The World of the Forms

“It was the tenth murder in two days found mutilated and left with no clues of a murderer or a motive. Something rather strange is happening all over, and police feel the worst is yet to come as…”, droned on, muffled by the double-glazed window pane as the eleve- twelfth body was added to the list of bodies to be found on the streets of Watford. The curtains of the window just feet away were drawn and the television blocked out the noise of the body dropping with a splat to the ground. Blood pitter-pattered on the tiles like raindrops from the pipes and the juice flowed down the guttering into the sewers. By the morning, all that would be left would be a few bloodstains and a stiff, malnourished body. Nothing a few goes in the washing machine wouldn’t get rid of. On a day where the moon would be shining directly onto the body, the clouds hoodwinked the Gods and the murderers kicked the body against the wall and moved on; driven by something, an urge for more evil which was so out of character for them yet they would not question it. They had no fear of being caught by the police or some higher power that they knew not of because they felt a surge of power be bestowed upon them. They were not the only ones. All across the shadowed night sky of different cities and boroughs across England, there were people itching for the smell of blood, the sight of anguish, the rush of seeing a soul fly upwards. The incense burned as those in Watford walked away from their most recent victim, following the trail for their newest prey. Their sixth sense drew them in like they were dragged by a lead - like they were moving to be closer to something they aspired to be. An icon. The five had never met before. Never spoken to each other. Never seen each other. Yet they felt so close and like family that they did not question who they were or why they were doing it, they just did what they felt was right and moved on. Not a single prick of guilt or question of motive filled their thoughts as they moved in silence.

The night grew colder as their thirteenth soul rose to a better place and the hormones fizzed through their bodies. The wind showered them with knives and whispered into their ears but they felt nothing. They were warm - perhaps it was their blood rushing, being spurred on by a heart which went into overdrive the entire night, or perhaps the presence of whatever they felt enshrouded them in a field of heat to keep them going. It did not rain, unfortunately for the Watford Five (as they eventually became called) so there would probably be a bit more blood than last night, but again, they felt no fear, they just mechanically walked on by. The pistons in their legs pushed against the gravel and creaked as they became tired. They walked past the Victorian houses as all bar one of the lights were off and felt on autopilot the whole time, just following the thread of where they would find their next fix. After a few minutes, they felt a tug on the thread and it went taut so they walked faster. Not running, but the pistons exerted more pressure on the ground than before as the need for more of the drug became the only thing on their mind. The moon began creeping out of the clouds beside them and illuminated a young woman, about eighteen or nineteen, medium size, but on the fragile side. She instantly saw the Five come towards her but to her it only seemed like one. Their faces were too dark, shadowed by their hoods and their bloodlust. Even if you saw their faces, you would not get anything. They had no emotions regardless of whether or not they had their eyes on prey. The young woman crossed the empty road, trying to get out of the way of the Five but as she made her second step onto the black river of tarmac, a body appeared from the shadow, about twenty metres away from her. Then four more distinct bodies rolled out beside him, their heads looking down to the floor and even though the faces of the Five were inconceivable, she could feel their eyes on her soul. Taking out her headphones she asked “What do you want from me?”, trembling in fear but trying to act brave so the quivers in her voice were minimal. All she received back was a step forward from the Five, no noise except deep breaths and sly moans from the desperate group of men who yearned for her. “Please leave me alone.” the girl whispered, throwing her purse on the floor with a light thud, unhearable for those in the houses with the windows shut. It was the night time in Winter, no one had their windows open. One of the Five opened her purse - Eleanor, her ID read. She tried to scream but all that amounted was a whimper and her breath began to run out the closer the Five walked to her. “Don’t hurt me.” she managed a final whisper, “Please”.

“We won’t.” The Five whispered back monotonously. All their voices merged into one mass of noise and the cadence of said voice was nothing special, nothing that she could necessarily differentiate from any stranger she met on the street. Eleanor was confused, yet still petrified to the point where she kept her breathing light to make no noise. The leftmost person of the men in front of her covered her face with his palm. She felt no pain. Her eyes closed and the backs of her eyelids filled with paradise. A raining garden full of willow trees and cherry blossoms. It was not cold in this land, nor was it hot, it was just the right temperature where the rain was warm yet refreshing. There was a little canopy to the left of the lily-pad filled pond, where the rain bounced off of and watered the chrysanthemums perfectly and the pink and yellow petals shone in the sunlight that just about petered in through the gaps of the willow tree leaves. The petals from the cherry blossoms fell into her hands and were ground under her feet as she walked to the canopy to experience the sound of the rain surrounding her. She could not help but feel perfectly at one with the world and her life. She was happy. The rain then suddenly got heavier and the flowers all withered away as the willow trees creaked and fell over. Her paradise crumbled as her eyelids opened to see herself laying in a puddle of complete vermillion blood. She viewed her body from above yet felt the pain they were doing to her. No knives but her body appeared to have holes in it where blood came pouring out. Eleanor felt herself get dragged into her body again to experience what felt like a gunshot through her stomach but nothing was there. The Five’s faces were completely dark, she saw nothing but a smile as she stared at them in agony. They all pointed their fingers at her and she rose up. Seeing her blood drive down the road back where she came from and all pile up neatly into the river at the foot of the road. She looked down at her body, mutilated and seemingly sucked of all nutrition she had left. Her face was screwed in despair, fuelling the Five’s addiction to the violence, hate, pain, suffering and death.

Eleanor felt a wave of peace destroy all the pain she felt. She drifted into something a bit like her paradise, only a few cracks of loss and guilt shone through the space between the willow branches as her body became submerged in a bath of tranquility. She just floated. No real moving or bobbing up and down; no wading yourself to keep afloat like she did many times at the beach. She began replaying her life through her mind but as soon as she experienced her life again, she forgot it all. No single memory remained. Not her face, not her name, not the gruesome picture of her decrepit, dead body laying on the road where she was murdered. She was now just a genderless soul, floating in this river. She figured out she was moving but did not feel it, she was just enveloped in the perfect warmth. Like Goldilocks she laid there with no thoughts on her mind but the most solemn, serene feelings of bliss in this perfect world she now travelled through. She could see nothing. The perfect black. Time and space seemed to stand still as she travelled through this perfect black onwards until she felt ripples surround her soul. Her senses began to fade as her soul kept travelling but the ripples startled her and the warmth transitioned into the perfect cold as her ‘body’ tensed up. Something changed in this afterworld - a change which sent Eleanor’s soul to be submerged under the water. Had the water still been warm then her soul would have finally lost consciousness and gone searching for a new body, a new life, but instead her soul startled awake. Still devoid of any memories or real feeling of belonging to anything or anyone, but the drifting down the river changed drastically. Ripples became bumps and bumps became waves as her soul got beaten and battered down the river until she hit a barricade. Her soul stopped, and metaphorically her heart did too. The soul rose out of the water and contorted into different shapes as differing levels of pressure crushed her from all angles. Fear. The only thing she could feel at all was fear, not that the soul had any understanding of what fear was or what the memory of any other emotion was like but fear reverberated off of every single ‘bone’ in her ‘body’. A face might have been visible, but the soul was submerged in the river for far too long to have senses other than pain and the inexplicable fear that was put upon her. Pain was standardized. No matter what stage you are at in your life, pain is inevitable, and pain is unavoidable. You start off in the world with pain, and end in pain. That is it. The cheshire cat grinned as the soul became weak and oozed out its first drops of juice. The cat was thirsty and once it got a few drops on its tongue, it wanted the whole bottle. So the soul was squeezed and squeezed and wrung completely dry. Humans cannot avoid but release their pain with a shout or a cry, a soul has not got that ability. When they are in pain, they suffer, being forced to hold the pain as their final experience. Lips were licked and the soul was devoured. The cat sauntered along, relaxed with its fix and surprised at the flavour of its dish. It was evidently a strong soul - one that will be missed (not that the cat necessarily cared). Relishing the enjoyment it received from its murder, it disappeared. Into the perfect black.

The Five dropped. Unconscious, but that was not really much of a change to their mental state in the first place. They waited for the police to arrive. In a perfect pentagon they laid there all night until a shriek echoed around the houses and a phone call started. Police cars rolled into the road and sectioned it off with repeated precision, as did many other groups of police all around as bodies were eventually found and wheeled off to be examined. At first sight the police were mortified, but the more they stared at the bodies (if you could even call them that), the more their terror turned into confusion. It was like no murder they had ever seen before; there seemed to be no trace of a bullet or stab wound and the only thing that was slightly reminiscent of any murder they had seen before was the blood, but there was only little. In each case they found, there seemed to be very little blood considering the fact that the body was in such a dehumanising state. “This would be the perfect murder, wouldn’t it, Dave? Minimal blood, no evidence thus far of gunpowder or even DNA prints on anything, huh?” said one of the officers, looking down at the five surrounding Eleanor in disgust.

“I guess so, mate. What do you think went wrong? Other groups are describing the bodies the same way as this poor lass, think they ran out of steam or something?” Dave responded, completely baffled by the entire situation but he was desensitized to all gore - his mother blamed it on the video games he played, but he thought that anyone with a sane mind would understand that they do not correlate.

“No clue. We’ll question them when they come around. Chuck ’em in the van for now and see what happens, and get the lass into the bag and then in the ambulance. Get forensics to run samples on everything. I want to know everything.”

“Gotcha. Mike,” Dave asked, “fourteen in two days is unheard of isn’t it? Thank God it’s over!” His voice almost quivered in excitement. The rush of arresting people capable of such a feat seemed to both excite and disgust Dave to the point where he felt sick. Or was it the rush of endorphins?

“Erm… yeah, I assume so. We’ll know if it’s over once we question them, so get them in the van and we’ll see what’s going on. Get the greenies to help you if you need, get them used to the blood on the first couple of days to sieve through the weak.” Mike was the superior officer in this case so tried to act tough but through the hatred he had for criminals shone a light of innocence and fear. He had a family now, after all, so the sight of someone’s life gone so tragically sent a shiver down his spine to the point where he just needed to forget about it. The body bag, Mike thought, was not the right send off that people deserved, especially if they had been murdered, but speed was everything in his job. Sometimes bodies went two by two into the vans to be transferred to the mortuary. It all seemed too pretentious and scientific, not a proper send off. Had he seen the case maybe ten years prior, Mike may have had a completely different viewpoint on it - perhaps having a total disregard for the victims of the crime, going straight past the sentimental rituals he had like quietly praying for the person to have a safe travel upwards and straight onto packing them into bin bags to be dealt with later, may have helped him recover easier. Despite what he thought about the victims, he cared about justice. He needed to bring punishment to those who dealt wrong unto people, oftentimes this meant he had to bend the rules himself, but if it was for justice, then he could alter his own rulebook of morality in search of the overall good. The blood may fade from the street, but the blood shadow never fades from his mind. It never does. Even through his facade and comradery, he sees the stains as he drives the shadows of previous cases. It will pass eventually, he hoped. “You can drive back if you want, lad, since you wouldn’t shut up about my driving on the way here. But I get the AUX, I’m sick and tired of constant drill artists through the van speakers!” Mike complained, but he needed human interaction to fill the void of the girl’s soul.

“As long as you don’t play ‘soppy’ love songs then I’m down with that.” Dave retorted as he hopped into the driving seat like a boy in the car dealership. It was just the reprieve that Mike needed to keep this facade up for a little bit longer, or at least until they reached the station - the Five didn’t seem like they were waking up soon, so he might be able to go home and hug his kids before he questioned them.

As the van stopped off at forensics, Mike and Dave slumped out to open the back doors and transfer the black bags onto the trolley to be dissected and examined. Mike held the button of his shirt pushing the trolley as a pseudo-prayer as the shock began to fade and the reality of what actually happened started to set in. He missed his wife and kids terribly and the more he stayed waiting for all the bodies to be pushed through the eerily creaky doors, the more he needed to smell his wife’s hair or feel the warmth of his children’s bodies. He had a son, three, and a daughter of eighteen months who was struggling with some form of illness that Mike didn’t necessarily understand - something to do with her lungs and heart but the doctor reassured him it was only minor (not that any parent would actually believe that). Mike took a look over at Dave whose eyes were lit up with intrigue and shock as he watched the coroner investigate the somewhat paranormal bodies. Granted he may have been intrigued because he was the epitome of a virgin and Carla, the coroner, was gorgeous. Her black hair tied up in a bun peeked through the sterilised blue hat she mandatorily wore and if Dave looked close enough he might even see a hint of her cleavage. Mike smiled to himself - Dave was the perfect partner for these situations due to his lack of social understanding. He seemed to be completely void of any gravitas or empathy - not in the psychopathic way, just in the sense that he felt more comfortable not showing it. He was easily distracted; Dave turned his attention to the new set of sterilised equipment going into the door to Carla’s room as she was inundated with bodies to dissect. Starting to feel his stomach wring, Mike left the building for fresh air and to phone his wife just to hear her voice. “Hi darling, I just wanted to phone in to check on the kids, how’s Maya holding up?... Oh, that’s great, any more news from the doctor’s yet?... Hmm, are they just saying that to make sure we aren’t stressed?... If you say so… Yeah work was okay I guess. A little stressful but nothing too traumatic today.” He lied naturally. Of course he wanted to tell his wife but he would prefer to suffer in silence than worry her - he didn’t see the unrelenting irony that this created. “Yeah not much is going on so I’ll be home in about an hour I think. Do you want me to bring lunch back or something? I’m not exactly hungry but I’ll bring back your favourite… Okay, bye, I love you.” Dave left with a lackadaisical grin and sauntered back over to the now empty van. “Go on then,” Mike sighed, “spill.”

“Huh?” Dave retorted, finally being brought back into the empirical world. “Oh, Carla smiled at me”.

“Jesus. Really? Wow you must be so sexy.” Mike tsked and jumped into the car and pointed Dave the way home. “Can you drop me off at the Deli and then mine? I’m gonna go home for a bit to do the paperwork there for a bit and then swing by the office at about 2.”

“Err yeah sure. Why not do the paperwork at the office? I can help you if you want.”

“Like you’d actually do the paperwork.” Mike rolled his eyes and they laughed in unison at the thought. “Nah for real I’d just like to see my kids for a bit.”

“Oh I see, yeah I can do that, no worries. Can I have the AUX thou-”

“Hell no! I’m not listening to some eighteen-year old ‘rapper’ rap about stabbing people.” Mike laughed but was being serious, after the morning he had had, he needed something to calm him down. The drive home wasn’t too stressful. Mike’s calm music - no classical music at the request of Dave - let him focus on his breathing and not replay the images of Eleanor that seemed to be imprinted on the back of his eyes. He picked up his wife’s sandwich from the Deli and gave Dave a handshake as he got his house keys from his pocket and left Dave the job of taking the van back to the office. He took a deep breath before twisting the key into the front door and hearing the cries of Maya. Instantly he ran into the living room where her stuffed swan toy was laying on the floor, out of the reach of her in her highchair that was smeared with pesto. She relished at the sight of her father and smacked the table part of her chair with happiness and the biggest grin stretched along her face as her cheek muscles were lifted up with the string of the puppeteer. It was the perfect happiness. A tear began to run down Mike’s face as he lifted Maya from her seat and held her close; close enough to feel her heartbeat on his chest. He kissed her forehead and held her tight for a little longer until he could hear his wife enter into the fray.

“What time do you call this then?” She giggled, joking at the fact that he was home when he had only left a few hours ago.

“Eleven,” Mike replied, not being in the right mental state to comprehend the joke, “I brought you back your favourite,” he held up the brown sandwich bag which rustled as he handed it over to her, “I know it’s early but I didn’t want you to go hungry.” They locked eyes and smiled. He brought her in for a hug and held her tighter than he had the previous nights so she instantly knew something was up but chose not to interject. He pushed her brown hair behind her ears and lightly kissed her. “I love you, Rebecca.” Without releasing the eye contact, she replied:

“I love you too, Mike”