choke ↣ joshler ✓

Contest Winners

Thank you if you submitted a oneshot! I really appreciate it and had a lot of fun reading different interpretations.

Since I did only get four entries, I'm including all of them here. There's no particular order for winners or anything because I enjoyed different parts from each one (:

There is also a reading list with all these on my account!

Without further ado, the submissions!

1. by neonpython

67 bodies.

That's how many it took for them to catch up with him. 67 murders all around the state of New York over the span of three years, and nobody even bothered looking for answers until someone important went missing.

Tyler didn't want to kill at first, but he was so psychologically damaged that no amount of therapy and hypnosis could help. Even though he always knew deep down he'd never be the same, he tried to move on from the betrayal and the trauma of his time in Missouri. He took medication, talked to a therapist, even tried to get closure before Josh was killed, but the closure backfired. That was what jumpstarted his already crumbling psyche to completely collapse.

Josh was right. He was manipulative and psychotic and just an awful person overall, but he was never wrong, especially when it came to Tyler. The people who had killed a part of him were executed, so what was he holding onto? The memories he had of the first people to show him life outside of his father's protective bubble, or the traits they all shared?

The bug Josh planted on their last day together never left. It just festered and spread, until a bully from his new school 'accidentally' met the sharp end of a switchblade behind the movie theater Tyler worked at. His first kill was an accident, but it opened doors Tyler didn't know were even there to behind with.

Tyler understood now why they killed and, as it turned out, he enjoyed killing too. He liked to feel in control of something, to know he had power over the lives of his victims, and that he outlived one more person after killing them. It was the only thing in his life that he could control.

His methodology varied from kill to kill- knives, guns, rope- because it helped the police not make a connection. But one thing all tied them together. Joshua. The first boy to steal, mutilate, and murder his heart before giving it damages beyond repair.

But that wasn't why he was caught. Not at first.

Tyler stupidly went after the daughter of a foreign ambassador, not knowing who she was or how risky of a target she'd be. He was pulled over trying to get rid of evidence, and after the police searched the car, they found her bloody clothes and the murder weapon in his trunk. But fate was in his favor all along; they still hadn't found her body, or tied most of his other victims to him, for that matter.

"Did you check the snowbanks? They might be preserved there. Or maybe the sewers. The rats would've eaten hen already," Tyler teased, screwing with the officer across from him.

"Shut the hell up, you bastard," the cop said in response, slamming his hands onto the table. "I want a location of all the bodies."

"No."

They only knew about twenty of the murders, already calling Tyler the Manhattan Killer. He smiled to himself, thinking of how they still haven't caught up to Patrick and Lindsey.

The police officer, Tyler forgot his name, snarled and grabbed the collar of his shirt, roughly pulling him over the table. Tyler feigned hurt, yelping and crying out for his father, who he knew was behind the one-way window.