Fifty Two Weeks of Murder

by Owen Nichols

  She brought grapes, chocolate and flowers, but had eaten one of the bars and so had to stop to buy another. She had a weakness for Cadbury’s chocolate having not eaten it since she was six. It brought back memories of happy days and she was fairly certain she was developing a dependency on it.

  As she made her way through the wards to Lucy’s room, Anders felt a deep rooted unease inveigle its way into her. She’d spent a long time in hospital during her transition and also after her back had been whipped to a pulp. She’d endured, but the torment and pain lingered, tendrils of memory insidiously coiling round her emotions, forcing her to take a calming breath. Every hospital tended to look the same inside. Long corridors, drab walls, rooms and wards branching off and an air of depression coupled with a sour tang in the atmosphere. Arriving at Lucy’s room, she sat on a deceptively hard comfy chair as she waited for Lucy to wake from her slumber. She’d regained some colour to her skin, but still looked grey and sallow, her blonde hair making her looker paler still. Her cheeks were gaunt and she’d lost a lot of weight. Her left arm was heavily bandaged and she could see the stump ending half way down to the elbow.

  Anders waited a while, not wanting to leave Lucy alone and eyeing the chocolate bar she’d left on the bedside table. She saw several Get Well cards and a balloon floating above her, tethered to the chair by a silk ribbon. Deciding she’d waited long enough for Lucy to wake and claim her bar of chocolate, Anders reached over and slid the bar from the table top, gliding her fingernail under the paper wrapper and tearing the foil. The sound woke Lucy who turned to see Anders looking guilty as she popped a section of chocolate into her mouth.

  “Busted,” she said, and offered Lucy the chocolate. She shook her head.

  “You have it, I’m all chocolated out.” Her voice was dry and cracked, pain etched on her face as she moved. Her Morphine must be wearing off thought Anders as she took a small piece of chocolate and left the rest on the table.

  “How you holding up?” Lucy moved to sit, struggling to do so one handed. Anders helped her up and plumped some pillows behind her so that Lucy could sit comfortably.

  “I’m here and I thank God for that, but it’s painful.” She held back tears as Anders sat on the bed and took her hand. She’d suffered terribly from the shrapnel. It had pierced her intestines and damaged a kidney. One large piece had nicked her spine and no one could say if she’d be able to walk properly again. She’d have to recover the hard way and do so with one functioning arm.

  “We’re here to help. All of us. Duncan is on his way now and Barry was going to pop by after he’d followed some leads.”

  “How’s it going?” Anders was reluctant to talk about it but knew Lucy wanted the distraction, even if only for a few minutes.

  “We’re swamped. New murders happening every day all over the world and the press getting into a tizz. Even the President is talking about it. Our team is huge now and the Hub is packed. Law enforcement agencies have flown in from all over the world to liaise and offer support.” Lucy gave a sad smile.

  “Sounds kinda exciting,” she said. Anders laughed for what felt like the first time in a while.

  “Not according to Mal it isn’t,” she said. “He looks pretty stressed.” Lucy gave her a tired smile.

  “No more dates for you two then?” Anders gave her a shocked look. “Oh, come on,” said Lucy, delighting at seeing Anders so uncomfortable. “We can all see the connection between you two. Besides, Helen was listening at the door when he asked you out!”

  “The little swine,” cried Anders good naturedly. “I thought she looked too innocent when I got back.” Lucy suddenly looked sad, glancing at her arm as she did so.

  “I guess I won’t be dating anytime soon,” she said morosely. She turned to Anders, her eyes tracing the scar on her neck and across the shoulders. The weather was hot, so Anders wore a sleeveless top that showed more of her scar tissue than usual. She gave a thoughtful look.

  “How do you live with it?” she asked, so quietly Anders barely heard her.

  “I don’t let it define me. Others will use it to put you in a bracket, find a nice easy label for you. They’ll stare and judge and use it to determine your place in the world. But that only happens if you let them. I learnt that a long time ago,” she said, talking about more than just her scars.

  “What was it like when you changed?” Anders was taken aback by the question coming as it was from Lucy.

  “Hard and painful. Brutal at times. But worth every second. It doesn’t define me anymore.” Lucy gave a ghost of a smile.

  “I’m not sure I can do that,” she said. Anders gripped her hand fiercely, imbuing Lucy with her strength.

  “I’ll help you,” she replied.

  Week 3

  I ponder on the nature of humanity. We muddle humane, human and humanity together, but they mean such different things. To be human is to simply exist. To have feelings or emotions is described as being human and we bestow ourselves with such honours, arrogance seeping from every pore. A dog can feel angry, happy or sad, much as we do. Is it not then human? Has it not transcended itself as we believe ourselves to have done? We strut and preen, obsessed with our own standing. Has not a simple Prokaryote conquered this Earth, its single celled existence evolving quicker and more deadly than we. Our arrogance is our undoing. Our belief in our divine right to rule, to bend the planet to our will is our undoing. There is no single living organism on this planet more destructive than Homo sapiens. Earth will revolt. It will turn on us and forsake us. As well it should.

  We must act. If we don’t return to our base state, learn to occupy our niche as we should, mankind will not survive. Our civilisation. Our laws. Our society. These are the ideals we worship as the epitome of humanity. They must be undone and the work has started. It is a long, arduous journey. There will be those who seek to stop us. Those who will seek to use the law of man against us. I say to them one thing.

  This is the time for a different law. A law as old as the planet itself. Righteous and blind in the purest sense. The law of nature.

  You are embracing this new law. All those who enter this competition do so not for the money alone, but for the greater good of mankind. For humanity. And this week, you have truly excelled. The slides below show some notable entries from across the globe as we unite to cast off the shackles of civilisation. You tear down order and show the chaos underneath. In that, we will find a new order. One that unites us all. That isn’t subservient to class, creed or wealth. You have risen in your hundreds and we will only get more powerful each day.

  I promised two winners this week. From the UK we have the Blood Eagle. Beautifully done, this image stands as the banner for us all. We shall be set free. That is my fantasy and this entrant captures the essence of that perfectly. The second winner comes from North America. His fantasy was to endure his own transcendence and that of his family. Bravo.

  The next theme highlights how we have moved away from our true natures. Fairy tales. I’ve watched the Disneyfication of our beloved stories for too long. These stories we tell our children used to be brutal and bloody. A message to every child that the world is harsh, cruel and unforgiving. These stories were a warning, not an aspiration. Not an ideal to be idolised. Change must come from the ground up. From the moment we are born, all indoctrination must cease.

  I present my example.

  I choose a Vicar. A man of the cloth. His ideals steer us away from the fact that we are animals by nature. They have us believe in a higher power. That our souls would suffer in Hell or revel in Heaven. Our souls belong to the Earth. We are of this planet.

  He is easy to take, trusting his fellow man and welcoming me into his house. I take his wife too. I have special plans.

  Snow White. The beginning of the corruption. The Wicked Queen suffers a quick death in the modern retelling. Not for those who know the true works. I take my time. The iron needs to be hot. She is strapped to a lattice wheel, arms tightly bound above her head
. She is unconscious but I don’t worry about that. I stoke the furnace, bellowing heat into its very heart. When it is hot enough, I place the iron boots into the furnace. The Vicar begs and pleads. He asks me for God’s grace and mercy.

  Our species has neither.

  When the boots are hot enough, I pull them out. This is the hard part. She wakes as I start to slide her foot into a boot. She screams and struggles and cries. The smell of cooked pork fills the room, her flesh sliding from her bones.

  I get both shoes on and cut her shackles loose. She must dance. That was the Wicked Queen’s punishment. To dance until her feet burnt off and she died. The Vicar’s wife disappoints. She does not dance, but she does try to remove the boots, hands melting to the iron as she pushes, screaming ever more loudly. She didn’t dance, but she did die, clothes bursting to flame and engulfing her body.

  The Vicar next. He is strapped to a giant wheel also, spread-eagled out, but his fate is very different. I choose an old nursery rhyme. These too, tell of the harsh brutalities of life, the constant struggle for survival. I choose the one that was most fascinating to me as a child. The Crooked Man. A tale of the divide between Scotland and England. I wish to create my own Crooked Man.

  He screams and sobs and wails as I take a bat ever so carefully to each limb. I start with the feet, the appendages bending at an unnatural angle as I slam the heavy weapon to them. Then the knees, loud crunching sounds as I shatter the bone. I carefully break each bone in his legs. He faints so I wait patiently until he wakes screaming. Then I start on the arms. Then the ribs and the spine. But not the skull. He needs to know that he’s crooked.

  I unbuckle my crooked man, but he disappoints also. He will not be walking any crooked paths. He certainly won’t be living in a crooked house.

  This is the truth of our stories and myths. There is no happy ending. There is only the law of nature. Natural selection in its purest form. We shall cull the soft, weed out those who’ve shrugged away their humanity and embraced civilisation.

  We have another fifty weeks of murder. Next week, there will be five prizes.

  The revolution of the species continues.

  Chapter 1

  The United Kingdom felt restless and uneasy. Domestic violence had increased, common assault was commonplace and the murder rate was the highest ever recorded, even outside of the entries to the competition. People who had only previously thought about killing someone now found their darkest desires legitimised. Fantasies turned to reality, morality deteriorated by the allure of money and perceived freedom from censure and judgement as offered by Buckland, his words finding physical voice as a higher purpose was attached to the most base of instincts.

  Anders reflected on this as she stood outside the impressive walls of the Tower of London. Buckland had driven a lorry to the square at the front entrance and parked parallel to the moat, lowering the tarpaulin sides of the trailer and revealing his work. All of the security cameras had been switched off by some virus the previous evening so there was no way of knowing where he had gone. Mal had a separate team scouring traffic cameras and feeds from every CCTV point in a two mile radius to try and work out his direction of travel at least.

  The square was chaos. A glorious sun had risen early and the weather was hot already, the sky a pale blue. Though the area was cordoned off, crowds of people had come to witness Buckland’s work and they were pushed back by increasingly angry officers. TV crews lined the perimeter, their lenses picking out every detail from afar. Anders closed her eyes, focused on the music, found her centre and breathed slowly before opening her eyes once more.

  The Vicar and his wife had been tied back to their posts and she felt such sorrow at their suffering. The Vicar was soaked in blood, bones sticking from beaten flesh, snapped like twigs under Buckland’s brutal assault. His head was untouched, face etched in a never ending scream, but the rest of the body was contorted and unnaturally twisted. She could see that Buckland had been careful with the legs. They were horrifically misshapen but the skin was unbroken. Either he’d lost control with the rest of the torso or someone else had joined in. Someone with less control.

  His wife was a smouldering effigy of charred humanity and the smell of seared skin and burnt hair was acrid in Anders’ nostrils. The victim’s skin had burnt and peeled in places, cracking under the heat. The bones were also bent and twisted as they buckled under stress fractures from the fire. Though her clothes had burnt off, apart from the shirt which had melted to her body, Anders could see the boots she wore. They came to the knees, wide at the top to make it easier to slide her feet in and narrowing at the ankle to make it harder to shake them off. They looked roughshod and poorly made, thick rivets sticking out and hammer marks evident where someone had bashed them into shape. The metal was thick and would have required some strength to hold them with long tongs. The victim’s skin had melted to the boots like some vile inner lining.

  She took in every detail, walking slowly around the lorry before stepping onto it and peering closely at every wound, every horrifying detail. She blocked out everything extraneous; the people, the noise, the bustle of a crime scene and the utter sadness of their brutal murders. She would give them voice soon enough.

  Eventually, she was done. Taking her headphones out, she tucked them into the pocket of her leather jacket and stepped back from the scene. Helen and Ben worked the site, leading a large support team. Anders was pleased to see Ben taking charge of a team consisting of seasoned professionals and leading them effectively.

  “Have you spoken to your old boss yet?” Mal spoke as he approached her, worry lines furrowing his brow. Anders nodded. She’d contacted the FBI to discuss the winner of last week’s prize, but they had nothing yet. They weren’t even aware of the crime.

  “They’ll pass on anything they get once they find the crime scene. We know where these killings took place yet?” she asked, pointing at the vicar and his wife. Abi joined them as Mal shook his head.

  “Not yet, but we’ll find it. Abi, you found inconsistencies with his first and second blog. Same again? Seemed the same hatred and bile to me.” Abi thought for a moment before replying, watching Duncan coordinate the team that would put a large tent over the lorry, both to preserve the evidence and give the poor couple some dignity.

  “It’s the same, but slightly different. It hews closer to the first blog, certainly.” She looked at Mal as she spoke, a gentle breeze from the Thames tousling her normally perfectly coifed hair. “I know what you’re asking though and I’d hesitate to stand in court and say it, but I do think it was written by two different people. Either that or Buckland’s grip on sanity is slipping.” Mal gave a short chuckle.

  “I think he’s lost all grip on sanity,” he replied. “If he ever had it, that is.” Anders turned to Abi.

  “You think the blog itself was written by two different people?” she asked. “The first part seems full of rage and anger at our species, but the second part was more sadistic, full of glee for what he was doing. Less someone on a mission to change the world, more excited child torturing a fly.”

  “It’s a fair point, but it could also be that the first part is him rationalising his killing to himself. Another psychologist could argue both sides in court.”

  The tent finally erected, they stepped under the entrance flap, the sounds of the crowded square smothered by the thick canvas. It had only been up a few moments, but the sun was already heating it to furnace like levels. In their coveralls, they were starting to sweat. Mal grimaced as he saw the bodies up close, their horrific injuries brought into sharp focus by the bright lights Ben had set up.

  “What pushes a man to do this?” he asked softly as he climbed onto the trailer and helped Abi up. Anders refused his hand, preferring to get up herself.

  “That’s the one question we’ll never know the answer to. Was he born like this or did something in his upbringing make him this way,” said Abi, holding her hand over her nose to block the putrid smell.
r />   “It’s a little of both, I think,” said Anders as she used a bright penlight to look for evidence on the corpses.

  “You would argue you were born that way would you not?” asked Abi. She’d had several similar conversations with Anders and knew that she wouldn’t mind such a blunt question in search of understanding. A few of the support team glanced at each other, not fully understanding what Abi meant as they listened in.

  “Slightly different Abi,” replied Anders absently as she worked. “In the uterus, there was a female differentiation in the BSTc part of my hypothalamus, so my limbic nucleus contains female levels of neurones. The brain of a serial killer shows no abnormalities compared to your average non serial killing person.” Mal grinned at Abi.

  “You did ask,” he said. Abi, warming to her theme, challenged Anders further.

  “Dr Kiehl found reduced density in the para-limbic systems of convicted serial killers. Maybe then it’s nature not nurture for serial killers as well.” Anders gave a tutting sound.

  “Only in those who displayed low levels of emotion towards the suffering they caused. Yes, they may have a disease, but we still abide by a moral code of right and wrong, such that a ten year old could use it.”

  “If it’s a disease, then we should apply a neuro-law. Criminal behaviour may be a disease that needs to be treated in some individuals.” Anders indicated the horrifying brutality Buckland had put on display.

  “Buckland’s no sociopath. He enjoyed this suffering too much to be one.” Abi looked at Buckland’s work and gave a troubled sigh.

  “I agree,” she said as Barry shuffled under the tent, looking anxiously for Mal. As he climbed onto the lorry, Helen hurled a string of expletives at him as the vehicle shook under his weight.