I see the greedy gleam in his eye. His distrust of me—sensible and warranted—battles with this undreamt-of offer: a view of my work in progress, which I never share with anyone. Just to see inside my studio, to be able to gossip about it and maybe describe it in an article, is a temptation Danvers can’t resist.
“I could come for a minute,” he says gruffly.
“This way, then.” I turn sharply to cross the road.
The rain thunders down, sluicing through the gutters, carrying trash and fallen leaves. I hardly have to watch for passing cars. The sidewalks are empty.
I cut through the route I’ve walked several times. The route with no ATMs or traffic cameras. Devoid of sidewalk restaurants or nosy homeless camped in tents.
If we were to encounter anyone along our way, I would cut this excursion short on the spot.
But no one intervenes. That sense of rightness settles over me—the one and only time I feel a connection to anything like fate or destiny. The moment when everything aligns in favor of the kill.
I let Danvers in through the back door. The lights are low. Our footsteps echo in the cavernous space. Danvers cranes his neck, trying to peer through the gloom, not noticing as he begins to traverse an expanse of thin plastic tarp.
I take the garrote from my pocket. Silently, I unspool the wire.
“I’d like to see your machinery,” he says, with ill-concealed eagerness. “Is it true you do all the manufacturing yourself?”
He’d love to catch me lying.
I’m closing the space between us, descending on Danvers like a hawk from the sky. He doesn’t hear my footsteps. He doesn’t feel my breath on his shoulder. He doesn’t notice my shadow engulfing his.
I wrap the wire around his neck and pull it taut, cutting off his breath like I snipped it short with a pair of shears.
His panic is instant.
He scrabbles at his throat, trying to grip the wire, but the razor-fine metal has already sunk into the soft flesh of his neck. He begins to thrash and buck. I take him down to the ground, pressing my knee into his back, pulling crossways on the wire in a rowing motion.
Danvers’s glasses have fallen off his face. They lay a few feet to the side, like a pair of blank eyes staring up at me.
Danvers himself is facedown, so I can’t see his expression.
It wouldn’t bother me to look into his face. I’ve done it before. I’ve watched the fear, the anguish, the suffering, all eventually sinking into dull resignation and then the utter blankness of death. Life over, snuffed out by the endless emptiness of the universe. Back from whence it came into nothingness, like a spark from a campfire disappearing into the night.
I could taunt him while I kill him.
I don’t do it. What would be the point? In a moment he’ll be gone forever. This is for me, not for him.
His struggles grow weaker, the bursts of effort further apart, like a flopping, dying fish.
My pressure on his throat is as relentless as ever.
I feel no sympathy. No guilt. Those are emotions I’ve never experienced.
I’m aware, academically, of the full range of human emotions. I’ve studied them intently so I can mimic their effects. But they have no power over me.
What I do feel, I feel intensely: rage, revulsion, and pleasure.
These are elemental forces inside of me, like wind, ocean, and molten rock.
I have to keep tight control upon them, or I’ll be no better than Shaw, a slave to my impulses.
I’m not killing Danvers because I have to.
I’m killing him because I want to.
He was an irritation, an inconvenience. A worthless, sniveling, envious shit stain. He deserves nothing more than this. In fact, he should be honored, because I will make more of him than he ever could have made of himself. I will immortalize him so his spark burns bright at least for a moment in time.
I hear the crack of his hyoid bone fracturing.
His body goes limp. Three minutes later, I release him.
Then the butchering begins.
While I’m working, I feel a sense of purpose. I’m stimulated, interested, flushed with satisfaction.
This is the feeling I always get when I’m creating art.
The sculpture is exquisite. My best work yet.
I show it at Oasis, where I know Shaw will likewise display his latest work.
None of the bones are recognizable as a rib, a mandible, a femur. I filed them down, dipped them in gold, and mounted them in an entirely new arrangement. Still, their linear, organic shape remains. The sculpture lives, in a way it never would've had it been constructed of gilded metal or stone.
The response is immediate and ecstatic.