Out on a Limb

Weighing the Options

Focus, Fancy, an inner voice chided, and he heeded the warning while applying a thin layer of liquid chalk to his hands, tucking it and a couple of other small items into his pocket, and taking in the layout of the climb before him.

He could have spent the next minutes gauging the heritage-style skyscraper and its jutting ledges and ornate scrolling, but he had already mentally plotted his course numerous times, and now it was simply a matter of following that path and completing the upward journey to Ferguson's office. He knew full well where a small nesting of pigeons were tucked on the twenty-eighth floor, their cooing noises similar to the lovely whimpering of a woman when she had exhausted herself of struggle and sensed the end of their time together was near.  He also knew exactly where his footing needed to land a few more feet above that.  It was that portion of cracked moulding on the twenty-ninth floor that would give him the perfect place to quickly pitch himself up and through the always open window of one Ferguson Chatterton, father, CEO, asshole extraordinaire, and soon-to-be fiftieth victim of one the most elusive serial killers in the last twenty years.

One might question the route Donald chose (he was scaling the side of a thirty story building without any safety gear after all), even if the climb itself wasn't particularly challenging for someone with mountaineering experience such as his own.  To a regular (and probably sane) person the feat might have looked impossible and would only be considered as a demonstration of sheer madness.  But to a skilled climber there were lots of possibilities — footholds, places to rest, multiple angles for finding a better grip and so on. 

It was very much the same way every woman he passed on the street had possibilities — weaknesses, insecurities, desires, and best of all, fears. He simply needed to identify those possibilities and then use them to achieve whatever goal he set for himself. Strangulation and exsanguination were tried and true favourites, but he was always open to exploring new ideas, and dabbled into different mediums for special occasions like an artist shifting from acrylics to oil paints and then to water colours.  His most recent adventures toyed with his own variations of autoerotic asphyxiation and not-so self-immolation — a somewhat loud and occasionally messy process.  Still, the method made up for its drawbacks with the beautiful songs serenaded to him as his lovely, caged birds were burned alive.  (The entirely practical self-cleaning usefulness that aided with their disposal didn't hurt either.) 

Even the ascent to his symbolic mountaintop was far from spectacular, coming in at an underwhelming total of forty-two feet. But still, it was a unique challenge, and a far more interesting way to test his skill than to simply steal someone's security fob, stroll into the man's office under some bullshit pretence, and then proceed to dispose of him. There was also the matter of CCTV cameras in hallways, elevators and throughout the floor's interior that would have required addressing and that simply was not an option.  For once in his life Donald Fancy had neither the time nor the patience to wait for things to unfold naturally.

Ferguson Chatterton may have been knocking on death's door each day he hobbled into his building and every time he lowered his creaking, shrinking form behind his grotesquely grand desk better suited to royalty or heads of state, but Donald couldn't wait for Ferguson to answer the persistent knock once and for all, not when the man's mind was still as acerbically sharp as ever, and the sound of Evelyn Blair's name sat freshly perched on his slimy, yet somehow perpetually parched lips.
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