also the one who did it."