Death Orchid

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Winter, cold, sky cloudless, a hard moon set stark into the black sky. He was a creature that murdered for business, only. Eight-inch knife, serrated, in his gloved hand, he leered at it as the glistening lunar reflection glowed off of its curved blade. In the moonlight he thought that blood looked like black oil, like his heart. There was no blood on the blade yet, but soon there would be.

Half way down the dark alley strewn with trash, offal, the remnants of peoples discarded lives he sat. He looked very much the vagrant. The odor of urine prickled his nostrils, it did not offend him. It kept him alert and ready. The distance between murders was shrinking; he was ready to murder again.

His clothes were used, ripped, reeking of body odor. His face was smudged with alley filth as was his hands and face. He had been particularly amused with the greased stringed wig, the Montreal Expo’s ball cap. After adding the straggly beard and unkempt moustache he had difficulty recognizing his own reflection in the mirror. For him, that was nothing new. Without the intricate disguise, he often experienced the same problem whenever he dared to look at his image in mirrors. Like a child afraid to put a foot past the edge of his bed, because who knew what hideous monsters dwelled there, he avoided the hideous reflective echo as much as he could. It made him feel uneasy him, the odd creature staring back at him.

The other him the chameleon was tall, rich beyond reason, a muscular artist, powerful, a sadist, traits he used on a regular basis killing. He thought himself one of the most unique and dramatic men on earth. To butcher another human being without remorse, a man must have his ego in place, his priorities, which of course he had done both.

In reality he was not a Serial Killer, just a simple man of commerce doing his business. He was an artist of what he did and held a mind of unimaginable intelligence, as well as creativity.

He was a f*****g walking, breathing horror show and he loved it.

Hunkered down in the icy cold, darkness, his blue eyes revolved around in his head, slanted as he heard something at the opening of the alley. A man, looking much like him, tattered, filthy, destitute, long hair, beard, filthy skin pushed a shopping cart into the beginnings of the alley.

Watching from his garbage strewn blind, inhaling the repulsive smells of the worlds of the disenfranchised, the poor, the homeless, he could feel the cut muscles in his entire torso tense. His body began to feel warm. Lifting the broad, flat blade to his eyes, he could see his reflection dancing along the slat of the razor sharp chrome.

Not recognizing what he was seeing, he smiled as his teeth, like fangs, bared; he grinned. He had the scent now of a predatory wolf hunting down a human being. He was in the zone now, ready, once again the ultimate hunter, a bestial enigma of no shape, no form, no possession of a soul.

He felt perfect, omnipotent, perhaps as God did before he murdered the innocent.

Watching, in the shadows, he was excited, pulse flat lining, he was ready to rock his world. What he was about to do was cryptic, lethal, final, simply his work for the evening. As the vagrant without a life moved nearer towards him, he felt as if he could taste the blood and touch the red liquid as it would wash over his hands. Soon blood, would etch as a second skin into his pores.

Breathing, a metronome, pulse calm, excited, he felt volcanic; his duty palatable of what he would soon do. Methodically he stood, pressing his body against the brick walls of the alley.

At six-foot two, one hundred and seventy-pounds of muscle, he was formidable. No fear, no pity, he was a perfect threshing machine of death.

The transient pushing the shopping cart stepped before him, lingered smiling at another of his kind there in the shadows. The man with the knife moved before him, stalled, smiled.

Amyl-nitrate cap, CRACK, f**k, the rush, suck in its power, he was ready to party. His body shuddered, his teeth became ridged, naked, stacked to his gums as some type of leering animal, thirsting for blood; craving its next meal.

He murdered for profit and only profit.

The beast did not hesitate, though slow he had found was sometimes better. The end results when he took his time were so f*****g intense, perfect. It was all about business yet he had found a s****l perk doing his thing. He got off, lived it over and over in his mind.

Kill a man, strip away everything he is and everything he is ever going to be, a man becomes a God.

Perhaps a moment of recognition passed between them. He would never know.

He stepped forward, wrapped his hand around the back of the now confused transient’s neck, leaned in and kissed him. The moment, the magic moment and at the same time he pulled up, violently plunged the knife into his empty stomach, disemboweling the man, stifling his screams, lips welded to lips.

He revolved the eight inches of blade, gutting him as if a disgraced Samurai. Their eyes locked, the killer could see that in the last moments of the vagrant’s life that he had UNDERSTOOD.

Warm blood, nothing like it washed on his hands as the man bleed to death. Power, a vice grip of an iron ingot, panic in bloodshot eyes, a last breath; joy in his murderous heart.

Peace as the killer felt his mind calm. He grinned, felt his d**k get hard, let the dead man fall to the alley floor.

Falling to his knees he lingered for some minutes, his head bowed to the ground. After his work, Gods work had ceased, he knelt before the dead man. Without a moment’s thought, he leaned forward, clutched the man’s hair.

HACK< HACK< HACK, several violent thrusts, with his knife, he crudely sawed his head off his shoulders. Not for pleasure, no never that, but for simple effect.

“Let the police figure that one out.” he often giggled to himself after he had killed before.

Humming, he lifted the severed skull level with his face. Quizzical, curious he looked into the man’s opaque, gray eyes.

Gloved hands washed in blood, he quickly grew tired, felt done with his commerce for the night.

Dropping the bloodied head to the alley’s floor, he twisted his neck, hard, back and forth. Cartilage cracked like low gun reports, releasing the tension form his neck.

Feeling better, richer for his expertise at business, his professionalism, two things he found great pride in, he turned to his shopping cart.

Withdrawing a plastic bottle of water with his gloved hands, he opened it. Several minutes passed, he finished washing away the obvious signs of blood careful not to leave any telltale signs anywhere.

He placed his bloody gloves in a Zip Lock bag, put it in his coat.

An odd recluse, still he was an important man, a respected man in such a booming market He jokingly knew that it would never do if people found out what he had been doing; why he had been doing it.

It had and was a great plan he had first dreamed up; a plan that was making him very rich or richer as the case may be.

He had lived in every corner of the world. There was no moratorium of places people could be slaughtered.

He was a most astute business man. He was an artist of life, filling it with music, art, a love of great foods, wines, cultures and other things that appealed to his queer likes and nature. Often he chuckled about what he was doing when he was day dreaming while working his various businesses; work much like he had done that night.

A master of computers he’d become fabulously rich from both sides of the corporate world, legal and illegal. Of course, it was a bit different at the corporate level where the only blood on his hands was that of beaten Bond Traders, Currency Traders and the most prosperous of them all, Real Estate Traders.

Peeking down the alley, he saw no reason to delay any longer. Having no further use with the dead corpse splayed on the ground before him, he peeled off his blood soaked trench coat. He let it fall to the ground.

He moved to a dumpster, popped the lid. In went the trench coat. He took a can of lighter fluid, spritzed the coat, ignited a stick match with his thumb nail and tossed it in.

“SWOOOOSH.”

No DNA, no hair follicles, prints, saliva; that was for bad f*****g TV.

Dressed now in black jeans, a black sweatshirt, black trench coat and heavy boots, he felt it was time; time to return to his other life.

Looking down at his rough hands, he saw no watch, for he wore no gold or any other kind of jewelry. He smiled, hearing his stomach growling. He now needed food; killing always made his appetite voracious. He thought of his kitchen placed so perfectly in his Mansion.

Killing always satiated him, now spent he began a low whistle as he moved to the alleys mouth. Wanting a moment, just one more because his d**k was hard, looked back, wanting one last breath of the blood, to appreciate the moment, the man he had just murdered.

Satisfied, he began to stroll down the poor section of Quebec, wondering, thinking and trying to remember if over the last six months if he had killed six men and woman, or seven.

He just couldn’t recall.

Shaking his head, he looked, up, down the street at several other homeless people, men and women and children wandering around with belongings stitched to shopping carts.

Reaching a corner, he looked back at them, hissed like a cobra at them.

His pupils dilated, lips trembling, he whispered to himself.

“I, God, will forgive every one of your lost souls. When my moon is gay with ego again, I will return.”

He started to giggle, for his love for literature only surpassed that of his lust for his own image.

Revolving his head again, he listened once again to the cartilage crack.

He moved past the corner, disappearing back into a black life he felt had just begun.

He knew that Darwin had been right.

The evolution of change always proved one thing.

The weak shall not inherit this burning slab of pain and death.

The Earth.