Page 8 of The Madness Within

Peter Langston thought he was free.

That was his first mistake.

The second? Thinking I had boundaries.

I didn’t strike right away. No, I stalked him. Shadowed his life until I knew the rhythm of it better than he did. Monday to Friday, he ran a coaching clinic at a gym just outside the city, a place where boys and girls came to learn discipline.

Trust.

He didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as those kids. He didn’t deserve to speak their names.

He stayed in a two-bedroom condo in a high-rise downtown, floor-to-ceiling windows that made him feel powerful. A view he didn’t earn. He jogged every morning. Ate the same sad breakfast. Jacked off to old footage from the trial I got him acquitted in.

He liked to see himself win.

I waited.

Each night I followed him closer. I let him feel me. The scrape of a shoe behind him on the sidewalk. The whisper of wind against his neck. A shadow just outside the corner of his eye.

He stopped sleeping.

Good.

On day five, he bought a gun.

On day six, he packed a bag. He knew. Or thought he did. But he had no idea what was coming.

I trailed him from the airport parking garage. He was sweating before the sun went down, hands trembling as he fumbled with his car keys. He glanced over his shoulder three times before reaching his door.

Still too slow.

I was already inside.

When he slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, I leaned forward from the backseat, my breath cool against his ear. “Going somewhere, Peter?”

He screamed. The sound split the air like meat tearing from bone.

Beautiful.

He tried to run, but I hit him with a spell mid-sprint, words whispered in a tongue no human remembers. It froze his legs in place like they’d turned to stone. He collapsed forward, face-first into the pavement, teeth cracking against asphalt.

I scooped him up like a rag doll and whisked up away.

I brought him to my kill room, deep in the belly of the west wing in my home.

Stripped to his boxers. Shackled, gagged, dried blood crusting at his temple. There’s something poetic about the way fear reshapes a man’s face, turned the lines of arrogance into something fetal.

He twitched when I stepped into the light. “I want you to know,” I murmured, “you weren’t my first.”

He didn’t understand.

“You’re just another reason I became what I am.”

I circled him, dragging my fingers along the wall where my tools hung like holy relics. I didn’t need them. Not really. My power was in my hands, my teeth, my rage. But there’s a ritual to it. A pace. A rhythm.

I pulled the scalpel first.

“Three girls,” I whispered. “One suicide. Do you remember their names? Because I do.”

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