Chapter 1
Shadows. Shadows haunted every inch of Raven’s Hunt. They haunted everyone. Everyone but me. Because even I was a shadow, or at least a part of me was.
The unhinged, murderous part that was a bloodhound when triggered. Fortunately for the people of Raven’s Hunt, I wasn’t triggered that easily.
And unfortunate for my victims, when I was triggered…
I quietly followed the man deeper into the Silent Woods. They were named so because the wildlife there had a tendency to absorb all the noise. All the screams.
I could almost picture him screaming in agony, begging for someone to save him, and the nature absorbing his voice.
Maybe he’d finally understand how it felt to not have someone answer your pleas.
Maybe he’d finally regret. Maybe he’d want to repent. And he would.
In hell.
I controlled my urge to jump him and kill him then and there. I had to wait.
I had to make my pattern show.
I wanted the rest of the men to tremble in fear as they awaited their punishment.
I wanted them to know when and where I was going to kill them and how brutal it was going to be.
Daniel stopped dead in his tracks, his hands in his pocket from the chilling weather, perhaps sensing.
I mimicked him, not moving an inch, but not hiding either.
Slowly, he turned around, and I could see the shake in his movements as he looked for me.
His eyes finally settled on my dark, hooded form, certainly only partially visible in the dark and through the fog.
But he saw me.
I could tell from the way he gulped and pulled out his hand and a gun along with it.
My lips curled, a sinister smile forming over my face as I took in his futile efforts.
He would feel the woods swallow his screams, and he would realize how it felt to not be heard.
He would pay.
Daniel turned back around and he quickened his pace, and like a perfect mimic, I matched mine to his.
He was like a mouse, walking right to where I wanted.
His car had stopped near the mountains, and his only choice had been to trek across them, or pass through the silent woods and walk to the other side of the city.
He knew I was coming for him, he couldn’t have just sat in the car.
He looked back around, and broke into a run, and I followed suit.
The only difference was that he was forty, and I was much younger.
In a matter of minutes, he was heaving, his hands on his knees, standing on dust and young cactus growth.
I stopped four feet behind him, and let the realization sink in.
I saw his body tremble as he looked around, realizing right where he was.
The Hollow Creek. The place of his doom.
“No, no, no, no,” I faintly heard him say.
He turned around quickly, but before he could even aim his gun, I knocked it out of his arms with a swift smack.
He shrieked and I pushed him to the ground, adrenaline coursing through me as the moment I had been waiting for finally came.
I was going to get to cut him open.
“P-Please,” the wind swallowed his plea, and I took out a pair of handcuffs from my jacket’s pocket and cuffed him.
“Hello,” I said, the device turning my actual voice into an eerie, electric one, making the kill even more thrilling. Plus, I didn’t want him to know who I was just yet.
When my victims figured out my identity, they saw their friend in me, and begged for mercy as if I would spare them cause we’d shared coffee one day.
It was annoying.
Daniel shook, and his plight only brought me pleasure.
I put a knee on his chest and pinned him down before taking out a syringe and releasing a drug into his lower spine that paralyzed his legs.
I wanted him to struggle and fight, but I needed his legs to remain still.
I pulled out a small object from my pocket, a ring-like thing, made specifically for beautiful times like this.
Using a gloved hand, I grabbed his, and clutched them tightly as he tried to resist. “Don’t move. It will only make this harder,” I repeated his words from year back, indifferent to whether he remembered saying them.
If he didn’t then, then he soon would.
Very fucking soon.
I slide the thumbscrew into one of his fingers and twisted.
His cries pierced the air, music to my ears, and I watched as his face twisted into agony as the bone broke and deformed.
I had a little over an hour to wrap that up, and I wasn’t going to waste a minute.
I turned my attention to another finger, then another.
The fourth time, I slid in the tool and paused.
His breathing evened out, and he looked at me in relief, perhaps thinking that I was going to spare him.
Not a fucking chance.
As fast as I could, I tightened it, making him scream.
And then, one by one, I destroyed all the fingers that had dared lay a hand on her.
I gave him a few minutes to regain his composure, a while for him gather himself as I let the energy inside me settle.
Torture and murder had become a good outlet for my rather unsatiated rage.
“I didn’t do anything,” the classic line escaped his mouth. But he had. He had done a lot.
“How old was she?” I asked simply. His eyes widened as he realized exactly who and what I was talking about.
“I…I…” his voice broke off, and the rage came flooding back. I unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down in a swift motion along with his boxers, exposing his ‘manhood’. “Please…please…” he begged as I pulled out a knife.
“I asked you a question,” I spoke, tracing the length of his penis with the tip of the knife, drawing slight blood.
“Twelve,” he replied, his voice breaking. “I am sorry, I am so-” I cut off his fake apologies by bringing the knife down and chopping off a scrotum.
His screams were so loud, that even with the environment absorbing them, a couple birds flew away from a nearby ghost of a tree.
I let him digest the pain before taking out an injection of local anaesthesia and injecting the fluid in the wound.
“Raping a twelve year old does not make you a man. You were never a man,” with those words, I cut off his other scrotum, and then repeated the process, so he wouldn’t pass out from pain.
I didn’t have enough time for him to wake back up.
I placed one of his scrotum in a zip-lock bag, before taking the other one into my hand.
The blood soaked my gloves and I let it, finding bliss in feeling it against my skin.
Daniel whimpered and I grabbed his jaw, forcing him to open his mouth.
Just as I had anticipated, he resisted, perhaps grossed out by what I was going to make him do.
He was going to wish he’d let me do it.
I took my knife back out and an EpiPen before injecting epinephrine into his bloodstream.
Good fucking luck passing out or bleeding out, bastard.
I injected a paralysing drug into his arms as well, and used a hand to grip his jaw before bringing the tip of the knife against the place where the two lips of his met.
I made a small vertical cut, before using it to cut along the lower end of his lower lip. He thrashed, he tried to resist, he tried to shout, but his attempts were all in vain.
He had once made a little girl stifle her screams.
I cut off his lower lip quickly with ease before moving to his upper one.
“Any final words?” I asked mockingly, knowing damn well that the pain wouldn’t let him speak.
“I-I…” he cut himself off with screams as I meticulously cut off his upper lip.
The pain made his mouth open up automatically, or perhaps he had lost the fight in himself.
With a smile, I pulled down the hood, and let him see my eyes.
His eyes widened and he struggled, looking at me in disbelief, and it was my favorite bit.
The victims realizing exactly who I was.
I slid his scrotum inside his mouth and pushed it close.
That night, Daniel Harris died gagging on his own testicle.
And I slid back into the shadows.
