"Hey, hurry up. We're in the middle of a massacre. Look what he's doing," a girl standing nearby said, holding a smartphone and pointing the camera directly at him.
The screen trembled in her hand, not from fear, but from excitement. The lens reflected an alleyway, bathed in the dim yellow light of a streetlamp, its shadows dancing across the walls as if trying to escape. At the center – him. The man, above whom the air seemed to thicken.
"I'm fed up with you, don't take my picture" replied a young-looking man standing over the bloody corpse.
He was covered from head to toe in mud, dried and fresh, all mixed together. His clothes were torn, as if he'd been wading through the barbed wire of his own rage. He smelled of sweat, blood, and something else, old and ingrained, as if he hadn't washed in a long time, as if he'd long since stopped considering it necessary.
"Oh, what are you saying? I'm not actually filming. I'm just showing—" she didn't have time to finish, as the guy interrupted her, taking a deep breath.
The breath was strange, too calm for what was happening. As if he weren't standing over a corpse, but simply collecting his thoughts.
"Look then, massacres aren't like that. This is just me teasing, you understand?" And with that, the boy pulled a small but terrifyingly sharp knife from his sheath, and then set about finishing his work again.
The metal glinted in the lantern light. The blade was thin, almost graceful – the kind used for cutting not for speed, but for feel.
He laughed. Not hysterically, but measuredly, as if laughing at a well-known joke. And again and again he plunged the knife into the body, which could no longer resist. Blood splashed across the asphalt, flowing into the cracks, as if the city itself were drinking it.
Paradoxically, the girl didn't look away. In fact, she laughed along with him.
From the outside, it looked monstrous. Absolute madness, devoid of any human contours. But for them, it was just a warm-up. Preparation. Before the real work, before the gang standing against them.
After several minutes of this madness, he finally ran out of steam. The laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. There was nothing left on his face, neither joy nor anger. Only emptiness.
This is how it has always happened.
Every time he killed, slowly or quickly, brutally or inventively, the end was the same: an emptiness that spread inside like cold water.
What did he really want to see?
A corpse divided into parts?
Or the face of a victim as life slowly drains out of her?
All desires became echoes. He pursued the perfect kill, but even when he seemed to achieve it, the same gap remained inside.
He couldn't suppress his bloodlust. No matter how many he killed, it wasn't enough.
But where did this desire come from? The desire to kill without reason. Without pity. Without regret.
"Hey, again? Come on... last time you used a more spectacular method."
He didn't even turn his head.
"That's it... that's enough for today. I'm terribly tired, and I'm still covered in blood. It's a good thing I brought this raincoat."
"Take it off and let me burn it, and you change your clothes," she said these words, smiling.
From the outside, no one would have guessed this girl had any connection to the criminal world. Her features were soft, her movements calm. But her clothes… her clothes spoke louder than words.
"Okay, thanks. I'll just go and change. You wait here if you're finished."
"Oh, no problem. Go."
Leaving the alley, the boy glanced around, carefully scanning for movement, headlights, and the shadows of patrols. At night, such places came alive, not for living, but for hunting.
He stepped out onto a street filled with people wearing similar clothes. This adventurous fashion was popular for two reasons: it was comfortable and cheap. It was ideal for the outskirts of the city, where survival was more important than appearance.
The boy quickly entered some nondescript building, lost among other similarly gray boxes. The door creaked softly and slammed behind him. He stopped, listened, then glanced around, as if even here someone might be watching him.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and pulled out neatly folded, perfectly clean and tidy clothes, too clean for this neighborhood, too alien to who he had been just minutes ago. He changed quickly, with practiced movements, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He discarded the old clothes, soaked in dirt and blood, without a second thought, as if shedding unwanted skin.
Without stopping for a second, he went back out and almost ran towards the same alley from which he came.
When he returned, the girl was already there.
She stood leaning against the cold wall, smoking slowly, blowing smoke into the night air. Her posture was relaxed, even lazy, as if nothing special ever happened there.
Seeing him, she slowly threw away her cigarette, stamped out the butt with the toe of her shoe and, with some strange touch of pride, gestured towards the place where the corpse had recently lain.
It was empty there.
Not a trace. Not a blood. Not a hint that anyone had died here at all. As if reality itself had decided to erase what had happened.
Then she spoke confidently, almost solemnly, with a creepy smile on her face:
"I've cleared out the bodies, so we can rest for today."
Having said this, she turned back to that very place, as if she wanted to make sure that it was really empty.
The boy came closer and stopped next to her. He also stared there, for a long time, silently, as if trying to discern in the void something that hadn't disappeared along with the body.
A few moments later, the girl handed him a long stick of gum. Her face suddenly became serious, too serious for such a trivial matter. And then she uttered a most unexpected phrase:
"What do you think? Aren't you bored by all this?"
The boy didn't look up. He stared at the ground beneath his feet, at the uneven asphalt, as if the answer lay there.
"Yeah. It's so boring. You know, honestly... I want something more."
She smiled slightly, twisting her face, but there was no joy in that smile.
"Yeah, right. But I'm already tired. So tired that I don't want to kill anymore. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"
He chuckled briefly, without humor.
"You won't be able to stop anyway... If you leave, they'll kill you."
"I never even thought of leaving..." she hesitated for a second. "It's just that now it's all disgusting. So disgusting that I don't want to see anything like it again."
He turned to her more sharply than he intended.
"What? You were just laughing wildly when we—"
"I thought I could fool myself," she interrupted. "I thought this was exactly what I wanted. And something I could live with."
He fell silent. They stood next to each other for a few seconds, not looking at each other.
"I see. So what are you going to do now?"
She smiled, tiredly, almost resignedly.
"What do you think? I'm disgusted by all of this... and you'll just keep going. You see, I can't go on living knowing that somewhere, right now, someone's dying. So I don't have much of a choice."
He frowned.
"What kind of elections are you talking about? You're acting so fucking weird..."
"Aha, I'm the weird one now, aren't I?" She tilted her head slightly. "Either I end my life, or you end up in custody. Not much of a choice, see?"
He turned sharply to face her.
"What? Are you crazy? Just run away if you don't want to get punished."
She shook her head.
"It's harder than you think. You're special in the gang. One of the most respected. So it would be good if you disappeared first."
He took a step towards her, his voice breaking into rage:
"You're a fucking bitch, what are you—"
And at that moment everything collapsed.
The sirens blared so suddenly it seemed to split the air. Patrols rushed into the alley from all sides, blinding him with headlights and flashlights. Shouts, commands, sudden movements. Guns were pointed directly at him.
And the girl... disappeared.
She simply wasn't there.
—This bitch... did she run away?
"Patrol! HANDS UP. You are under arrest on suspicion of committing a series of murders. You have the right to remain silent in accordance with the law."
The voices were harsh and precise, as if they were spoken not by people but by machines. The commands poured out one after another, drowning out the sirens and the pounding of blood in his ears. He was roughly pressed against the cold wall, his arms twisted behind his back. He didn't resist, not because he couldn't, but because resistance at that moment seemed pointless. It had already happened.
The thorough search was swift and humiliating. Strangers' hands rummaged over his body, checking his pockets, his seams, his belt, every movement a reminder: he was no longer the hunter. He was the prey. The handcuffs clicked shut with a dry, metallic click, too loud in his head. The sound seemed to seal the deal.
He was almost pushed into the patrol car. The door slammed shut, cutting off the outside world. Inside, it smelled of plastic, sweat, and something sterile, alien. The car pulled away.
On the way he was torn apart from the inside.
Rage washed over him in waves, hot, sticky, all-consuming. The image of the girl surfaced again and again: her face, her smile, her calm voice. Absolute betrayal. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of pure, concentrated revenge. He imagined dozens of ways he would do to her if he were ever near her again.
But what's the point?
In this desperate situation, he had only one option: to rely on luck. Not on people, not on plans, not on force. Only on naked, twisted chance.
He knew the truth.
He was doomed to life without parole. Not hypothetically, definitely. There were too many leads, too many bodies, too many witnesses. And he knew something else: he would be killed in his cell. Sooner or later. People like him don't live to old age behind bars.
And for the first time in his life, a strange feeling arose inside him.
A mixture of self-pity… and panic?
He tried to listen to this feeling. He tried to name it.
But could such a ruthless man, respected by everyone in the gang, feel panic? A man whose name evoked fear, not sympathy?
No.
It was something else.
It was excitement.
The thought came suddenly, clear and frighteningly logical. Everything that lay ahead: the trial, the cell, the violence, the struggle for survival, all of it only fueled his bloodlust. A new level. A new stage. New rules.
"Yes, it's excitement. That's exactly it."
He almost believed it. Almost.
But somewhere deep down, he knew how pathetic it was. Self-delusion, a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of control. Deceiving himself was perhaps the most pathetic thing he was capable of.
And yet… he kept doing it.
Because without this lie, only emptiness remained.