Ready. Set. Psycho.

Prologue: Psycho

Psycho shuffled into the car seat and moved his hips until they sank comfortably into the groove. He adjusted his rear-view mirror downward until Greg, tied and gagged in the back seat, filled the frame. He smiled, started the ignition, put the car into gear, and peeled into the street, cutting off oncoming traffic, some of which honked.

"You see," Psycho said, "people think rules inhibit. If anything, rules liberate. People think rules stop criminals. If anything, they enable us. Observe."

Psycho drifted into oncoming traffic. More honking, but the cars swerved around him. He gently drifted back into the proper lane. "Have you ever considered how absolutely terrifying driving would be without rules? That pedestrian there, the fat one - oh, you can't see them. Trust me, he's fat. That pedestrian is walking not four feet from cars that are traveling fast enough to turn most of his organs into paste if they hit him. Is he afraid? Not even in the slightest. Why? Because he is on the sidewalk, and the rules say cars don't drift onto sidewalks. But see that other guy up ahead?"

Psycho smiled into the rear-view mirror and made sure Greg made eye contact as he drifted onto the sidewalk. There was a splat and a big bump and a rumble as he ran over the pedestrian. "Rules. He didn't see it coming. He wasn't afraid. He thought he was safe because of those rules. He did not take even the slightest, sanest precaution because, well, you're not supposed to drive on the sidewalk. So people like me? We can do what we please. Once you know the rules. Once you understand how they fit everyone else's behavior into a box. It makes everyone so predictable that planning a crime - or not planning a crime, but simple, random crime - becomes easy. Once you know the rules for behavior in that box, you can smash the box and take or do anything you like.

"That's something you cops know, isn't it? How incredibly thin that blue line is between the victim and the criminal. In today's day and age, the only protection is the sheer number of law-abiding citizens. I can't kill them all. A thief can't rob them all. So the majority of people are safe. But really, the rules keep them prisoner. They keep them sitting there waiting for someone like me. That terrifying truth is that rules do not protect anyone from harm; worse, they enable harm by lulling people into a false sense of underserved security.

"Rules, as they say, are made to be broken. And I was made to break those rules."

Psycho drove out of the city, but not far. In a truck stop under cover of darkness a few miles into Connecticut, he parked, got out of the car, took a canister of gasoline with a rag coming out of the spout from the trunk, and put it next to Greg. He lit it and walked away as the car caught fire and Greg screamed.