There were far more beautiful places for the world to end. Oliver had seen many of them first hand. Pompeii, Germany, France. Wars and battles and atrocities had been carried out in beautiful strategic course, resulting in something that resembled art. Instead he got stuck in the artistic equivalent of a box of crayons.
Still, it was an ideal way to pass the time. He had time to waste while he waited for his annual killing spree. He killed twelve people every year during the twelve days of Christmas. For him, blood was the greatest gift of all.
However, needs must. He killed his chosen dozen every year for free, leaving behind a little less evil in the world. He brought joy to the world in the arms of death. It was all rather poetic, really, when you thought about it.
But killing people took time and, most of all, money. You would think that a killer that carved lines in peoples skin would have very few overhead costs, but that just wasn’t so. There was a whole list of things he needed: cleaners, solvents, ways to dispose of the body safely and without drawing attention to oneself. Murder might be a crime of passion, but it was awfully expensive.
So this was a meant to an end. And the truth of it was that the thirst for blood had outgrown his yearly entrance back into the lion’s den. Whereas he viewed the twelve people he chose every year as one big art canvass (indeed, he published the photos under an assumed name and they had received glowing reviews) killing for profit was no less of an art. Especially given his abilities.
Oliver had never believed in the supernatural before. He believed in blood and the fourteen lines from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven that he carved in people’s skin. But last three Christmas’ ago, things had changed.
He had killed his wife, his daughter and his son. When the last line from The Raven had been carved into his son’s skin, he was surprised, but not frightened, when the boy’s body began to glow. Then his son had talked to him from the land of the dead and his life, or after life, had changed forever.
Now he could kill at will, whenever he wished, or whenever he was paid for it. He was being paid handsomely to kill everyone in the apartment building. Or he had been. He had since killed the landlord that wanted to turn 69B into a murder scene for insurance money. Oliver didn’t care about the reason behind the killing, all that mattered was that there was an art to it. The temptation of fourteen or more people to fall under his knife grew to be too hard to ignored, so he pressed on, despite the untimely death of the landlord. Fat fuck.
Thus far, he had only managed to kill three people out of the fourteen. He had tried for more, but people were so frustratingly stubborn and would fight to live. The only ones he spared were the writer and his new friend. At least he had gotten rid of the tranny. There was too much love in them to succumb to fear. He doubted whether they even knew anything was going on.
He didn’t care. There were many other bags of blood in the building and there was one more entering now. Oliver caught a flash of blond hair, saw the man holding a briefcase or medical bag in one hand. Oliver wondered whether there were scalpels in the leather satchel. Those could be fun.
This was all just a primer to the main event. He had attempted to kill three others, but had not been successful. That was all right. If there was anything he had learned, it was that everyone had to die eventually. All you had to do was wait.
And Oliver had all the time in the world.
69B 