PSYCHOPATH

prologue

Prologue:

PSYCHO: psychotic, neurotic, and hopelessly alone.

            He stared at the whimpering man crawling up the marble steps of the platform. All the doors of the church were locked, the building empty of people besides the two men. And all that was heard was the echoing of the his desperate pleas trying to move up the steps in an attempt to flee.

            "P-please," the sniveling man cried, his voice garbled with puffy and cut lips. The man reached up the stairs with his hands, searching for a purchase on the steps to crawl up with, unable to see where he was headed with both of his eyes sealed shut. "God, help."

            Pleading to God would not help him.

           He continued to emotionlessly watch the beaten-up male find his way up the stairs of the platform and crawl over to the church's altar. Following his movements, towering over him, his feet clicking ominously on the marble floor. The man on the floor weakly brought his head up, looking for his killer, only seeing a dark shadow of a figure looming over him through his puffy eyes. Fear was evident in his bruised and bloody face.

            "I d-don't want to die. I-I don't even know what I did," the hurt man sniffled with desperation, his voice cracking. Salty tears seeped through the cracks of his black eyes.

            He laughed without humor, dark and sinister, making the man sob even more at the seemingly disembodied voice. And for the first time, He spoke spitefully, "Like you don't know what you did; talking about some risk of your business ventures on the phone loudly, in the middle of church. How inconsiderate of you, you interrupted the holy hour." His voice was even more baleful than his laugh, smooth and deep.

            "It w-won't happen again, it was one s-s-small mess up," the trembling and shuddering man wept, covering his distorted face. "Are y-you going to kill me?"

            He didn't give an answer before he bent down, grabbing the back of the man's neck roughly with his gloves and bringing him to his shaking feet despite the man's reluctance. The man wailed once he felt the hands on his neck, his cries loud and piercing. The bawling didn't last long for his head was slammed down upon the altar. Once. Twice. Three times, till it was over, the man's cries stuck in his throat. Blood leaked from the his skull, reddening the pearly blonde hair on it.

            Letting the man's limp body fall to the floor, He strode over to the front pew of the church and picked up the thick American flag, the end of it trailing behind on the floor as He walked back to the man's crumpled body. He wrapped the flag tightly around the man's lifeless arms and dragged him along the marble floor to the table with the tabernacle -the cross directly above it- smearing shades of red across the marble.

            He then tied the man onto the cross with the bloodied flag by standing on the altar. The man's head was tilted forward into his chest, his arms outstretched to take the form of the cross. He reached into his jean's pocket and brought out a pocketknife, flicking it open. Running the tip down the man's belly, it cut open easily, even through the thin shirt the man wore, unleashing and spilling organs and blood, some of it dangling from his stomach. With his gloved hand, He wrote on top of the altar in the man's blood, "No guts, no glory."