Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

There's Something Evil Growing in the New Inmate

The first body was found in a grove of trees near the city park. Soon after, several others were found scattered about, haphazardly buried with seemingly no attempt to hide them. Similarly, he made no attempts to avoid getting caught. His fingerprints and DNA were found at every crime scene, neither of which were in the system. But he had left witnesses who could describe him, and it wasn't long before a couple city cops came across someone who matched the perpetrator's likeness one night. The evidence confirmed it was him.

During the trial, he pleaded guilty. He didn't even bother getting a lawyer. Just represented himself and repeated the same phrase over and over again. "I did what was needed. I buried the seeds."

Everyone figured that by seeds he meant bodies. When asked how many he had buried, he responded, "Twenty-three and one."

After a painstaking search of the city, twenty-three bodies were eventually recovered. The trial dragged on during this period. They never found the extra "one" that he had always alluded to. But, given his strange wording and precarious mental state, they decided to ignore the latter part and focus solely on the former.

He was sentenced to life without parole. Many people argued that he deserved the death penalty for what he did, and there was a great uproar when he was allowed to live. His crimes were indiscriminate, emotionless, and methodical. Each victim was cut open from throat to groin then stitched back up and buried. It was the work of someone who was simultaneously deranged and unnervingly organized.

Nobody knew what his actual name was. He had no name, no identification, no record, and no trace of his existence. He was entered into the prison system as a John Doe. However, a strange system error caused his prisoner number to display as a single zero. It became a joke among the guards, and they began to call him Zero. It wasn't long before his fellow inmates referred to him in the same way. He didn't seem to mind.

Zero was a quiet prisoner. He never resisted when told what to do and never complained about the unsanitary conditions of his cell. Strangely enough, he seemed immune to the typical predatory nature of the American prison system. None of the other prisoners ever bothered him nor did the guards. He remained nonviolent, passive, and self-contained. In many ways, he was the perfect prisoner.

Zero did, however, have one oddity. He would repeat the same phrase over and over again. "I buried the seeds. I buried the seeds. I buried the seeds."

It was a constant monologue of his. It unnerved the guards and other inmates, but it was always quiet and spoken to himself. It seemed more like a nervous habit than anything malicious. The prison psychiatrist dismissed it as nothing more than a strange fixation, and everyone accepted it as such. Zero lived like that for thirty years. He became one of the oldest inmates in the prison, and it seemed he demanded a begrudging respect from those around him, if only for how placid he had remained in his time.

However, one night the other prisoners were woken by a loud cry in the middle of the night. Zero's mantra had grown to a frantic wail. Unrelenting, he shrieked about planting the seeds. He lashed and writhed in his cell, and it took five guards to finally restrain him. He was then put in solitary confinement where he later calmed down. For the next several days, Zero's behaviour was different. He was less reserved, and he deviated from his typical, repetitive self-talk.

One day, the guards watched him as he approached another inmate with a strange swagger to his step. The particular prisoner he was approaching happened to be a high-ranking member of the Aryan brotherhood who was a firm believer in violence as a form of conflict management.

"The time is upon us," Zero hissed as he drew uncomfortably close to the other prisoner's face.

The guards instinctively placed their hands on their batons, expecting a fight to break out. To their surprise, the Aryan brother drew back, his tattooed face contorting in an expression of fear and disgust. He stumbled back a few steps, and a look of confusion spread across his face. He seemed baffled as to why he reacted in the way he did. He turned to confront Zero but stopped dead in his tracks, waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal, and walked away.