The Butcher of Pepper Hill [An Interactive Story]

71

Wes gives you a blank look. Then, with a sigh, he rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and shakes his head.

"Sweet Jesus, Kendall," he says. "You watch too much God damned T.V."

He frowns at your confused expression and gestures at you with the knife. "This whole desperate beggin' thing. I wonder if anyone ever thinks it'll actually work."

"Wes—"

"Seriously, now. I've got you in my basement holdin' a knife on you. The ending of this story should be pretty damn clear."

You stare at him in horror. You can't seem to find the words to say in response to his frank discussion of your inevitable murder.

He gives you a shrug. "I'm just sayin'."

"You're evil," you say, but there's no power behind the words.

"Evil? No," Wes says. "I'm just a man makin' his way in an evil world."

Glancing toward the stairs, you wonder if you have any chance of escape. As if he can see what you're thinking, he steps closer. You edge to the side, lifting your hands in a warding gesture, and he steps again, angling his body to cut off your path to escape. You continue this game for a moment, you edging back and to the side, him edging forward, until cold concrete kisses your shoulders.

You never would have expected things to happen like this at the end of your life. Wes's fist darts foward, closed around the handle of the knife. Your hands are raised, and you bring them together in an attempt to stop the attack, but the knife slides easily through your fingers, laying your palm open to the bone and plunging into your stomach just below your sternum.

Your sob of pain and terror is the only sound for a moment. Then, Wes pulls the knife out with a sickening, sucking sound.

As you close your hands over the wound and slump down to your knees, sobbing, he studies the knife with a frown, watching your blood drip down over his fingers. He reaches around to his back with his other hand, and when he straightens, he has a coil of thin cord in his hand.

The pain is incredible, but still you try to edge past him, crawling on your hands and knees as blood seeps into your clothes, soaking your shirt front.

Wes's hand comes to rest on your shoulder. You try to shrug off his grasp, but he pulls your shoulder, rolling you over onto your back.

You grapple with Wes's hands, your own slick with blood, but he is stronger than you are, especially now that you are in pain and are losing blood from the wound in your stomach. He loops his gruesome noose around your neck.

"Nn—" you say, but the noose is already tight enough to cut off your air, and any chance you had of begging for your life is cruelly cut short as Wes wrenches it tighter and tighter...

When the papers report your death, they will describe it in clinical terms, as you described so many others.

Kendall Moore, local journalist of growing renown, was found dead in a ditch on Snaketail Road this morning just a mile from where the the body of Back Road Butcher's most recent victim, Mathilda Haynes, was discovered. The victim sustained a single stab wound to the torso, but medical examiners indicated the cause of death as strangulation...

ENDING ACHIEVED: A Famous M.O. 

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If you want to achieve all 24 endings and need a little help, check out the END NOTES chapter (mild spoilers) for a story map!