Page 127 of Peak Cruelty

Severity’s for courts and cowards.Pain is binary—you bleed or you don’t.

The first ten are easy.

The ones I remember without effort.Faces I could sketch blindfolded.

A teacher.

A nurse.

A man who ran a charity and wore kindness like a suit.

The kind that stinks more coming off than going on.

Patterns emerge on their own.I don’t force them.I just write them down.

They always want to be seen.That’s the thing.

It’s not enough to be cruel.They need a witness.

Applause, even if the act’s staged in private.

I watch for tells now.Every room I enter becomes a test.

Who’s performing.Who’s waiting.Who’s watching the wrong things.

I stop sleeping through the night.Not because I’m haunted.Because I’m working.

Each name gets a column.

I don’t delete anything.That would make it a hit list.

This isn’t revenge.

It’s inventory.

Eventually, I stop hiding the bookandthe spreadsheet.

No one comes over.

I build rules as I go.

No children present.

No mess someone else has to clean.

No deaths that look like vengeance.

If it’s going to look like an accident, it has tobeone.

I’ve researched more about breaker boxes and valve corrosion than I ever cared to know.

The point is to leave no pattern they can trace.

But there’s a pattern.Of course there is.

Just not the kind they’d expect.

There’s a woman at a clinic nearby.Pediatric.

---