Prologue
There was the smell of blood.
It wasn’t a dark night. The moonlight shone on the Earth’s surface, painting everything silver in its trail. To the eyes of a stranger, the scene about to happen was crystal clear.
His nostrils flared, his head jerked up. He no longer looked at the floor while pacing down the lonely road. It has been so long...His whole being was excited by the smell, as if someone turned on a switch in his brain. A feeling that had been shut down for as long as he could remember. His scarlet eyes gleamed of hope, his heart raced in his chest, as though it wanted to leave his body behind and run for the source of the smell. He licked his lips in delight, and without an ounce of hesitation, his legs started moving.
One step at a time, two steps, three steps, the silence of the night killed by the sound of his feet on the cold asphalt.
It’s right there, he was so close..so close... He turned right, following a narrow alley, and he found….
He found what he was looking for.
Red, the blissful color dominating the scenery. What a nice feeling it gave him, at that moment. He wondered about the reason why he felt so euphoric. He has seen all kinds of murders before, but not a single one was like this...
No, this one was special.
This one stank of pure evil. When the darkest parts of a human mind was pushed away by a powerful conscience, this killer did not fight his nature, did not question himself before performing such a sin. Guilt was nowhere near welcome in this killer’s mind.
It was a real work of art.
The Demon approached, without fear of leaving footprints behind.
He had thought he was a mere human. All this time.
He was not, so he didn’t have to worry about leaving a trace on the crime scene.
He stepped on the pool of blood like it was just a small lake on uneven ground, a persistent trace of a recent storm. The body looked so serene, as though it was relaxing under the moonlight on a deserted beach. He realized it was a woman only after looking at her reddened hair, floating on the surface of the blood pool.
Before he knew it, he was on his knees, gazing at the girl from up close. She was wearing a white sleeveless dress. Her skin was still intact, the purple snakes of death that took over corpses’ skins still haven’t devoured it. The white dress ended at her waist, for her lower half was reduced to bits. Her limbs were not all in one place. They were scattered all around her. Both hands closed in fists, both feet with their bottoms facing each other, forming a T shape. The legs were oddly arranged, reminding him of something he should have kept in his memory but didn’t. Something he should never have forgotten.
The girl looked like a ragged doll, broken, left to the mercy of no one, nonetheless beautiful. Her eyelashes glittered under the moonlight, casting a grass-shaped shadow on her damp cheeks. Her lips were painted bright red, like her own blood, and her bangs hid her forehead, slick with blood, stuck to her skin like she had just gone out of the shower.
She looked like a dying angel.
He opened her eyelids to glance at her irises, the frozen look of fear perhaps lingering in them. He only found the whites of her eyes, her irises long gone, hidden inside her skull.
She must have eagerly wanted to leave this world, not bothering to look at it for one last time.
She deserved to be named, he thought. She deserved to be remembered.
What could be her real name? What was her story? How did she end up being the victim to such a talented killer?
He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know, or whether it was his own past that intrigued him. His own ignorance that wished to disappear, bringing back all his memories to the surface.
Perhaps this moment was destined to be. Perhaps this crime was the one thing he kept waiting for, to change his fate forever.
That’s when a strange thought occurred to him. This corpse…something destined to happen…
He stood up. Taking several steps backwards while still looking at the body, a sight unraveled before him.
And he understood, or rather, someone was trying to help him, was trying to make him understand.
The girl’s scattered limbs formed one word.
B E L L E T H
He realized with dread….
that his whole life had been a huge lie.
He knew.
He knew why this crime was so special to him.
He remembered.
