by Scott Blade
"I didn't. I didn't. Shane you know that," he said. He was desperate to claw his way out of our trap. He was nothing without his hammer.
"Paul, did your victims beg like this? This doesn't suit you. Here let me show you what is in my briefcase. It will make you feel better," I said, placing the case on the arm of the sofa. I reached inside and twisted the two metal objects until Paul heard a familiar clicking sound.
Slowly, I looked up and saw the terrified look in his eyes had changed into one of hope as he recognized his trusted possession. I wielded in my hands his murderous sledge hammer. It glimmered even in the dimly lit library. It beckoned to him like a desperate mistress.
He gazed upon it like a severed appendage. He needed to acquire it and put it on ice so that it could be reattached.
"My hammer. You stole it. I got off because you took it from evidence room. That is why I am free. You saved my life," he cheered. "But Shane, why are you here? To scare me?"
For a moment, Paul was relieved. He actually thought that I was his savior, his champion.
"Paul, I didn't free you. I sentenced you....to death!" I shouted and raised the hammer. Paul flinched in terror as the hammer came down towards him. I stopped it just inches from his face.
He nearly wet himself.
"Shane! What are you doing?"
"Paul you think that you deserve a second chance? Admit to what you did!"
"I am innocent," he insisted.
I lowered the hammer and flipped it around. I grasped the head, extending the handle out to Paul as a gesture to take it, to take the hammer that belonged to him.
"Here Paul, take your hammer," I said, teetering the hammer's handle inches from his face.
Paul looked into my cold, black eyes and swiftly grabbed the handle. Slowly, he rose from the floor; where he had crouched in fear. He wiped the tears from his face and gripped the handle tightly. He held it with both hands. I could see the expression on his face completely morph. He was no longer Dr. Paul Verize, history professor. He was the creature that I hunted. He was the serial killer known as Paulverizer.
"There you are, Paulverizer," I said.
"Shane, you shouldn't have done that. You know I can't let you leave now. Just like those boys. They went too far. You went too far.
"I appreciate what you did for me. Without you I would have gone to prison....but I have to bash your brains in!"
I turned my back and slowly inched away from him.
Paul raised the hammer high into the air. He geared up for a death blow. One hard whack on my head would certainly put me down.
"Paul, do you know anything about the sea urchin?" I asked, interrupting his swing down on Shane's skull.
He stopped, still holding the hammer high above his head.
"No," he said, puzzled.
"The sea urchin is a creature that simply sits on the bottom of the sandy ocean floor. It rests close to the shore in the shallows. It has a shell that is covered in long spikes like darts. They are thin and appear insignificant. Actually, they defend the urchin from predators. With great potency, they cause paralysis that is almost undetectable at first. The sea urchin's sting kills a lot of people each year. More than you would expect. They walk through the water and step on a stinger and drop dead," I said.
"What are you talking about?" Paulverizer asked.
"Ever heard of a Trang Com?"
"No," he said, feeling unsettlingly weaker. He figured that his sudden fatigue was from holding the heavy hammer.
"It's a Chinese pharmaceutical company that develops the sea urchin's poison into an instant tranquilizer," I said, grinning. "Of course, they altered the original compound. It is much faster acting now."
"So what? You were going to tranquilize me and turn me into the police?"
"Police? No," I said.
"Then what? Blackmail me? Christ you have more money than I do."
"Paul, the tranquilizer that they developed, they wanted to use as an anesthesia. They made it work on touch, on contact," I said. "You see, it just has to be administered on the skin. No need for needles."
"So?" he asked, feeling weaker.
"Paul, it kept killing people because of the poison," I said, pausing for a moment. "Paul, you didn't notice that I was wearing gloves while I held your hammer?"
Paulverizer lowered the hammer and looked down at the handle. That was when he noticed that it was coated in a gel. He didn't feel it before, because his hands were instantly paralyzed.
Suddenly, Paul realized that I drugged him with the sea urchin's poison. He dropped the hammer. I heard its heavy weight hit the hardwood floors, slightly cracking the tiles of wood.
As I moved closer to him, I saw that the hammer wasn't the only thing that fell to the floor. Paul's body doubled over next to the hammer. He shivered mildly.
"Paul," I said, bending down closer to him, "I am not here to just give you back your hammer. I am here to use it on you."
He started to scream, but could barely make a sound. His tongue and lips were numb.
I looked down at him.
"Besides, if I wanted to bribe you; why did I buy the plane ticket? The ticket is so the police think that you left town. See, you are leaving," I said.
Gently, I picked up Paul's feet and began to drag his body. I dragged him out of the library, across the hardwood floors, and past the kitchen. We went into the bathroom.
I lifted Paul's head and leaned him up against the wall. With bloodshot eyes, he looked directly into his own bathtub.
He saw that the shower curtain was gone and his tub was a completely different color. Instead of the pearl white that it had been when he left this morning, it was a dark black, plastic color.
As Paul's eyes focused in and out, a side effect from the poison, he realized that the color changed because his tub was covered with a black tarp.
Paul began to panic. He realized what the tarp was actually for. It was a durable, dark Bond hardware tarp. Skilled hunters used it for toting around deer carcasses. It kept their pickup trucks clean from the smell of dead deer. It also kept all of the blood and innards inside the tarp, making it perfect use for a serial killer.
Paul should have thought of using the same tarp to keep his victims from being discovered. Then he never would have been caught and I wouldn't be here. He could have kept on clubbing young college boys to death like they were baby seals.
"Paul, do you know what you did wrong?" I asked from out in the hall.
I knew that he couldn't speak, but I liked the torment. Like I said before, justice was really more of Shane's thing. Ultimately, I just wanted to bash in some body parts.
"You killed eleven young college boys. They all had futures. They all had parents and grandparents," I said, realizing that maybe I did enjoy the sense of vengeance as much as Shane.
"Shane Lasher and I did not have that. We had no parents. We were born out of death. All Shane and I have is each other."
Paulverizer felt sheer terror by the sound that followed my voice. I dragged his sledgehammer across the hardwood floors, into the hallway and across the kitchen floor. It scraped along the tiles, making a hideous sound that resembled a long, sharp knife scrapping against bone.
I entered the bathroom, sledgehammer in-tow. I leaned it up against the wall next to Paulverizer. Then, I grabbed his arms just behind his shoulders. I lifted him up and plopped him into the tub over the tarp.
"Paulverizer," I said grabbing the long, steel handle of his hammer. "I am Lasher the Slasher. Glad to finally make your acquaintance."
I lifted the sledgehammer up over my head. The bathroom light glimmered behind it. With all of my might, I slammed the hammer down towards Paul Verize's gut, knocking out his light.
2
The Creator of Me
"I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was
ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.
–– H. H. Holmes, mass murderer.
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Vanity Fair's highest ranking photo journalist, Anna Black, was as world class as Vanity Fair got. Last year, she wrote the magazine's "sexy men" section. This year they chose Shane for a spread called "The Sexy Capitalists", because he lived in the capital. Like I said, world class.
She wanted Shane. He could sense it. She inhaled his Polo Black cologne, and relished at the features of his face. She wanted to scratch her sharp nails down his back as he entered her.
Shane leaned against the railing of a white marble balcony. His black kill-suit and tie hung off him like it was his skin. He wore that suit like I wore his skin.
Anna's skin was pale white. Her body was adequately sculpted. She belonged among the stone architecture of the Capital like the armless, busty goddess statues in the gardens of ancient Rome.
For the past forty-five minutes, she threw question after question at Shane:
"Shane, how could you do it?"
"Shane, don't you think he was guilty?"
"Shane, how do you live with yourself?"
"Shane, will you take off your shirt for this next photo?"
Shane's new celebrity status has also brought him the attention of his father's old law partner, Terrance Graves; a man who virtually ignored Shane most of his life. He was a cryptic man to say the least, not much sense of humor. He was a mystery, an enigma. He mostly kept to his ivory tower in the New York City office. Rarely has Shane heard from him. After Shane and I were orphaned, Terrance Graves was always behind us in the shadow of our life. He was our benefactor. Yet, he never participated hands-on in our life.
As our Godfather, Terrance Graves stepped up after Shane's parents died and took us in. He was our salvation. Although, neither Shane nor I remember much about him from Shane's rearing. We got birthday phone calls, which turned into birthday cards. Eventually, we rarely communicate with him at all. Until the day came that we came to work at Graves and Associates.
During our childhood, Terrance Graves hired others to watch over us. We had nannies, butlers, and prep school teachers. We went to the most expensive prep schools in New England. We spent summers in Europe: South France, Italy, and Monte Carlo.
Shane's schooling was extensive. We had the best teachers. We learned everything from mechanics to fencing. Shane and I were educated in two languages other than English––French and Spanish. We learned art, sculpting, and welding. We learned world history, literature, and civilizations. We learned the sciences and the law. Yet, my personal favorite subjects were psychology and martial arts. I liked to kill things. Psychology helped us to understand them better.
Shane liked criminal justice, art, and international law.
All through our schooling I grew inside of Shane. Occasionally, we met in the dark moments of his life. Our first meeting was long ago.
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School children crowded a playground from Shane's past, set in upstate New York. A young bully picked on a helpless boy. He taunted him. He beat him.
One day on a cold December afternoon, the young, helpless boy hid behind something inside of him that he hadn't fully understood. The thing took over him, controlling his actions. Together, he and the cold thing waited patiently out on an icy lake. The children played hockey on the ice, but only on the sides where the ice was safe. The helpless boy stood in the middle of the ice over the dark patches. He held the bully's favorite hockey stick. He had swiped it earlier out of the bully's gym bag.
From the sides of the lake the bully cried out, demanding the stick back. He stood among the other children, watching as the helpless boy waited, baiting him out onto the frozen lake over the dark water beneath.
When the bully neared the helpless boy, at the peer pressure of his friends, the helpless boy ferociously banged the hockey stick on the ice.
After two hard strikes to the ice, a crack formed and raced across the ice. It shattered the ice beneath the bully's feet. He crashed into the freezing water.
It took an hour for the paramedics to thaw out the bully's toes. The blood in them had frozen.
The bully never messed with Shane ever again. That was the first time that Shane remembered meeting me, his protector.
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Anna Black snapped photos of Shane, sexual photos. I suspected that Anna intended to keep some for her personal use.
Also, I imagined that once the photos were developed, they would make Shane look like he was just casted to be on the new season of The Bachelor. Women would swoon after him.
It didn't require a lot of effort for Anna to convince Shane to take his shirt off. Before I could object, Shane posed in the chill of D.C.'s windy weather. His muscular torso was chiseled beyond that of an ordinary lawyer and he was proud of it.
I wasn't keen on this photo shoot because it brought unnecessary exposure to us. First Shane would be on the cover of Vanity Fair with his shirt off. Next we would be facing the electric chair, something that we both feared, and I have few fears. The electric chair topped the list. It sounded excruciating. A 100,000 volts frying through his brain, the place where I lived was something that frightened me. The only thing that Shane feared more was being trapped in a small cell. He feared enclosed spaces.
That was our kryptonite. Enclosed spaces paralyzed Shane. Claustrophobia sedated him and he stalled out, rendering his body useless to me.
For years, we schooled and trained ourselves for life as a hunter. As a monster, I loved to feast on the flesh and gnaw on the bones of other monsters. I lived for this purpose, to murder, to mayhem. Of course, there was one monster in particular that we both wanted to kill most of all.
We wanted to destroy our creator. Like Oedipus Rex, we wanted to destroy a vile creature known as father—the StoneCutter. He was the serial killer that we craved after, like Ahab to Moby Dick. He was our Great White Whale. He was our heavenly, estranged father, our holy grail. He was not our biological father, but our psychological one. He created us. He committed a vile act against us before we were even born. This act set in motion the darkness that would become Shane’s life.
He was the StoneCutter.
The StoneCutter operated with complete anonymity for decades until the press pieced together some of his murders. A New York Times' reporter named Katelyn Fox uncovered his murderous spree.
Like the Zodiac, the StoneCutter killed in secret for decades. However, unlike the Zodiac, the StoneCutter did not advertise it to the media. The StoneCutter never intended to be caught or famous. He was dangerous because he didn't seek fame, recognition, or validation. He simply wanted to kill.
Along came Katelyn Fox, an ambitious, young journalist. She obsessed over serial murder. Often she studied serial killers. She spent hours cataloging and researching local and nationwide crimes, searching for patterns that no one else sought out. She hoped to uncover a serial killer. Her tireless obsession led her to one of the greatest finds in crime history—the existence of the StoneCutter.
One day Shane appeared on her radar. He had met Katelyn over a year ago. She wanted to make a name for herself. She wanted to use him for this means. He defended the serial killer that she had been writing about. He saved the alleged defendant from a guilty verdict.
What Katelyn uncovered was that over the course of many years, a gruesome series of home invasions had taken place across New York and neighboring states. Home invasions were not a new or uncommon crime, especially among the wealthy areas of New York, but these particular home invasions were sinisterly unique.
Normal home invasions involved a wealthy family, a clever thief, and a body count. What set the StoneCutter apart from the rest was that he was no thief. He never took a thing from the homes that he invaded.
He invaded homes in order to brutally torture and murder the families that dwelled inside. He forced the patriarch to bury the other family members alive.
No one knew where Katelyn Fox got
her information, but she knew details that the FBI kept from the press. In her articles, she exposed that a serial killer was behind the invasions. She claimed that he targeted wealthy families and forced the father to bury the mother and children alive and then shot the father over an open grave. The StoneCutter left the mother and children to suffocate beneath the cold ground.
One more important detail that Katelyn uncovered was that the StoneCutter created grave markers, headstones, for his victims. The killer specially designed each headstone for each of his victims. He carved them himself. This indicated that the murders were premeditated and methodically planned out down to the last grim detail.
Katelyn's articles garnered insurmountable attention across the country. The reading public forced the FBI to open an investigation into the phantom that she dubbed the "StoneCutter" or a man who created tombstone makers.
The StoneCutter carved the headstones out of a heavy stone. He wrote "Here Lies" and then carved the victim's names into the stone. He took great care in carving and chiseling the stones. The attention to detail informed Katelyn and the FBI that the murders were planned out painstakingly, like a master serial killer would do––like I would do.
I admired the StoneCutter's methodical nature. Those stones were not easy to carve and then lug around until the murder took place. The ritual controlled him. It rose out from a dark place inside of him. Sometimes, Shane made me wait months before I killed again. In that long period of time, I paced, I burned, I drooled, and I waited for the right time to strike. I studied and planned out each murder, laying the perfect trap for my prey, but I could never imagine taking the time to carve out a headstone and then carry it, unnoticed, to the kill site.
Besides being methodical, the StoneCutter was admirably brutal, dispatching a mother and her children in such a cold fashion. That was something even I could not do. Shane and I eradicated other killers. I was not doing this for some moral reason, some misguided sense of righteousness, or for some twisted sense of justice. I understood the difference between right and wrong; I simply am not interested in right. It's not that I am not diabolical enough to kill anyone. I just never found interest in burying a mother with her children. I had no morals, but that kind of murder just didn't feel right. It didn't taste right. I was not sure why. Perhaps, Shane's side of our brain had some sense of morality that stopped me, that blocked me. Perhaps, Shane was my conscience. Luckily for him, I had no interest in killing a mother and her cubs....only the poppa bear.