The Next One

Chapter Uno

July 8th, 2017

The stars were nonexistent, puffy clouds shielding the natural bits of light. The only illumination that was given to me was the light of the lonely street lamp on the lonely shallow sidewalk. It was the middle of the evening, 'bewitching hour' if you would. 3am. A time when no human should ever be awake. Roaming the streets alone, especially now, was considerably dangerous.

They say that there were dangerous people out here. People that sought no remorse for their crimes, all the forgiveness and love being stolen from them young, while they could do nothing but watch. People who saw all the happiness being ripped from their bodies. People who sought to make others feel the same way they had, because why should one suffer alone?

You see...remorse is a funny word. They expect me to have remorse for those who couldn't protect themselves. I could never protect myself from them or more specifically him. Nothing could ever make me feel more empty, and nothing could ever fill me.

Not after the event that happened last year. One year to be precise. Exactly one year tonight. I asked myself of every moment of every day why I bothered to remember. The last thing I wanted to remember was him. I couldn't even say his name anymore, the very sound of it rolling off my tongue just brought those tears back to my eyes as I saw the life draining from his eyes as his blood spilled on the cheap carpeting of his office. Our office. The one we shared for such a short time.

Max.

Hatred is such an abomination, a subversion of what should be good, pure in this world. Well guess what? I'm an abomination. I never see strong hatred except where love is betrayed or destroyed in some manner. We make excuses for strangers and hold our loved ones to impossible standards. We give excuses for those we care for and never bat an eye when they wrong us. When loved ones break our hearts, we forgive them, over and over and over again, even as we allow them to break us down, tearing away our self-worth. Why do we do this? We forgive them, our hearts telling us that they are worthwhile, even as it aches with pain.

Love.

Love wasn't enough to save you. It was frail, fragile, only for the weak-minded. I was weak once. But not anymore. He was weak, I was not. This is what set us apart from one another. If only I had realized it sooner, or else all those years growing up would've been so much easier. I am strong, invincible. I don't need others to rely on. I'm tired of the mistreatment of others.

That's why I killed her tonight.

Her sharp glare of judgement was enough to cut through ice. We passed on the streets just earlier that evening. The upkeep of her preppy clothing was enough to suggest that she was an highly important business woman working for someplace important. She's had it made her whole life.

I had followed her home that night. She wouldn't expect someone like me to follow her into a well-lit neighborhood this time of night with a police station just down the street. She was too focused on her phone to notice that I lept her fence and came up from her back porch. I waited until she was fast asleep so I could break the lock on her back door and sneak inside.

The last thing she remembered seeing was the quick swing of the kitchen knife in the darkness as her throat was sliced clean off. I didn't get the chance to get her name, but the name on her business cards stacked neatly in the corner clued me in to her name.

Brandly Savaneer.

Most say murder wasn't justified. Inhumane to be precise. It's justified when the murderer seeks to end someone's life, someone who has wronged them, and the only way to have them to forgive them is to see their blood get all over the carpet. Fire doesn't care if it burns wood, your home, or the flesh from your body. Like a knife it has no preference at all. It just cuts, doesn't matter what it's cutting. Yet, when a person kills another person, it's suddenly a huge deal. Life is short and meaningless, it shouldn't matter if you get murdered or killed in a fire.

"That was fun." I murmured under my breath, a manslaughter can really take a lot of you. Driving a knife into someone's chest or slicing a throat required upper body strength, to which I used to lack a year ago. I'd grown stronger over this past year, but it was still a lot. The adrenaline was enough to keep me going.

I preferred a gun, but the police station was down the street. They'd come running if they heard a gunshot. I needed time to plunder the house for clothes and supplies and also hide some of the evidence so they couldn't follow me. That was the last thing I needed.

I preferred to stay away from the police. Not because I feared being caught. They were quite stupid, and before I was officially a killer, they couldn't deduce that I was killing all of mine and Max's old associates, rather obviously if I may add. I knew if I saw Max I probably couldn't control myself. I can't bare to see his stupid grin again. It was because of me he was alive. If only I just let him die, then that wound would've closed all those years ago.

After breaking into her safe and stealing couple hundred dollars, a watch, and some clean clothes from her husband's closet, I ditched the old clothes and left them on the floor. They already knew who I was, so I didn't care about the DNA testing. I gathered the remaining items in her fridge into a backpack I had left outside.

I allowed a green slip of paper to fall to the floor. A note. Something to remember me by.

The final step was calling 911.

"You've got to help!" I cried on her phone. "Brandly is dead! There was a murder here!"

"Where are you?" The operator, who I had known as Marge back in the day, asked. "Are they still in the building with you?"

"Trace the phone call and find out." I threw the phone on the ground and took out a gun and shot it three times. Then I quickly tossed the backpack over my shoulder and escaped the way I came.

I managed to get pretty far. I didn't even hear the sirens.