Sinister

Prologue

I ran my fingers over the dull, chipped head of the hammer as I contemplated what my next course of action was. I had already found my victim, kidnapped him, and had him waiting at my mercy in the dark, wet sewer maintenance room, yet I had not doled out my justice yet. However, that moment was sure to come. It wasn't a matter of leaning on guilt and shame so I could let someone like him go, but more of a dilemma on how I should make him suffer for his crimes.

For a moment, I heard my victim thrash about and sob off in the dark, but it quickly stopped as he realized there was no hope. With the sounds of a criminal trying to break free, I finally decided to put an end to his time spent among the living.

I headed over to the maintenance room and pushed open the heavy metal door as the rusted hinges groaned out in the dark. I let the sound ring and listened to my victim whimper and struggle before I flicked on the smooth bakelite switch and let the fluorescent light wash over the room, dispelling the thick, velvety black that had consumed the room earlier.

He was bound from head to toe, hogtied like the pig he was, writhing and squirming like a maggot exposed to air. I smacked him on his side with a quick flick of my wrist before undoing the knot that contorted his body. I shoved him into the chair as he struggled to breathe, choking on the wrung out rag I had used as a gag.

I couldn't let him die just yet, for he had not repented for the pain he had caused others so indifferently in life. I undid the knot holding the gag, and as soon as I did, he began to cry and lament. "Please! Please let me go!" He thrashed for a moment and began to shake in his chair before he started up again.

"Oh God, oh God, please help me, plea-" He was cut short as I brought the claw of the hammer onto his finger. He lurched forward before rearing his head back and wailing in agony. I let his cry ring out to no one and watched as he shook violently in his chair.

He sputtered and vomited in his own lap before whimpering out in no particular direction."Why..." He coughed again and hiccuped before babbling incoherently.

I leaned back against the wall and spoke to him. "Why? What do you think?"

He stopped shaking for a second and sniffled, "I didn't deserve.. this."

I laughed out loud and nearly brought myself to tears before snatching him up by his oily, black hair. "Neither did your daughter, or your secretary, or any other of those women."

He froze in time for a moment, in total shock that anyone found out about his misdeeds. Little did he know that every move he had made for the past 11 years was closely monitored by my unwitting partner, the GCSS, a network of cameras wired to every home, office, and street corner. However, it only took me three days to know about every grope, push, and advance he had made on anyone he thought was open.

The victim, so to say, that I had taken in this time was a rapist who cornered his daughter, blackmailed his secretary, and accused every other woman he had violated with false accusation. He was a walking disease that needed to be cleansed, and I was the vaccine that was going to purge him.

Very, very soon.

He came to life and muttered, "How did you know?" He rocked back and forth for a moment and whispered, "No one could've known."

I frowned and put his hand back up on the table, ready to leave another finger dangling by a thread, but he screamed and lashed out in an attempt to stop me but to no avail. The drugs that I had given him were almost enough to turn him into a vegetable, but he was still processing relatively clearly, and, more importantly, kept him from moving any more than an inch or two.

I came down fast on his next finger and kept pressing and twisting until the weathered claw of the hammer had ground right through the flesh holding his finger on. I tore off his finger and positioned it like a dart as he began to wail. He screamed for a moment, only to have his own finger shoved in his mouth, farther and farther down his throat, until his face turned purple and I was forced to make him throw it back up.

He groaned with a voice the texture of sandpaper until he could manage to croak out, "Please...I'm so...sorry." He sobbed dryly with intermittent coughs and sputters until I grew tired of listening.

I came down next to his finger and heard the thunk of the table as he whimpered and made his pants a soiled, souse mess. I grabbed him by the ear and whispered softly to him, "Rest now, rapist."

He looked in my way and whimpered once again before I spoke to him the last thing he would ever hear.

"In hell."

It took me hours to clean chunks of flesh off of the walls of that room.