Murders at Midnight

Artist in the Making

He sat in the dark, waiting for hours until she finally arrived. The table was already set, and he tapped his fingers on his plate while he bided his time.

She's late, he thought, annoyed. She's going to pay for this. His hands twitched for the butter knife next to his plate, and just as he grasped the handle, the doorbell rang.

    As he opened the door, a slender woman with raven black hair stood dressed in only a skimpy bikini, shivering in the brisk December air.

    "You're late. This is going to come out of your payment," he said, slamming the door behind him. "And you missed dinner."

    "Aggressive are we?" she chuckled, pouring herself a glass of wine. Little did she know it was more than just wine. She noticed the drink seemed stronger than usual, but she shrugged it off as he began leading her upstairs into the bedroom, handcuffing her wrists to the bedpost. She didn't even notice the knife in his other hand.

    Why is he still fully dressed? she wondered, feeling a bit uneasy. He's going out of order . . . Her eyes widened when he approached her with a blindfold; she'd explicitly told him no blindfolds when they'd talked over the phone.

    "This isn't what we agreed to," she pleaded, knowing something was wrong. But whatever was in that wine made her words come out in a slur. The world seemed to fade into black as she lost all feeling in her legs. By the time he tied the blindfold on, she felt completely numb. Within seconds, she was completely passed out.

    With a malicious grin, he watched as the prostitute went limp. Then he went to work, practicing his butcher skills. First, he cut off her ankles, hacking away viciously. Next, he cut just below her knees, followed by detaching the leg remnants completely. Then he went to town on her stomach, stabbing randomly.

    Each penetration from his knife gave him more excitement than the night he'd planned on the phone with her ever would. Blood splattered his white suit and his face, and he decided he would never be washing these clothes--they needed to be preserved forever.

    His masterpiece was finally complete: blood was splattered everywhere, intestines hung from the ceiling fan, and limbs were strewn about a dismembered corpse. She was his first, but she definitely wouldn't be his last.

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Written by Skylar Jordan and Cecelia Bonaparte