KILLER ADDICTION: When Murder Becomes A Habit

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

‘SALLY! IS THAT YOU?’ I yelled as I peered through the grime of the enormous warehouse window. Through the faint wash of moonlight, I thought I could see a body inside. Oh, please God, please don’t let it be her. I found a door, but dammit, it was locked!

I picked up a rock and hurled it through the window, shattering it with a deafening crash as the old glass split into hundreds of tiny shards. Desperately, without thinking, I put my hands on the windowsill, ignoring the pain and the gush of warm, sticky blood on my palms and fingers as I jumped through the opening.

I ran across the room and skidded to a stop next to the dark shape on the floor. It was a body! Through rising panic, I tried to pierce the dim light and identify the facial features. But there was something strange about the eyes that I just couldn’t make out in the dark. I pulled out my lighter and flipped the striker and suddenly wished I hadn’t, as the sheer horror of the grisly scene unfolded before me in the flickering light.

I could tell it was Sally, but only just. Spread-eagled on the dirty floor, she’d been stripped n***d and tied with a thick rope at the wrists and ankles back to steel beams and pieces of heavy equipment. Someone had turned her into a grotesque syringe pincushion, stabbing her at least twenty times with syringes that were just left there, sticking out of her. But the most horrific part of the scene was her eyes—each one of her open eyes had a syringe sticking out of the eyeball, with the needle driven down to the cylinder.

The horror of the scene hit me with me all its force and I collapsed back on my haunches and screamed with every ounce of air I had in my lungs until I could make no more sound. I collapsed forward on my knees, racked with grief, and the sobs came pouring out of me in spastic convulsions as the truth dawned on me. It was my fault!

‘NOOOOOO!!! Sally, I’m so sorry! What did I do to you? It’s my fault!’ I yelled to the rafters and my screams reverberated in the cavernous space, mocking me as they echoed back. Drained and exhausted, I collapsed onto the floor beside Sally, my body still convulsing with sobs at my loss, her suffering, and my guilt for the part I had played in her hideous death.

My sobbing slowly eased, and silence settled over the scene like a hangman’s black hood to match the darkness of the room and my heart. Seconds ticked by and then the sound of a big motorbike coughing into life and tearing off down the street outside flooded into the building.