The Butcher (Patreon)

This is my entry into SOL's Halloween writing contest, and I would appreciate any feedback I can get before submitting it. I'm still in the process of editing, so any typos or errors you notice would really help. Thanks!

Eckhart Koch started every day early, and today was no exception. He woke up before dawn, not even needing an alarm clock, and went about his morning routine. He lived alone in the apartment above his butcher shop, a solitary man, but a welcome constant in the lives of those who passed through his door each day. Everything in his room was meticulously organized, his kitchen was spotless, and his business was the embodiment of neatness and professionalism. He was a man of tidy routine.

He enjoyed his breakfast and coffee with the morning paper, flicking through the local stories. Much of the news was still focused on the death of Antonio Borelli, a material witness in the city’s case against the Philadelphia crime syndicate. He was ready to bury his friends and superiors, and now he was lying on a cold steel table because of faulty breaks in his sports car.

As the sun lit the city streets, Eckhart flipped the sign in his store window from CLOSED to OPEN and began his day in earnest. Customers strolled in one by one, and he fed them meat, cheese, and knowledge. He was polite, helpful, and his German accent and mannerisms put people at ease. They would smile when he spoke to them and laugh at his jokes, earning him good business. The day passed with the same episodic productivity as all the days before, blissfully boring, and he went to bed without issue or complaint.

The next day, however, threw him off his routine. It was when he came downstairs to find his storefront window had been vandalized, spray-painted with big letters. Whether they formed a message or the initials of some young punk trying to build up a reputation, Eckhart wasn’t sure; he just sighed and pulled out the paint thinner. He didn’t usually have to deal with this kind of behavior unless the streets were filled with drunken sports fans. It took some time, but he cleaned up the mess. He hoped that was the end of it, but days later, he found his window once again vandalized. He cleaned the window as before, hoping there wouldn’t be a third time.

“It’s been happening to all of us,” said his friend, James, who ran the nearby hardware store. “Mary had a dry ice bomb stuffed in the newspaper dispenser in front of her bakery.”

“Vandals come and go, probably just some dumb kids,” replied Eckhart, paying for more paint thinner to clean his window once again. “The police will do a show of force, and the little rats will scurry off to find something new to entertain themselves.”

“I just wish they’d target a Wal-Mart for once.”

After washing away yet another layer of paint, Eckhart went to bed, hoping these troubles would soon be over. His hopes were dashed that night when he was awoken by breaking glass. He rushed downstairs to find his storefront window reduced to shards scattered across the floor, with a lone brick lying amongst the debris. It was a long night for Eckhart, between cleaning up the damage and dealing with the police.

“It was probably just some kids pulling a prank,” the bored officer said, scribbling in his little notebook as his squad car lights flashed outside Eckhart’s shop.

“I don’t care who it was! They’ve been hassling me relentlessly! All of the businesses in the area are getting vandalized!”

“I’m gonna have to ask you to calm down, sir. Getting belligerent isn’t going to solve anything.” The sighing officer’s inability to make eye contact irritated Eckhart further, but he forced his angry tone to a low simmer.

“I want to know that these acts are being taken seriously. I've been in this location for eight years, and this is the first time someone has dared attack my business with such hateful audacity.”

“We’ll do what we can to stop it, try to put more patrols out, but the department’s dealing with budget cuts, so don’t expect a miracle. Have a good night.” The officer then shuffled off, having run out of strength to pretend to care.

The next morning, a tarp hung where Eckhart’s store window once stood, crisscrossed with police tape. Eckhart was behind the counter, trying to order a new window.

“Wow, what happened here?”

Eckhart looked up as a man forced his way through the tarp and maneuvered under the police tape. “Excuse me, did you not read the sign? My business is closed today.”

“Oh, I’m not here for meat,” the man said, looking everywhere but at Eckhart.

He was in his late twenties, almost thirty years younger than the graying butcher, and with his skinny build and narrow face, he couldn’t pull off the leather jacket look, despite how hard he was trying. He had a meandering gait, going off on twisting tangents as he sauntered over to the counter, with his face constantly shifting as if he had a sneeze stuck in his nose.

“And what are you here for?”

“You see, I’m in the private security business. Alphonse Maroni, I heard that there has been a rush of vandalism in this area. I think we can help each other out.”

“Oh really, and what are you going to do to keep my window from getting broken again? Are you going to sit out there in a lawn chair with a baseball bat every night?”

“Trust me, Pops, people under my protection don’t get messed with. And with the way things seem to be escalating, you need my services. It doesn’t take much to ruin a business, just a few things going wrong.”

“Protection, right. I know what it is you’re trying to sell. Get out of my store! And don’t you ever show your face around here again!”

“You know, it’s a real shame you feel that way. Tell you what, I’m going to leave you my card. Give me a call when your health and business are a little more of a priority.”

Alphonse dropped a business card on the counter and then strolled out of the shop the same way he came in. After he left, Eckhart busied himself by closing the broken window, covering it with plywood and tarps to keep more prowlers out. Even when that was finished, there were always things that needed to be done, and he always liked to keep himself busy. Night fell, and as Eckhart prepared to retire for the evening, he heard a noise down in the shop, the snapping of wood and tearing of fabric. He went downstairs and found a man with a ski mask pointing a gun at him. He was larger than Alphonse, and had forced his way through the plywood cover with a crowbar.

“Open the register, now!”

Eckhart raised his hands. “Mein Gott!”

The man stormed over and circled around behind the counter. “I said, open the fucking register!”

“Ok! Ok!” Eckhart moved to the cash register and opened it, but the few bills inside just angered the robber.

“What, that’s it?”

“Everyone pays with credit these days!”

The man forced Eckhart into the kitchen. “I know you’ve got more money squirreled away! Hand it over before I splatter your brains across the wall!”

“I don’t have anything! Just take what you want from the register and leave!”

“You think this is a game?! You think you can toss some dollar bills at me, and I’ll leave?!”

The man beaned Eckhart in the side of the head with the crowbar, knocking him to the floor. With no sign of movement from the shopkeeper, the mugger did a quick sweep of the upstairs and downstairs, but found nothing of value; no safes full of grandmother’s pearls and diamond earrings, cashboxes hidden from the IRS, or anything worth hauling to a pawn shop. He returned to the kitchen to find Eckhart still laid out, then stuffed his gun into his pants and pulled out his phone.

“Hey, it’s me. The old man is down. I don’t know; he ain’t moving. Nothing much in the register. Yeah, I looked.”

Eckhart continued to bleed onto the floor, and as it pooled beneath his face, some entered his mouth. The flavor awoke him, and he opened his eyes. However, the man who fell to the floor was not the same man who got back up. The robber had his back turned, still talking on his phone. He didn’t hear the cleaver being picked up off the nearby counter, nor did he feel it hack through flesh and bone and bury itself in his shoulder, not until his severed hand fell to the floor, still clutching his phone. For the briefest moment, the man didn’t react, then the pain surged from the stump of his wrist while streamed and filling the kitchen with the stink of iron.

Screaming in agony, the man staggered forward, clutching his arm with his clothes dampening by the second. Eckhart retrieved the man’s phone and ended the call, not wanting the person on the other end of the line to hear what was about to happen.

“You motherfucker!” the man howled as he drew his gun.

The moment the pistol was raised towards Eckhart, he zoomed forward and robbed the man of his other hand. The old man’s movements were fast and precise, brandishing the cleaver with horrifying skill. Blinded by pain and slipping on his own blood, the man fell to the floor, unable to stop his bleeding and now hyperventilating. He looked back at Eckhart, taking a moment to lick the blood off the cleaver and shudder. “Oh, how I’ve missed that taste. You should have left when you had the chance. That privilege has now been revoked.” He then tossed the cleaver in the sink and stood over the wounded man, holding his dropped crowbar.

“Please don’t! Please!” the man begged, spilling tears as quickly as he spilled blood.

“You were right about one thing: this isn’t a game.”

The first swing came, the metal hook burying itself in the man’s already wounded shoulder. He screamed in agony, only for the second swing to shatter his jaw. Again and again, the crowbar rose and fell, crushing bone and spraying blood. Gore covered his face, but Eckhart didn’t stop swinging, relishing the viscous heat on his skin. Even when his victim’s skull had caved in, and his brains lay splattered across the floor, Eckhart only halted when the sound of police sirens reached his ears and the blue lights filled his shop.

Two cops rushed inside, aiming their hands at Eckhart. “Jesus Christ,” the female officer gasped, seeing viscera splattered across every surface of the kitchen.

“Drop the weapon now!” the male officer nervously shouted, using all of his willpower to keep down the dinner now rising up his throat.

With his eyes still on the dead man, Eckhart dropped the crowbar and raised his hands. “I surrender.”

Eckhart was arrested and brought to the local precinct. After being treated for his head wound, he spent several hours in a holding cell with the other arrestees of the night, all of them squeamish from the sight and smell of the blood soaking his clothes. His prints were taken, but dismissed, for all of them were ineligible. “Kitchen accident when I was younger, burned my fingertips near to the bone,” he claimed. Eventually, he was guided to an interrogation room, and soon, a detective arrived, carrying a file with the police report.

“Good evening. I am Detective Hewn,” he said before sitting down.

“Evening,” Eckhart replied.

Hewn sat down and flipped through the file for several moments, not saying a word, pretending he hadn’t already examined it. Finally, he loosened his tie and leaned forward. “You know, I’ve been on the force for twenty years. I’ve seen a lot of blood pooled on floors and splattered across walls. This is something different.” Eckhart didn’t respond. “Do you have anything to say?”

Eckhart tried not to smirk. “I’m waiting for a proper question. Why waste my breath responding to rhetorical statements?”

“Very well, what happened tonight?”

“I was about to go to bed when someone broke into my shop. Perhaps he was the same man who’s been vandalizing my property these past several days; I’m not sure. This time, rather than a can of spray paint or a brick, he came at me with a gun and a crowbar. He threatened me, robbed me, and tried to kill me, and I defended myself.” There was no anger in his voice. If anything, he seemed amused by the whole thing.

“You sliced off his hands and caved his skull in.”

“I disarmed him. You’ll find one of his hands still clutching the gun he threatened to kill me with. He was fast, but I was faster.”

“Self-defense is one thing, but once he lost his hands, he was no longer a threat. If you had stopped there, or had you not dismembered him before palming that crowbar, this would be much less of an issue.”

“Can you blame me for being a little quick to anger? For days, my shop, my livelihood, has been vandalized and destroyed. I’ve received no help from the lazy cops who can’t be bothered to look me in the eye, and then tonight, I was badly wounded and my life threatened by a violent mugger. Between the adrenaline and disorientation from my head wound, I’d say my actions were quite understandable, if not completely justified.”

“It’s not your place to say that.”

“A jury would, and I’m sure the media will too. Perhaps if the police had done a better job of keeping me safe instead of only showing up when it was over to arrest me, then the events of tonight wouldn’t have happened. What were they doing while I was lying on the floor, bleeding and unconscious?”

“We can’t be everywhere at once.”

“No, but you have to be where it matters. No one was. Now, I’d like to call my lawyer.”

Eckhart was soon released, but the investigation would continue. He returned to his shop to find the robber’s body gone, as well as several items taken as evidence, but there was still a great mess. After everything that had happened, it would have been natural for Eckhart to simply go to sleep and put off dealing with the gore until he’d had some proper rest, but he couldn’t sleep if he wanted to.

He went to work cleaning up the kitchen, meticulously scrubbing every surface, and removing all the splattered blood. It wasn’t simply for sanitary reasons; he needed the distraction. He needed to remove every trace of what he had done to keep the shadows in his mind at bay. Yet even after sterilizing his shop and scrubbing his skin raw in the shower, temptation continued to whisper in his ear like a sultry escort, and he could only resist for so long before giving in.

It was still the early hours of the morning, with the sun not yet due to rise for several more hours. Still, he left his shop and drove across the city while trying to talk himself into returning home and letting the past remain in the past. Regardless, he arrived at a public storage facility and opened up his unit with a key he had not used for many years. Inside the concrete room sat a lone trunk, like a treasure chest hidden away in a pirate’s secret hoard. Eckhart closed the door behind him and kneeled before the trunk, opening it with shaky hands.

The released smells made his blood boil with excitement, and of the myriad items stored within, he pulled out a large scrapbook. However, the pictures and faces within came not from a camera recording family moments and happy memories, but were clipped from newspapers. In English and several other languages, the same words and phrases kept appearing over and over again in various fonts and sizes: missing, corpse, horrific scene, mutilated, strikes again, nightmare, pieces, desecration, bloody, reign of terror.

Reading through the clippings, Eckhart shuddered and bit his lip. “Maybe just one more time….”

The next day, Alphonse arrived at a nightclub owned by his boss, serving as the main base of operations for everything in their organization. The club was silent at the moment, waiting to reawaken and cater to the nightlife of its customers. Depending on their level of involvement in the business, the employees there either looked away as he passed them by or gave him a nod.

Alphonse made his way to the boss’s office, where a bearded man in a pressed suit sat behind a desk. “Lorenzo! My man! How are you?” Alphonse exclaimed. His boss did not share his grin.

“Take a seat, Maroni. We have things to discuss.”

Alphonse sat down. “What’s the problem?”

“One of ours was murdered last night, Jason.”

“Do we know who did it?”

“Some deli owner he was supposed to put the fear of God in. I believe he refused our services.”

“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Cranky German bastard didn’t feel like paying up. For him to kill Jason, he must have been lucky.”

“Well, his luck ran out. I need him dealt with. To kill one of my men is to spit in my face, and such a crime has grave consequences. Fearing me is the natural response for the people of this city, so make an example of him.”

“Understood. I’ll do you proud.”

“I know you will, now go.”

Alphonse left the club, and his phone pinged as he got in his car. He had received a text from Eckhart.

‘I’m ready to discuss protection.

Come to my shop in the evening.’

“Don’t worry, asshole. We’ll talk long and hard about keeping you protected.”

That night, Alphonse arrived at the butcher shop to find all the lights were off, but the door unlocked. He stepped into the dark building with his pistol in hand. “Hey, Pops, you here?” There was no answer, and he proceeded on. It was possible the man had gotten tired of waiting and gone to bed, so Alphonse headed upstairs. The bed was empty, and looking out the window, he could see Eckhart’s car parked out back. Starting to get annoyed, he searched the apartment, and upon going back downstairs, he noticed a closed door with some faint light coming through. Opening it up, he found a set of stairs leading down to a basement. He moved down the creaky stairs to the concrete chamber where a chair sat beneath a bare bulb.

“What the fuck?” Alphonse muttered, unaware that he was not alone, not sensing the cold gaze on him, not feeling the presence in the corner like a malicious specter. He only felt the rag cover his face and the chloroform fill his sinuses.

When Alphonse woke up, rather than looking at the chair, he was sitting in it, though it would be more accurate to say he was tied to it. He tried to speak and groan, but the duct tape over his mouth wouldn’t let him, and with each passing second granting him more lucidity, it didn’t take long to realize his clothes were missing. Before him was Eckhart, sitting on his trunk with a grin and unblinking eyes.

“Hello, Alphonse. I know we didn’t get along the first time we met, but I am just so happy to see you again.” Alphonse struggled against his binds and tried to scream and curse, but resistance was impossible. “Ah, ah, save your strength. You’re going to need it. You know, dear boy, I’ve been at this spot for eight years. I live a clean life, I pay my taxes, I follow the law, I do everything I can to be an upright citizen and maintain a routine of peaceful productivity. And then you and your friends came along and tried to disrupt everything. Now, though I say that, I don’t want you to think I hold a grudge. No, I vented all my anger on the man you sent to rob me last night. Everything that’s going to happen next comes not from a desire for vengeance, but my desire for pleasure.”

Beside the trunk was a pile of Alphonse’s clothes, from which Eckhart retrieved a pack of cigarettes. “I see you’re a smoker. Such a terrible, unhealthy habit. That said, I know what it’s like to have a monkey on your back, to have a need that only one thing can cure, if only for a short time. I, however, was addicted to something else, and for eight long years, I was able to resist. Then, my streak was broken last night. Now, the cravings are back and they demand satisfaction, and you’re going to help me put them to sleep.”

Eckhart stood up, opened the trunk, and drew a large, black butcher’s apron from within. He adorned it with rubber gloves and a belt around his waist, holding several knives. Seeing the blades, Alphonse’s breathing accelerated, causing the duct tape over his mouth to rapidly flex, but it wasn’t until the final article was revealed that a muffled sound of terror began to slip free.

Eckhart wore a plastic face shield, used in meat processing plants to prevent the produce from being contaminated by sneezes and coughs, and limit worker exposure to viscera. The once-transparent plastic was coated with layer upon layer of blood, decades of gore from countless victims, left to harden into a black shell. Two spots and a streak; the only form of cleaning performed on the mask, simply to create a pair of eye holes above a large scrawled smile.

Eckhart leaned forward in front of Alphonse with a knife in his hand. “Working in a butcher shop is fine, but you just can’t compare it to carving living human flesh.”

He brought the knife towards Alphonse’s chest, and the man struggled to try and get away, twisting and writhing to keep the edge from touching his skin, but nothing could be done to escape the horror. Steel met skin, cold against hot, the latter giving way to the former as it was so easily torn. Alphonse screamed through his duct tape gag as the razor edge carved down through his epidermis, sending lightning shooting through his nerves and making him feel like his chest was on fire. Every centimeter of the cut felt like a foot, as though the blade, barely halfway down his right pectoral, was carving its way down his stomach. Blood flowed freely from the incision, such a vibrant, beautiful red, making Eckhart even more excited. This is what he had been craving for so many years, the desire he had so vehemently resisted, and to finally indulge it was a pleasure beyond words.

After leaving a suitably long cut down Alphonse’s chest, Eckhart pulled the blade away to catch his breath. He was shaking from head to toe in jubilation, as though on the edge of climax. His victim was trembling similarly, but the glassy look in his eyes and the vomit leaking from the duct tape gag was a more accurate representation of what he was feeling.

“What do you feel, Alphonse? I bet you’ve never felt more alive than at this moment. Have you ever been so aware of your flesh, of the blood flowing underneath? Has it ever dawned on you like this just how fragile you are? How easy it is to tear you to shreds? How this thin layer of skin holding you together might as well be tissue paper? Such a small wound, yet the agony it invokes breaks you down to nothing. Isn’t it funny? Just a minor cut, and all bravery and bravado spill out just like your blood, and you go from being a big man to a tiny sniveling whelp. I want to see more. I want to see just how small I can make you.”

Eckhart resumed cutting, all to the stifled howls of Alphonse’s agony. His blades cut deep into the muscle and ran far across the skin, but he was careful not to sever any major veins and arteries. Though blood streamed from every wound, it wasn’t enough to deprive Alphonse of consciousness. Eckhart didn’t want his toy dying on him too quickly.

As he struggled to voice the pain he was feeling, Alphonse’s mind reached back to the past, and he considered all the decisions that had led him to this moment, as well as all of the crimes he had committed. His ears ached from the sound of gunshots and screams of mercy, his fists throbbed from all of the innocents he had beaten half to death for opposing him, and his nose tickled from the smell of the drugs he had sold, smuggled, and imbibed in.

Stealing, rape, murder, his sins were many and dire, and yet as he looked at Eckhart, his face hidden behind the bloody mask and his breathing heavy from perverse enjoyment, Alphonse realized now that he was in the presence of pure evil, that he was the victim of the Devil himself. Is this truly the fate he deserved? This agony that went beyond words, carving at his soul the way the blades carved at his flesh, was this the fitting punishment for everything he had done? Had he already died and was now experiencing the horrors Hell had in store for him?

Finally, after over an hour, Eckhart stopped cutting and stepped back. Alphonse had lacerations crisscrossing his body from head to toe and was left nearly catatonic from shock, but the pain would not let him black out. The throbbing of every wound purged his mind of all thoughts, save for a question repeating over and over: Why won’t I die? Eckhart peeled off the duct tape covering his mouth, having lost much of its adhesion to the tears, snot, drool, and other bodily fluids that now drenched Alphonse from his torture.

“That was even more fun than I thought. I can’t tell you how much I missed these special moments. Did you enjoy yourself?” Eckhart asked,

“K-k-kill me,” Alphonse stuttered, barely able to speak.

“What’s that? I couldn’t hear you?”

“Please, just fucking kill me!” he sobbed.

“I’d say that’s a fair request. Very well then.”

Eckhart then pressed the tip of one of his knives against the middle of Alphonse’s chest and slowly needled it in. Alphonse wanted to scream, but his voice was too hoarse. He could only endure the tedious insertion of the blade, wishing his death would come faster. He begged Eckhart to finish him off, but Eckhart was enjoying himself far too much to do that. The knife cut deep into his liver, a fatal wound, but until death finally came for Alphonse, Eckhart wasn’t going to let him get off without more pain. He continued inserting knives, trying to get them all in before his victim went silent. Alphonse became acquainted with the entire set before releasing his final breath.

Eckhart moved away and stretched with a blissful sigh. That was precisely what he needed. Now came the matter of dealing with the body. Eckhart hung Alphonse on a meat hook and drained the blood, and hosed down the mess, sending the evidence of his crime flushing down the drain in the basement floor. Once lightened, he moved the corpse up to the kitchen, where he once more put his cutting skills to work, carving away everything that could be immediately disposed of using the methods of his profession and history. The rest of the remains were stored in his walk-in freezer until they could be properly dealt with. It was late when Eckhart was finally finished cleaning the scene, and the years were taking their toll, but he slept better that night than he had in years.

The next day, he reopened his business, with all of his usual customers stopping by to remark, ask what happened to his window, and note his head wound. Their pity earned him a lot of business, much of their money being spent on the sausages for display, hand-prepared and freshly ground. He had a lot of new produce available.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, Lorenzo Avecto was getting annoyed. Alphonse hadn’t checked in, and no one had seen him. When he called, all he got was voicemail. As evening approached with no word, he put out the order for Alphonse to be tracked down. By then, his annoyance had turned into unease, and his instincts told him something was wrong. That night, the call arrived.

“Boss, I found Alphonse’s car.”

“You sure?” Lorenzo asked, leaning back in his chair back at the club.

“I’d know that ‘ass, grass, or gas’ bumper sticker anywhere. There are some parking tickets under the wiper. It’s been here for a while.”

“Where?”

“Weyland Ave, north side.”

Lorenzo paused. “Is there a butcher shop on that street?”

“Yeah, I passed it by, why?”

“Alphonse was supposed to kill the owner. All right, leave it there and come back.” Lorenzo then got up from his chair and looked out the office window, once more feeling that tightness in his gut. He typed a number into its phone. “It’s me. Put a team together. Butcher shop owner on Weyland. There can be no room for error.”

That night, five men approached Eckhart’s shop, all wearing ski masks and bulletproof vests under their clothes and carrying silenced pistols. The way they walked and carried themselves projected their killing experience. They broke into the store quietly, but not quiet enough. Upstairs, Eckhart’s eyes opened, awoken by primal instinct and predatory awareness.

He could hear them downstairs entering his shop. These weren’t police, and he didn’t have anything valuable enough that a whole troupe of robbers would break into his shop. This could only mean that Alphonse’s friends were paying him a visit. Killing Alphonse was supposed to be a one-time indulgence of his repressed desires, like cheating on a diet, but how could he refuse prey so willingly presenting themselves to him? The problem was that all of his killing equipment was in the trunk in his basement. He silently got out of bed and moved his dresser, retrieving a Swiss army knife. The blade was small, but it would get the job done.

Below him, the five hitmen split up. The first stayed by the door, keeping a lookout. The second went to search the kitchen, while the third went in search of a basement. The fourth and fifth went upstairs, and they likewise split up. The fifth entered the bedroom, looking around with his gun-mounted flashlight. The beam settled on the bed and the large shape beneath the covers. Before he could just start firing, he needed to confirm it was the target.

He approached the bed and poked it with his gun, realizing the mass was just pillows. He didn’t even sense Eckhart sneaking up behind him in the darkness. He just experienced the briefest moment of pain as the blade of the Swiss army knife was buried in the back of his neck, just below the skull. The blade twisted like a key, and the brainstem was severed. The man died before he could make a sound.

Down the hall, the fourth hitman had just scanned the closet and laundry room and moved on to the bathroom. He shined the beam of his flashlight back at himself through the mirror above the sink, then turned, hearing a soft tap. It was just the last few drops falling from the shower. The man looked back at the mirror, with the reflected light now shining on Eckhart behind him, illuminating the maniacal grin on his face. The hitman spun around and was slashed across the throat. The cut went deep, severing the major arteries and opening his windpipe. He fell to his knees, grasping his throat and trying to stop the bleeding, or at least gather his breath to scream, but he died helplessly.

Down in the dark kitchen, the second hitman was circling the cutting table, being pulled by his nose like a bloodhound. The room, laced with the scent of chemical cleaners and disinfectants, smelled familiar to him. Any butcher shop would maintain constant sanitation to keep vermin and disease out, and cleaning up the scene of a murder was part of the hitman’s job, so he used many of the same products, but there was a heaviness in the air that he was also familiar with. It was an air of secrecy, of malice, one that no soap or spray could cleanse or civilian could detect. This wasn’t some ordinary kitchen; something terrible had happened here. Those thoughts were ended by a cleaver buried in the back of his skull.

Down in the basement, the third hitman had similar suspicions as he shined his light on a certain chair in the middle of the room. He then noticed a trunk nearby and a peculiar smell emanating, but as he stepped forward to open it, he heard a noise upstairs. He raised his head and pressed on the radio in his ear.

“You guys hear that?” There was no response.

Clutching his gun with both hands, he slowly moved up the stairs, readying himself for whatever awaited. In the shop, he found the first hitman on the floor, killed by a thrown kitchen knife lodged in his temple.

“Guys, Lewis is down! Do you copy?” Still no response.

A noise from the kitchen then reached his ears, and the hitman slowly went to investigate. Inside, he found a puddle of blood with no body. “What the fu—”

Before he could finish speaking, two knives were stabbed into the sides of his neck. Though it didn’t kill him, the pain alone robbed him of his motor functions, as well as his ability to scream. Holding the knives like handlebars, Eckhart, standing behind him, forced the man to stagger forward and slammed his face against the electric meat slicer. The push of a button got the blade moving, and the man spasmed as his face was shaved off layer by layer until finally death rendered him still.

Eckhart sighed and dropped the man, no longer recognizable, onto the floor. Normally, he liked to take his time with his victims, to enjoy slowly killing them, but this was quite fun. Besides, now he had more meat to sell. It proved to be another busy night for Eckhart. Between cleaning the mess and carving up the bodies, he was starting to wonder when he’d get a full eight hours of rest, but as he worked, he had plenty of time to think about his next step. The fact that this was the third time someone had come after his life in as many days made it likely that this violence was going to continue. That said, what kind of spider would complain about flies landing in its web?

Over the following week, Eckhart felt he was being watched. When he walked the streets, his predatory instincts told him someone was following him, and even over the sounds of the city, he thought he heard the click of a camera. He also received an online alert that someone was looking him up. At night, he spotted someone going through his dumpster. Fortunately, he was smart enough not to leave evidence where anyone could find it, but he’d have to do something about this prowler sniffing around.

 “Eckhart Koch, born September 26, 1971 to German immigrants. He has no police record, no living family, and pays his taxes.” A man with wiry hair laid a manila envelope on Lorenzo’s desk while reciting the facts.

“You’re saying he’s clean?”

“For the most part. He used to be a surgeon, but lost his license due to some bad scripts, then he disappeared into Europe for several years before coming back and opening a butcher shop. I couldn’t get a bead on anything he did during that time. Otherwise, nothing really stood out.”

The man’s words did nothing to remove the rock in Lorenzo’s stomach. The team he sent to kill the shopkeeper had not checked in, but their van was found near Weyland Avenue. No arrests were made, no bodies were found; it was like they had disappeared off the face of the earth. In his gut, Lorenzo knew they met their end at the hands of the butcher, but who in the world was he? Fortunately, there were private investigators who could answer this question for him, and Aimes was one of the best.

“Take another look, a deeper look. I want to know where he went to school, where he lived, and if anyone around him ever went missing. Break into his home and bring me every secret he has.”

“Home invasion costs extra.”

“You can bill me when you get back.”

The next day, Aimes waited down the street from Eckhart’s shop. The man had a strict routine, and in the late morning, when business slowed, he’d break for lunch and go out to run errands. He saw Eckhart step out of his shop, lock the door, and begin his stroll down the street. He was usually gone for an hour or so, so Aimes had enough time to do a quick search, but he didn’t want to press his luck. As soon as Eckhart was gone, Aimes snuck over and picked the lock. He opened the door, unaware that he had tripped an alarm. At the nearby hardware store, Eckhart’s phone dinged and showed him the intruder slipping into his store through a hidden camera. The prowler had fallen into the trap.

Back in the shop, Aimes did a quick sweep of the shop and kitchen, not expecting to find anything interesting. He had to commend Eckhart on how spotless everything was. Why was Lorenzo so worked up about this guy? As he went upstairs to begin searching through Eckhart’s personal life, he was unaware of the front door silently opening and Eckhart stepping inside. He knew this building like the back of his hand, knew which floorboards and stairs creaked, and how to move around silently. He found Aimes in his room, trying to do his best to dig for information without leaving a noticeable mark among Eckhart’s meticulously organized possessions.

The chloroform rag over his face blinded and suffocated him, making Aimes panic and try to fight off his unseen attacker, but Eckhart had plenty of experience in subduing victims who resisted. The last thing Aimes felt before blacking out was hitting the floor. When he finally woke up, he found himself in Eckhart’s basement, hanging from the ceiling by his bound wrists. A cinderblock had been tied to his feet so that he couldn’t kick or thrash, same with the duct tape over his mouth preventing him from screaming, though he frantically tried. This couldn’t be happening! This couldn’t be real! His clothes had been removed and left in a pile nearby. If he could get to his phone, he could call for help, but no matter how much he struggled, all he accomplished was wearing himself out.

Sunlight passed through a small window, so he hadn’t been out for long, but it wasn’t until night fell that someone finally came for him. The footfalls down the basement stairs made his heart race and his breathing quicken. His captor was intentionally slow and heavy with his steps, terrifying Aimes, and when he saw Eckhart dressed in his murder garb and wearing his mask, he released a muffled scream.

“Time to have a chat with my new guest.” He approached Aimes while brandishing a knife and humming to himself, causing Aimes to twist and writhe in yet another attempt to free himself. “Well, now, I suppose we can’t talk with you gagged like that, can we?” Eckhart ripped the tape off Aimes’s face. “Just so you know, I’m suffering from a bit of a headache, so if you scream or raise your voice, I’ll have to silence you. Now tell me, who are you, and why are you skulking around my shop?”

“J-J-Joseph Aimes, p-private investigator. I was hired to do a background check on you. Please, just let me go!”

“‘Please, just let me go!’ Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve ignored those words.” Eckhart brought his knife up to Aimes’s face, his fearful eyes reflected in the polished steel. “You’re going to have to do better than that. Who sent you?”

“Lorenzo Avecto! He runs the Philly mafia!”

“So the head honcho of the big, bad mafia is interested in little old me. Now things are getting interesting. And what did you tell him about me?”

Aimes began to sob. “Nothing like this. Please, I’m sorry for snooping around; it’s just my job!”

“Hey, hey, fear not, friend. I’m not judging you. Stalking and gathering secrets are skills of mine. If I want to take my time, if I want to enjoy the kill, I need to properly research my victims. The last thing I want when I’m skinning someone alive is for their husband or wife to suddenly show up at home and ruin the fun. That’s another body to deal with.”

“Jesus Christ, this can’t be happening,” Aimes whimpered.

“So why don’t you go ahead and tell me everything you know about Lorenzo and his friends? Wow me with your investigative skills.”

Aimes was quick to spill everything he knew about Lorenzo and the syndicate. He was a private eye, a freelance agent, so he lacked the knowledge of a true member, but his profession also left him aware of every ripple in the city’s sea of rumors. He named names and listed addresses, gladly condemning them to the hell he was experiencing, if it meant he might be able to escape it himself. He spoke so fast that he was panting by the time he was finished.

“Thank you for that. You’ve told me everything I wanted to know.”

“Please, please, just let me go.”

“Why would I let you go? You came here to find out everything you could about me, so how about I give you my life story. However, I’d rather you not interrupt me, so I think I’ll just….” Eckhart ripped off a fresh piece of duct tape and slapped it over Aimes’ mouth. He then took his knife and dragged it across the man’s forehead, making sure his scream of anguish was sufficiently mumbled.

“Wonderful. Now, I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was born in a small town outside the city limits back in 1971, the heir to a long line of butchers. These knives, you see, belonged to my father, his father, his father’s father, and so on. They’ve always been my preferred tools for killing.” As he spoke, he again slashed Aimes, inflicting a perfect cut that slit the epidermis without damaging the muscles or major veins to the sound of Aimes’s pained moaning.

“I spent my childhood in the kitchen with my father, learning to use a knife before I learned to read. You could say I had a natural talent for cutting through flesh, and I loved it, but as time passed, I began to grow bored with simply slicing cold ham and sides of beef. I wanted something warm and living, full of fresh blood. I became adept at catching squirrels and birds and would take my time seeing how long I could keep them alive while cutting them. As I grew older, I moved on to cats and dogs. Once I entered high school, the neighborhood pets no longer held their sway. I wanted something that would beg me to stop in words I could understand.”

He walked around Aimes, slashing him again and again with tears, blood, and urine soon pooling below him.

“Being in school, I was surrounded by potential victims. All I had to do was listen in on their conversations to know when and where to strike. My first kill was the younger brother of one of my classmates, who I lured into the woods. I’ll never forget the sound of his screams; so beautiful, so pure. He was far from the last child I killed in that period. Ah, the 80s, it was so easy back then. Kids would leave home at dawn and not come back until the street lights came on, and all you had to do was say you had Playboys and fireworks, and they’d trust you with their lives.

Back then, the Satanic Panic was in full swing, so all my victims were chalked up as killed by devil-worshippers. No one would suspect the friendly German kid down the street, except for when that Jewish girl went missing. Ironically, I wasn’t even the one who killed her, but the bullies at school still pinned the blame on me. Kids can be so cruel, can’t they?”

Aimes was trying to chew on the duct tape over his mouth. If he could make a small hole, he could hopefully scream loud enough that someone outside might hear him. That hope kept him going, and he used his efforts to try and block out the pain of Eckhart’s knives, but it was a futile endeavor in all aspects.

“I continued murdering my way through college, experimenting with different weapons and tactics, but eventually, we all have to grow up and choose a career. I went to medical school to become a surgeon, to continue my love of cutting people, as well as put my talent and experience in butchering to work for me. Medical school helped me hone my killing skills, such as teaching me how to avoid major arteries to keep my victims from bleeding out prematurely, or how to target nerve clusters if I really want to make them suffer.

I almost got kicked out of school at one point for suspected “mistreatment” of the cadavers, but I spent many years as a successful surgeon and was even considered a prodigy by my peers. If I told you how many people I’ve murdered, it would shock and horrify you, but I’ve also saved countless lives. I once fished a bullet out of a man’s brainstem and brought him back to life as they were preparing to wheel him down to the morgue. Having that kind of control over the lives of others was something already quite familiar to me.”

Blood coated Aimes from his numerous cuts as if he had been spray-painted from head to toe with gore. As per Eckhart’s words, all the blood came from his capillaries, while the veins and arteries were preserved, similarly preserving his consciousness.

“My job also granted me access to plenty of victims. Medical records alone are a wealth of information. Addresses, family members, places of business, it made killing so easy. I often enjoyed my hobby in the hospital as well. Sometimes, I’d switch a patient’s medication, giving them something they were allergic to or an extreme dose of something simple, and I’d watch them die in their beds. It was easy enough to blame it on another doctor or the pharmacist. I did get caught at one point and lost my license, but painted it as an accident and avoided jail.”

Aimes’s sweat mixed with his blood, with the salt sinking into his wounds and making them throb. He prayed to every god he could think of for the pain to stop, but Eckhart kept cutting.

“After I lost my job, I decided to travel and see the world. I spent a lot of time in Europe and the Mediterranean, continuing to experiment with different methods of killing. I’d change my tools and tactics to avoid detection, frequently moving to new cities and countries. I earned many nicknames from the various newspapers: ‘Jack the Strangler,’ ‘le Trancheur de rue,’ ‘der Nachtschütze’, ‘il Selvaggio Romano,’ and a few others. Backpackers and homeless made easy prey, and if I wanted to extend my vacation, I just had to rob my wealthier victims.”

Just like Alphonse, Aimes had reached the point where he no longer hoped for freedom or saving. He no longer hoped for anything, nor could he even feel hope. Now he just wished for death.

“Finally, I came back from Europe and set up shop doing what I was raised to do: cutting meat. I had grown a bit bored of killing and decided to take a break, which eventually became what I thought would be my retirement. I spent eight years in this shop, living a peaceful life away from my old habits, but then your employer gave me the gift of temptation. And now, here we are, and after slaughtering the last half-dozen men who came after me, I find my blood boiling in a way it hasn’t done in years. I’ve decided to come out of retirement, and thanks to everything you’ve told me, I know where to go to satiate my cravings. Ah, I know that look in your eyes. You’re thinking, ‘Please kill me, I want to die!’ Is that right?”

Aimes frantically nodded.

“Don’t worry, I’ll release you from all of your suffering.” Eckhart then stepped forward and slashed Aimes’s throat, sending a fountain of blood running down his chest. Aimes wanted to speak, but even if his mouth wasn’t covered, his windpipe had been cut, and with all the blood he had already lost, he barely had the strength to shape the words. All he could do was stare at Eckhart’s mask, sporting a fresh layer of blood, as the life streamed from his body one crimson drop at a time.

The next day brought the continuation of a troubling pattern for Lorenzo. Aimes had yet to check in, and once again, Lorenzo was left making calls that no one answered. However, he had expected this. Sending Aimes into the lion’s den had been an experiment, and now Lorenzo understood that anyone he sent to Eckhart’s shop wouldn’t come back. Sitting at his desk, the man was deep in thought. How should he handle this? Should he cut his losses, chalk the eight casualties as expendable assets, and regard the butcher shop as a place never to get involved with? Or should he double down and go scorched earth on this man who had moved past being a thorn in his side?

Lorenzo’s thoughts were interrupted as his brother entered his office, not even bothering to knock. “Yo, Tobey said the team he put together for you never came back. What’s going on?”

“A problem has presented itself. There is a little butcher shop on the north side of town, and everyone I’ve sent there has yet to return.”

“You’re shitting me, how many guys have we lost?”

“Eight.”

“Eight?! And I’m just hearing about this now?! What are you doing about this?”

“Danny, you literally came in here talking about how the team I sent to kill this guy never came back. I haven’t exactly been sitting on my hands.”

“Well then what are you doing about this next?”

Lorenzo sighed and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we headed?”

“To pick up something for dinner.”

The two men drove to Weyland Avenue and parked down the street from the butcher shop.

“So that’s the place?” Danny asked.

“Yeah, I want to speak to this guy eye-to-eye.”

“All right, let’s go.”

“You stay here. You know I like to keep my backup at a safe distance.”

Lorenzo checked his piece, straightened his suit, and then got out of the car. For a mob boss, such a lone confrontation was all but unheard of, but he had to know for sure who the man he was about to meet was. He walked down the street and entered the shop, and from behind the counter, he and Eckhart locked eyes. ‘So this is the guy,’ Lorenzo thought, looking at Eckhart and feeling unimpressed. Eckhart looked his new customer up and down, this man in his pressed suit who stood out against his usual clientele. Though he did not assume the man’s name, Eckhart could detect his profession and why he was there. He smelled of blood money.

“Good morning. How can I help you?” Eckhart asked with a smile.

“Hello, can I get half a pound of ham and half a pound of turkey, cut thin?”

“Coming right up.” Eckhart gathered the meat and laid it across a cutting board. When preparing meat in bulk, he preferred to use the electric slicer in the kitchen, but for customers, he put his skills on display. Besides, if this customer really was affiliated with his recent victims, he wanted to have a weapon in hand. With perfect precision, he brandished a knife and began slicing up the ham into strips.

“I think I came here once, years ago. This used to be a shawarma joint, right?” Lorenzo asked as he watched. Eckhart’s machine-like carving both impressed and unnerved him.

“Ah yes, the family from Lebanon. Very kind people, gave me a great deal on this place. The problem is that it took a year for the smell of all those sauces and spices to finally clear out. I prefer my kitchen to smell of only my own seasoning.”

“Yes, now I remember. My father brought me here. He loved the stuff, loved all food, really. He’d scour the city looking for new restaurants and come home each day, sucking on a toothpick and bragging about his amazing lunch.”

The ham was finished, so Eckhart began cutting the turkey. “My father, on top of being a butcher, had a special love of wine. He loved to collect it, read about it, even make it in his basement. You suggest any meal, and he’d tell you the perfect wine pairing, even if it was a peanut butter sandwich. He taught me how to use a blade and, how when preparing salmon with herbs and citrus, anything other than a Sauvignon Blanc is an insult to the dish. I imagine our fathers would have gotten along famously.” The ham and turkey were weighed and wrapped up. “Anything else I can get you today?”

“I was going to take my family out to a fancy restaurant for a big dinner, but now I’m not so sure. What would you recommend? I want something heavy and filling that will have everyone laid out and groaning happily like a fat cat beside a fireplace.”

“I have Italian sausages, personally made and seasoned. Enjoy them with a bottle of Tuscan Chianti, and your family will feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven. My customers have been eating them up like hotcakes, but I’m sure I have just enough to satisfy you and your family.”

“That sounds excellent. Let me see.”

Eckhart pulled out a tray of sausages and set them on the counter, and as he gazed at the meat before him, Lorenzo felt a chill crawl up his spine. He looked back and forth from the meat to Eckhart, noticing the gleam in his eyes. His smile appeared innocent, but his eyes could have glowed in the dark like a pair of cigarettes. Those sausages were not pork. Lorenzo knew it, and he knew that Eckhart knew he knew it. At that moment, any thoughts to Eckhart’s innocence wet up in smoke.

“How… how many you got?”

“Oh, about seven men’s worth.”

Lorenzo felt the weight of the gun in his chest holster. He was so used to carrying it that he thought himself no longer aware of its heaviness, but now it felt like it was pulling on his shirt like a needy child, begging for attention. His instincts were telling him to kill this man, not to avenge his subordinates, not even for business, but because his heart told him that the stranger before him could not be allowed to live. Eckhart had many knives within his reach. Could Lorenzo draw and put a round in the butcher before he ended up with several inches of steel in his chest? Those instincts, telling him to pull and fire, settled, realizing such a feat was beyond him. It wasn’t that he was that slow; he just knew that Eckhart was that fast.

“Wonderful, wrap it up. I’ll take it all.”

Eckhart packaged up the sausages, and Lorenzo’s card dinged in the reader. It was a heavy purchase. He bid the local butcher farewell and returned to his brother’s car.

“So, what do you think?” Danny asked.

“Put another team together. I want that man wiped off the face of the earth.”

This was not the first time Lorenzo had given such an order. Danny had heard his brother decide the fate of many men, but all those times, his voice was either chilled with the cold callousness of doing business, or burned with the flames of anger and retribution. Now, there was only fear. To display such a feeling, Danny felt inclined to bust Lorenzo’s balls, but wisdom prevailed. After all, instead of mocking his brother’s fear, he felt it would be smarter to share it.

Later that evening, after the sign on the door was flipped from OPEN to CLOSED, a car pulled up in front of the shop. Eckhart, doing his daily cleanup, paused and looked out the window. Several men stepped out of the car, all of them wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns, each tipped with suppressors. He locked eyes with the men through the front window.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Eckhart muttered.

The driver pressed down on the horn, emitting a continuous bellow that echoed across the district. Using the sound for cover, the men raised their guns and opened fire, raining hellfire upon the storefront. Glass shattered, wood splintered, plaster disintegrated, and metal chimed as bullets ripped through everything. Outside, the noise of the shots was smothered by the suppressors and car horn, yet the ringing of shell casings bouncing on the pavement was clear as day.

Eckhart ducked down behind the counter as his shop was torn to shreds. The gunmen seemed to have expected this and lowered their aim, focusing on the counter and forcing him to crawl for his life towards his freezer. Multiple bullets grazed him as he moved, and the sound of them shredding everything in their path hammered his ears, while smoke and powdered debris got in his eyes and made it a struggle to see.

There were multiple brief pauses as the gunmen stopped to reload, then the bullets flew once more. Eckhart reached the freezer and wormed his way inside, just as the kitchen was pulverized. The gunmen were leaving no spot untouched. Once the shop was riddled with holes and on the verge of collapsing under its own weight, incendiary grenades and gas cans were lobbed inside. They exploded with waves of fire that spread and splattered, turning the shredded building into a roaring inferno. With the butcher shop burning beyond control and the street filled with bullet casings, the men got back in their car and drove off, soon replaced by fire engines and cop cars.

Sitting in his office, nursing a glass of whiskey, Lorenzo waited for his phone to ring. This was a perilous move and would draw much unwanted attention, but it had to be done. He was a criminal, a murderer, yet what he had faced in that shop was evil in its truest form. Despite every crime and sin Lorenzo had committed in his life, everything he had done to get where he was, this act of violence, this epitome of destruction, was done not simply for his sake. It was ordered by the little voice in his head, the instinct known as the human conscience, telling him that for the sake of mankind, this evil had to be burned until only ash remained, the demon cast back into the fire from whence it came.

Finally, he got the call. “It’s done.” The words put his heart at ease and untied the knot in his stomach. Now, he could sleep peacefully.

The next day, the butcher shop fire was all over the news. Even in a city like Philadelphia, such audacious violence shocked the community. The locals were mourning Eckhart after charred remains were found among the ashes of the destroyed freezer. The poor man had tried to escape the bullets, but the flames got to him in the end. At the local precinct, Detective Hewn was sorting through a mountain of evidence pointing to the syndicate, but there were no fingerprints, fibers, or anything that could clearly list a name. He was just one of many detectives working against the mob, now trying to find justice for the beloved local butcher.

A week into the case, a call came that demanded Hewn’s attention and pulled his eyes from the ashes. There was a murder reported at the home of a man with known mob affiliations. Hewn arrived to find the street filled with cop cars, forensics vans, and an ambulance, while neighbors watched the scene of death like vultures, hungry for details. Officers were speaking to a sobbing Hispanic woman on the front steps, who, judging from the bag of cleaning supplies at her feet, appeared to be the housekeeper. Hewn passed by, slipping under the police tape blocking off the front door. Inside, the forensics team had just started their work, with their victim right where they found him. It was a man tied to a chair in the center of his living room. His clothes were removed, and he had been meticulously covered with crisscrossing slashes in a net pattern, leaving him caked in blood.

“Sweet Christ,” Hewn muttered.

“Looks like this guy suffered just as badly as Big J,” said the auburn-haired FBI agent already there, trying to get a closer look without stepping on the dried puddle of gore that had pooled below the body. It was already marked with countless footprints, left behind by the killer as he leaned over the bound man, cutting him over and over. Agent Madison was the department’s resident fed, a go-between between them and the bureau for all things mob-related.

“I’m going to guess he bled to death. What else do we have so far?”

“The cleaning lady found him like this. Hewn, meet Peter Wuhl. He has some small priors on his rap sheet, but he’s been implicated in various mob activities. He must have really pissed off Lorenzo Avecto for this kind of punishment.”

“The mob has always been brutal, but this is going way too far. The Kosh incident was an act of elimination, but this? Madison, I look at this and see evil.”

“Apparently Avecto’s escalating in his methods for dealing with problems. Maybe he’s still trying to prove to everyone how tough he is.”

“His hold on the mob must be really weak if this is what he does to send a message. All these killings, and so public, too. But who in the world does he have working for him that could do this to someone?”

Agent Madison turned to a member of the forensics team, wrapped in his sanitation suit.

“Have you found anything yet?”

“The door showed signs of forced entry, and he seemed to have been moved here from his bed during the night. The residue on his face confirms the use of chloroform, but from the ligature marks on his wrists and ankles and the way he was chewing on the gag in his mouth, he was clearly awake and conscious for most, if not all of the torture.”

“I saw there was also blood in the kitchen sink, so the killer must have washed his hands after,” said Madison.

“Or his tools,” said Hewn.

Hewn’s phone began to ring, and he stepped outside to answer it. Out in the street, officers were busy canvassing the area, searching for anyone who might have seen or heard something. Looking down the road, Hewn spotted a parked car with two men inside, watching the scene intently. If they were locals, they’d be standing on the sidewalk, meaning they had driven here to survey the scene. As Hewn approached, the driver started the car and drove off, but he already had a good idea of who they were. The victim inside was part of the mob, and the men were his coworkers. Were they there to observe the police studying the cruel fate bestowed upon the fool who had angered their boss? Or were try trying to figure out what was going on, the same as he was?

The investigation continued, scrutinizing every detail of the Wuhl home in search of clues as to the perpetrator. However, there was no trace of the killer to be found, as if they were chasing a ghost. However, there was a small lead that gave the detectives hope.

“Hewn, look at this,” said Madison. “It’s an ATM camera.”

He approached her desk, looking over her shoulder at the computer screen, where a wiry man with crazed hair was projected through a fish eye lens.

“When was this?”

“Around three hours after Peter Wuhl’s estimated time of death. We got a call from the bank. Apparently, his accounts were drained early this morning.”

“He looks homeless. There’s no way this junkie killed Wuhl, even for money. They’re more smash-and-grab, not slow, meticulous torture. He keeps looking to the side. The killer must have put him up to it and was watching him from the sidelines.”

“If you’re cutting someone like that, you might as well interrogate them for their bank accounts. Any updates from the neighbors?”

“No one heard or saw anything, and forensics haven’t pulled up anything yet. Whover this guy is, he’s good.”

“Then this tweaker here might be our only witness.”

Hewn and Madison left the station, heading for the street where the ATM was used. They canvassed the area with a picture of the man caught on camera, asking local businesses, residents, and homeless people if anyone recognized him. If they did, they weren’t saying.

“What I don’t understand is why this street. Of all the ATMs in the city, why come all the way to this one?” Madison asked.

“I’ve been looking around, and have yet to see a single camera. Traffic cams, security cams, nothing. That one ATM is the only thing keeping this street from being completely in the dark. I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

“Our guy is good. He is very—” Madison was cut off as Hewn stopped her.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing at a manhole cover at their feet. “This rust was chipped recently.”

With no shortage of effort, Hewn lifted the manhole cover, opening the sewers below. He climbed down the dirty ladder with Madison shining her light down upon him.

“Aw fuck!” she heard him exclaim.

“You all right?” Madison asked.

“I am, but my shoes aren’t. Or my socks. Or even my pants for that matter. Hold on.”

She saw Hewn’s light click on down below. “Anything down there?”

“Well, I found our witness. But I can’t say he’ll be very useful us. Looks like he was silenced after he stopped being useful to our guy.”

While Hewn and Madison went digging in the sewers, Danny Avecto walked quickly through his brother’s nightclub, making his way to the office upstairs. “Have you heard this shit?” he asked his brother.

“Yes, Wuhl was killed. I know. Sounds like someone had a bone to pick with him. We’ll find who did it.”

“But do you know how he was killed?”

Lorenzo paused his work and looked up. “What happened?”

“They found him tied to a chair in his living room, sliced up like he had been tossed in a food processor. Just cuts going across his whole body, hundreds of them. The man was tortured to death.”

“The butcher…” Lorenzo muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s assume that this is a rival group trying to encroach on our territory. This is their declaration of war. Get me info on all the gangs in the city; the Russians, the cartels, everyone, and look for anything new that’s going on. New leaders, new members, anything that would suggest someone is making a move on us.”

“On it.”

Danny left, and Lorenzo turned and looked out the window. He hoped desperately that it was just another act of mob violence. Money, power, those were the endgame of this threat. He hoped for that to be the case, for those were things that could be understood. But this chill in his blood, this weight in his stomach, this shiver in his spine, if they were right, then this was an act of pure, unmitigated malice, performed by a demon refusing to be cast back into Hell.

Three days after the death of Wuhl, gunshots echoed, but were heard by no one. Down in his basement, another of Lorenzo’s subordinates was doing some target practice. Jake Kurland’s basement had been turned into a personal shooting range, heavily soundproofed to keep from drawing the neighbors’ ire. Word of Peter Wuhl’s death had circulated through the syndicate, and Jake had no plans of meeting the same fate. He put round after round into the paper target hanging at the end of the room, imagining he was plugging lead into Wuhl’s killer. Beside him lay numerous different firearms, from pistols, to shotguns, to even a sniper rifle, along with countless boxes of varying ammunition.

The soundproofing of the basement worked wonders. He didn’t even hear the front door of his home being opened. And with the combination of his ear protection and the deafening cracks of gunshots, he didn’t hear his dog barking, nor the cry as it was silenced. It was impossible for him to hear the footsteps coming down the stairs, and the smell of gunpower covered the stink of blood. His only sensation was the solid blow he received to the back of the head, erasing all others and dropping him into darkness.

Jake eventually woke up, finding himself at the other end of the range. He was bound by his wrists, hanging from the ceiling. The back of his head was throbbing and his vision was blurred, but he knew there was someone there with him. The end of the firing range was well-lit to illuminate the target, while near the door, there were fewer lights, so he could only see the figure in silhouette.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jake asked.

“Ah, you’re awake. I hope you don’t mind, I was just admiring this arsenal of yours. It’s very nice. Everything is well-oiled and maintained. I respect a man who takes proper care of his tools.”

Jake struggled against his binds. “Get me down from here, you fuck!”

“Shall I try to shoot the rope like in those old westerns?”

The stranger raised a 9mm pistol and fired, striking James in the right hand and severing one of his fingers. Jake screamed in agony as blood poured from the shredded digit.

“My apologies. When it comes to firearms, I’m normally a much better shot. However, it’s been quite a while since I used one, so my aim is a bit, well, hit and miss, as you might say.”

“You fucking asshole! Just wait until I get down from here! I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Now, now, no need to fuss. Let me try again.”

He fired another shot, hitting Jake’s left hand and blasting off his thumb, drawing another howl of pain.

“Oh dear, I’m just all thumbs today, aren’t I? While you, well, you’re more the opposite.”

“What do you want from me?!”

“I want you to tell me about all your friends and coworkers. I want to know about their homes, their routines, and anything else you have swirling around in your head.”

“Fuck you. I ain’t selling out my buddies.”

The stranger finally circled around the bench and approached Jake, and as he stepped into the light, Jake felt his blood run cold. The black apron and gloves, the knives hanging on his belt, the bloody mask with the scrawled smile, they robbed Jake of all courage. It wasn’t just Eckhart that survived the fire. His trunk, holding all of his tools and mementoes had been recovered.

“You know, of all the ways I’ve killed people in the past, my favorite method is knives. You can take your time and REALLY get in there for a nice, personal, intimate murder. That said, guns are certainly not without their charms. True, they’re so fast, able to extinguish a life like a candle, they can sometimes ruin the fun and make killing so impersonal. But if you use them right, they can be a lot of fun and make things more efficient.

See, long before my time, if you wanted to extract secrets from someone, you’d have to grab a hammer, walk all the way over to them, and smash their kneecap. But guns make it so much easier. I can just…” Eckhart leveled the pistol and shot Jake in the knee, once again filling the basement with an anguished howl. “Look at what I’ve done to you with just the pull of a finger. So little effort for so much damage. And that’s just with a 9mm. Once I pick a larger caliber, then it gets more fun.”

He returned to the bench and picked up a .357 magnum. “You gotta love that big, fat revolver. The look, the weight, the feel, so powerful and iconic. Despite my accent, I was born in this country and grew up watching the same action movies you did, so I can certainly appreciate both the appearance and power of a good revolver.” He shot Jake in the other knee, blowing a much larger hole in his leg and a gush of blood. “Ah, and that splatter! So satisfying! So beautiful! That’s something you can’t get with knives. True, you can achieve a nice spray if you slash an artery, but only a gunshot can give you that explosive burst of crimson.” He aimed lower, putting a round in Jake’s shin and splashing blood on the wall behind him. “I could do this all night. It’s so much fun!”

“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you whatever you want!” Jake screamed, his face wet with blood, tears, and snot.

“I knew you would.”

Eckhart asked his questions and Jake was quick to answer. Like Aimes and Wuhl, he gave names, addresses, and personal details of everyone he knew in the syndicate, and Eckhart compiled it with all of the information he had already received. Whenever he gave an answer that Eckhart didn’t like, whether due to ignorance or an attempt to lie, he received a bullet, but just like with his slashes, Eckhart was careful to avoid hitting organs or major arteries.

“Ok, you’ve answered all of my questions,” said Eckhart, walking back to the bench.

Jake, bloody and sobbing, looked up. “Are you going to let me go?”

“Let you go? Why would I do that?” He picked up a shotgun and chambered a round. “Didn’t I tell you I could do this all night?”

The next day, calls to Jake went unanswered. Nobody had seen him, and Lorenzo felt a familiar chill. He sent Danny and two other men to his home to check on him. They opened the door with their guns raised, ready for anything. In Danny’s shirt pocket, his phone was on speaker, with Lorenzo on the other end.

“Jesus, the dog is dead. Ah man, Booster was a good boy,” said Danny.

“You can mourn later. Find Jake,” Lorenzo ordered.

“Yo, Danny,” one man said, pointing to the ajar basement door.

They moved down the basement steps into the darkness. “Christ, it stinks down here. It’s like snorting straight gunpowder.” Danny muttered while feeling around for the light switch. The lights came on, and one of the men immediately turned and vomited onto the floor, not that anyone could blame him.

“Sweet mother of God,” Danny cursed. He had never been a particularly religious man, but he instinctively crossed himself, desperate for any form of protection he could get.

“What is it? Danny, tell me what you see!” Lorenzo yelled.

“We… uh… we found Jake. It’s bad, bro. It’s really bad.”

“Body bag?”

“More like a trash bag. And a snow shovel.”

Jake lay at the end of the shooting range, reduced to a pile of shredded flesh and splintered bone. The wall behind him was splattered with blood, while the ground was covered in hundreds of bullet casings of all calibers. One of his severed arms, stripped of flesh by countless rounds and reduced mostly to a branch of bloody bone, still hung from the ceiling. It was the only recognizable piece of his body. Everything else had been utterly liquified by bullet after bullet, long after Jake died.

“What is this, man? What is this shit?!” one of Danny’s henchmen exclaimed in a rightfully fearful panic.

“Shut up!” Danny barked as he took a picture and sent it to Lorenzo. “Bro, this some fucked up shit. Whoever did this fired enough bullets into his body to win a war. A picture of this should be in the dictionary, right next to the definition of ‘overkill’. What do you want us to do?” Several silent moments passed by. “Lorenzo?”

“You said it yourself, a trash bag and a snow shovel. Scoop Jake’s remains and all the bullet casings into a trash can and dump him in the ocean. Then burn the house down. By the time firefighters show up, I want his house to be a roaring inferno that all the water in the sea couldn’t extinguish. Leave no traces of what happened here.”

“But what did happen here?” Danny didn’t get an answer, realizing his brother had hung up. Danny turned to one of the men with him. “Go get a shovel.”

Six days after the Wuhl murder, and Hewn and Madison still had no leads. The perp left no prints, fibers, or DNA. He was a ghost. However, they were called out to the sight of a new murder. They came to an apartment building to find the street filled with cop cars and forensic vans just like before, and in the lobby, officers were speaking with the victim’s family. The wife cried as she answered the cops’ questions, while the young son stared into space with dead eyes, his soul scorched by trauma.

“Detectives!” a cop said while following them into the elevator.

“What do we have so far?” Hewn asked as the doors closed.

“Vic’s name is Frank Herbert, found by his wife and kid. They left to go visit relatives over the weekend while he stayed behind to repaint the apartment.”

“And how was he found exactly?” Madison asked.

“It’s better if you see for yourself.”

Hewn and Madison went up the unit in question, where just like before, nosey neighbors were standing in their doorways, trying to glean details. As they approached, they picked up the smell of blood and paint wafting out of the apartment. They arrived to find a body hanging upside-down from the ceiling in the den, showing signs of repeated branding with something metal. His head was missing, and below him sat a large bucket, encrusted with paint and gore mixed together. The walls of the den and kitchen had been painted with the mixture, what should have been a calming bird egg blue instead a horrific mauve. It was immaculate, not a single speck, drop, or smear out of place, and extending into the adjacent hallway and kitchen. The forensics teams were even taking pictures of the trashcan, where used painter’s tape, stained with blood and paint, had been discarded.

“Hewn, what the fuck are we dealing with here?” Madison asked.

“I have no idea.” He looked around the den as the forensics team took pictures and tagged evidence. All around him was blood. No cleaning agents or chemicals could wash away the gore, could purify this scene of evil. Even if the very drywall was ripped out, and every last blood cell removed, no one, upon finding out what had transpired in this apartment, would ever move in. “This wasn’t done quickly. Our guy took his time to paint this right. The corners, the window frames, the floor, he was careful about all of it. He used fucking painter’s tape for fuck’s sake. I’ve paid money for inferior work.”

“Do you know what it would take for someone to do this?” Madison asked. “To bleed a man like a dead deer and then meticulously paint almost an entire apartment unit? The dedication, the patience, its horrifying.”

“Lorenzo Avecto must really be trying to send a message to his enemies here. He’s culling the herd in the most gruesome ways imaginable.”

Madison touched the wall and examined the mixture of paint and blood on her fingertips. “I’m starting to think that Avecto didn’t do this. I don’t think these murders are a message FROM him, but a message TO him.”

“You thinking a rival gang? Cartels have been known to do some sick shit.”

“Hmmm, could be.”

Three days later, Eckhart was busy with his next victim. In the quiet suburbs, screams of agony, terror, and grief lay sealed behind clenched teeth and within paralyzed throats. The man Eckhart was working on was lying on his dinner table, spread eagle and limp as a rag from the drug he had been stuck with, leaving him unable to move, but aware of every sensation. He could only silently sob as he mourned his wife and children, all of whom had already met the same fate he was about to. Their blood soaked the table beneath him, the wood lined with countless cuts and chips from Eckhart’s cleaver.

“I’m sure you’re wondering something at this moment, a single word echoing through your mind, the unspoken scream bouncing off the inside of your skull,” Eckhart said, circling the man while securing his restraints. Just because he was drugged didn’t mean Eckhart wasn’t going to take precautions. He hadn’t lasted this long without playing it safe.

“Why? That’s the word, isn’t it? Why. Why am I doing this to you? Why did I come into your life to inflict so much suffering? Why would God allow me to walk the earth? It’s because a certain man you’re affiliated with decided to make me his enemy.” With the restraints secured, Eckhart then tied a torniquet around the man’s wrist and flattened his hand. “Deep breath, now.”

WHACK!

Eckhart swung his cleaver, slicing off the tips of the man’s fingers. Blood spurted from the wound, and a groan of agony slipped from the man’s lips as tears streamed down his eyes.

“Lorenzo Avecto, you know that name, yes? You did some work for him, according to Frank Herbert. He gave up your name under similar circumstances.”

WHACK!

He swung again, cutting off the second knuckles of the man’s fingers. The torniquet did its work, restricting the blood flow so his victim wouldn’t die too quickly.

“You see, Lorenzo sent some men to kill me and even burned down by home and place of business, leaving me with nothing, nothing but old habits and skills.”

WHACK!

The man’s fingers up to the knuckle were now gone, added to the thick mess of butchered flesh on the table.

“So, I’ve decided to use those skills once more. He took away everything from me, so I’m going to take away everything from him.”

WHACK!

Half the man’s hand was gone.

“But this isn’t vengeance, no, no. I’m frustrated that I have to rebuild everything from the scratch, but if anything, I’m grateful to him.”

WHACK!

Off went the thumb.

“He gave me the greatest gift a man like me can receive, a blessing the likes of which cannot be properly put into words.”

WHACK!

The man’s hand was fully removed. Eckhart removed the torniquet from his wrist and tied it around his elbow.

“He gave me an excuse.”

WHACK!

The man’s wrist came off.

“For these past eight years, I’ve tried to put my past behind me, tried to tell myself that I’d had enough torture, killing, and mutilation for a lifetime.”

WHACK!

Another inch of the man’s arm was severed, and another mark left on the table beneath him.

“As you can see, that wasn’t the case. I still have so much more… passion… in me.”

WHACK!

The cleaver cut through bone like it was a candy bar.

“But I still tried to restrain myself, ignoring my desires so I could maintain a comfortable life of peace and quiet.”

WHACK!

Each cut hurt as much as the first, with the man silently begging and praying for death, but Eckhart was going to drag this out as long as he could.

“But once that comfortable life was gone, I no longer had any need to hold back.”

WHACK!

“When you’ve lost everything, you’re free to anything. Don’t you think that’s true?”

WHACK!

“And of course, how better to exercise my new freedom and indulge my old habits then by turning my attention to the man who gave me this wonderful gift?”

WHACK!

“The man who was surrounded by so many friends and underlings, each one a new toy for me to play with.”

WHACK!

“How could I resist such a vast reservoir of entertainment? It’s like how a predator will follow behind a herd of prey, sticking close to his food source and picking them off one by one.”

WHACK!

“Each man I kill leads me to the next one. I have a whole list of names just waiting to be crossed off.”

WHACK!

Eckhart had reached the man’s elbow, so he again moved the torniquet, this time to his shoulder.

“Still, I’m not sure that fully answered your questions. I doubt that extinguished the flames of ‘why’ burning within you.”

WHACK!

Blood splattered on Eckhart’s mask.

“Why did I kill your children first and make you watch?”

WHACK!

The man whimpered and sobbed in agony.

“Why did I then kill your wife while you could do nothing to save her?”

WHACK!

Gore dripped off the table, adding the vast puddle of viscera soaking through the floorboards below.

“It’s because when the police find you, I want them to know I made you watch.”

WHACK!

Eckhart scraped the severed portions of the man’s arm off the table.

“When Lorenzo learns about your fate, I want him to know I made you watch.”

WHACK!

“I want the WORLD to know I made you watch.”

WHACK!

“Because that is who I am.”

WHACK!

“Killing is what I was born to do.”

WHACK!

“I spent eight years trying to deny it, but the fact is that to deliver death and pain is my reason for living.”

WHACK!

“I am an artist, and this is my art.”

WHACK!

“And you and your family will be another masterpiece.”

WHACK!

Having reached the man’s shoulder, he stopped to catch his breath.

“Now then, let’s start on the other arm, shall we?”

The next day, Hewn arrived at Lorenzo’s nightclub with a furious scowl. No one was around except for members of the mob, all of them flashing dirty looks and waiting for any excuse to deal with the intruder.

“I’m here to speak to your boss,” he grunted to the bartender while flashing his badge.

“Unless you get a warrant, no one goes in,” the mafia thug scoffed.

Hewn pulled a photograph out of his jacket and slid it across the bar. “You mean a warrant for this?”

“Sweet mother of Christ!” the bartender exclaimed.

Hewn grabbed him by the collar. “Where is Lorenzo Avecto?!”

“He’s upstairs! Leo will take you! Leo, show him to the boss!”

One of the younger members, surprised and confused, jumped to his feet. “Uh… sure. Right this way.”

The young man brought Hewn upstairs, where two guards were standing by a door to Lorenzo’s office. “Big man’s in a meeting. No one interrupts,” one of them warned. In response, Hewn shoved his way past them and went into Lorenzo’s office. Inside, Lorenzo sat behind his desk, speaking with several business associates, all of whom jumped to their feet as Hewn stormed in. He drew his gun and pointed it at Lorenzo’s forehead, with everyone in the room aiming at him.

Lorenzo had yet to make a move, and he looked calmly at Hewn despite the barrel of his gun just inches from his face. “You have my attention, but I believe introductions are in order.”

“Detective Robert Hewn, Philly PD. I know who you are.”

“Well, detective, I get the sense that you have urgent business with me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t make such an unbelievably stupid mistake like bursting uninvited into my place of business, interrupting my meeting, and pointing a gun at me. Bad things happen to those who show such disrespect, even if they have a badge.”

“Things like what happened to Keith Ofter?”

“What are you talking about?”

Hewn slapped the photo down on Lorenzo’s desk. “This is what I’m talking about. Forget an arrest, forget proper procedures, forget a trial, anyone who does this shit in my city gets put down, and I don’t care what happens to me so long as they’re burning in Hell.”

Lorenzo looked at the picture, momentarily confused, but as he processed the image, his demeanor broke. For the sake of maintaining appearances in front of his associates, he tried to put on a brave face, but all of them could see that he was deeply unnerved. Hewn then turned to them, all the men still with their guns pointed at him.

“I bet you’re all curious. I just came back from the home of a Mr. Keith Ofter, someone who works for your friend here. He, his wife, and his three children had been hacked to pieces and arranged into a… a… a meat pyramid atop their dining room table! The entire kitchen floor was drenched in blood and dripping into the basement!”

The men all paled and lowered their weapons. They were all criminals, each having blood on their hands in one form or another, but to literally butcher a family of five went far beyond their limits. They specialized in organized crime, but this was on the level of a war crime.

Hewn turned back to Lorenzo. “From that look on your face, I’m going to assume you didn’t do this, but it was clearly your actions that set this all in motion. Peter Wuhl, Frank Herbert, and now Keith Ofter, the three most gruesome murders of my career, all one after another because of you. What did you do? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

Lorenzo looked at his associates. “Leave us.”

The men all departed, leaving Hewn and Lorenzo alone. Lorenzo returned the photograph. “It’s not just those three men. Several other of my employees have met equally horrific ends. We simply cleaned up the mess before you could find out.”

“You mean like the fire at Jake Kurland’s house?”

“I didn’t say anything about a fire.” Hewn rolled his eyes. “A few days ago, we found one of my men dead. He had been renovating his house and adding a room upstairs. He wasn’t answering any calls, and when we went to his place, we discovered his corpse riddled with hundreds of nails driven into his flesh with a nail gun, like a human pin cushion. They had all been meticulously placed to avoid killing him, to prolong his suffering as much as possible. Three days between kills, that seems to be his pattern.”

“Who the fuck is doing this?”

“I have the feeling that he’s gone by other names, but you know him as Eckhart Koch.”

“Eckhart Koch? You mean the bu—” he paused, struck by a horrifying revelation. “The butcher.”

“Eight men went into his shop. The first, you found beaten to death with a crowbar. The other seven were never seen again, at least not in a way they might be recognized. Altogether, he has murdered thirteen people, but those are the only ones I know about. I sense he has killed far, far more than that throughout his life.”

“And burning down his place, what was that? Retribution?” Lorenzo didn’t answer. “I’m not wearing a fucking wire. Just answer the damn question.”

“That was not retribution, so much as an exorcism by fire. I am a businessman, and everything I’ve done, no matter how cruel or violent, was always the unfortunate means to an end, the cost of doing business. Eckhart Koch is something else. I saw it in his eyes. He is evil in its truest form. Had I succeeded in killing him with those bullets and flames, it would have been the most altruistic act of my life, for it would have ridden the world of an inhuman monster. Burning down his place… I had hoped that would end him. I was so wrong. Until then, he had been content just to kill whoever I sent into his shop. The evil was contained like a genie in a bottle, but I set him loose upon the world.

When Peter Wuhl was discovered, I hoped that it really was the act of a rival gang, but soon I had to face the truth. Eckhart Koch is still alive, and he’s coming after me and everyone around me. As you saw, my men’s families aren’t safe either. I’ve been scouring the city ever since, looking for him, trying to finish what I started and put an end to this horror.”

“Well, this isn’t your fight, not anymore. As much as I would love to let him continue exterminating you and your underlings, he’s crossed a line, and now the blood of women and children have been spilled. The police are going to deal with this. If he’s after you and your men, then that gives us an idea of where he’ll strike next. We need a list of all of your associates so that we can put them under watch. When Koch makes his move, we’ll catch him in the act.”

“You must take me for a fool if you really expect me to give you a list of names. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? A list of everyone you should put behind bars and an exclusive look into my business. What good will it do me if Koch is dead and I and all my men end up nailed to the wall?”

“This isn’t just about your men! Their families are now in danger as well!”

“And you think they’ll be safe if I sell out my friends? Their families will be dragged through the mud and left destitute. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No, I will not surrender everything I have to you cops and your DA just for a shred of protection.”

“After all the lives lost, you still think you can win this on your own? Fine, then let every drop of blood from here on be on your head.” Hewn turned around to leave and then stopped. “You said that the other seven were never seen again, at least, not in a way they’d be recognized. What did you mean?”

Lorenzo sighed and went to a nearby drinks fridge. Operating above a nightclub, it was easy to have any liquor he wanted sent up to his office, but there were times, such as during important meetings or when he needed peace and quiet, that it was better to keep the door shut and just reach into the fridge and pull out the good stuff. He came back, holding the frozen package of sausages from Eckhart’s shop, still sealed with the sticker.

“I bought this from Koch before burning down his shop. He said people had been snatching them up. Give this to your forensics office and have them test it.”

“Test it for what?”

“I think you know.”

Hewn paused, hesitant to receive the package. “Are you being serious?”

“Never in my life have I been more desperate to be wrong. The evil of Eckhart Koch extends far beyond his crimes against my organization.”

The next day, Hewn and all of the other detectives in the precinct were called into the captain’s office.

“Shut the door behind you,” the old man said, now looking like he had suddenly aged ten years. Standing beside him was a woman from the forensics lab, looking equally disturbed.

“What’s going on?” Hewn asked.

“We retested the human remains found in the ruins of Eckhart Koch’s shop. It’s not him.”

“What are you talking about?” another detective asked.

The woman from the lab laid a file on the captain’s desk. “We collected hair from a brush in the apartment above the shop belonging to Koch and matched it to blood splatters found in the shop from the initial gunfire, but it doesn’t match any of the remains found in the freezer.”

“Then who did you find in there?”

“The remains of half-a-dozen men in that freezer, four of which have priors.”

“It seems Lorenzo was telling the truth about the men going in and never coming out,” said the captain.

“We also tested the frozen sausages Detective Hewn gave us. They were… human.”

“Meaning Eckhart Koch has been killing people and feeding them to his customers.”

The captain’s words shocked all of the detectives. The murders they had seen were bad enough, but this was a whole new definition of sinister, with the fallout beyond what anyone could imagine.

“Now we know why the Avecto went to such extremes to kill one little shopkeeper,” said Madison. “He’s been at war with Koch since he killed that mugger, and he’s been slaughtering and eating his men. He survived the fire and he’s going after the mob and their families.”

“Now, instead of worrying about the mob, we have a cannibalistic serial killer on the loose, and God knows how many customers have been victimized by him. He’s still out there, and when this gets out, the entire city is going to explode in a panic. It’s going to be biblical. For now, we forget about the mob and all other cases. Whatever you’re all working on, shelve it. We need to find Eckhart Koch no matter what the cost, before the details leak to the press. Hewn, you’re leading this one.”

“We know he’s going after the mob, so all we have to do is use them as bait. We’ll put squad cars outside of their homes and wait for him to show up. Avecto wasn’t willing to give up any names, but we have plenty on file. We just have to pick someone we already know.”

“Koch has likely been doing this for a long time, meaning that he’s had a lot of experience in evading the police,” said Madison. “I’m not sure he’ll be that easy to catch.”

“We know his name and his face, so the hard part is over,” said the captain. “This is no longer a case to be solved, it’s just a manhunt. We won’t stop until he’s in cuffs or in the ground.”

That next evening, officers were stationed outside of the homes of all known mob affiliates. The officers were not in uniform and sat in unmarked vehicles, not wanting to give away their presence. Hewn and Madison waited outside the Avecto estate. The lavish mansion was outside of the city, free from the filth and noise of the concrete jungle, but well within the range of a dedicated killer, and everyone, both cop and criminal, hoped to catch Koch in his inevitable strike against Lorenzo. This wasn’t the first time Hewn and Madison had done a stakeout together, but Madison was unusually quiet, and Hewn had an idea why.

“Are you really still mad?”

“More… at a loss for words for your stupidity.”

“We couldn’t keep tiptoeing around it. Now we know that all these murders weren’t Lorenzo purging his ranks.”

“So you burst into his office and put a gun to his head? You’re lucky you didn’t end up rolled into a carpet and tossed into a dumpster.”

“We can’t afford to take half-measures around this. When we found the Ofter family, I saw red. Lorenzo may not have killed them, but he set this all in motion. He deserved to stare down a barrel, if only that.”

“It was reckless, stupid, and could have done far more harm than good.”

“Save it. The Captain already chewed me out.”

“Not nearly enough. Had you even bothered to consider what would have happened if Lorenzo hadn’t let you walk out of there? You came so close to dying and you don’t even realize it.”

“I realized it, but it was worth it.”

“Jesus, Hewn. Don’t ever have kids. You’ll make orphans of them.”

“Duh. When I first joined the force, my Sergeant said that in law enforcement, you either pick career or family. Try to have it all, and you’ll lose it all. So, I picked career. No wife, no kids, no guilt or judgment. I never have to worry about missing piano recitals, soccer games, dinner with the in-laws, and the bad guys don’t go free because I have to get home and make dinner.”

“Being married to your work is a loveless relationship.”

“Right, like the female FBI agent with a chip on her shoulder never turned down a date or a party because work was more important.”

“At least I go out and get laid when I feel like it. Handsome stranger, a hotel room, some condom wrappers and wine glasses, that’s my date night. You’re probably just hunched over your toilet, muttering angry curses and choking the chicken while your cholesterol climbs ever higher from the fast food you eat, chilling and gathering flies in front of your TV.”

“That was a haunting scene you just painted.”

“Because it’s so accurate. Our lives are hard, but they shouldn’t be miserable.”

“Oh please, what’s wrong with being miserable? I like being miserable. I LOVE being miserable. Where is the rule that says that everyone has to get married and be happy? God forbid someone devotes their life to protecting the community and dealing with bad guys. We go into this line of work because its who we are. For people like us, family is business and work is pleasure. We live for the hunt.”

“Live for the hunt, huh? I wonder if Eckhart Koch has the same inclination.”

Hewn shot her a dirty look. “So, what’s your read on him? You’re the criminal pathologist, tell me about this guy.”

“Koch… he’s not like anything you or I have ever seen before. This evil didn’t suddenly sprout from the ashes of his business. He clearly has a lot of experience in killing, and now he’s using those skills to get back at Avecto for causing trouble in his life. His neighbors all described him as friendly and charming, never giving them any reason to think he was anything but a wholesome local businessman and pillar of the community. It’s a well-honed façade, covering up his sadistic and malevolent nature.”

“Fucking psychopath.”

“Sociopath. Psychopaths have the cruelty, but not the impulse control. His actions may seem rash and impetuous, but it’s the opposite. He’s patient, intelligent, and highly-competent. Everything he does, he does will skill and perspective, able to perform the kind of actions that those with less age and experience would get caught doing. He knows all the tricks and tactics, how to bag his prey while avoiding capture.”

“So how do we stop him?”

Madison shook her head. “With no small amount of luck.”

As the detective and FBI agent argued, Koch was already closing in on his next victim. Keagan Modeli, warned of the three-day pattern by Lorenzo, had taken refuge in the local church. He was friends with the priest, who was letting him hide among the pews overnight. He had considered going to a hotel, but as a man of faith, he wanted to believe that he’d be safe in the house of God. Even with his work for the mob, he still hoped in the light of the divine and its protection, trusting in prayer. He sat on that hard wooden pew, head bowed, gripping his rosary and praying like never before in his life, praying to be saved from the Devil that walked the earth. He was alone, the priest having gone off to do something in the back rooms. All was quiet, with the candles burning without the slightest flicker in the still air.

“It’s amazing to me how bloody hands can still clasp in prayer.”

The voice froze the blood in Keagan’s veins. He had never heard it before, be he knew who it belonged to. That faint German accent might as well have been a power drill boring into his ears. It came from directly behind him, but how in the world had someone managed to sneak up on him? Even while focused on prayer, he should have sensed Koch’s presence. The man was like a ghost, or perhaps a demon would be more accurate.

“Are you going to kill me?” Keagan asked, afraid to turn his head.

“I was thinking we could talk for a bit. But if your hands leave my sight, I’ll take them from you, one finger at a time.”

“Father Stenson will be back any second.”

“No, he won’t. I made sure of that.”

Keagan shuddered. “Why here? Why now? Why me?”

“Why? Why? Why? That’s always the question, isn’t it? I’ve looked into so many eyes, all screaming that word, demanding a reason as if they hope it’ll save them. Would it really comfort you if there was something bigger than you and I, something that aligned the stars for this very moment? If the answer to your question was, “because God said so,” would you stop praying or pray even harder? Would that alleviate your fear, or break your heart?”

“So that’s why. You could have gone after anyone else at any other time, but you chose me, here, and now, because it’s not enough to kill me. You have to target my faith as well. You see me as someone who deserves to die after swallowing your insults and mockery.”

“Do not mistake me for some angsty teenager on a message board, trying to spread the glory of atheism. To me, faith is not born of ignorance or foolishness. It is something inherent to us, as natural to mankind as the blood in our veins. To mock the idea of faith is like mocking the flight or fight instinct. Faith is the color of the world around us, seen through our mind’s eye.”

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to ask you to elaborate so you can monologue?”

“Ah, that venom in your words, the piss and vinegar in your voice, when moments ago, you were shivering in terror. You already know you can’t protect yourself, but you can protect your beliefs. That final inch you will never give up, that last accomplishment your dignity can cling to into your final moments, it lets you find peace in the end and surrender yourself to what is to come. Am I wrong?”

Keagan finally turned to Koch, looking the man in the eye. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but the smile on his face and a predatory gleam in his eye still chilled Keagan’s blood. Regardless, he managed to put on a brave face.

“No, you’re not wrong. My faith gives me courage and guidance. It is my foundation, and no matter what may happen to me in life or death, I can always return to it, like going home. It doesn’t matter what you do to my body, because my soul will forever remain out of your reach.”

“So, it helps you face your fears, is that right?”

“It is.”

“Ironic, then, that what you use to face your fears is born of them. I’m an agent of fear, a long-time scholar of fear, studying it in all its aspects and invocations. Do you know why we believe in the divine? It’s the same reason we believe in conspiracy theories: our fear of chaos, the unknown, and the unpredictable. It’s more comforting to us to believe that bad things happen because they’re supposed to, that it’s all according to someone’s plan, rather than they happen because we have no control over them. A man of faith’s greatest fear isn’t the devil, and a conspiracy theorist’s greatest fear isn’t a shadow government, it is the power of coincidence. We need to see patterns in the world around us, it’s how we function. Patterns allow us to exert control.

Growing up, there was a man on my street who insisted that the Kennedy assassination was a government hit, a ploy, a cover-up, whatever you want to call it. He was into all kinds of conspiracy theories. He said he was embracing the harsh truth that everyone ignored, when really, he was just pursuing another comforting lie. See, it was much easier for him to believe that it took the combined efforts of well-funded and well-organized government agencies to kill the president, and that no one else could have pulled it off, rather than consider the possibility that in our chaotic, fragile world, all it takes is one madman with a gun to completely upend the established order and change history.

It's the same thing with 9/11. There is no way we were so vulnerable and exposed that a bunch of guys from the Middle East could hijack some planes and attack us so brutally. Clearly, it all had to be a carefully-orchestrated false-flag operation by the all-powerful government, and we were never in real danger from outsiders. That’s what they want to believe.

Disease has killed more people than all of humanity’s wars combined, but when COVID came along, so many people were quick to call it a hoax and say that there were mind-control chips in the vaccines, because it was easier to believe that the governments were lying and everything was being orchestrated by the powers that be, rather than accept how vulnerable we still are to sickness and how easy it is for the well-oiled machine that is our society to seize up. People would rather believe that the world is under the complete control of competent evil than face the fact that we’re just the blind leading the blind through a chaotic and indifferent universe.”

“Is there a point to all this?”

“You believe in God for the same reason they believe in conspiracies. When good things happen, you’ll say it’s proof of miracles and answered prayers. When tragedy strikes, you’ll say that God works in mysterious ways, because rather than accepting that suffering and tragedy can befall anyone at any moment. It’s more comforting to believe in necessary sacrifices for the greater good, determined by an inarguable authority who surely has our best interests at heart. You need to believe that there is someone looking after you, that there is a safety net, because you’re too afraid to accept your own frailty.

Tell me something, which idea scares you more? The possibility that I’m an agent of the Devil, a supernatural being not of this world, wielding inhuman cruelty in the ongoing battle between Heaven and Hell, and you are a noble and mighty Christian soldier, beloved by the all-knowing and all-powerful creator of the universe? Or that we are both just simple men? Does it scare you to think that I have a human soul, human malice, human limitations, and human parents? That everything I do, no matter how sadistic and evil, lies within the potential of everyone on Earth, even you? Does it scare you to think that you are a simple flesh-and-blood man, vulnerable and exposed, insignificant and unloved by any higher power, and that the only difference between you and me is our brain chemistry?”

Keagan once more turned back to him. “There is nothing human about you.”

Eckhart chuckled. “And there’s your answer.”

“Then tell me something, what is your comforting lie? What delusion to you cling to as to justify your atrocities?”

“How should I know? That’s an awfully loaded question, after all. We don’t know which lies we tell ourselves. They can only be revealed to us by others. If you want to know what I believe, well, that’s simple. Talk is cheap, but pleasure? That is priceless.”

Eckhart soon departed from a church, the doors remaining shut until the next morning. Those who arrived discovered the beheaded priest in the backroom, and Keagan crucified with his guts spilling onto the floor. If God existed, He wasn’t in that church.

Over the coming days, more and more bodies were found. Despite police stakeouts, Eckhart was too clever to be captured by such tepid half-measures. He surveyed the homes of future victims, and those with guards stationed outside were postponed. Why go for the protected prey when there were so many vulnerable individuals just waiting to be claimed? Not to mention there were plenty of low-level dealers out at night just waiting to be mutilated and put on display. And if any of them were carrying ketamine or similar drugs, he could use them to paralyze his other victims.

Affiliates of the mob, no matter how distant from the matter, were discovered in their homes, mutilated and killed in the most sickening ways imaginable. Anyone who was ever associated with the mob, who they had worked with, who had done favors for them or received favors, they were all targets. Once their names were given during torture, their fate was sealed. He hunted them down, staying busy while circumventing the police’s efforts to catch him. Their friends, family, neighbors, and the police had no idea of their involvement until their defiled corpses were discovered. Many of these men themselves didn’t realize they were in danger until it was too late, thinking that their connections to the mob, so thin as to be almost nonexistent, wouldn’t warrant their deaths. That ignorance kept them from fleeing the city, and made them and their families suffer.

Each of their murders was similar, but had its own unique details. Eckhart’s love of slicing flesh manifested itself in artistic ways, with the cuts on his victims forming patterns and symbols, as if his knives were brushes and the flesh of his victims were his canvas. The autopsies told everything, the cuts revealing whether they were made by knives or cleavers, smooth or serrated.

Just like the lacerated victims, the dismembering and disemboweling were performed when the victims were alive, the bloody chunks used to create displays of the macabre. In one apartment, Hewn found a man’s innards hanging up from the walls and ceiling like streamers for a party, with his butchered body arranged on plates at dinner table as if arranged for a family meal. His severed head was in the middle of the table, the mouth filled with candles, all to celebrate his birthday.

There were also signs that Eckhart had been feeding on his victims. Dirty plates, silverware, pots, and pans were discovered in victims’ kitchens, slick with human fat or sticky with blood, often accompanied with a glass of wine. It wasn’t just him imbibing either. One man had been dismembered and force-fed his own flesh until his stomach ruptured, while a family had been found at their dinner table, forced to eat portions of the father before they were all slaughtered, their bodies caked with blood, tears, and vomit. This had grown far too large to keep hidden from the media and the public.

‘The Butcher,’ a simple nickname, but it adorned the headlines of every local paper, along with his kill count and the leaked details of how his victims met their end and were found. The fact that he had been selling human meat to his customers was kept hidden, but once the truth of his other acts of cannibalism came to light, it was easy enough for the media to speculate and get a lucky guess.

Every night, the police commissioner, the mayor, and everyone of authority even related to the case was grilled as press briefings, with the media demanding to know why Koch hadn’t been found and how long it would be until the streets were safe, but they had few answers to give. His face was plastered everywhere, and every detective in the city was putting everything else on hold to track him down, but he was nowhere to be found.

That said, other methods of trying to catch him were implemented, but he was always three steps ahead. Hewn and Madison would check police and security cameras around the homes of victims, searching for patterns. No cars or license plates appeared more than once, because Eckhart would steal a new car for every murder. No recognizable figures were seen skulking around the area, because Eckhart routinely switched through different outfits and disguises. When the word was put out to look for anyone his age with a German accent, he adopted a different accent. It wasn’t difficult, he just had to adjust his pronunciation a bit and sprinkle some words of other languages, and people would believe it. No matter what trick or tactic the police used to try and catch him, he slipped from their fingers like they were trying to grab smoke.

Lorenzo was similarly putting everything he had into tracking Koch down. Everyone who lived and worked on Koch’s old street, everyone who had ever been reportedly in the same room as him, whether it was a doctor’s office or a classroom, everyone who ever crossed his path and might be inclined to offer him aid or shelter, found their doors being knocked on by hands holding badges and notepads. The police and detectives asked their questions and left with few answers. Later, the doors were banged on by angry fists, fists holding pliers, hammers, and other tools of interrogation. The same questions were asked, but far harsher, and ignorance was not accepted as an answer. Regardless of what was asked or how, every three days brought a new corpse in an ongoing killing spree that left the police and mafia in the dust.

Realizing each one had a target on his back, Lorenzo’s men, those more involved in the syndicate, took the same precautions as women on college campuses, staying in well-lit areas, not going out at night, and moving in closed groups. Several men had cloistered themselves in the home of a mob member, believing that they were safe with guns and numbers. Many of their friends had been murdered in broad daylight, but still, they watched the clocks obsessively, counting down the seconds until night would end and the sun would rise. They drank to calm their nerves, did drugs to amp themselves up, and peered out the windows with itchy trigger fingers.

They thought they were safe, until the first Molotov came smashing through the window, spraying liquid flames across every nearby surface. Others followed, spreading the fire. The men inside, coughing on the acrid smoke, were forced to forsake the safety of the house and rush outside. Eckhart was waiting for them with a cleaver, taking perverse joy in sneaking up behind them and hacking them to pieces before they could fire off a shot.

Eckhart usually stuck to his three-day pattern, only deviating when it was convenient, such as when his victims would flee their homes every third night to avoid him. He used those three days to rest and recover, as well as prepare for the next kill. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t a young man anymore, and though his work at the butcher shop had been physically demanding and kept him in decent shape, the days when he could quickly and quietly hop a fence to sneak into someone’s home were gone. These late-night kills took a lot out of him, and he had to look for easier ways to get close to his victims.

He’d spend his time gathering information on Lorenzo and his men, following them around, scoping their homes and businesses, as well as running errands. He would stay in cheap motels, pay in cash, and move frequently. He only kept what tools, clothes, and other things he absolutely needed, and was careful about leaving no traces. He already had no fingerprints, and he always bagged his trash and cleaned up any place that he could have left his DNA.

As Eckhart whittled down their numbers, he soon began to run low on unprotected victims. Despite his pattern, the police kept officers stationed outside of potential targets every night. Outside of an apartment building, two such officers were getting impatient.

“I can’t believe we’re wasting so much time and manpower protecting these scumbags,” the younger one, Lebowski muttered yet again.

“Yeah, well these scumbags may lead us to the biggest scumbag of them all. We’re not protecting them, we’re using them as bait,” the older cop reminded him while looking through a pair of binoculars at their target’s window. “Seriously, how many times have we already had this conversation?”

“Doyle, bitching is the only thing that’s keeping me awake and alert.”

“Then go get us some coffee for fuck’s sake. Bitching is keeping you awake, but it’ll put me to sleep.”

Lebowski got out of the car, glad to stretch his legs, and went off to gather sustenance and caffeine. He returned minutes later with two cups and a box of donuts. He could see Doyle still in his seat, but the old man seemed to have dozed off.

“Here, I got us some coffee,” Lebowski said as he got back in the car. “There’s donuts, also. If we’re going to spend all this time on our asses, we might as well fatten them up for comfort.” Doyle didn’t respond, and while digging in to a bear claw, Lebowski gave him a shake. “Hey, say something. You can’t just—”

He stopped. Something about Doyle didn’t feel right. Lebowski turned, realizing the man beside him was dead. A wire was wrapped around his throat to keep him upright, and blood was running down the side of his face from a stab wound through the temple, delivered through the open window. His half-open eyes just stared into darkness.

“Jesus Christ!” Lebowski exclaimed, before another wire looped over his own throat and slammed him back against the seat.

The wire dug deep into his skin, cutting off his airway and blocking the arteries carrying blood to and from his brain. There was so much force being exerted on the wire, Lebowski thought his head would be severed. The pain was the only thing rushing through his head, overwriting his training and all other instincts.

“Thank you for the coffee and donuts. These long nights really do a number on me,” he heard behind him.

Lebowski soon went silent, with his dying breath trapped in his lungs by the wire. Eckhart tied it around the headrest to keep the body upright, just as he had with Doyle. He then collected a few things and went to the apartment entrance, pressing the button for his victim’s unit.

“What do you pigs want now?” the annoyed voice grunted

“Mr. Thompson, we need to do a sweep of the apartment, make sure nothing is amiss.”

“You woke me up. I’d say that’s pretty fucking amiss. Leave me alone.”

“You could be saying that under duress. We have to confirm your safety.”

An annoyed grunt echoed through the intercom and the door was unlocked. Eckhart went up to the unit and knocked on the door. Thompson looked through the peephole, seeing Doyle’s badge, and opened the door.

“I swear to God, this had better—”

He was silenced by a knife plunging into his chest, ripping the air from his lungs and leaving him unable to speak. He looked at Eckhart, seeing the malicious grin on his face. “So tell me, how safe do you feel?”

But Thompson couldn’t speak or even scream. The placement of the knife had rendered him silent, and as blood filled his mouth, it took away his ability to stand. He fell to the floor and tried to crawl away, while Koch stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him.

“I’m a little bit pressed for time, so I have to make this quick. But don’t worry, it won’t feel that way to you.”

The death of the two cops and Thompson’s gruesome murder was splashed across the news like blood from an artery. Mafia members, their families, and now police were being targeted. Was anyone in the city was safe? After Lebowski and Doyle, another two cops were killed via a sniper rifle taken from Jake Kurland’s armory. Perched on a large air conditioning unit, Eckhart then gazed across the street into his target’s home. One, two, three. The man, his wife, and his daughter had their skulls blasted open by a trio of well-placed shots. A pair of detectives were blown to smithereens when a bomb under their car exploded. Shooters placed on rooftops, lying in wait and keeping watch over Lorenzo’s men, would suddenly go silent on the radio, later discovered with their throats slashed or their intestines spilled.

With so many dead, the city was in a panic. The streets were cleared at night, doors and windows locked, and police officers tried to keep as much of the city in eyesight as possible. Still, with decades of experience at his disposal, it was easy enough for Eckhart to move around. He had plenty of money from his victims, and changing his appearance to become unrecognizable was a simple matter. He had never had so much attention on him before, always preferring to keep his killing covert and hidden, but this atmosphere of terror excited him. It was the most fun he’d ever had.

The thrill of the kill and the escape, his gruesome work plastered across every form of news media, the national and even international attention he was receiving, he loved it all. He was no stranger to being pursued, having been labeled various nicknames throughout his killing career. However, now it was his true name being spoken by fearful pundits, his true face on newspapers and screens, his true self being scrutinized by the world, forcing the public to acknowledge his existence and the horror he could unleash upon them. He decided to push it even farther.

As night fell upon the city, the docks remained ever active. Ships were arriving from all corners of the globe, and in one warehouse owned by a dummy corporation, Lorenzo’s men were hard at work unloading their newest shipment. Drugs, guns, and other contraband where being moved around and prepared for redistribution. With everything that was going on in the city, all the men were heavily armed, doing their jobs with rifles and submachine guns slung over their shoulders.

Outside, one such man stood guard, muttering curses as he tried to light his cigarette. His lighter was almost empty, with each turn of the wheel shooting sparks and ruining his night vision. The scratching of the flint covered the sound of Eckhart’s footsteps, and finally, when a withering flame finally came alight, it was extinguished by a splash of blood, courtesy of a thrown knife burying itself in the man’s neck. He fell to the ground, spasming and choking on his own blood. Eckhart picked up the cigarette and crouched down, relishing the terror in the man’s eyes as he looked upon his bloody mask and a smile scrawled across it.

“Why do so many of you guys smoke? This is a terrible habit, you know? Smoking kills.”

Once the man released his final breath, Eckhart slipped into the warehouse. Within the labyrinth of crates and shipping containers, he could hear the men working diligently, and began his hunt. Like any predator, he searched for prey moving separately from the pack. He spotted his next victim stepping into the bathroom and followed him. As the man stood over the toilet, relieving himself, Eckhart snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the back. The piercing wound drove all the air from his lungs, leaving him unable to scream, and in that moment of pain and confusion, Eckhart kicked the back of his knee to force him down, and proceeded to drown him in the toilet. With one lung already punctured, it didn’t take long for his life to end. The man’s last thought was how he wished he could have at least flushed first.

As Eckhart turned to leave the bathroom, another man appeared. Spotting his slain coworker and the killer standing over him, the man didn’t know whether to shout for the others or raise his gun and open fire. In that brief fraction of a second, Eckhart slashed his throat. The man fell to his knees, unable to make a sound from his torn windpipe, and with all of his instincts screaming at him to focus on stopping the bleeding. A stab to the temple ended his attempts.

Eckhart continued skulking around the warehouse, soon spotting his next victim moving down an aisle between two walls of crates. Eckhart’s steps were silent as he approached with his cleaver in hand. The man died without ever even knowing what hit him, barely feeling the blade bury itself in the back of his head. Eckhart moved on, keeping to the edges of the warehouse as he locked all the doors so no one could get out. Six men remained, and the absence of three of their coworkers caught their attention. Names were shouted in impatience, answered with silence, and repeated in fear.

“Back-to-back! No blind spots!” one of the men barked.

Rather than split up, the men grouped together, guns raised and pointed in all directions. It was a good strategy, and they were prepared to wait all night like that if it meant they would survive. Then the lights went out. The men grabbed whatever they could use to keep the darkness at bay, be it flashlights, lighters, or their phones. Then, from in the blackness, they heard the rattling of chains hitting a shipping container. It was a rhythmic beat, ceaseless and echoing, forcing their acknowledgment. They couldn’t block it out, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t slip into denial and tell themselves that Koch was warded off by their superior numbers and chose to flee. He was there with them, his presence impossible to ignore or simply wish away.

A few of the men panicked and opened fire, shooting blindly into the darkness and praying to every god they could think of for a lucky hit. The sounds of gunfire calmed them, each thunderous boom an affirmation of their power to defend themselves and kill the intruder, but when their guns fell empty, the soft clicks of their impotence overwhelmed by the rattling of chains, what little courage they had was cast into the breeze like ashes from an urn.

“What do you want from us?!” one man desperately shouted.

The chains stopped; the warehouse was now silent. The quiet the men had hoped for, the end of the infernal rattling, now chilled their blood. Then something flew through the air and hit one of the men before bouncing on the ground. The man instinctively screamed, believing himself wounded and feeling the pain that only fear could give him. The others all shined their lights on the object, recognizing it as the severed head of one of their coworkers.

The man who had screamed, no longer able to control himself, sprinted off into the darkness. He had to get away, to find some exit and flee this horrible place. Every sin he had ever committed, every mistake he had ever made, he would gladly repent for all of it and throw himself at the mercy of the divine in exchange for a modicum of protection from this evil.

“John! Get back here! Don’t leave the circle!” one of his cohorts shouted, feeling like a sailor on a storm-addled ship now taking on water.

They heard John reach one of the exits, but he didn’t seem able to open it, screaming, cursing, and throwing himself at the heavy doors. There was a momentary pause, sounds of shuffling and struggling, and then the screams resumed, but the pitch and desperation had skyrocketed. These were howls of agony, coupled with the ripping and tearing of flesh. The rest of the men were too terrified to move, forced to listen to the anguished cries of their friend, each of them trying not to imagine what was being done to him, so as not to imagine themselves suffering such cruelty.

Each second that passed felt like an eternity, the men begging and praying for John simply to die, for his screams to stop, for some sign that there was an end to horror that awaited them. But Eckhart denied John the sweet release of death, and continued carving away, letting his voice bounce off the walls of the warehouse. Compared to this, the rattling of chains might as well have been a mother’s lullaby.

“Damn it,” one man cursed. “Call the boss! Call the cops! Somebody call somebody!”

Another man pulled out his phone to make the call, but as the light of the screen shined on his face, a knife spun through the air and drove into his eye socket. As he collapsed, the men who had held steadfast against their terror earlier, who had resisted shooting blindly into the dark, opened fire in the direction of the thrown knife. Soon enough, the guns again fell silent and empty, the air thick with the stench of blood and burned powder.

As one man in the group ejected an empty magazine, he released a guttural cry when his throat was slashed from behind. The others all turned, seeing Eckhart there, and as their lights shined upon his bloody mask and knives, they froze in terror, and Eckhart advanced. He dove into their midst with a knife in each hand, slicing and stabbing like a warrior on an ancient battlefield, with each spray of blood adding a fresh layer to his mask. They tried to fight back, swinging their empty guns like clubs, but terror clouded their minds and hindered their movements, and Eckhart slaughtered them.

Soon enough, all the men were on the ground, dead or dying. The dead were the lucky ones, for there was no more pain Eckhart could give them. The living, though, would be fully aware of what would come next. Cops eventually arrived, having received a call of numerous gunshots being fired in the area, but by the time they reached the warehouse, they found it up in flames. All of the contraband that Lorenzo had shipped in was being destroyed, all of it evidence that could have been used to put him away. The last thing Eckhart wanted was for his prey to be whisked off to safe little jail cell.

When Lorenzo received the call that his warehouse had been incinerated, he felt the cold lead weight of dread sink into his stomach. His men had been found mutilated with their empty guns beside them. They had been well-armed and outnumbered Koch, but he still slaughtered them. This was beyond what his men could handle. It was time to bring in reinforcements.

However, not all evidence had been destroyed, for a cardboard box had been discovered next to the bodies with the word “evidence” written on the side. It was brought to the station, where it ended up on Madison’s desk. The box was filled with countless photocopies of newspaper articles and printed texts from webpages, with countless pieces following the Philadelphia murders.

“What is this?” Hewn asked as they went through the box.

“These are all murder reports,” said Madison, flipping through the pages, “and in different languages. English, German, French. And look, there are obituaries too. Wait, I remember hearing about some of these years ago, murders across Europe.”

A chill crawled up Hewn’s spine. “What’s the most recent article, before Koch’s murders?”

Madison looked through the stack. “Here, a missing person’s report from Italy. Dated… eight years ago. Wait a second, how long did Koch say he lived and worked in that butcher shop?”

“I think you already know,” muttered Hewn.

Madison stepped back, as though afraid to hold the paper in her hands. “These are all of his murders. This is everyone he’s killed throughout his life.”

“A lot of these papers look like they were photocopied out of an album or something. Jesus Christ, he’s showing us his trophy collection and claiming responsibility for all of these kills. He wants us to know who he is, who we’re dealing with.”

At that moment, that box of articles might as well have been a mountain of corpses. If it was Koch’s intent to invoke fear, it was working. The entire department was put to work on digging through the box. This was no longer a local issue, but the next chapter in an international killing spree that had been going on for decades, and now Interpol was getting involved. Calls were being made to numerous police departments across Europe, with detectives and investigators in other countries pulling out dusty files and cold cases, finally being given a perpetrator. Walls were blanketed with reports of murders and disappearances, tying together every death, along with countless pictures of grotesqueries and horror, pictures Eckhart had taken himself and now twisted the stomachs of all who looked upon them.

The next day, planes from various nations arrived at the local airport, out of which stepped assassins and hitmen, as well as the detectives and Interpol agents who normally chased them. The call had gone out to the assassins, a bounty that few could resist. However, the job was unusual. Normally, they’d simply receive an encrypted text or email with the name and picture of the target, the bounty, and some details, but a meetup had been requested first. These men and women, agents of death, many of them ex-military or lifelong residents of the criminal underworld, were all being summoned to the Avecto estate. Those who knew each other, whether as friends, acquaintances, or competitors, exchanged nods, scowls, and smirks as their crossed paths brought them to Lorenzo and his brother.

Meanwhile, the detectives and Interpol agents were being corralled into an auditorium to be briefed on the case by Madison. She stood at the front of the room, her young face lined with dread. Everyone before her had the same weariness, the vitality and vigor sapped from their bones by the deathly chill of their cold cases. Koch had perused their nations, plaguing their homelands with death and horror, then fled before he could be brought to justice. Still, there was some fire in their eyes. Finally, after all these years, perhaps they finally had the chance to close the book on the darkest days of their careers, and give relief to the families who had lost loved ones.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said, speaking the same words as Lorenzo, who stood before a crew of hitmen in his dining room.

More than a dozen assassins had gathered with varying demeanors. Some were calm and cool, keeping their cards close to their chest, while others exuded auras of arrogance. One man from Ireland was leaning back in his seat with his feet up on the dining table. Such disrespect would normally invoke a harsh punishment from someone like Lorenzo, but at the moment, he had more important matters to deal with.

“I’ve brought you all here because there is someone that I need erased from existence, and I can’t afford any screwups. Mistakes and underestimations have already cost enough blood.”

“All very hush hush, yes?” a sniper from Egypt muttered. “Your notice didn’t tell us who we’re after, only the price. Five million? That’s a lot of money to throw around for one man.”

“Who are we killing, the president?” the Irishman laughed.

Lorenzo held a remote to a digital projector set on the table, activating it and casting a picture of Koch on the wall. “Your target is Eckhart Koch. If any of you have been paying attention to the news, this name will sound familiar.”

At the police auditorium, Madison had a similar image projected on the wall behind her.

“You are all here for one reason: to help capture the man who is arguably the most prolific serial killer in human history, Eckhart Koch. According to the data provided to us, he has murdered almost three hundred people across several nations.”

“Looks like nothing more than an old pussy,” scoffed a Serbian killer in Lorenzo’s house.

“Isn’t he the man that your media has been calling the Butcher?” A Russian woman beside him with platinum-blonde hair asked.

“Correct. He’s killed dozens of my associates, several of their family members, and numerous police. His crimes go beyond murder and go deep into the realm of the profane.”

“Eckhart Koch’s current target is one Lorenzo Avecto,” said Madison. “A local mafia boss who earned Koch’s ire by burning down his residence and place of business. Ever since, he’s been killing Avecto’s men one by one in brutal, sadistic fashion. Not even their families are safe, and have suffered the cruelest actions imaginable at his hands.”

As Lorenzo spoke, he clicked the remote, cycling through pictures of crime scenes. These were pictures either taken by his own men or leaked to him by cops on his payroll. Images of butchered flesh, defiled corpses, and vast blood splatters stretched across the wall. The assassins and hitmen, most of whom had seen war in one form or another, went silent as the pictures were burned into their brains. Everyone in that room was a killer, a murderer, a criminal, but for all their sins and immorality, all of the lives they had taken, they had been grossly outclassed. When Lorenzo said Koch’s crimes went beyond murder, he wasn’t exaggerating. They were looking upon the actions of true evil.

Likewise, Madison was flashing through case files and pictures Koch himself had provided, stunning the seasoned lawmen before her. They had already witnessed the horrors Koch had inflicted upon their home countries, but to see how far his path of destruction had carried him, how much suffering and death he wrought, they wondered if he was really human. What they were chasing wasn’t a man, but a plague.

The last image was one he had taken of himself, with his apron, gloves, knives, and bloody mask. Countless men and women, who had spent their careers chasing killers, drug dealers, and international crime lords, subconsciously recoiled at the sight. That smile scrawled on the mask through layer upon layer of blood, it was like it was laughing at them, seeing them not as pursuers and enemies, but victims just waiting to meet his blades.

“Eckhart Koch is a man who has perfected killing,” said Madison. “Though his preferred weapon appears to be knives, he’s also been known to use strangulation, guns, explosives, immolation, bludgeoning, drug overdoses, and so on. It’s how he’s managed to avoid detection so long. By frequently changing his method of killing, he’s fooled the world into thinking his murders were done by many different people. He is an expert in avoiding detection and covering his tracks, leaving scores of dead bodies in his wake and disappearing without a trace. He does not discriminate between victims, killing members of every sex, race, ethnicity, and age, and has proven himself adept at subduing armed and trained personnel, be they police and SWAT officers, or well-equipped gang members.”

“Just the other evening, he went to my warehouse on the docks and slaughtered and mutilated everyone inside. Ten men, all of them well-armed and prepared on their own turf, and he put them on display, skinned like rabbits,” Lorenzo warned. “Make no mistake, this will be the fight of your lives and the hardest you’ll ever work. Eckhart Koch has no residence, no means of contact, no patterns or confirmed sightings. He kills and vanishes into thin air, ceasing to exist until his next murder. Everyone I’ve sent after him has never returned.”

“His means of killing follows usually follows a simple pattern. Every three days, he’ll infiltrate the victim’s home, usually at night, immobilize them and their families with ketamine or similar sedatives, and torture them. We believe he does this to gather information on future victims, but mainly to amuse himself. Men, women, and children have all been discovered horribly disfigured and defiled. He’ll also takes what he needs from his victims, be it money, tools, and drugs. Almost every victim thus far has had their cell phone taken, with all attempts to track them fruitless. That said, the moment any of his patterns becomes inconvenient, he’ll deviate, so predicting where, when, and how he’ll strike has been a crapshoot.”

“Five million, that is the reward for whoever can bring me his severed head. I would strongly suggest working together and splitting the money, but if you want to fight amongst yourselves over who gets the prize, I can only offer this advice: wait until after he’s dead. You don’t want to be all alone against him. Given all of the cops he’s murdered, you’ll understand that he is currently the police’s top priority, so you’ll have to circumvent them as well.”

“Due to his own legal circumstances, Lorenzo Avecto has been uncooperative with our efforts and helping us protect his men. However, with all the lives he’s lost, the ground is shrinking beneath his feet. The way things are going, it won’t be long until he’s all alone. We’ve seized his passport and have eyes on him so he can’t go anywhere. So long as he lives and is kept in the city, he is our bait and our link of Koch.”

“You expect us to kill the Devil himself and offer us no leads?” a hitman from Brazil countered.

“He’s been going after my men one after another, breaking into their homes to torture and kill them and their families. My associates, those that the police are aware of, are under their watchful gaze. The rest, I’ll leave you to look after.” As Lorenzo spoke, Danny slid manilla envelopes across the table to everyone. “Their names, numbers, and addresses, as well as every other detail I’ve amassed from this ongoing nightmare. According to his pattern, Koch will come for one of them tomorrow, and when he does, I expect someone here to finish him once and for all.”

Lorenzo went through the group one by one, consigning assassins to protect his underlings. What he didn’t know was that his conversation was being recorded. There was a microphone hidden in the room, placed there by Eckhart himself. For a man of his skill and talent, sneaking past Lorenzo’s security and placing bugs was simple. But if he could slip into Lorenzo’s home, why not simply kill him and get it over with? It was for the same reason that he tortured so many of his victims before killing them: to prolong his fun. As for the police, he knew that the gift he sent them would rile them up, but he wasn’t concerned. No matter how many eyes they put on the streets, he already knew how to blind them when the time came.

“Keep this in mind,” said Madison, “this not about saving some mobster or avenging his henchmen. Nor is this about any individual country and murder. We are here today to put an end to one the greatest ongoing atrocities in the world. Now let’s get to work.”

The evening of the next day, all of Lorenzo’s hitmen were in position at their assigned places. Each assassin was wondering if they would be the lucky one and manage to nail Eckhart to the wall. But fortune would not smile upon them. The only smile they would see would be scrawled in blood. It started with Patrick, the hitman from Ireland. Contrary to his attitude at the mansion, he took his work seriously, and while waiting in an alley across the street from his ward, he was stone-cold and focused.

Then movement caught his eye. On the other side of the street, a man was walking on the sidewalk. It was too dark to see his face, but he seemed to carrying with a duffle bag over his shoulder. The bag was suspicious enough, but the way the man walked stood out to Patrick. He carried himself like someone ready for a fight, someone who had experience in killing.

“My man,” Patrick snickered.

Once the stranger passed by, Patrick silently crossed the street over to the opposing sidewalk and began following him. True, he didn’t know for sure that this guy was Eckhart, but it would be easy enough to check. But then the stranger suddenly ducked into an alley, setting off alarms in Patrick’s head. Had he been made? Either way, he couldn’t let this guy disappear. He drew his gun and slowly approached, ready for anything when he turned that corner, or so he thought. He saw nothing when he faced the alley, for his vision was robbed from him, courtesy of a blinding light.

Having been waiting in the dark for hours, his night vision was well-honed, so all it took was a policeman’s flashlight in Eckhart’s hand to leave him recoiling in pain from his burnt corneas. Then, before he could collect himself or even open fire, Eckhart smacked him in the side of the head with a meat tenderizer mallet. Patrick hit the ground like a felled tree, unmoving, and Eckhart dragged him into the alley. Patrick’s body was discovered the next morning, his skull pulverized into mush by countless hammer blows, but he wasn’t the only murder that night.

Soon after, Bashir, the Egyptian sniper, found himself yawning for the umpteenth time. Perched up on a fire escape, keeping an eye on Lorenzo’s underling, he was doing every mental trick he had to keep from falling asleep, and his general discomfort helped. He was used to waiting for long periods of time, gazing through his scope, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t unpleasant. He could see Lorenzo’s man waiting in bed with a rifle in hand, terrified of dying the same way his friends had. Every three nights, the entire syndicate would forgo sleep, refusing to lower their guard until the sun came up, lest the Butcher catch them like the boogeyman.

However, Bashir pulled his gaze away as he heard rustling down below. He spotted a homeless man digging through the dumpster directly beneath him, muttering crazed half-thoughts. Bashir himself had climbed up onto that dumpster to get to the fire escape. He kept his focus split between the homeless man and his target of protection. For all he knew, the bum could be nothing more than yet another example of the country’s failed mental healthcare system, or he could be an insidious ploy by Koch. Soon enough, the homeless man wandered off, and Bashir returned his focus to Lorenzo’s subordinate.

Unfortunately, his focus was again broken, this time by a horrific smell. It was the smell of burning garbage, and looking down, he saw a fire had started in the dumpster, and it was growing quickly from some kind of accelerant. “Shit!” Bashir cursed, trying to cover his face. The smoke was thick and acrid, and there was no breeze to carry it away. He might as well have been stuck in a chimney. He had two options: either climb down into the street, or up onto the roof.

If he went down, he’d have to jump in order not to end up in the dumpster, which would mean abandoning his rifle, and even then, there was the chance of mechanical injury. If that homeless man really was Eckhart in disguise, he didn’t want to be down on the street, possibly wounded and without his main weapon. He also wasn’t too keen on getting closer to those flames. Going up to the roof would mean exposing himself, or it could be that Eckhart was driving him into a trap up above. Regardless, the roof seemed the better option.

Bashir began to climb, but even while slung over his shoulder, his rifle didn’t make maneuvering up the fire escape easy. What’s worse, his strength was quickly fading, and his lungs and sinuses felt like they were on fire. It wasn’t just garbage that was burning down below. Eckhart had clearly added something extremely toxic, and the fumes were poisoning him with every breath he took.

Each step was harder than the one before it, his sense of equilibrium soon going out the window, followed quickly by his eyesight. He slowed to a crawl, but even that was impossible to maintain as he coughed with every breath he took. It was agony, with the pain spreading through the rest of his body like there was broken glass in his veins. “Not like this. Please, not like this,” he struggled to say, but found he could no longer speak.

Blood filled his mouth as his lungs and airway were eviscerated by the toxic fumes. He finally collapsed, his body cursed with indescribable agony and unable to move. All he could do was lament taking the job, and that he’d end up another name on Koch’s list of victims. These horrific fumes, the blood in his mouth, was this what death tasted like?

As Bashir died on that fire escape, Koch had already moved on to the next assassin. Mariska, the killer from Russia, was employing a hide-in-plain-site approach, disguising herself as a late-night jogger, circling the city block where her ward lived. She’d run a lap around the block to scope the area with a Beretta in the pocket of her sweatshirt, wait for a bit in the shadows to see if anyone would show up, and then jog another lap. Eventually, she spotted a change. There was a bus stop on her route, and a man had taken a seat to wait. There was a plastic bodega bag at his feet and he was playing on his phone.

She passed him once, her senses on high alert, looking for anything wrong with the picture. The man didn’t react to her passing by, nor did he react the second time. The third time she tried to pass him, she didn’t make it. She was discovered the next morning, her dead body sitting upright on the bus stop bench, bereft of eyes, teeth, and fingernails, with a slash across her neck from ear to ear like a bloody smile.

None of Lorenzo’s henchmen died that night, but several assassins met their end. He only managed to kill a handful of them, but the rest wisely decided to cut their losses and flee the city. Five million dollars was a tempting reward, something they’d all risk getting shot or even blown up for, but with Koch, simply getting shot or bombed would have been a mercy. When the Serbian hitman was discovered hanging from a lamppost, lynched with a noose made from his own braided intestines and sporting the marks of horrific torture, money no longer mattered. It was five million, but it could have been five billion, and they’d still run. It just wasn’t enough for the others risk their lives against the evil of the Butcher.

A week later, a call reached the task force. A body had been discovered in Lorenzo Avecto’s home. Hewn and Madison arrived with a coroner’s van and several other law-enforcement vehicles to find the place eerily quiet. Normally, the property would be filled with bodyguards patrolling the area, especially with everything that had happened. Lorenzo and Danny Avecto were sitting on the front steps when the detectives arrived, the two of them looking gaunt.

“The Avecto estate. How beautiful, the house that crime built,” Madison scoffed as she and Hewn approached the two crooks.

“Where is everyone?” Hewn asked.

“Gone. They’ve all left,” said Danny.

“What do you mean they left?” Madison asked.

“What the fuck do you think? They all quit this morning,” said Lorenzo. “I have no one left. Koch has either murdered or driven off everyone who works for me.”

“And the body you called in?” Hewn asked.

“Why do you think they left?” Lorenzo replied before he and Danny stepped inside, leading the detectives. He brought them to a bathroom where a man in a suit had been left to hang from the showerhead by his bound wrists. He had been gutted, with all of his internal organs lying in the tub. As members of the coroner’s department loaded the corpse into a body bag and the forensics team began searching for evidence, Hewn, Madison, and the Avecto brothers went back outside.

“I recently had to hire a private security company after Koch killed off so many of my regular guards, and they demanded triple their usual rate. Then, the moment they saw this, they all quit. That son of a bitch was in my house, walking my halls, and was does he do? He kills one man and then fuck’s off. He wasn’t spotted and forced to make a hasty escape, he didn’t try to come after me and was driven off by the other guards, he killed one fucking man and decided to call it a night. After everything he’s done to me and my people, he decides to fucking insult me.”

“And no one heard or saw anything?” Hewn asked.

“Nothing. I’ve already searched the security cameras, and even they didn’t pick anything up. He’s a fucking ghost.”

“We’re going to need those tapes,” said Madison.

“Fine, take them, I don’t care anymore. I’ve had it with this fucking city.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re not leaving,” said Hewn.

“Yes, I am. It’s a free fucking country.”

“No, it’s not, it’s a country where we still have your passport. You set all this shit into motion, YOU. Eckhart Koch kills all these people because of your actions and you think you can just hop on a plane and retire in the Bahamas?”

“Then I’ll fucking drive to a Tijuana instead. It doesn’t matter where I go. Anywhere is better than here. After all, clearly you can’t keep me safe.”

“If you leave, then Koch is in the wind and we’ll never find him.”

“Because you’ve done so well until now? Don’t you try and pin your failures on me. Some detective you are. All these deaths and they still haven’t taken your badge. Koch must have already killed all the best cops and left nothing but the hopeless losers.”

Hewn attacked Lorenzo, throwing wild punches, which the former mob boss returned. Madison and Danny were quick to pull them apart, but even then, they were like a pair of junkyard dogs barking at each other from the end of their chains.

“Not so tough without your little henchmen, are ya?! Bet that’s the first in a long time you’ve have to fight your own battle!” Hewn taunted, trying to get past Madison without simply knocking her over.

“I’ll kill you myself, pig! Before Koch gets his chance!” Lorenzo fired back with Danny trying to keep him still.

“Enough!” Madison shouted, finally getting them to stop. “Hewn, get back in the damn car! And you two! Don’t even think of trying to leave, or we’ll charge you with interfering with our investigation. I swear, I’m surrounded by fucking eight-year-olds! Hewn, MOVE!”

As Madison herded Hewn back to the car, Lorenzo calmed himself down and turned to Danny. “Send word to the other top dogs in the city. We’re sitting down for a meet at the club tomorrow night.”

“But we’re still leaving, right?”

“Correct. We’ll bid farewell to our old enemies and then haul ass out of this city. Until then, we need to make preparations for our departure.”

“The cops will be keeping an even closer eye on us than before. We’re the only ones left for Koch to go after.”

“Which means they’re our new bodyguards, and if they try to stop us from leaving, well, we’ll kill anyone in our way and let that German fucker take the blame.”

What the two men didn’t realize was that their conversation was being leaked. In a surveillance van disguised as an ambulance, the captain and two detectives were listening in on their talk, thanks to the microphone Hewn had planted on Lorenzo. This could be construed as an illegal wiretap, but thanks to all the chaos and terror Koch had incited, no one cared about such things. Law enforcement had been given a blank check of legal and moral ambiguity to get the job done, and if some high-level criminals were taken care of in the process, who would complain?

As the two brothers went back into the house, Hewn and Madison went to the van.

“Anything good?” Madison asked.

“Well, you both deserve awards for your acting,” said the captain. “They’re calling for a meeting among the heads of the various crime syndicates. It seems Lorenzo has some final words for his competition before he hits the old dusty trail.”

“The biggest scumbags in the city gathered under one roof. It sounds like a perfect opportunity for a raid,” said Hewn. “The only way Lorenzo is leaving this city is on a prison bus.”

“We should also expect Koch to make an appearance,” said Madison.

“There is no way he would know about it,” the captain argued.

“Koch has been three steps ahead of everyone since this started. The fact that we shouldn’t expect him is precisely why we should expect him.”

Thus, preparations were made on all sides. Lorenzo and Danny prepared to leave the city and worked on tying up loose ends. Neither planned on ever returning, so things like the Avecto estate would need to be taken care of. Most personal belongings could be sent for after the fact, but the most important and incriminating items would be taken with them. Likewise, all of the combined law enforcement agents gathered in the city were preparing to make a move on the gang meeting.

Madison’s prediction of Koch’s interference was taken to heart, and though taking out the leaders of the city’s criminal underworld was worth pursuing, arresting the Butcher was the top priority. That said, Eckhart was likewise getting ready. He was similarly aware of the meeting and knew that the combined masses of law breakers and law enforcement would be converging on Lorenzo’s nightclub. He was preparing for the crescendo of his performance.

That night, no one slept, gripped by anticipation, uncertainty, and terror. Lorenzo and Danny didn’t even bother trying, instead waiting up all night for Koch to come and finish the job. It was against his pattern, but they knew to expect the unexpected. They breathed as quietly as possible, fearing that the sound of moving air would cover his predatory footsteps. Every light was on to leave him no darkness with which to hide himself. They were surrounded with every gun they had, fingers glued to their triggers, wanting to be ready to shoot at any moment without even a shred of hesitation.

Hewn, unable to stand tossing and turning, finally got out of bed and left his apartment, in the mood for a poached egg. He stopped by his favorite diner, open 24/7 for those who needed breakfast in the middle of the night. He sat at his table, the place occupied by a couple other insomniacs burning the midnight oil. He stared into his decaf coffee, thinking about everything that had happened and everything that was about to happen.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he heard as someone sat across from him.

He looked across the table to find no one other than Eckhart Koch, smiling as if they were old friends having lunch. Hewn froze up, first thinking that he was hallucinating or that this was some messed up dream, and that he never left his bed. Then he realized that he was indeed awake, and was overcome with shock that the most wanted man in the world was sitting across from him. Next came frustration, realizing he had left his gun, phone, and radio at home, leaving him no way to apprehend Koch or call for backup. Then came the fear, as every horrific crime scene and mutilated corpse flashed before his eye, now imagining all of those dead bodies being him instead.

How many of those people met their end this same way? How many of them saw that smile and were then tortured to death? Was this just it for him? Was he about to meet the same fate as all those who came before him, all who died at Koch’s hand? The cold oil he now felt filling his stomach, was that the feeling of inevitability? To sit across from humanity’s greatest serial killer, it was like being face to face with Death itself. He was looking at his own end.

Then the waitress came by and set his plate before him. “Anything else I can get for you, hon?” she asked.

“I… I’m fine, thanks,” Hewn managed to say. If he was going to die here, the least he could go was not give Koch a reason to go after anyone else.

Eckhart turned to her with the politest grin in the world. “Could I get a mug of hot chocolate, please?”

“Coming right up, sugah’,” she said before leaving.

Only once she was gone did Hewn speak. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought that was clear. You can’t sleep and neither can I, and when that happens, there is no better place to go than a diner.”

“So this is it, huh? I guess it’s my turn at the chopping block.”

“Maybe, maybe not. That depends on if keeping you alive would be more entertaining than adding you to my scrapbook. Speaking of which, did that evidence I give you add some much-needed perspective? Did it help clarify things a little?”

“It confirmed that you’re a monster.”

“The man I killed in the church said something similar. He said that nothing about me is human. Do you know he said that? Because he was terrified by the fact that I am human, that everything I’ve done, the heights I’ve reached, are attainable by anyone. Think about it, has anything I’ve done been declared impossible by the laws of physics? Have I displayed any kind of superhuman abilities or powers that would separate me from the human race? I haven’t, I’m purely human, just like you.

Your best friend could do what I’ve done. Your neighbor, your doctor, your favorite movie star, all it takes is a hand to hold the knife and the desire to use it. That fork and knife by your plate, you could use them to kill me right here and now. And yet, inevitably, someone will continue my work. They’ll have never met me, possibly never even heard of me, but they’ll be born just like me, with the same desires and appetites, and my will shall live on through their deeds, despite killing in their own name. You can slay the man before you, destroy my body and every shred of evidence that I ever existed, but what I am, what I represent, can never be expunged from humanity. Am I disease? A plague upon mankind? Or am I merely a symptom?”

The waitress returned with his mug of hot chocolate. “Ah, thank you, love,” he said before she walked off.

“Toss all of the word salads you want, but that doesn’t undo everything you’ve done.”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware.” Eckhart reached across the table and pulled a piece of bacon off Hewn’s plate. “Your food’s getting cold.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Then don’t mind if I help myself.” Eckhart took Hewn’s plate and pulled it over to himself. “Tell me, detective,” he said as he cut into the egg, “have you ever killed anyone before?”

“I have.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Well, if you don’t want to talk, then as they always say, actions speak louder than words.”

Understanding Eckhart’s meaning, Hewn bit his tongue. “I was a rookie cop walking the streets, stopped by in a little corner shop for something to eat, looking around in the back. A tweaker then bursts in with a gun, demanding money from the teller. I draw, tell him to drop the gun and put his hands behind his head. He points the gun at me and I put three rounds in his chest. He hits the ground, not gurgling, twitching, or anything, just dead as a doorknob.”

“And what did it feel like to kill that man?”

“Like the biggest mistake of my life, like losing my badge and getting charged with murder because I did something I wasn’t supposed to, or didn’t do something I was supposed to. I expected to get railed, told that I wasn’t supposed to kill him, that maybe he was the senator’s kid or something and I should have tried harder to talk him down.”

“So you feared the consequences of your actions, but did you feel any guilt or remorse for snuffing out that man’s existence?”

Hewn paused. “A little.”

“And what happened after? I take it you didn’t lose your badge.”

“I was told it was a good shooting, and received a commendation.”

“Yes, an excellent murder, exactly what you want to hear. And have you killed others since then?”

“I have. To protect myself, the people around me, and the innocent lives of this city, I’ve done what I needed to.”

“Sounds to me like you moved past your guilt. But you must have felt something else, something instead of fear and regret. To take a life is no small thing. It changes the world, even if you don’t realize it.”

“Ironic to hear someone like you talk about the value of life,” Hewn scoffed.

“On the contrary. Do you think I would take so much pleasure in my work if I thought it was insignificant? A human life is the most complex thing in the known universe, physically, psychologically, symbolically. There is so much that goes into it. The first man I killed after Lorenzo destroyed my home, do you remember his name?”

“Peter Wuhl.”

“Peter Wuhl, that’s right. Think about everything he experienced, everything he suffered and worked for. How many thoughts do you think went through his mind throughout his life, thoughts that no one else ever had before? What stories and art did he want to create, but never had the chance? How did he affect the lives around him from the moment he was born? What lasting mark did he leave upon this world?

As a boy, he had hopes and dreams, he felt excitement and curiosity. I’m sure there is a box in his parent’s closet filled with artwork he made as a child, colorful school projects crafted with glue and construction paper that he poured his heart and soul into. He went trick-or-treating on Halloween, he squealed and hollered on Christmas morning, and made wishes as he blew out his birthday candles.

As he grew into adolescence, he strived for accomplishment and love. He gave 110% on the baseball diamond, driven by fantasies of being immortalized with a game-winning homerun, of the beautiful girl in his algebra class noticing him and the two of them being crowned the prom king and queen and dancing under the spotlight. He made plans and looked to the future, a young man with so much potential.

As an adult, he sought to shape his destiny according to his beliefs, to build a life for himself and change the world into his vision of an ideal reality. He hoped to marry a sweet and beautiful woman and have children that would grow to do great things and raise more children who would accomplish even more. He worked hard, he voted, he relaxed on his couch with a beer and Sports Center on the TV. He ended up falling into the mob, but I doubt he ever truly lost that spark.

A lifetime of joy, pain, hope, fear, promise, disappointment, and effort. And then I came along and extinguished it like blowing out a candle. I didn’t just end his life, I erased all of his memories, I crushed all of his hopes, I silenced his feelings and opinions, I cancelled his future and stopped the birth of his children. Think of all the energy we expend throughout our time on Earth, all of our emotional effort from the high and low points of our lives, the physical strength we exert as we play as children and work as adults, the electrical signals firing in our brain as we learn and grow wiser, the body heat we vent as we lie awake in bed and stare at the ceiling, enough combined power to match the blast of an atomic bomb. In Peter Wuhl’s home, I held that power in my hand and snuffed it out.

Every time I kill, I again hold that power, and I cast it into the breeze. That is the weight of a human life, the indescribable significance. Tell me something, have you ever put that much thought into it? Do you put that much value on a human life?”

“It depends on the life. Your life, for instance, has no value. You bring ruin upon this world, inflicting terror, agony, and death all for your amusement. You claim to see the value of life, but you don’t respect it or cherish it. You go out of your way to destroy it. You say you’re just another human, but the way I see it, you’re the worst human who ever lived.”

Having finished eating, Eckhart chuckled and pushed the empty plate aside. “That was delicious, really hit the spot. You know, the last time we spoke across a table like this, I had just killed the burglar who broke into my shop. Do you ever think about that talk we had? When you looked at me from across that table, surely, deep down, you must have suspected my true nature.”

“Admittedly, I thought you were creep who finally got to live out his murder fantasy. I just had no idea what a demented piece of shit you were.”

“Does it ever haunt you to know that you had me in custody and you let me go? If you had killed me in that interrogation room, think of all the lives you could have saved, the horror you could have prevented.”

“You’re right, it does haunt me. I go to bed every night, wishing I was back in that interrogation room, wishing I had just pulled out my gun and emptied the clip right into your smug face.”

“You failed to kill me then, so tell me, Detective Hewn, how do you think all of this will end?”

“Ideally, with me lighting you on fire and you begging for mercy. Realistically, with you locked up in a supermax cell, never seeing sunlight for the rest of your life. How do you think this will end?”

“Ideally, with a bang, and then a whimper, but ultimately, the life of Lorenzo Avecto will be left in your hands.”

The waitress then returned to their table with the bill. “Here you go, fellas. You both have a nice—”

She was silenced by Eckhart pulling out a knife and slashing her across the throat. He was fast as lightning, flashing his steel and sending a fountain of blood spraying from the woman’s neck, blinding Hewn. Hewn scrambled to his feet, but was faced with a tough choice. Should he leave the woman to die and go after Koch, or try to save her and let him once again slip away? The waitress fell against him, clutching her bleeding throat and begging Hewn to help her. The choice was made for him, and he grabbed a handful of napkins and tried to help her stop the bleeding. As Eckhart left, he stabbed two more customers, inflicting fatal wounds that Hewn would not be able to ignore. He disappeared into the night, leaving behind yet another bloody mess.

The next day, all of the final preparations were being made. The police were setting up positions near Lorenzo’s night club, close enough that they could storm the place when they needed to, but far enough that their presence wouldn’t be revealed. As night fell, several cars pulled up and the various leaders of the Philadelphia underworld stepped out. They were dressed in their expensive suits and aristocratic jewelry, sporting many tattoos and carrying several custom weapons. The Russians, the Irish, the cartels, and so forth, each leading man flanked by three bodyguards. They said nothing to each other, saving their words for the meeting.

Until now, the various crime organizations have been in a carefully-maintained stalemate, secretly undermining each other to grow their own bases while doing everything they could avoid costly infighting. Then the Butcher came along and changed everything, for better and for worse. He took up precious police attention and resources, giving them more room to breathe and expand, as well as crippling Lorenzo and the Philadelphia mafia, but he was also the only man in the city that these underworld figures feared. Each organization had committed terrible crimes for the sake of money and power, making examples out of those who got in their way, but that was just business. Eckhart Koch did everything they did, and worse, and he did it simply for pleasure.

They knew to fear the Butcher, that to shudder at his name was not a sign of weakness, but wisdom. One man had brought the entire mafia to its knees and left behind scores of mutilated corpses, including criminals, their families, and the police. One single man. Originally, they had scoffed at the tales, joking amongst each other that Lorenzo’s men were simply weak and helpless against a little old shopkeeper, but all of this nightmarish savagery and blood had changed their attitudes.

They knew that if Eckhart Koch willed it, he could do the exact same thing to any of them. This hadn’t continued because Lorenzo and his men were weak, but because the Butcher was too formidable to be stopped. Though they’d never admit it, they were all nervous to attend this meeting and be in the same room as Lorenzo. They were afraid they’d catch the Butcher’s attention like catching a cold.

With the police watching them from a safe distance, they entered the club, forever closed. There were no staff, for anyone who worked for Lorenzo was either dead or had fled the state. Danny was there waiting for them. “Esteemed leaders of the various syndicates, welcome. I am Danny Avecto, Lorenzo’s brother. The meeting will take place upstairs, but your bodyguards will have to wait in the hall. For obvious reasons, we don’t want anyone straying too far. Please follow me.”

Danny brought them upstairs into Lorenzo’s office, where a large table had been set up with Lorenzo sitting at the end. “Greetings, friends and enemies, enemies and friends. Take a seat.” The various crime lords sat down, each one with their top man standing behind them against the wall. Outside, the rest of their bodyguards were waiting in the hall, trying to resist the urge to instigate each other. “Now, gentlemen, I have invited you here for an obvious reason: to discuss the Butcher. All of you met my brother downstairs. He is one of the last few people I still have on my side. Everyone else has either abandoned me or met horrific ends. To the deserters, I have no ill will, for they made the right call.”

“And what do you plan to do about the Butcher all by yourself?” the leader of the local cartel branch asked.

“Nothing. I invited you here to let you know that I am surrendering all of my territories and businesses in the city. I no longer have anyone left to run or defend them. I am fleeing the country and I doubt I will ever return so long as Eckhart Koch lives. After this meeting, I will board a plane you will never see me again. With any luck, Koch won’t be able to follow me, and I hope for your sakes, that my leaving will quell his bloodlust and he won’t turn his attention towards any of you. Long have we all been at each other’s throats, and now, at the twilight of my reign, you are the closest things to friends I have left, if only that we all understand the stress and trials of being men in charge.”

As Lorenzo spoke, various law enforcement agents were beginning to close in on the night club while listening in on the conversation. No one was sure what would happen when they busted open those doors or what they hoped to accomplish. They had been building cases against these men for years, and now seemed like the best chance the pull the trigger. Perhaps, with this, they could throw on the added charge of criminal conspiracy, or if they put up a fight, the attempted murder of law enforcement agents. Hewn and Madison were following behind the SWAT team, but like all of the Interpol agents and European investigators waiting in the wings, their thoughts were on Eckhart Koch. Deep in their hearts, they knew he still had a part to play in this.

“So, before I depart, I wanted to give you my farewells, and more than that, offer a challenge to each of you, a pact to be held among the various syndicates. I leave behind my territories and criminal enterprises to whomever can kill Eckhart Koch. You can either fight amongst each other for the rubble of my empire, or you can honor this pact and let whoever slays the Devil take it fair and square. Understand that only when he is dead will you be truly safe, plus, I imagine killing the Butcher would earn you points with any prosecutor brave enough to come after you.”

“A killer scavenger hunt,” said the head of the Russian mob with a smile. “I like it. I will agree to the pact.”

“I take it this building is also part of the offer? This is a nice office. My boys and I will kill that German prick and turn him into a rug for this room. We’re in,” said the head of the Irish mob.

One by one, the various crime lords agreed to unwritten contract. The Avecto empire would go to whomever could avenge it.

“Excellent, then to all of you, I say goodbye, good luck, and good hun—”

Lorenzo was cut off as a tremor then shook the building and the sound of an explosion reached his ears. However, it wasn’t just one. A continuous rumble was echoing across Philadelphia as countless explosions were set off. The law enforcement agents about to reach the club stopped and turned around, seeing pillars of smoke and fire rising up in every direction. Throughout the city, Eckhart had placed explosives at strategic points, and was setting them off using detonators made with his victims’ stolen cell phones. Power lines and transformers, propane tanks and fuel trucks, subway cars and city buses, all meticulously picked for maximum destruction, carnage, and chaos.

Those three days between murders weren’t spent just resting and spying on victims. He had plenty of time to gather various materials, and plenty of experience in making explosives. Pipe bombs from household cleaners, fertilizer bombs made from bags taken from victim’s garages, and even nail bombs using powder extracted from bullets, not to mention a few grenades and blocks of C4 taken from Lorenzo’s warehouse. People were ripped apart by shrapnel and shockwaves, incinerated as buildings went up in flames, electrocuted by downed power lines, and run over by drivers panicking with the explosions and lost traffic lights. With the power out, the flames burned all the brighter, and were quick to spread.

“With a bang,” Hewn gasped.

“Everyone, fall back!” the captain’s voice then squawked on the radio. “We’re aborting the operation! We have a state of emergency! Our main priority is re-establishing order and saving as many lives as we can!”

“Captain, this is Koch’s plan! He’s trying to draw us away from the nightclub!” Hewn argued.

“Well, it worked. The entire city is up in flames and God knows how many people are dead. Koch will have to wait; we need all hands on deck for this.”

The SWAT team hurried past Hewn and Madison to rejoin the others, but the two just looked at each other. “We can’t let him get away with this,” Hewn hissed.

Madison sighed. “Then let’s be quick.”

In the night club, Lorenzo and the other criminal leaders were looking through the office window with heavy hearts and cold stomachs, seeing the light of the fires as they spread across the city. Before today, they all saw Philadelphia as nothing more than their place of business, their territory, a breeding ground of people to extort and exploit, but seeing this destruction and carnage, hearing the screams and sirens as public order fell apart, it twisted their insides into knots. Even the head of the Chinese mafia and the cartel leader, born in other nations, now felt like they were watching their own homes go up in flames.

Much of the city was now lit solely by fire, as electricity was the first to be taken out, but a minute later, some dim lighting returned to the night club. “The back-up power,” Lorenzo sighed in relief. However, he could hear something, a faint buzzing in the background, and his eyes were drawn up to the speakers in the corner of the room. There were speakers placed throughout the building, feeding music from the DJ station. Over the static and crackle, he heard a voice.

“Hello, Lorenzo.”

He’d know that voice anywhere, hearing it in his nightmares, and having anticipated its return for weeks. All around him, the other criminal leaders were trying to keep their nerve as they realized whose voice it was.

“Last time we spoke, we were in my shop, my place of business, before you destroyed it. You took everything from me, so I think it’s fitting we speak in your place of business, after all the work I’ve put in to take everything from you. I’ve slain your men, one by one. I tortured their families, one by one. I’ve crushed your operations, one by one. Once I find you, I’m going to slice away at you, cutting off pieces, one by one, to see how much I can take away before you die. And to those with you, your fellow kings of the underworld, coming here was the biggest mistake of your lives. I will take you and your men, one by one. One by one. One by one.”

Then the sound changed, another man’s voice crying out through the speakers.

“One by one! One by one!”

Then another voice. “One by one! Oh God, please! No! Ahhh! One by one!”

New voices kept being added.

“It hurts! It hurts! One by one! One by one! One by one!”

“One by one! Please, just fucking kill me! One by one! One by one!”

The chant continued, the words being screamed in agony, and it wasn’t just men, but women and children too, Lorenzo recognized them as the voices of his subordinates and their families, forced to recite the words while being tortured and recorded. Their voices were also overlapping each other, with other pleas and agonizing howls heard in the background. Children screamed for their parents, parents for their children, husbands for their wives and wives for their husbands, and endless begging to God for protection and mercy.

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

“He’s here, he’s here in the building!” Lorenzo cursed.

“Is there another way out?” the Russian mafia head asked.

“Show some backbone, will you?” the cartel leader said as he checked his piece and tried to put up a brave front. “Time to earn some territory.”

“He must be at the DJ station,” said Lorenzo. “Danny, take everyone in the hall down there and kill this fucker down once and for all!”

Danny and all of the bodyguards drew their weapons and headed down into the club. Each of them was nervous and struggling to keep their nerve. They heard all the stories of how Lorenzo’s men and their families were tortured and killed, and it didn’t help that they could now hear their anguished voices.

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

They reached the club, devoid of life and barely lit by a few security lights. They were slow to cross the dance floor, their guns pointed in all directions, afraid to leave any blind spots. But there was a pungent smell on the air, uncomfortably sterile, like huffing a rag soaked in Windex. One man then tripped and fell, complaining about the wet floor. They all looked down, afraid that it was soaked in blood, but instead, whatever was covering the floor was clear. The men began to cough and rub their eyes as the smell irritated them further. Danny arrived at the DJ station, finding only a cell phone plugged into the speakers, playing the recording.

He was just about to stop the recording, but stopped, finally recognizing the smell. It was two aromas, bleach and ammonia, mixing together. He looked back at the men, barely able to see them through his own stinging eyes, but hearing them coughing in pain and groaning from developing blisters.

“It’s mustard gas!” he exclaimed.

The power then went out, the men left in darkness and silence. All the men, disoriented by the gas and blinded by the fumes and darkness, tried to get their bearings, before hearing the sound of a blade slicing through flesh, a gun hitting the floor, and one gangster crying out in pain.

“My hand! He cut off my fucking hand!”

Another slice landed somewhere else in the darkness and a gun hit the floor. “My arm! Goddammit!” a man howled.

Eckhart moved through the darkness, severing the men’s outstretched hands and robbing them of their weapons. Blood poured onto the dancefloor, mixing with the bleach and ammonia already bonding into gas. Clutching the bloody stumps of their wrists, struggling to breathe in the clouds of gas, and blinded by darkness and inflamed eyes, the men were helpless. Then a noise reached them, one that chilled their blood and let them know that hope had abandoned them.

It was the roar of a chainsaw.

The power then came back on, the lights shining upon Eckhart, wearing a gas mask and night vision goggles, and holding a chainsaw above his head. Along with the lights coming back, the recording at the DJ station continued.

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

“ONE BY ONE!”

Eckhart rushed into the crowd, carving men with the chainsaw, reducing flesh, muscle, and bone into bloody pulp instantly, with the voices of the dead cheering him on.

“ONE BY ONE!”

He slashed one man from shoulder to hip, ripping him open like a pumpkin and spraying viscera in all directions.

“ONE BY ONE!”

He stabbed the next man through the stomach, the poor soul spasming atop the blade as the teeth shredded his intestines. He thrust the blade up, sawing through the man’s chest and skull, then pushed the blade back down through his pelvis, completely splitting him in half.

“ONE BY ONE!”

The next man put up a valiant effort in trying to hit Eckhart with his remaining hand, but the clumsy blow was dodged with ease, and Eckhart sliced off the man’s arm, adding ever more blood to the air and floor. Eckhart then sliced off his legs and left him to bleed to death.

“ONE BY ONE!”

Another man was on his knees, blindly searching for his gun. He was at the perfect height, so, with an elegant swing, Eckhart sliced his head off and sent it rolling away.

“ONE BY ONE!”

One of the cartel leader’s bodyguards tried to run away, but slipped and fell on his back. He looked up, and despite his ruined eyesight, he saw Koch standing over him. He instinctively raised his hand to defend himself, but the chainsaw made short work of his fingers. Eckhart jammed the end of the chainsaw into the man’s mouth, shredding his tongue and ripping off his lower jaw. Eckhart then walked away, leaving the man to spend his dying moments choking on his own blood.

“ONE BY ONE!”

The other men were now trying to escape, searching for any way out of the club, but rendered half-blind and barely able to breathe, they could do nothing to open the locked doors, and Eckhart picked them off. Those that could still run had that ability revoked. Picking up one of the dropped handguns, Eckhart would shoot them in the legs to take them down, then finish with the chainsaw. One by one, he slaughtered them all.

Outside, Hewn and Madison had reached the nightclub entrance, but were struggling to get the front door open. It was a heavy steel door for soundproofing, and shooting the lock wasn’t working very well. In every direction, they could hear sirens blaring and people screaming as the city descended into chaos. With the power out and police overwhelmed, looting had already begun, and mass rape and murder wouldn’t be far off. Even the Interpol agents and European detectives, originally brought over to help find Koch, were recruited to help restore order.

“I just checked, every door around back is locked as well,” said Madison, jogging over.

“Damn it. Well, there is one more way to get in there.”

He went over to one of the cars the mob bosses had arrived in, finding the driver dead with a slashed throat. He pulled out the corpse, took his keys, and got behind the wheel. The tires squealed as he spun the car around, facing the front of the night club. Madison wisely got out of the way as he revved the engine, then slammed on the pedal and sent the car rocketing forward. He busted through the heavy doors like a battering ram, taking out the whole frame and a big chunk of the wall around them. Pinned against his seat by the airbag, it took Hewn a moment to pull himself together. He climbed out with a stagger and Madison rushed over.

“Are you all right?”

“That was a lot less fun than I thought it would be. Let’s get in there.” They were both about to enter, but stopped, smelling the mustard gas and wisely retreating.

“He’s gassed the place. There is no way we enter until it airs out,” said Madison.

“Son of a bitch!” Hewn cursed.

There was nothing they could do but wait, while inside, Lorenzo and the other mob bosses were growing more fearful by the second. The recording had stopped playing on the speakers, and the sounds of gunshots and Eckhart’s chainsaw had died down. Now there was only the unbearable silence. They remained in Lorenzo’s office, each of them keeping their guns pointed at the door, ready to shoot anyone who so much as grabbed the handle. However, a pungent smell began to waft into the office through the air vents.

“You smell that?” the Chinese mob boss asked.

“Smells toxic, it’s stinging my eyes,” said the Irish boss.

“And there is smoke mixed in. He’s started a fire,” said the cartel leader.

“Either he’s trying to smoke us out or burn us alive. Either way, we have to get out of here,” said Lorenzo.

“Got any ideas?” the Russian boss asked.

“There is a fire escape on the back of the building, down the hall, past the staircase to the club. But that bastard surely knows it’s there too.”

“Better to go down fighting than die in here,” said the cartel leader.

They slowly and carefully stepped out of Lorenzo’s office with guns ready. Before today, they were all enemies, and now, they were brothers in arms, sharing the same foxhole. Out in the hall, the smell was even worse, and all of them immediately started coughing.

“This way!” Lorenzo hissed.

He led them down the hall, and as they passed the stairs to the club, each of them thought about their men down there. The Butcher had claimed them all, and they were next. They reached the storage room, but upon opening the door, a horrifying sight greeted Lorenzo. Danny was suspended from the ceiling with a meat hook through his jaw like a fish on a line. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was whimpering and crying in agony.

“Jesus, help me get him down!” Lorenzo exclaimed. The Russian boss grabbed Danny’s legs and lifted him up, taking the weight off his jaw, while Lorenzo pulled a chair over and climbed up to help get the hook out. Danny writhed and thrashed, with a garbled cry slipping free. “I’m here, Danny! Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of this! Just hold still!” But Danny continued to struggle, with his desperate cry growing louder. The mob bosses stood back, sensing something was wrong. Finally, Lorenzo got the hook out of Danny’s jaw. “Ok, let him down!”

The Russian boss released him, but Danny released a bone-chilling scream of pain, and rather than dropping to the floor, he slowly descended with blood immediately soaking his shirt and jacket, before stopping once more, still suspended. “Danny, what’s wrong?!” Lorenzo asked.

He lifted Danny’s shirt and gasped in horror. There was a second meat hook, tied to the first by a wire unseen in the darkness. It was originally stuck in Danny’s gut just above his pelvic region, but when the first hook was removed and Danny was released, his full body weight was put on the second hook, causing it to rip him open until it snagged on his ribcage. Now Lorenzo understood why Danny had thrashed and struggled. He wasn’t writhing in pain; he was trying to stop them from saving them, because he knew it would kill him. His garbled voice was warning, but Lorenzo didn’t get it in time. Danny’s shredded organs fell out of his ripped torso along with a waterfall of blood, with the light leaving his eyes.

“Danny! Danny! I’m here, brother! Oh God, I’m so sorry!” Lorenzo sobbed.

“Aw, brotherly love. Isn’t that sweet?”

Everyone then turned to the doorway, where Eckhart was standing with a Molotov in each hand. Before the mob bosses could raise their guns, Eckhart smashed the bottles against their feet, spraying them with liquid flames. The fire claimed three of them, their screams of agony instantaneous. Eckhart threw another pair of bottles, unlit, but they soaked the remaining mob bosses in volatile fumes, and the fire was quick to spread.

As his former enemies burned alive, Lorenzo climbed out the window on the fire escape. His sleeve was burning, but he patted it out and quickly climbed down the ladder, dropping down into the back alley. He took off in a run, heading for his car. He had parked at a distance to keep it hidden, but as he sprinted down the open street, Hewn and Madison spotted him.

“Lorenzo Avecto! Don’t move!” Hewn shouted.

Already at his wits end, Lorenzo acted on instinct, turning around and opening fire. One bullet caught Madison in the neck, just a hair’s breadth from a fatal wound, while another pierced Hewn’s thigh and broke his femur. As he fell, howling in pain, Hewn fired off a shot, winging Lorenzo’s shoulder. Wounded but upright, Lorenzo hobbled the rest of the way, reaching his car. He didn’t bother buckling his seat belt, he just pulled out of there and sped off as fast as he could. He drove through the city, past countless burning buildings, feeling like he was trying to escape from Hell itself. Anything in his way, be it a person or abandoned car, met his bumper.

He managed to get out of the city, speeding towards an airfield where a private plane was waiting for him. He drove onto the tarmac and got out of his car, moving to the trunk where he grabbed a pair of duffle bags full of money. However, his wounded shoulder made it difficult.

“Johnson, get out here and help me!” he yelled.

The pilot came out and rushed over to assist, but then stopped. “Who’s that?”

Lorenzo looked over his shoulder, seeing a car speeding down the runway towards them. “Move! Move! Get on the plane!” he screamed.

He and Johnson hurried towards the plane, and as the car approached, Lorenzo raised his gun and opened fire. Bullets pocked the windshield and hood, but neither the car nor the driver could be killed so easily. Eckhart, behind the wheel, ran into Johnson, sending him flying over the roof of his car and filling the air with hundred-dollar bills. Lorenzo was knocked to the ground, feeling like he had been the one run over instead. Without a pilot, the plane was useless to him. He had to get back to his car. However, as he got to his feet, Eckhart threw his own car into reverse and hurled himself back, slamming into Lorenzo. The former mob boss lay on the pavement, wincing from his multiple broken bones and trying desperately to reach his dropped gun.

Nearby, he heard a car door open and shut, and reached with greater desperation to the sound of approaching footsteps. Finally, Eckhart stood over him, stepping on Lorenzo’s hand and making him cry out in pain. It was just the two of them on the dark, empty tarmac, with the city of Philadelphia burning in the distance.

“Oh, Lorenzo, look at yourself. You were the king of an underworld empire. Now, here you are, writhing in the dirt, all alone in the world. Contrary to what I said earlier or what you might think I feel, I hold no anger or grudge towards you. In fact, I’m grateful. Slaughtering your men and tormenting you has been the most fun I’ve ever had. I feel like… I’ve grown as a person, thanks to this experience. What about you? Do you think you’ve grown? Have you learned something about yourself from all this? Maybe gained a new perspective?”

“You killed my brother! My friends! My men! Hell is too good for you!”

“Ah, I see the wound is still too fresh. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to think it over.”

“Just hurry up and kill me already.”

“I love hearing those words. ‘Kill me!’ They’re sweet as sugar, like honey in my ears. So many of your men begged for that, begged me to end their suffering. And trust me, you will continue to beg as well.”

Weeks passed and Philadelphia was slowly rebuilt. The death toll was measured in the hundreds, with thousands more left wounded or homeless, not to mention the exorbitant financial blow the city suffered. Entire blocks had been claimed by the fire, the city’s electrical grid was in tatters, and countless businesses had been looted and ransacked. The National Guard were called in to help repair the damage and reinstate order, but lawlessness still crept through the wrecked city like a draft. With all of the city’s mob bosses eliminated, a vast power vacuum had opened up and everyone with a gun and ambition was trying to fill it. The criminals not fighting for power were acting on their own, taking advantage of the chaos and destruction to purge.

 It was the greatest tragedy in the city’s history, a black stain upon the nation, and it would take years for things to finally return to normal. But while wounded, Philadelphia as a whole had survived and would recover. It was only a matter of time. And if there was a silver lining, it was that the Bitcher had disappeared, not that there was enough manpower to spare looking for him. The assumption was that he fled the city after slaying everyone at Lorenzo’s night club. All of the European investigators and Interpol agents left, disappointed and bearing fresh scars on their heart. Once again, Eckhart Koch had slipped through their fingers, leaving behind a sea of bodies in his wake. If he ever showed up on the public radar again, they would be notified, but until then, their cold cases would remain frozen in time.

Once their wounds had healed, Hewn and Madison were cleared to return to work. Madison was lucky to be alive, and Hewn was trying to hide how sore he was, and not walk with a limp. Koch was gone and every crime syndicate in the city had been crushed, but they were still busy as always, trying to keep the city from once again descending into anarchy. Then, one day, while Hewn was sitting at his desk, he received a call.

“Detective Hewn, hello.” He recognized the voice instantly and felt his heart rate skyrocket.

“Eckhart Koch?” As he spoke the words, he waved everyone over and signaled for the call to be traced.

“That’s right. It’s good to hear your voice again. The papers said you were wounded that night, but it seems you’re back to work. I’m glad.”

“Well, I’m too stubborn to stay in bed all day.”

“I figured you would say something like that. I know you’re tracing the call, but don’t worry about trying to keep me on. I’ll leave the phone going so you can find my location. I actually have a gift here for you, or rather a responsibility.”

“What kind of gift?”

“Think back to our talk at the diner. We discussed the value of a human life, remember? That’s the only clue you’ll get until you arrive here, but I’ll be long gone by then.”

“The whole world is looking for you, Koch. Even you can’t disappear completely.”

“If I’m caught, I’m caught. To be honest, I kind of like the idea of getting arrested. Imagine what a circus my trial would be like. Imagine the news media, the punditry, the online discourse. I like to think I’d be taken to the Hague. I’d say I deserve that much, at least. It’s just a shame I wouldn’t be able to properly enjoy it all from a jail cell. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.”

“That’s really all this was for you? Fun?”

“Of course. A word of advice, my friend. Don’t take life so seriously. After all, none of us get out of it alive.” Then the line went silent.

“Koch? Koch!” He was gone.

The trace was completed, and a whole caravan of law enforcement vehicles hit the road, followed by choppers. No one expected to find Koch still on location, but they wanted to be ready for anything. They arrived at a warehouse and formed a perimeter with SWAT teams and Kevlar vests. They carefully entered, finding Koch’s phone on a table, and beside it, something they never could have prepared for, even with everything they had seen thus far.

“Is that… Lorenzo?” Madison gasped.

“What’s left of him.”

Lorenzo was lying on a hospital gurney with an IV bag hooked up and a heart monitor beeping from his low pulse. He was completely unrecognizable, reduced to nothing more than half of a torso and most of a skull. Eckhart had carved away everything but the most vital body parts to keep him alive, starting with his limbs, including his shoulders and even his collar bone. Most of his organs had been removed, leaving him with just a heart, one lung, one kidney, and little else. A colostomy bag collected his waste, but without a stomach, he could only receive nutrients with the IV bag, and a rubber hose siphoned away urine from his nonexistent bladder.

He had no eyes, ears, or a nose, or even a lower jaw, as if Eckhart had grinded away his face with a power sander until nothing but his cranium remained, now visible due to his missing scalp. His throat was completely open to let air move with his vocal cords taken out, not that he could speak without a mouth. Even the muscles in his neck had been carved away so that he couldn’t support his own head. Most of the subdermal muscles in his torso had also been removed, plus half of his rib cage on the side of his missing lung. The only reason why Eckhart let him keep so much skin was to prevent infection, and so he could seal up the bottom of Lorenzo’s torso like a Ziplock bag.

“Lorenzo Avecto, can you hear me?” Madison asked before reaching out and gently touching him.

Lorenzo recoiled from that contact, thinking she was Koch, though all he could do was wiggle on his bed. Seeing him writhe and hearing him gurgle through his open throat, a SWAT member leaned over and vomited onto the floor, followed by another cop, and an EMT. Lorenzo could not see, hear, smell, speak, or move. His only awareness was mind-searing agony.

“Jesus Christ,” Madison whispered, trying not to cry.

“Is there anything we can do for him? Prosthetic limbs and an electronic larynx maybe?” Hewn asked.

“There is nothing to attach prosthetic limbs to. We don’t even have a way to communicate with him. You’re thinking about his quality of life, but if we move him from this bed, he will die. I don’t even know how he’s still alive, how it’s even possible to do this to someone without killing them. This is his life now. Until he dies, this is his entire existence.”

Hewn looked at him, the man he had dedicated so much time and energy to catching, dreaming of the day he’d hold this mob boss responsible for everything he had done. Slowly, Hewn raised his gun and pointed it at Lorenzo.

“What are you doing?” Madison hissed.

“At the diner, Koch said he would leave Lorenzo’s life in my hands. This is what he meant. He left me the choice of putting him out of his misery or allowing him to continue to live, but this is not living.”

“Hewn, you could lose your badge for this!” Despite her words, no one else spoke or moved.

“I don’t care about my job. I don’t care what sins or crimes Lorenzo has committed. The only man on earth who deserves to suffer like this is the man who made him like this, and he’s in the wind. If I let this go on, I’m just as bad as he is. There’s right, there’s wrong, and there’s mercy.”

He pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the warehouse. Lorenzo’s heart monitor whined as his pulse went flat. Everyone stood there, silent and still like statues, as smoke wafted from Hewn’s gun. He slowly set it down on the gurney, along with his badge.

“I quit.”

He turned around and walked away, leaving behind the Butcher’s first and last survivor.