TWENTY-FIVE
RIPPER
FEAR GRIPS CITY AFTER DOUBLE HOMICIDE NEAR UNIVERSITY. POSSIBLE WORK OF A SERIAL KILLER?
The headline bleedsacross the front page, letters bold and black, daring anyone to look away. They never do. Fear is magnetic—more potent than sex, than hunger, than prayer. People devour it with their morning coffee, let it stain the edges of their tongues as they pretend the world hasn’t tilted. I savor that. I savor how the name tastes in mouths I will never meet.
With three murders under my belt, the media has since named me Ripper Incarnate. A modern-day legend reborn, stalking the cracks of this desert city while the sun burns high overhead. It’s fitting in a sense. I’m not ridding the world of trash or filth.
I’m instead after something much more important—a legacy character in this horror story.
It has been several days since I tore apart that bitch and her boytoy, and I’m still seething. I can still feel the pain from thatmistake. I’ve never let anyone get the drop on me before, and it will never happen again.
Pride will get you killed; sloppiness will get you caught, and I don’t want either.
As much as I enjoy stalking the streets like the ripper they claim me to be, there are too many variables where something could go wrong, and that was proven with Bailey and Liam’s murders.
I prefer to plan and take my victims by surprise, have them believe that just because they are behind locked doors, they are safe, when in reality, they are far from it. Locked doors have never stopped me. Fourth-story apartments have never stopped me. I was in Khloe’s apartment before anyone could suspect anything, and getting out was just as easy with the fire escape.
Detail is the backbone of survival.
Tonight is no different. While extra police patrol the university, they often overlook the fact that the rest of the city still exists. They think my territory is the campus because that’s where three of them fell. Cute assumption. My target has nothing to do with the university or its students.
It’s someone worth more of my time, and eventually, I will get to her, but until then, I’ll enjoy playing with my food and inflicting psychological pain. Psychological pain is as much an art as the physical act.
I could easily end this game, but where’s the fun in that? Where’s the artistry? The story? One best friend and two side characters are only a prologue. I doubt she’s even figured out that all of this is because of her. Perhaps tonight, she will.
The screen fights me for a beat—metal fibers rasping under the tip of my knife, a small, stubborn argument before it gives. I press the blade harder, levering at the corner until the frame pops free with a brittle snap that sounds louder than it should in the hush. I hook the mesh, pry it free, and toss the useless thing aside without bothering to look where it lands.
The window itself yields without effort. There’s no click of a lock, no stubborn resistance. She didn’t lock it, such a stupid move on her part. People are always so careful about the visible things—the deadbolt, the chain—then leave a hairline seam of invitation and call it safety. That little seam is the honest betrayal, the private faith people hand to glass and a plastic catch and then forget. They curl up with their phones, comfort themselves with streaming noise, and assume nothing will test that sliver of trust. They never imagine a hand on the other side of the glass.
They never imagine me.
Pocketing my knife, I press my palm against the window frame and ease it open. The pane slides up with a faint groan. I slip through the gap in one smooth motion, landing on the carpet below. It swallows my boots completely, the thick plush material muffling the sound before it could even form. I stay still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. The only movement comes from the faint flicker of light bleeding through the open doorway ahead. It spills across the floor in pale stripes, flashing weakly against the wall each time the television changes scenes. The sound reaches me in waves—laughter, bright and hollow, clashing against the quiet. It rises, falls, then burstsagain, a loop of synthetic cheer masking the truth that the house is otherwise dead silent. It’s the perfect kind of noise. Mindless, and loud enough to drown out almost anything—even her last scream.
I move with patience, sliding across the floor like a shadow. My body tilts forward, each step deliberate and placed with care, weight spread across the balls of my feet, the soles pressing into the softer edges of the floorboards where time hasn’t made them shift and groan. The air hums faintly with static from the television, and snippets of songs, people advertising stupid shit to gullible buyers, a man attempting to tell a story too fast. Scroll. New voice. New song. Again and again.
I stand in the doorway between the living room and the hallway and find her immediately.
She’s curled up in a recliner, body small and soft against the fabric. One leg is tucked under her, and her chin dips toward the glow in her palm. The blue light traces the delicate hollow of her throat, flickers across the curve of her cheek, and catches the faint sheen of her lip gloss when she bites down in concentration. Her hair—black streaked with washed-out pink—slides forward, curtaining half her face, leaving one pale shoulder exposed to the lamplight. She shifts, and the fabric of her oversized pale pink t-shirt rides up slightly, revealing smooth skin above the waistband of her matching shorts. Her foot taps against the recliner leg in a steady rhythm—tap, tap, tap—a small, absent sound that punctuates the muffled laugh track coming from the TV. She’s completely absorbed, lost to her glowing screen, scrolling through an endless feed of meaningless faces, songs, and jokes.
She’s completely unaware of my presence looming in the shadows of her living room.
I watch her. I let the sight build, stretch, and pull tight inside me like the string of a bow drawn, waiting to release. She’s stilllost in her little world, and I can see the rise and fall of her shoulders, slow and even—completely at ease. My pulse, on the other hand, beats steady and deep, every thud echoing through my skull as I wait for the moment.
Patience. That’s what separates me from the rest.
The art isn’t in the kill—it’s in the waiting, in the build-up. The longer I let it stretch, the sharper the moment will feel when it finally breaks.
She shifts in her seat, the phone’s light flashing across her cheek. That’s when I step closer, silent but no longer hiding, my shadow spilling long across her shoulder. The knife slides into my grip, weight balanced. I flex once, just to feel the give of my glove against the steel. I take another step just as the TV coughs out a burst of laughter. The floorboard beneath my boot complains, a single sharp creak that snaps through the air just as the laughter quiets.
Her head jerks up.
The look that blooms in her eyes is the exact thing I’ve been waiting for—confusion collapsing into fear that ignites so fast it’s almost beautiful. One moment, she’s locked inside her little private world, thumbs moving like a metronome over the tiny glass screen. Next, her pupils blow wide, and I can see the exact second her brain scrambles to rearrange reality around the fact that she is not alone in this house.
The first sound she makes is not a civilized noise. It rips out of her, half a bark, half a sob, the raw animal alarm that leaves the throat before the mind can make sense of it. She jerks upright so fast the recliner rocks back; her phone skitters from her hand and bounces across the floor. A mug upends and explodes against the hardwood, ceramic shards scattering across the floor in a constellation. The spilled coffee spreads in a slow, uneven pool, its scent sharp in the air.
She moves like someone yanked the floor out from under her—pure, blinding motion—hands and feet a mess of impulses.
