Page 1 of Dark Torment

JONATHAN

I’mexcellent at my job. Both of them, really.

Prosecutor by day, killer by night.

It’s my job with the District Attorney’s office to put killers behind bars where they belong. But at night, I’m the worst of them.

Thing is, I’m not your typical serial killer. I know the difference between wrong and right. I just don’t care.

I don’t have something in my brain telling me that taking someone’s life is okay, or that I’m doing God’s work. I don’t have a voice in my head screaming‘Whore. Kill.’ or any other bullshit other killer’s spew in order to try and get away with a lesser sentence.

I never set out to be the animal I’ve become, but it’s everything I never knew I needed.

Knowing I’m the reason someone else lives or dies is a powerful drug that I came across by chance a few years ago. I was on my way home from an evening jog when I found a woman crying for help a bit off the beaten path. Someone had stabbed her and left her to die without a single ounce of remorse.

Now, let me start by saying that, until this point, I assumed I would be like everyone else and call for help immediately. Then, doing everything I could to stop the bleeding… but I didn’t.

Her pooling blood called to something deep and dark in my soul as I made my way closer to her. Her screams and cries had stopped as her eyes filled with so much hope, thinking I was someone there to save her.

I felt like a fucking God when she looked at me like that, but it wasn’t enough.

Saving her life wasn’t what called to me.

I found myself jealous of the man who had done this to her. Attempted to take her life like this before leaving her to die. Jealous and curious.

Why leave her behind instead of enjoying the thrill of the kill?

There was no way she would survive if I didn’t get her the help she needed immediately, and that was the whole point in choosing this time of night and this specific trail.

I wanted to know what it had felt like to slice a knife through such sweet skin. How it felt to control her existence like that. Normally, I would never hurt a woman, but she was already marked for death.

It was in that moment, as I watched her dying, that I could feel that control. That power.

I leaned over her body and asked her what her name was.

“Chr—ist—ine,” she gurgled out, and I smiled.

“Don’t worry, Christine. I’m going to make it all better.”

She smiled up at me weakly in thanks before I pulled off my shirt and wrapped it around her throat.

She tried to cry out, but my hands cut off her voice box. Her eyes grew wide, and she began to panic.

Squeezing my hands tighter around my shirt, I felt her trying to gasp for breath as I held her down. Her tired body flailed as she desperately tried to fight back, but she was too weak and had lost too much blood.

That was the night I felt just how incredible it was to take someone’s life, and I became addicted.

When she stopped breathing and the life left her body, I called the police. When they arrived, I was covered in her blood, but they didn’t question it. To them, I was just a passerby who tried to help her before she succumbed to her injuries.

All they did was ask questions. What happened? How did I find her? Do I know who she is? Did I see anyone else?

Not once throughout the investigation did anyone think I was responsible for her ultimate demise because of who I am in the city of Chicago. I realized I could get away with murder if I just played my cards right, and so it began.

I never stick to the same type of kill, I take forensic countermeasures, and I’m never identified as a suspect.

I live my double life in peace, finding victims on the dark net that someone else in this pathetic world wants to be rid of.

It’s easier than choosing victims at random and taking the chance that a pattern can form for the police to trace.

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