One Year To Die (Flip Zimmerman x Reader Fic)

Chapter 3 - The Calling Card

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January, 1979.

51 WEEKS TILL YOUR MURDER

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It's been a whole week...and fucking nothing!

The incident on the corner below your apartment on new years day turned out to be nothing more than freak assault. The girl was reluctant to give a statement to the police, for obvious reasons considering her profession, but the uniforms that interviewed her were able to get a rough profile of her attacker.

Unfortunately for you, the description would lead you no closer to the Butcher. The man that attacked the girl didn't exactly meet the aesthetic description of someone the Butcher would allow in his gang of despicable beings: an overweight, middle aged and greying asshole. And instead of taking no for an answer, the dickhead beat her like a dog and dropped her battered body where he picked her up on the corner.

The Butcher was a man that left his stylised mark on everything. From what you were able to tell, without ever actually meeting him or ever actually seeing his face, you knew he was meticulous. You knew he was systematic with his methods - each of his victims were a testament to that.

Every month, there would be a new victim. And every six months, there would be a change of state. Like. Fucking. Clockwork. So you would've thought that after two months in Colorado, there would be two victims at least. But nothing.

There have been disappearances of women, sure, but none matching the MO of the Butcher. All of the confirmed victims of the Butcher thus far were almost identical on paper: unhappily married, brunette and desperate...so desperate it seems that they fell into the womanizing traps of a rapist and serial killer, never to be seen again.

And this maniac has his signature too, just to round of the depraved sadism. Each of the bodies found thus far have been the same, all carved from neck to navel, gutted, butchered. Not to mention defiled in the most inhumane of ways. Reading the autopsy reports of the victims after eating is not a wise idea, having it written in black and white what these poor girls had to go through in their final moments, it's almost unbearable. Their bodies were always battered by a struggle, their skin bruised and bitten and scarred in the most intimate of areas as the Butcher had his way with them...whether they were raped before or after their murder, it was often difficult to tell.

Either way, it was sick.

And despite the murder, mutilation and molestation, the Butcher likes to taunt not only the police, but the families of the victims.

He liked to keep trophies, and send trinkets to the grieving families. It was often the first indicator of anything sinister. The women would go missing, and then after a few weeks of nothing, a letter would be sent to the husbands of the victims, a calling card of sorts. Contained within, there would be one thing...their wedding ring. And it would would always be signed in sinister red:

'The Butcher, xxx.'

A love letter.

As for his trophies... From all the bodies recovered, the women all had one thing other than their wedding rings missing: their hearts. It would be carved from their bodies. God only knows why he did this or what his purpose was with human hearts.

The human side of you wanted to know nothing about this, to forget every report you had read and erase every photograph you saw; but the detective had a sick and twisted needed to know even more, to delve even deeper into the murderous mystery of it all.

But right now, the barmaid needed to get three beers to Table 6.

You recognised the men from the other night - one of them was the guy that tried to attack Meg from over the counter. You'd recognise that foul yellow smile anywhere. You told Meg you'd handle this table, for her sake, hoping that they would remember you and how you were not the one to fuck with.