3

I didn’t need to say anything as he entered. I let the surroundings do the talking for me. He couldn’t fail to notice the pools of blood, or the arcs of crimson where the axe had swooped on its deadly curves. He also couldn’t fail to notice the bodies or the stench. The young men and women were strewn around the room, left where they had been killed. They had only been deceased for an hour or so, but the stench of drying blood, of emptied bowels and exposed organs, was prominent.

He seemed agitated, almost desperate when he entered, but he immediately deflated when he looked around and realized he was too late.

“You expected something else?” I projected from the center of the stage, my arms spread.

In my mask and my bloodied clothes, I expected him to fear me just like the young actors and actresses had done, but despite the distance between us, I could see there was no emotion in his eyes, no terror, no apprehension, no respect. That disappointed me. I hated it when things didn’t go as planned, but I continued regardless.

“I should have waited for you,” I told him. “And for that I apologize. But I was so eager to start. I mean, look at this!” I threw my arms open. “Isn’t it fucking beautiful?”

I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t think so, but he didn’t say anything. He walked up to the stage, doing his best to slalom through the bodies, but not seeming to care about the blood. He trod in a sticky patch left by the director and left singular crimson footprints as he approached the stage.

“And your kids,” I said. “I guess I have to apologize for lying on that one, as well. I jumped the gun a bit.”

“I did what you asked.” His voice was barely audible. It was gravelly, tired. “I went there alone, and yet you killed them anyway. Why?”

“Why did I kill?” I asked. “That’s what I do. You know that better than anyone.”

He shook his head. “My kids were different. You did that to get at me. This was vengeance, this was a game. But why them and why not me?”

“Ah.” I pointed at him. “But why not both?”

“They did nothing wrong. The people you killed, they had their faults. Darren Henderson bullied you, the priest, well, you knew him, so I’m guessing he had a hand in making your youth a misery, as well.”

That amused me. There was a twinkle in his eye. He was trying to get to me. He wasn’t intimidated by the mask, by the knife in my hand, or by the bloodshed around him.

“But my kids,” he continued. “They did nothing wrong. Neither did any of these.” He gestured around him.

“And what about Darren’s brother? What about the boy in the church? What about all the others I killed that did fuck-all wrong? This isn’t a mission of vengeance or righteousness, Lester. I’m not a fucking vigilante. If people wrong me, they die, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else gets off the hook. Stop looking for reason in this, because you won’t find it.”

He nodded slowly and then he turned away, gazing around the room. “So that’s what this is all about?” he asked. “You brought me here so you could kill me? Why the pomp, why the flair, why not just wait for me at home and kill me then?”

“Ah, Lester, you disappoint me.” I shook my head, showing my disappointment. “I mean, where’s the fun in that? As you said, this is a game, and games should be fun. If you make them too easy then they stop being fun. Am I right?”

He didn’t answer and continued to look up at me. I felt powerful on the stage. It gave me such a thrill to be above others, to be looking down on them and to be leading the show. It was a shame I had no interest in acting or singing. I was a great performer, of course, but although my performances would soon be famous in all four corners of the world, it wasn’t the sort of thing people paid money to see. At least not the normal ones.

“Why me?” he asked eventually.

“You exposed me and my past. You gave the media a taste of my true self and you dug up old bones that should have remained buried. I wanted to show you that you’re not the only one who can excite the press or toy with the public.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

I shrugged. “That’s all irrelevant now anyway. What’s done is done, and what I did was fucking fantastic, so I would never take that back.” I had a bright smile on my face and although it didn’t show through the mask, it did carry in my voice.

“You’re fucking sick.”

“You’ve only just realized?”

He stood still, staring at me, unmoving, unblinking. Eventually he asked, “So what are we going to do now?”

“You tell me.”

He shook his head defiantly. “This is your show, this is your setup. You decide.”

I put my hands behind my back and waited patiently, not saying a word.

“Are you going to stay up there?” he asked.

“I belong here.”

“You belong in an asylum.”

“I beg to differ.”

“This is what all of this is about, isn’t it?” he asked, a cheeky smile spreading across his face. “Delusions of grandeur. You want to get back at the world for bullying you, for calling you ugly and weird, that’s why you kill, that’s why you destroy families, that’s why you wear a mask.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Don’t underestimate me, Lester. I’m not one of your pathetic criminals that you can manipulate with a few emotional tricks. I kill them because I like it, pure and simple.”

“It’s sickening.”

“Again, I beg to differ. As a race, we humans kill for food on a mass scale. We torture intelligent beings who feel pain just as much as we do, and we do it so we can buy ten hamburgers for a dollar, or have something to jam in our mouths when we get bored between TV programs. We torture them for cosmetics, just to make sure the shit that’s killing them doesn’t turn our eyebrows green or make our hair fall out. At least what I’m doing makes sense. I kill for pleasure, for a feeling that is unrivaled and cannot be achieved by any other means.”

He didn’t seem to agree. “We kill for food, to survive; you kill for fun.”

“To survive?” I laughed. “You’re telling me that an overweight Westerner with his Big Mac, his bacon sandwiches, and his heart clogged with ten pounds of animal fat, needs to kill an animal to live? Fuck off, Lester, I thought you were more intelligent than that.”

“So what are you, some sort of radical vegetarian?”

“Again, stop fucking around. I like meat just as much as the next man. I was making a point. This thing that you and society deem as unforgivable is no different from what man has been doing for centuries, no different from what we’ve been doing as a race since we crawled out of the ocean, developed brains, and then spent thousands of years trying not to use them.”

“So if you kill at random, then why my kids?” he begged to know. “You didn’t need to do this. You got the fame that you wanted, the world is paying attention to you now. Why me, why my children?”

I shrugged. “This was personal. I wanted to test you. To take away everything, to bring you to your knees. The great men are the ones that make their own way in life, the ones that drag themselves from the bottom and make it to the top. I did that and—”

“Bullshit,” he spat, interrupting and infuriating me. “What bottom? You were a middle-class white boy with clothes on his back, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over his head.”

“How dare—”

“Let’s be honest, you’re just some puny little twit with maternal issues. A pathetic kid who was bullied all his life. There’s no two ways about it, that’s why you do what you do.”

“That’s nonsense and you know it,” I said, trying to keep my cool but getting increasingly annoyed.

“I beg to differ.”

That, along with the smug smile on his face, was what tipped me over the edge. I jumped down from the stage and grabbed him by the throat. He was still smiling and didn’t seem to care when I tightened my grip. His expression also didn’t change when I pulled the switchblade out of my pocket and opened it close to his throat.

“This is my show, Lester, stop trying to spoil it.”

“But aren’t I part of the show, as well?” he asked. “Otherwise, why haven’t you killed me already?”

We locked stares for a moment and then I stepped back, ripping off the mask. “You know what I look like, so there’s no point in hiding it.”

Lester nodded and instinctively rubbed the spot on his throat where my hand had been. “The whole world has seen you, or at least a representation of you. And once this is over, everyone everywhere will be doing their best to find you. How do you plan on staying hidden?”

“I have my ways,” I told him confidently. “But mostly I will be relying on others, because believe me, people are not as smart as you’re giving them credit for.”

“Killing will be impossible. If there’s a murder in your area then someone will see you, they’ll put two and two together. Hell, they might even check CCTV. That didn’t exactly work out for you last time, did it?”

I shook my head, maintaining a smile. He was trying to mess with my moment, to cast doubts on my future and throw me off guard, but I knew exactly what he was doing and was happy to play along.

“You see, that’s the issue with England, and with smaller countries. They don’t cater to the serial killers who truly want to make a name for themselves. They’re too small, too claustrophobic. The cities are the lifeblood of any country and the excitement that lures any killer, but here the cities are wrapped in cotton wool, mollycoddled by a paranoid government intent on making sure that every burglar, every mugger, every rapist, and every pickpocket is accounted for. Whether you’re strolling to the shops in your pajamas to buy some bread and milk, fucking some local fancy down some piss-stained alley, or relieving yourself against a lamppost in the dead of night, you’re watched and studied all hours of the day.”

Lester shrugged. “I don’t know about that. You did well as The Masquerade.”

I grinned. “Thank you for noticing, but that’s different and it bores me. These shitty little towns have nothing for me. I want something bigger, something more exciting.” I paused to allow myself a laugh. “That is, unless you stop me.”

He didn’t find it as funny as I did.

“It’s places like America where I can truly shine,” I continued for my one-man audience. “A country so vast and so grand that hundreds of people are murdered every day without anyone knowing and without anyone caring. There are probably hundreds of serial killers that have been unaccounted for, people without rhyme or reason who drive from state to state, ticking off prostitutes and hitchhikers to rack up a high score. With a bit of invention and the balls to own up to your crimes, a prolific killer could really make a name for himself there, cementing his place in history.”

“And is that what you want?” Lester asked. “A place in history? Is that why you do what you do?”

I could see that he didn’t have a genuine interest in what I had to say. He was playing my game, trying to lure me into a false sense of security, be my friend, but it wasn’t going to work. I was, however, willing to play dumb, but only because he intrigued me, because these were the moments that I longed for, the moments that I dreamed about. Here I was, face to face with my adversary, my equal in many ways, albeit to a much lesser extent. He was an adversary like Darren Henderson, a comrade like my father. He was both and neither, and he was the only non-blood-related person I had enjoyed speaking to since the cold December night I had ended Darren’s life.

“That’s not the only reason,” I told him. “I enjoy what I do. And most of them have done something to deserve it anyway.”

He shook his head. “Many of them were young girls. Innocent girls. They don’t deserve that; what could they have possibly done to deserve that?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No one gets it, no one truly understands. It hasn’t changed and it never does. These people are locked away in their pathetic little lives, completely oblivious to the outside world, to all the little demons that scurry about and threaten their perfect families, their perfect careers, their perfect selves.” I stamped my foot and expected Lester to jump. He didn’t even flinch. “I’m the threat, I’m the demon, I’m the one who disrupts, causes chaos. These people do nothing wrong on the face of it. They’re not killers, they’re not abusers, but they deserve to die, because ignorance and stupidity is just as bad as all of those things.”

“I get it,” Lester said, nodding. “I really do, and I believe you. I’ve walked in your shoes, I know how you think. I know how your brain operates.”

I laughed at him, giving his pathetic response the reply that it warranted. “You don’t have a clue what I do or why I do it. I’m not on a mission for the greater good, I’m not a whack-job who thinks that by stripping away the rust of civilization the foundation will thrive. I do what I do for myself and no one else. I do what I do because I like it.”

“And why the women?” he asked. “Why, if there is no sexual motive, did you kill so many young girls?”

“Ah!” I put my hands together and squeezed, allowing him to see my face light up as if I were recalling a fond memory. “Back to this. Why indeed? I have no idea. Maybe it just feels right, maybe it’s just easier, maybe—”

“Maybe they remind you of your mother?”

I thrust the knife at him, the point of the blade just a few inches from his throat. “Don’t you dare talk about my fucking mother!” I ordered.

“But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all this is about. That’s certainly what Irene Henderson was all about.”

I kept the knife pressed to his throat, lifting the blade up and down as he swallowed, tracing the movement of his Adam’s apple. “Believe me, Lester, I have killed many men. Maybe not wearing that mask, maybe not under the guise of The Masquerade, but many men and boys have died by my hand. Your son included.”

He flinched at that.

I grinned, eased off. “Irene Henderson. Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“You ruined her life.”

“That may be so, but I didn’t kill her.”

“She would have been better off dead. You scared the life out of her and left nothing but an empty shell.” Lester spoke without emotion, without the crippling fear or the capitulating emotional anxiety that I could forgive him for expressing. This lack of emotion had nothing to do with the fact that he was a policeman. I had encountered plenty of them, both experienced and naive, and they hadn’t shared this apathetic facade, this vacant stare. It was something else entirely and it intrigued me.

“And what about you, Lester Keats? Why are you an empty shell, as you so eloquently put it? What or who scared the life out of you?”

Lester continued to stare, not flinching. “That’s none of your fucking business,” he said slowly.

“You realize I have a knife pointed at your throat, right?”

“Do you think that scares me?”

“Evidently not.”

We locked stares again.

“I like you, Lester.”

“I want to kill you, Herman.”

“You’re not the first.”

“But I will be the last.”

I pulled back, keeping the knife close. “The truth is, I know why you broke, Lester. I know about your wife. I know your kids grew to resent you for her death.”

“That had nothing to do with it.”

I shrugged. “You’re right, maybe they just thought you were a useless cunt. But either way, they hated you.”

I could see the anger flare behind his eyes as he recalled everything they had put him through and everything he regretted saying and doing to them.

“I know about the incident with the drug dealer. In fact, that’s when I really started to like you. You see, you’re a lot like me, Lester. You may not realize it, but we’re very similar. In a different time, a different place, we could have been good friends. Brothers.”

I could see the anger increasing; his lips were instinctively curling in distaste as I spoke those words.

“You’re not as pure as I am. You’re not as honest with yourself as you need to be. But … you remind me of someone I respected once.”

His demeanor changed in an instant. He grinned. “The Butcher?”

My face dropped. I gave him a curious, shocked stare. “What did you say?”

“You’re not always the most intelligent person in the room, Herman. You don’t always know more than everyone else. I figured it all out. Your father was The Butcher and you tried to follow in his footsteps, but you failed.”

His grin was bigger, his confidence had increased. I was speechless.

“He died, so you tried to take on his legend, didn’t you? That’s what all of this is about. You want to do what your father didn’t, you want to become the person he failed to be. The person you failed to be when you let your anger get the better of you fifteen years ago.”

“Anger had nothing to do with it,” I said. “They weren’t where they should have been. That was their fault, not mine.”

Lester laughed. “Well then, I guess they paid for that mistake, didn’t they?”

“How do you know about my father?”

Lester was enjoying this. I could tell. He shifted forward, but I reacted quickly, pressing the knife back to his throat. He didn’t seem to mind and spoke like nothing had happened. “If you really want to know, it occurred to me a number of years ago. A woman I was looking into was reported missing around the start of The Butcher’s reign. I wondered if the two were connected. Your father always fit the profile and as soon as I realized that she couldn’t possibly still be alive, I made that connection.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That woman was your mother, Herman. I know your father killed her.”

I didn’t speak a word, but I watched his face change as he stared at me, and I realized that my expression spoke for itself.

“You didn’t know? Come on, you must have.” I could feel his breath on my face. “Did you know the police investigated your father after your mother went missing? Did you know they suspected he had killed her, but couldn’t find any proof? There were at least half a dozen reports of assault, none of which she followed through with. He beat the shit out of her, Herman, but every time he convinced her not to press charges. He manipulated her like only a true sociopath can.”

“You seem to know a lot about common assault, Lester. Did you beat your wife, as well?” He laughed again. I knew he could sense the unease in my voice. “It must have been hard to grow up around all of that violence,” he said. “Witnessing all of that anger and then losing your mother …” He shook his head slowly, the point of the knife tickling the skin on his neck. “God knows what that would have done to a child’s mind. That’s why you kill, isn’t it? That’s what turned you into a monster. Your mother was the only person you loved and having to watch her suffer before losing her completely, that fucked you up.”

That amused me immensely and I laughed to express this amusement, but in doing so I gave him the opportunity that he had been waiting for. He swung his arm and caught me on the wrist, not enough to knock the knife out of my hand, but enough to direct it away from his throat. Then, with his free hand, he punched me in the face. I was still taken aback, still a little fazed, so I didn’t see the punch coming until it landed.

I felt my nose buckle under the impact, felt one of my back teeth chip as my jaw clenched and then shifted, my molars grating against each other. I had taken plenty of beatings in my life; I knew how to maintain composure. While fazed, I managed to drag the knife back to him, to thrust forward with the blade. But he was too quick. He moved out of the way, swiveled until the back of my hand pressed against his chest, and then he clawed at my fingers.

He was a dirty fighter, doing what he needed to get the job done, which, even as it was about to cost me my life, I respected him for. At first he dug his nails into the fleshy part of my hand, and when that didn’t work, he bit me. When that still didn’t work, he peeled my forefinger away from the handle of the blade and continued to peel it back until he heard it snap. That was enough to cause me to drop the knife, enough to give him the edge that he needed.

As soon as the knife was pried out of my grasp, I fell to my knees and realized that the end was nigh. I’d had a good run, and although being stabbed in the back by a policeman wasn’t my first choice as a way to go, it certainly had a nice ring to it.

I waited for the thrust to come, to end the agony that soared through my body, but it didn’t come. Eventually I looked up, craning my neck, blinking through the pain and the haze to see Lester standing over me. The vacant expression had gone from his face and was replaced by a crude smile, a smile I was sure had been on my own face a number of times over the years.

“It’s better than you could ever imagine,” I told him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Killing. It’s everything that you imagine it to be and so much more.”

“I’m not a murderer, Herman. I’m not even a violent man.”

“Says the guy who just broke my fucking finger.”

He laughed and I couldn’t help but join him, but when I did, he seemed to take offense. He swung for me and his boot caught me on the chin, spinning me over and causing me to land in a heap, the back of my head clattering against the solid floor.

“What the fuck was that for?” I spat, thrusting my neck up just enough for me to spit a colorful concoction of my own blood and mucus onto the dusty floor beside me.

“You’re a filthy fucking murderer, you have no right to laugh, no right to smile. I don’t care why you did what you did. I don’t care if you had a bad childhood. You’re scum.” He dropped to his knees and hovered above me, the knife held tightly in both hands, experienced enough not to make the same stupid mistake I had made. “Did your victims ever smile, did they ever laugh?”

“You’d be surprised.”

He kicked me again, a toe-poke into my ribs, but that wasn’t enough to sate my sense of humor.

“Does this take you back, Herman? Does this remind you of your schooldays? All of the times those kids beat you up? If only they knew what you would turn into, hell, if only the teachers knew, they would have given them medals. You got exactly what you deserved.”

I laughed. “Ironic, really, because so did they.”

He hit me, another crunching strike with his boot, this time into my waist. It sucked the air out of my lungs, caused me to crunch into a ball. He seemed to enjoy that more than the others, but when I stopped hissing, when I stopped moaning, I laughed again.

He gave me a blank stare. “Do I amuse you?” he asked.

“You? God no, you’re hardly a bundle of fucking laughs, are you?” I scrambled up until I was leaning on my elbows, moving slowly. “I was just thinking how the roles seem to have been reversed. I’m the psycho killer here, yet you’re the one standing over me with a knife, taunting me.”

“Now you know how it feels to be one of your victims.”

I shook my head. “You know as well as I do that I can never know that. These people are weak, they don’t feel or think the same as I do. As we do.”

He didn’t say anything to that but I could see that I had gotten through to him.

“You and me are alike, and I know you see that. Only, it’s got nothing to do with Whitegate and it’s got nothing to do with being miserable. It’s about being disillusioned with life, about being fed up with the human race on the whole.”

Lester nodded, it was faint and it might have been instinctive, but it was definitely a nod.

“Take your kids, for example—”

“Leave my kids out of this!”

I held up my hands as best I could, grunting through the pain that the movement caused. “I’m just saying. Do you feel the love that all parents feel? Do you feel enlightened and enlivened that you have spread your seed?”

He shook his head, another faint and almost invisible movement.

“And why is that?”

“I loved my kids.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He shrugged and as he did so, I saw his grip on the knife loosen. He was a professional man, an experienced officer, but he was letting his guard down, letting his emotion get in the way.

“My kids lost respect for me. After their mother died …” He trailed off with a shrug. “They stopped caring.”

“And eventually you stopped caring as well?”

“I still loved them,” he said, his voice picking up, fluctuating as emotion took hold. “But I didn’t like them.”

“I’m sure the feeling was mutual.”

He nodded in agreement and I clambered to my knees, grunting, groaning and hissing through clenched teeth, showing him I was no threat—I wasn’t capable of doing anything. He didn’t stop me, seemingly lost in his own thoughts as he idly watched.

“Life has been cruel to you, but that’s the way things are,” I told him. “Most people suck it up and move on. But there are those who refuse to let it wash over them, the ones who decide to fight back, to kick life in the balls every time it threatens to do the same to them.” I was closer to him now, just inches from the loosening blade and from his defeated posture. “So why don’t you quit your job, ignore your kids, and join me?”

“You’re a murderer.”

“I’m more than just a murderer. I’m one of the most prolific murderers there has ever been,” I informed him. “The fear and the respect I get is unparalleled, and that fear and that respect will continue long after I’m dead.”

He looked me in the eyes and I sensed a great deal of emotion. He wasn’t a murderer, I knew that and he knew that, but he was fed up with his lot in life. He was angry, bitter, and although he would never take that first step, he wanted the satisfaction of vengeance.

“You can’t tell me that murder has never appealed to you.” I locked him into eye contact and moved closer, until he couldn’t see my hand edging for the knife. “You can’t—”

“You’re right.” He backed away. “I do want revenge, I do want to hurt those who have hurt me.”

Just when I thought I had him, I realized that he had been fucking with me.

“But you’re the one who has made my life a misery these last few years; the one who has given me sleepless nights because I can’t get the faces of your victims out of my mind; the one I have to thank for losing my appetite because I couldn’t get the smell of rotting flesh out of my nose. Yes, my kids hated me, and no, that wasn’t entirely my fault. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t look at my daughter without knowing that her face could be the face of one of your victims, without realizing that all the love I had for her could be exploited and taken away with one thrust of a knife. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that I couldn’t look at my son without seeing Darren Henderson or Barry Barlow, the ones you butchered, cutting short their young lives and the lives of their parents, their brothers and their sisters.”

“They deserved everything they got!” I spat, feeling a surge of anger at the mere mention of those names.

He ignored me. “And in the end, my worries about my children weren’t unfounded, because my nightmares came true, and that was your fault.” His expression twisted, a menacing look spreading thickly across his face. “They were kids!” he roared. A veil of spittle flew from his mouth. Strands of saliva stuck to his chin and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “How could you even think for a moment that I would want to end up like you? You disgust me.”

“I’m so much more than you could ever be,” I said, growing increasingly incensed.

Lester shook his head. “You’re nothing. And as for your legacy and your legend, let’s just see what happens when the world learns that the most prolific serial killer in the country was taken down by a depressed cop.”

I knew how things were going to play out and I knew I was at a disadvantage. I was weak, nearly keeled over and vulnerable to attack. I had no weapons, nothing but my own fists, but I did have the element of surprise. The last thing he was expecting was for me to charge at him with little regard for my own safety. After all, no one in their right mind would run at a man holding a knife. But that’s exactly what I did.

The charge was effective—he didn’t have time to prepare the weapon. I felt it stick into my waist, rip through my clothes and dig into my flesh, but his grip was weak and before it penetrated much further, he dropped it. He grunted upon the impact, the air knocked out of his lungs, and then he fell backward with me on top of him.

He was surprised and fearful, I saw it in his face—the same expression that had been on all of their faces. He was stronger, more experienced, but when it came down to it, they were all the same.

I ignored the pain in my stomach and the blood that soaked my shirt, and I pummeled my fists into his face, relishing the sound my knuckles made as they crushed against his jaw bone, his cheek bones, and his temples. I broke his nose, crushing it against his face and decorating his flesh with its crimson innards. I broke some of his teeth, the crushed enamel collecting at the back of his throat along with blood and mucus, threatening to choke him on his own body fluids. I also broke his jaw, leaving his mouth a twisted mess. I gave it every last ounce of energy that I had, gritting my teeth like a marathon runner on the final sprint as I pushed through the pain.

He tried to stop me, and he was strong enough to land a few powerful punches, but I had more experience than anyone when it came to being hit. I could deflect those punches like I had deflected Darren Henderson’s punches. Back then I had dissociated, gone to my special place, a beautiful place where I killed Darren in so many beautiful ways, but now I was already in my special place. And no punches and no pain could stop it from being so beautiful.

Lester Keats was a bigger and better nemesis than Darren Henderson had ever been. He took a lot more to catch and a lot more to defeat. I had been terrified of Darren, overcoming my fear using sheer determination alone. I hadn’t been as scared of Lester, but only because I was a man now. Much more than that, in fact.

“You know,” I said, stopping, breathless. “I actually thought about avoiding you,” I told him, grinning at his mangled face as he tried to breathe, tried to spit out the blood collecting at the back of his throat. “I thought you were a worthy match, that you might actually put an end to everything I had worked so hard to create, but …” I shook my head. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I stood up, kneeing him in the groin for good measure. He tried to scramble to his feet, but he was punch drunk, barely conscious.

“If this were a film, this would be the point where someone would burst in and save you.” I walked over to the knife, and as I bent down to pick it up, I felt a sharp pain in my torso. The blood was pouring heavily now and the pain was increasing, but I would live. It would be a reminder of our battle, a scar fittingly deeper and bigger than anything Darren had left. “Do you have anyone lined up?”

I held the knife above him. His eyes were open and seemed to be looking at me, but his face was so swollen and so bloodied it was hard to tell.

“A partner that you argue a lot with but really, deep down, you’re best buddies with?”

He choked out an inaudible reply.

“I’ll take that as a no. What about someone who you thought was dead or missing?”

Another choke. There was also some movement, a wriggle or a spasm, but I didn’t know if it was intentional.

“Again, that’s a no. It’s not looking good for you, is it?” I rested a finger thoughtfully on my chin. “Okay then, what about your kids? You used to love them and I’m sure they felt the same way about you at one point. Years of arguments and hatred later, I think it would be rather apt for them to show up, save your life, and make your happily-ever-after come true—what do you say?”

I was silent then, waiting—only the sound of his moaning, grunting, coughing, and spluttering breaking through the silence. I checked my watch, tapped the top of the timepiece, and then I raised a finger, remembering something. “Ah right, they can’t, can they? Because I killed them.”

“I. Will. Not. Play!”

I frowned at the bloodied mess before me. “Excuse me?”

He was trying and failing to pry himself up. “I. Will. Not. Play. Your. Games.”

“Who said anything about games?”

“This. This is what you enjoy,” he said, breathless from the struggle, the words grating and bubbling out of his throat as if spoken under water. “And I want no … no part in it. Kill me. You fuck.”

“Well then, there’s no need for that.”

He summoned some energy from somewhere and used it to throw out his arms and legs, like a wounded animal kicking its last kick. He caught me in the shin and threw me off balance, but I retained my footing before falling over.

“Kill me!” he yelled, his voice screeching. “You fucking piece of shit. Kill me!”

“You’re not—”

“Shut up and kill me!”

“Well I—”

He lashed out again and this time he managed to sweep my feet out from under me. I toppled forward, landing next to him, at which point he threw himself on top of me. We fought again, but there was little strength left in him and I managed to get to my feet, with him on his knees as he tried and failed to follow me up.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked him. “I just wanted a—”

“What is wrong with me?” He spat. “That’s rich coming from you!” He laughed maniacally and I felt the excitement drain out of me. This was supposed to be my moment, my crowning glory, but he seemed to be having more fun than I was. I had been dreaming of such a kill for a long time, a worthy adversary, a long and drawn-out vengeance, but he—

“Well!” he spat again. “Get it over with!”

In his anger, he managed to scramble to his feet, looking like a sleep-deprived zombie as he rocked back and forth, seemingly unaware of where I was or where he was, or so I thought. He reached out and grabbed the knife in my hands. His bloodied and soppy appendages clasping around the blade and my flesh.

He looked at me and I could just about see two small pupils poking through a swamp of blood and swollen flesh. “I. Will. Not. Play. Your. FUCKING. GAMES!”

He drove forward, his hands still holding the knife. I felt it sink into his waist and, with his face inches from mine, I saw the smile slowly develop and I felt his final breaths leave his body. I tried to rip the knife free. This wasn’t how I wanted it to be, this wasn’t how I wanted him to die. It was supposed to be my kill, my time to shine, but this, this was barely even murder. As weak as he had been before, once the knife was inside him, there was little I could do to pry it free. His body was reluctant to let it go, desperate to die, clinging onto the steel blade as it sucked the remnants of life from him.

When I finally ripped it out, it was already too late.

Lester was still smiling when he fell to his knees, his hands cupping the blood gushing out of his torso. “You’re not a legend,” he said, almost giggling despite his imminent demise. “You’re just a lost child.” He fell backward, hitting the floor with a thump and a moan. He laughed as he made contact and then, as the last of his laughter and the last of his life drained away, he added, “And a fucking prick.”

I watched him breathe his final breath. I did not smile. I did not enjoy it.

I bent down over him and checked his pulse, making sure he was gone and sighing in disappointment when I realized he was. Not that it mattered—if he were still clinging to life, there would have been very little I could have done to prolong it, very little I could have done to make it enjoyable for me.

I was annoyed. He was my greatest adversary and yet had delivered me no satisfaction. He had been better to me alive, and that was a thought I had never had about anyone else. It was almost enough to make me want to give up killing, to pack my knives away, settle down, and try to live the normal life.

I chuckled to myself.

As if that were ever going to happen.