A Strange Addiction

Nothing could have prepared Officer Peterson for the sight he was about to see. In his 16 years as a murder investigator these past months had been the worst. He had been informed vaguely of the crime when his lunch was interrupted, but the reality of the crime chocked him. As he stepped out of his car and walked the few feet under the yellow tape, he felt the blood drain from his face. Breath caught in his throat making it impossible to breathe in the summer air.

A young boy laid before officer Peterson on the steaming concrete. The heat had burned the skin and tissue from the boy's cheek, chin, and naked chest, leaving a trail of sweetness in the air. The shoulder long hair covered some of his pale face, yet not the cold eyes widen in stilled horror. Some of his hair stuck in thick ropes to the wound on the back of his skull. The blood turned the chestnut hair into a beautiful burgundy red. Small pieces of crushed skull scatted the burgundy. As his eyes his mouth was opened; a plump of his tongue sticking out, the rest laid burnt onto the concrete. Peterson looked scanned the melting body before him before taking a knee and inspecting the note attached to the skin of the teenager corpse with a crude safety pin. 

"There are many a way of addiction and many a things to be addicted of. The Devil shows his face in different ways, such as the rush of a drug running through your veins at the speed of light or the rush and satisfaction that follows your fist connecting with a motherfucker's face. All addictions with the same pulling factor; the promise of a rush like no other. I've had my rushes; they've all slowed me down in the aftermath, left me lost and wanting more. The adrenalin worn off and for long I thought it'd be the end of me. But I was wrong.

Not long ago I struck a girl in the back of the head with a tool, not hard enough to kill her but just enough to break open her skull. Soon thick, red blood ran out and down her hair. I hadn't noticed the beauty of her hair before the chrisom blood thickened it and clumped it together in great, volumes pieces. She fell forward on to the floor, as I know you found her, but you should know she did not die in vain. I watched the blood run through, creating my artwork.

I know you've been looking, but you've been looking all the wrong places. You will not find me, because I will not make no mistake and let ya'll catch me. You will not find my next victim before I do, 'cause I don't know who it's gonna be next. All I know is that this rush is only satisfied when blood mixes with gorgeous locks and make my art. My creation.

Save yourselves the trouble. Go home to your wives and kids. And don't forget to lock the front door."

Pictures of the young blond girl on the bathroom floor sent chills down Peterson's spine. It had only been a few months of the investigation, only a few months since the first victim had been found in a pool of her own blood. Peterson wiped his forehead. Bleed out after being hit once in the back of the head. Since then, others had been found, all different. Boys, girls, men, women. White, black, Hispanic.

They had never found a pattern, and judging from the note, they never would. Peterson fought back the stomach acid rising in his throat. He hadn't eaten much in the last while, how could he when kids were found murdered? How could he eat, sleep and drink while trying to keep his own family safe?

Somebody in a bio suit picked the note from the young boys back. It was evidence. Maybe it contained something like a fingerprint or DNA from the perpetrator. Peterson shook his head in silence. He knew nothing would turn up, just like they had no evidence form any of the other cases. Nothing. Not even the handwriting would turn up anything. The only evidence they had was the method. One blow to the back of a head. The method had led them on to believe the culprit to be a woman, the handwriting too. Peterson had never seen this method used by a man. Nor the fine swirls on the notes would be the handwriting of a male. But the seer force, violence, and obsession – could that really be of a woman. The concrete burned Peterson's knee, so he stood back up and once more wiped his forehead. He took one last look at the young body before him before moving back to the car.

This asshole never left anything behind, and Peterson believed them when they wrote that the police would never catch them. This horror would end when the asshole wanted it to, and Peterson had a feeling many other people, kids, and adults, would suffer before it was finally over.