3

The box was filled with manila envelopes, all of which had been scrawled with a single name and sealed. The seal on the top envelope, marked with the name Sandra and penned in my father’s neat hand, had broken and the contents had spilled out.

The first sight to greet me was a Polaroid picture of a woman. She was young, blonde, pretty, naked, and dead. She was lying stretched out on a carpet that had been dyed red with her blood. Her stomach sliced open, her innards popping out through the bisected flesh. Her large intestine stroked up her body like an alien tentacle, toward breasts that had been violently mutilated. Her nipples sliced off.

I wasn’t squeamish, but I hadn’t expected to see what I had. I had never witnessed anything so grotesque, so violent, not even in films. My stomach hadn’t been prepared.

I took a few deep breaths, braced myself, and looked back inside the box, fighting away nausea as I rifled through more of the pictures. A lot of them showed her after death, before and during mutilation. The rest were of her when she was alive, spied through the eyes of a voyeuristic lens. Snaps of her shopping; answering the door to a delivery man; having coffee with a friend; looking forlornly out a restaurant window. I’d seen this woman before.

I tipped out the envelope, spilling the contents into the box. A picture of her laughing with friends; one of her behind a desk; on the phone; eating dinner. Then, flopping out like the prize from a box of cereal, was a tiny, laminated slip.

It looked like a pair of buttons, neatly encased in their factory-sealed strip. I picked them up and studied them. They were small, off-colored, almost brown. I turned them over in my hand and then placed them to one side. Only when I looked back in the box, back at the picture of mutilation staring at me from the steel base, did I realize the two small buttons were the woman’s nipples. I gagged a little as the acid in my throat threatened to release again, but I managed to keep it down.

My heart was fluttering, tapping a round of palpitations the likes of which I had never experienced. But none of it was out of fear. It was astonishment, muddled with a touch of pride and respect. Was my father The Butcher? Was it possible that the happy, friendly man who had guided me through my miserable life was the most vicious killer in recent history?

I ran back into the living room and practically dove onto the couch. Under the seat I found a newspaper, ruffled, creased and ripped in places. I grabbed at it roughly and erratically flicked through the pages until I found what I sought: pages four to eight, a detailed analysis of The Butcher’s victims. There, smiling happily from her passport photo, was victim number twelve, Sandra Goldstein. The same blonde whose disembodied nipples I had just held.

I took the newspaper to the kitchen, laid it out on the counter. I opened more of the envelopes, checking off the macabre sights inside against the pictures of the victims in the newspaper. One victim after another—this one’s throat had been slit; that one’s fingers and toes had been amputated; this man’s testicles had been removed; this woman’s scalp had been sliced off.

It was a sordid collection of sickness, and one that I had taken great delight in reading about over the last few years. The thought had never crossed my mind that my own father had been the source. Even as I searched through his disturbing deeds, I found the idea hard to digest.

The paper confirmed everything in the photos and with each collection came another prize. A lock of hair, neatly encased in laminate; folds of skin still clinging to hair follicles; a piece of skin, dried, preserved, and stored in multiple pieces of plastic wrap; a finger; a toe; a testicle.

I dropped them back in the box and leaned against the counter, exhausted. I was breathing heavily, my eyes wide. As hard as it was to believe my father was a notorious serial killer, it was an invigorating discovery. I respected him for it. No more was he just a friendly, happy-go-lucky idiot who ran with the crowd and wanted to be a part of it. He was a vicious killer, a man who probably hated the world more than I did.

But what did that mean? Why did I struggle to fit in and he didn’t? If anything, he should have had a harder time than I had. He had desires to murder, to mutilate, to destroy. He was a beast, a vicious demon who spent his days destroying life. How did he manage to fit in when all the while he—like me—was dreaming about ripping the throats of the very people he was befriending?

Was he like me? Did he feel the way I did?

I hovered back over the box. Alongside the envelopes were some floppy disks. I took these upstairs, making sure I locked the box first.

I booted up my father’s computer. There was little of interest on there. A few card games, a puzzle game, a word processor. No files hidden in the open. I slid in one of the floppy disks. With my heart pounding in delightful anticipation and my hand trembling over the mouse, I opened up the most recent of two files.

Eliza Rowntree. A pretty little thing, no more than eighteen. Popular, friendly, athletic. Stunning body. Amazing eyes. Perfect skin.

I strangled her with my bare hands. The best way for her to go. I had to feel every inch of her depart. Watch the fear in her eyes and sense the stench of desperation on her breath.

I took my time destroying her.

I used a scalpel to carve out her eyes. So beautiful. I took a lock of her hair and a piece of her skin. She was my favorite victim.

I couldn’t imagine my father writing what I had just read. It read like the diary of a madman, so succinct, so brutal. I read the second document; it was longer, more precise, detailing everything that Eliza did. Her weekly schedule, her daily routine. It even mentioned the dates of her menstrual cycle and when her parents usually visited. It was dated two months before the entry on her murder. Two months of methodical stalking before he had killed her.

The other disks described other murders and other victims. It wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know why my father had done it, why he had chosen his victims. I found a suggestion of what I was looking for on a disk created five years ago, around the time of the first Butcher murder.

I wanted more. I didn’t get enough with him. It was gratifying, it was fun, but it could have been better.

I hunted down my first female victim. A prostitute. Skinny. Probably a drug addict. Her lips were chafed. Eyes sunken. Despite her evident drawbacks, she was pretty. She would do.

I took her to the woods. I suggested we get out of the car, as I didn’t want to mess up the interior with our bodily fluids. She didn’t object. She took off her knickers. Pinned herself nonchalantly up against a tree. Waited casually, chewing gum.

I felt disgusted. She wasn’t even looking at me. Her pinpricked pupils were staring at everything but me, despite the fact that she was half naked and waiting for me to fuck her. I persevered nevertheless. I pinned her throat to the tree. She didn’t object at first, assuming I was just kinky. She was probably working out how much extra to charge me when the realization dawned.

I closed my hand around her throat, so tight I could feel the gum slide down as she swallowed and prepared to scream. I clasped my free hand around her diseased lips. Squeezed until the blood drained from her face.

With my free hand, I worked open my zipper. I was excited and eager, but my penis wasn’t. I left it dangling. Waiting.

I ripped off her top, exposing an exquisite pair of breasts. Big, firm, smooth. I stared at them. Sunk my face into them. There was no movement. No erection.

I thrust myself up against her, feeling her dry clitoris against the skin of my flaccid penis. A few pubic hairs, missed by the razor, brushed against my foreskin as I pumped myself back and forward.

She screamed underneath the flesh of my palm. She bit my hand. I pulled it away in surprise and she freed herself. Kicking her heels into the undergrowth, disappearing into the forest.

I followed her. Stalking around in the darkness, my pants still open, my eyes refusing to leave the grayness ahead of me. I enjoyed the chase. Striding through the fields. Avoiding the noisy leaves and twigs underfoot. Listening to the distant skips and stumbles as she struggled to run and hide.

I reached a dead end. A wall of foliage. I pinned my ears to the air, heard her thick breaths, the perspiring sounds of an addict and a smoker. She was waiting behind a tree. Hiding. Petrified and breathless.

I took her in my grasp for the second time. She was crying. Bawling her eyes out. Pleading and sobbing with every breath. I squeezed tighter and tighter until her eyes bulged. Her screams stopped. I used both of my hands to wring the life out of her like a wet towel.

She slumped. Lifeless and breathless in the still night air.

I was fully erect. I let her body drop. Eager for more.

I dismissed the thought of having sex with her. She disgusted me as much dead as she did alive, but when I began to manipulate her body, I felt something I have never felt before. It was a fulfillment and an excitement topped only by squeezing the last dregs of life out of her.

I finished her off with the tools in my boot. A pair of pliers for her bones. A scalpel for her flesh. I let the rain wash away the blood from my hands and face. It was reckless. It was risky. But it was fun. In the future, I will be more careful.

Every killing had been documented. All twelve murders over the last five years, along with a few that hadn’t been attributed to The Butcher. I took great pleasure in reading about them, amazed that the image of The Butcher in my mind, an image created through years of avid reading and daydreaming, had now morphed into that of my father. It seemed illogical that he could have done such a thing, and yet he had.

I finished reading the macabre material, packed everything back in the box, and buried it back in the garden. I kept the key for myself, depositing it in my underwear drawer.

I didn’t know why my dad did what he did—why he started or why he continued—but it didn’t matter. He had done it. He had created a legend. He had created a God. Everyone feared him, everyone respected him, everyone revered him. And now what? Felled by something natural, something he couldn’t control … probably a heart attack, the cruelest and most primal of physiological failures. This wasn’t how great men died. It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t fair.

The press anticipated his killings with giddy glee—each succession of slaughter another front page for their newspaper and another twenty-minute slot for their prime-time news show. Everyone awaited news of his next victim, every emaciated prostitute who had little choice but to stand on the streets and sell her body for a fix; every trembling teenager forced to walk home alone; every otherwise physically capable adult who imposed their company on others to avoid being alone.

And now what? Their fear would grow, stagnate, and then, eventually, die. The Butcher would retire to the pages of history. An interesting segment in a book of unsolved crimes. His legend, borne of fear, reverence, and spectacular brutality, would fade with an anti-climactic whimper.

It was obvious what I had to do. I would like to say that I deliberated over it for a few days and maybe even suffered a series of sleepless nights. That would make sense, after all. But there was no deliberation, no sleepless nights. I had made my mind up before I had even realized the full extent of what my father had created.

I had to take over. I had to continue my father’s legend. I had to become The Butcher.