Everyone Needs a Hobby

“Please. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go!”

Once upon a time, the pleas had been music to my ears. The sounds of skin chafing on rope and the jingling of chains were a beautiful backing track to one of my favourite vocal tracks. Unfortunately, you can only listen to the same song so many times before it starts getting stale. 

“Why are you doing this?! I don’t even know you.”

I’ve found that it’s almost always the same desperate begging and the same indignant questions. It grew tiresome after a while. What difference did any of it make? They were all going to suffer and die at my hands regardless.

“Because I can,” I said.

She said something else after that, but I had stopped listening. I turned away from my captive, who was dangling naked from a rafter by chains at her wrists. I had grown bored of her whimpering. But soon would come the screams. The screams I don’t think I will ever tire of. You might become tired of listening to your favourite song on repeat, but there is always a part of you that comes alive when the chorus kicks in.

I walked over to the stack of crates with the sheet draped over them. There was a selection of different knives there, most designed for the purpose of butchering and carving meat. It was, after all, what they would be doing.

I selected a knife with a small, sharp blade. This one wasn’t made for butchery. It was actually made with working with fruit in mind. I like to start small. Long, shallow cuts. It’s less satisfying if it's over too quickly. 

As I walked back towards her, she started to struggle and fight harder. Desperation was winning out over logic. She couldn’t possibly escape. But her simple, animal brain had taken over now. I felt my own heartbeat picking up, the anticipation and excitement building. The fun was beginning now.

I placed the tip of the blade on her inner thigh and gently pushed until I saw the first little pinprick of blood. Then, slowly, I started dragging the blade down her leg. She struggled harder, flailing her legs in the hopes of kicking me. Unfortunately for her, it was hard to kick someone with any real force when your legs were bound at the ankles. I had learned to make a point of doing that the hard way. An earlier plaything had kicked me in the head - and he was a lot bigger and stronger than she was.

Once I reached her knee, I stopped the cut. I slipped the flat of the blade up to her abdomen before switching back to the sharp edge of the knife. You see, this was why I stripped my victims bare. I take no sexual pleasure in any of this. Fair play to those who do, far be it for me to criticise anybody’s interests. But for me, it was all about making sure I had the maximum amount of space on my canvas for my art.

The screams had started by then and I was lost in the moment. It was the pay-off for all of my hard work and preparation. My body thrummed with the thrill of it, like it was trying to harmonise with her agonised screeching. Her misery was my bliss.

Reading that, I suspect that you think me a monster. I don’t blame you, I suppose. Perhaps I am. But I’ve given this a lot of thought. One doesn’t just start carving up strangers like a pig spontaneously. 

I’ve had the desire to hurt people like this for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I relished the pain of others. I learned to instigate fights just so I had the excuse to hit someone back. I found little subtle ways to make the other children yelp in fright and pain. Of course, I often got in trouble. I was taught to bury my compulsions. By the time I was a teenager, I was practically a model student and a respectable son.

But that whole time, I was watching. I realised something. All of these rules and laws to stop us from hurting people are just about making people who don’t have the inclination for it feel better about themselves - morally superior. But all the while, we let people starve on the streets without a roof over their heads. We tolerate parents beating their children and call it discipline. We lock people up and deprive them of their freedom for victimless crimes. We invade other countries and impose our wills on their people and call those that die acceptable losses. Men, women, children and everything in between die in droves and we shrug it off and call that collateral damage. 

Perhaps not all of us are violent individuals, but humanity is a violent species. The only difference between me and all of those others is that I don’t feel the need to make up excuses for my actions. This is who I am. This is who we all are deep down, I suspect. There’s no difference between me and a person who laughs when their friend falls down the stairs except that I’m more honest with myself.

That’s why when I changed to a more specialised knife and started peeling her skin off of her like an apple’s, I felt no guilt. I felt no shame. The more she cried and screamed, the more I liked it. I was at peace with that. If you’re not, that’s your problem.

“You’ll probably pass out from the pain soon,” I told her. “I’d appreciate you holding out as long as you can, this stops being fun when you’re unconscious. But I understand that everyone has their limits and you’re going to reach yours soon. So, if you have any final words, now might be a good time. Once you lose consciousness, I’m going to kill you and move on.”

I didn’t really care what her last words were. I am clearly not the sentimental sort. But, saying things like that always made my victims quake in fear and I do love that expression. Besides, sometimes they say something unique and interesting and it makes them easier to remember. 

“You won’t get away with this. You’re going to prison forever. You’re going to spend the rest of your miserable life getting the living shit kicked out of you by guys who are twice your size and guards who despise you. They’ll crack your skull open with batons and fry you with tasers.”

I sighed. She didn’t say anything particularly unique. She was hardly the first person to wish death on me or tell me I was doomed to prison. If I wasn’t writing this down, I think I’d probably have forgotten her after a couple of years.

“Let me tell you a secret,” I said, “I have been getting away with it. I’m going to continue to get away with it. I am going to continue doing this until I can’t anymore and I am never going to suffer any kind of consequences. I am never going to have any attack of conscience over it. You are one in a long line of lumps of meat for me to play with. Far from the first and in no way the last.”

“Fuck you,” she replied with all the eloquence you could really expect from someone who was trying not to howl as a filleting knife worked on her. I could tell she was trying not to scream, but she wouldn’t be able to stop for long.

“You see, I picked you more or less at random. Most killers go for people they know. I don’t. I’ve also never been convicted of any crimes. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. So even if my prints or DNA shows up on the scene when your body is eventually discovered, there is nothing that will lead the authorities to me. I move often, so there’s no risk of people starting to notice any strange behaviour or proximity to my crimes. I don’t even stick to the same modus operandi. I’m cutting you to shreds. My last victim was a young man whose eyes I gouged out before I bludgeoned him to death with a hammer. Observable patterns and DNA are what get you caught. Neither of those are a problem for me.”

She started shouting for help. But she’d tried that already. She knew that there was nobody around who would hear her. Pretty soon, those sounds had devolved back into the wordless shrieks I so loved. I had started cutting deeper.

“That’s right,” I said. “Scream for me.”

She did. And when she stopped; I slit her throat, collected my things and left the building. I had a plane to catch in the morning and there was no reason to hang around when the fun part was over. I didn’t want to oversleep and miss my flight.