4

10 0 0
                                    


It had been exactly 44 days since Angel caught Jhin, and had locked him up safely in her own apartment, keeping him from harming others

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

It had been exactly 44 days since Angel caught Jhin, and had locked him up safely in her own apartment, keeping him from harming others. Over a month now without a single act performed, the city of Epsilon began to wonder if the mischievous serial killer had gone into hiding, or died. It had been 4 kills per month for years, but now... nothing had happened in quite a decent amount of time.

They call me mad. All artists are mad.

Jhin had begun to... express himself... in rather strange ways. He painted a lot, and even covered the walls of his bedroom in beautiful paintings. Everything from galaxies to lotus flowers, he covered even a part of his ceiling. The bathroom door was painted and the inside of his bathroom had been started on but never finished. Everywhere there were canvases with beautiful paintings. Some displayed on the walls, others left in a stack on the carpeted floors.

His more recent paintings, had been rather gruesome. The last two weeks had been hell for Angel, who struggled to get him to do anything. She even went as far as to buy him a small electrical piano. She sometimes heard him playing when she'd gone to bed for the night, the music waking her, and only sounding sad, and soft. Jhin began displaying these aggressive behaviors too, being locked up and confined starting to drive him mad. Well, he was already mad, but this was somehow worse. Several nights he'd even refused to eat, and barely drank anything for a while. Angel, desperate to get him to stop hurting himself, had started to keep anything sharp away from him. Jhin started to paint on himself... with a small knife she'd allowed him to have only for trimming his canvas papers.

This had been one of those instances, and she'd come home to find him acting out again.

It hurts so good...

"Jhin?" Angel wandered over to his room, to see Jhin standing there by the door as though he'd been expecting her. Perhaps he heard her come in the front door. She noticed his eye, and ignored the strange message he was holding up on either side of his head via his drawings. "Jhin what happened to your eye?" She asked, noticing that he had the right one covered.

"Oh that... it's nothing. I just wanted to cover it." He set down the papers he'd been holding up on either side of his head. One had a drawing of his gun on it, the other, red splashes. With the drawings held to either side of his head like that, it looked like he was suggesting the end of his own life.

"Is that real blood?" Angel asked.

He turned around and shrugged. "And what if it is. It's art."

The stars align.

"Jhin we talked about this. You need to stop hurting yourself. What did you use this time? Give it to me, whatever it is." Angel grabbed the key from her bedroom, and then started to unlock his door. She stopped short when she saw him peering down through the bars at her. Taking a step back, she put the key behind her back and observed him. "Are you gonna-"

FOUR: and a city of lightsWhere stories live. Discover now