Sinister

Chapter 1

I checked my watch as I hid the hammer in the false panel under the floorboards of the bathroom. It was approaching midnight and my roommate, as punctually late as he was, would probably return just as the clock struck one. I finished covering up the panel and began to clean up the blood that I had tracked in, as to not alert my roomie, who was a police officer in training.

It was a dangerous game to play, living with someone who could land me a life in prison, but it had its upsides. He was gone on a nearly daily basis and, like the saying goes, keep your enemies closer. Besides, if I ever needed to, I could dispose of him and put the blame on his risky profession.

I never thought about it too much, but killing my roommate would probably be the only slaughter that I would regret or feel remorseful about. The only people I had ever taken off of the face of this earth were the sick, the vile. People like me, who feel a rush of pleasure when blood runs through their fingers.

I used to despise how good it felt to have control over someone's life, but slowly, as I began to explore the extent of possibilities I was given, I began to come to see killing as a part of me. I lacked the ability to see the lines between murder and punishment at first, but slowly I began to differentiate between the innocent and the guilty.

The judgement struck down upon the wicked was not by any god, but by me. I was the sole power that could give, take, or simply leave be. I was the hand that brought suffering to the filth of the world, and that same hand was the one responsible for the cleansing of the streets of New York.

However, I always knew my work was not righteous, and I was just as sinister as those tracking mud on the pure. Every part of me knew it, to the core. The only difference between a common murderer and I was that I did evil unto the evil.

After returning the apartment that I had lived in to its original state, I began to take off my blood-soaked clothes and attempted to wash them off in the bathtub, scrubbing away the stains left from dealing punishment to the foul creature in the sewers. I worked for nearly half an hour and began to tire before resorting to chemically removing the deep crimson splotches. 

As I thought about the sewers, I slowly became aware of the stench that had stuck to my clothes from travelling the cistern-like waters of the sewers. I decided to knock two birds with one stone as I prepared to take a bath while loading in a mixed load of laundry. I made sure that the blood was, for the most part, scrubbed off of my clothes, so neither my roommate's clothes nor mine would come out tainted with blood.

As I finished loading the laundry, I began to get ready to bathe. As I started to run the water, I snuck a glance at myself in the mirror. At first glance, I was thin, almost frail. Upon further examination, what looked like a weak, lithe body was a wiry, taut bag of muscle, from years of dragging bodies and swinging hammers.

Another contributor to my frame was my official profession, which was also the reason I had a roommate in the first place. I worked in a steelworks factory, where the air was worn stale from sparks and cigarettes. The only reason that I never got into shape was that of my diet.

As I worked to scrub the blood off of my skin, I fell into deep thought. I never really took time for myself, proof being my signature panda-like eyes and pale, wiry build. I stopped scrubbing for a moment and considered taking a break from punishing the evil. I stopped in time for a moment, contemplating, when I heard my police friend come in and sigh loud and hard.

I finished freshening up and walked out to see my roommate sitting on the bottom bunk, his face buried in his hands. He was deathly pale, and he looked like he was on the verge of passing out.

I feigned compassion and tried to remember his name. "Are you alright? You look pallid." I handed him a water bottle and tried to eliminate letters. As he took a swig from the water bottle, it came to me that it was definitely an 'H' name.

He stuttered for a moment when he tried to speak, but eventually, he maundered out, "They s-sent me on the case, and the," He paused for a moment. "The body, the one that was there, it was just... half!"

As I tried to discern what he was rambling about, it suddenly came to me. His name was Harry! Or maybe Henry, but that didn't matter because the other thought that came to mind was that he must have found a body that wasn't quite put together.

I realized what he was talking about when I was doing a mental inventory check on my recent victims. I remembered a particular young man that had a passion for cannibalism, rape, and other dark deeds.

I punished him severely.

But what mattered more now was that the body had been found. In that moment, I knew what had to be done. If the police were hot on my trail, I couldn't be sitting on a landmine like this. I continued to pretend to be sympathetic, and as he laid in bed, I began to plot.