Hollowpoints

I am the Tiger

Even with the semester well under way, he decided it was time to write his novel.

I am the Tiger

He’d been thinking about doing one for almost five years by then, but life’s little chores had always gotten in the way. Like passing through graduate school in record time.

I am the Tiger

Part of him thought it was a bit cliched. An English Professor writing a novel in his spare time, although he couldn’t recall any actual cases of such a thing.

I am the Tiger

There were classes and the papers to grade, but he had such a limited social life, how could he not have the time to do a little writing?

I am the Tiger

The only problem would be in finding the right material. Perhaps he could make it a crime
thriller. He had enough experience with the subject.

I am the Tiger

Experience indeed. Several lifetimes’ worth.

I am the Tiger

And always, of course, was the little voice, repeating those same words over and again, just beyond his conscious thoughts.

Reminding him of something he’d forgotten.

* * * * * * *


“Let us start by asking ourselves, what, if any, significance Conrad places on never naming his protagonist.”

It was a silent classroom before which he stood. Nothing unusual there. He’d seen it before, on a few occasions. It was part of the territory with a literature class at a sports funded school. The roster was either made up of those skating through for a Gen Ed, or the occasional declared English major fulfilling his or her degree requirements. Nobody ever took his class “just for fun”. The hand that slowly slid up near the middle of the sea of desks belonged to a bear-of-a-man with dark hair, and anxious eyes. The Professor was lost for a name (he so rarely spoke to his students), but he had a feeling that it was Ross. Although he knew this man fell under the former breed of attendees to his lectures, he was satisfied in that at least someone was paying attention.

“Yes? What do have to say on the matter?” The man’s eyes shifted down to his lap briefly, straying only a moment, but taking in something nonetheless.

“Uh…he is a nameless Captain on a nameless ship. Conrad must have considered his story so universal that the Captain may represent every man, and that the ship may symbolize the ship of life for all men. Still young and unsure of himself, the Captain feels uneasy in his new command, just a four-night old. He does not yet know himself. He knows neither the good nor the bad within his own soul.”

There was a truth to this man that was more then clear to the Professor, it read through in his speech, delivered in a wavering tone of insecurity, and by his constantly shifting gaze, which punctuated nearly every sentence. The Professor’s face changed almost to a frown and then his straight lips creased at the corners a bit, as if he was trying to smile but had forgotten how.

“I applaud the enthusiasm you have expressed for this course. That you would go out and buy a non-required text to assist you is commendable. And, while Cliff’s Notes can be helpful to condense, and even sometimes to formulate topics and discussion, it should never be quoted verbatim…to a professor of literature…with the book sitting open in your lap.” The man (Ross was it?) slid down into his chair and placed the yellow and black book into his pack. The Professor wondered to himself if the publishers were attempting a construction zone/caution motif for the cover, or if they had a thing for bumblebees. “I also believe the term is ‘fortnight’, not ‘four-night’.” The Professor moved around to the front of his desk and locked eyes with the young man.

“Now, since you chose to commit an act of 2nd-degree plagiarism in my class, I will just pick on you some more.” A few people snickered, but Ross (he was almost positive that was his name) turned a shade towards pale. “Tell me,” the Professor leaned at him, accenting his words, “in your own words, what do you feel that all means, anyway? By not naming the Captain is he trying to create an ‘every-man’ character out of him? Someone that the audience can sympathize with, or, at least, try to understand?” It took Ross a moment to feel out his thoughts, and the drama played out on his face. The Professor leaned against his desk while he waited.

“Uh…well, I think that…um…that, yeah. I mean…I think all that stuff you said.” The Professor grinned, just a bit, letting the silence that surrounded him grow thicker. As he stood there, stretched out in front of his class he couldn’t help but wonder what they thought of him. Did any of them realize what kind of a man he once was? Could they even imagine such a thing? He doubted it greatly. At times, he realized, even he had trouble fathoming his previous life. Barely a minute passed in the silence, and then he turned at glanced at the wall clock.

“That would be time, ladies and gentlemen. That is all for today.” The students quickly gathered up their belongings, none of them wanting to be the last to leave the cold gaze of their strange Professor. “I expect each and every one of you to be prepared for the midterm next Wednesday, as it is twenty-five percent of your grade. Do not let yourselves down.” Ross (that had to be his name) stared at the Professor with a bit of resentment clouding his eyes. Apparently he didn’t appreciate being made out to be a fool in front of his peers. Not that anyone ever would appreciate such a thing. The Professor wondered, idly, if the young man was considering any sort of retribution against him. The Professor could feel himself sizing the man up, trying to assess his strength, where it would reach, where it would fail, how fast he could run, even how well his voice would carry. He knew where the thought had come from, but it disturbed him to think it so close to the surface. Such were thoughts of another time, another life, and another person almost. He was certainly not that man anymore. He was as certain of that fact as he was that the young man’s name was Ross.

“I did not mean to embarrass you today, Ross. I just prefer my students understand the material before them, rather then parrot back someone else’s work. I think you are bright enough to succeed, so long as you provide the effort I am certain you are capable of.” He wasn’t sure what it was that prompted him to speak to the student, but he felt it was somewhat necessary, a part of his new role, perhaps.

“First off, my name’s Martin. And second, I’m dropping your stupid class. I don’t need it on account of my dad paying for the new science building last fall. Later.”

Martin. His name wasn’t Ross it was Martin. He never claimed to have many certainties in his life in the first place. This latest development wasn’t much a change of affairs.

* * * * * * *


It wasn’t as cold as it was supposed to be that October. The wind was strong, almost fierce, but it had subtle warmth in it which lent the days to short sleeves, and the nights to light jackets. It also had a pleasant scent that night when he walked through the courtyard. Most times it smelled like alcohol and garbage, usually because the campus caretakers were the worst paid employees in the entire state. That night there was a touch of vanilla on the breeze that reminded him of his mother’s cookies.

She’d make a batch for him every spring, when the weather was pleasant, and he left the house more often. It wasn’t that she disliked him, but she was like most any other parent with an active child: when they left the house, a celebration of some sort was in order. That celebration was her cookies, which he loved more then any other food he’d ever known. Even as he grew older and eventually moved out on his own, he would still think of his mother’s cookies, especially when he smelled vanilla.

The scent of nostalgia wasn’t what had brought him out that night though. He was out and abroad for the same reason he had gone out every other night this month. He was looking for her. He wasn’t sure where she was, but it never dampened his spirits. He would search every night if that were what it took. He had to find her. He had to know that she was out there, maybe looking for him. So far, he had no luck in finding her, but it had only been a few weeks. It couldn’t be long before they found each other again.

He turned off the walkway that skirted the edge of the Glen Complex, student housing for the upper classman. Just off the paved walk was a dirt path that twisted into the overgrown forest of brambles and stripped trees known to the students as “The Jungle”. The name came from the alien nature of the place. Although there wasn’t a single piece of vegetation that wasn’t indigenous to the area, it all had taken on some strange and mutated appearance. Part of it was the exhaust of the neighboring smokestacks that crowned the campus power plant, and part of it was (once again) the poorly funded caretakers. But there was something else to the place, as well. Something haunting and eerie that stayed with you no matter how far you walked around the place. Some said it was akin to the feeling one gets from walking by an ancient cemetery at night. Others claimed they could hear disembodied voices of children, which sounded close enough to touch them. He never lent credence to any such nonsense.

Most of it was a drunken story told to drunken listeners during drunken parties. Other times, it was the upper classman hazing in the freshman. Once there was even a prank perpetrated by the faculty. No names were ever released, but the rumors abounded that they were almost forced to resign. Despite the Jungle’s colorful mythology, he had never been bothered by the place. In fact, every night he had searched, he would pass through it, just in case she was there. It was remarkable, he noticed, how different the Jungle looked from within. As warped and corrupted as it appeared from without, beneath the canopy of naked branches, and overgrown brush, was a peaceful respite from the harsh false light of the campus buildings. The atmosphere there was more pleasant, as well, as if the Jungle was some kind of giant air filter, holding the nearby city’s airborne filth at bay.

She was never there, of course. A woman of her caliber and breeding would never be found lurking in the overgrown shadows of a warped forest. He knew this, but he persisted in entering the Jungle each night that he walked. He would catch the sounds of the carried voices of other students in various stages of revelry as they drifted through the branches. It was a symphony of debauchery that sickened him to his core. It never failed that something sacred to him on these walks, such as the memory of his mother’s cooking, would be perverted into the mocking voices of so many inebriated underclassmen. The scent of vanilla was gone, replaced with the pungent taste of bile as it rose in his throat. Once each night he would vomit at some point in his walk. He was accustomed to it as a part of his evening ritual.

He always felt cleansed afterwards, lighter in body and soul. He would not consider his search in vain, no matter how often he returned without her. This night was different though. This night he saw her walking along the north side of the Jungle. She was alone, as he had hoped she would be, and he made his way through the undergrowth towards her. She was everything he had dreamed she would be, at first glance. She had smooth skin and long, dark hair. He eyes reflected the moonlight like a gently flowing stream. She had grace and an air of elegance that he had never known a woman could have. The closer he got the more of her he took in. She even wore a fragrance of vanilla upon her, which convinced him beyond any doubts he might have harbored that he had found her.

As he stepped from the edge of the Jungle, she was facing away from him. She had stopped walking, and was slightly hunched over at the neck, her hands near her face. He thought that she must be cold without a jacket, until he heard the clicking sound of a cigarette lighter. The glow of the tiny flame cupped in her hand danced upon his face, and he clearly heard the rustle of fresh-lit paper along with the accompanying smell of burnt tobacco. Again, his gut twisted and he felt the urge to retch gain a foothold within him. How could she smoke, he wondered? Did she not realize how foul and harmful such a practice was? He began to suspect that there was something wrong, that perhaps he had been wrong about her. The longer he stood there, the more he became aware of the underlying scent of grain alcohol that permeated from her very pores. He knew it wasn’t her then. She would never partake of any manner of drug; she was too pure for that. This was an imposter that stood before him. A creature sent forth to sway him from his given search. Whoever had dispatched this succubus had underestimated his resolve. He would not be deterred.

He reached out to her from where he stood at her back, less then two short steps behind her. He grasped he hard by the hair, and pulled, drawing her head back to him and gripping her by the neck as he did so. She began to cry out, in both shock and pain he imagined, but as his left hand closed tightly around her windpipe the sound was cut off. She would not be bringing down any more demons upon him this night. In fact, he would make certain that she never tempted him, or anyone else, again.

* * * * * * *

When the Professor got to his classroom the next day, he knew something was awry. It was like reading a drop in air pressure to tell a storm was coming. To those sensitive enough, such things are second nature. That was how it was with death and violence for him. He could sense its presence in the proximity. Pain had been inflicted upon another human being recently. It was always odd to him, sensing such things that he had not caused. It has been his experience that it is easier to forget one’s own family than the attributes that one acquires to become a predator. The scent of blood was strong and cut with fear, and it hung upon the campus, heavy and dark.

There was a group of students at the rear of the classroom huddled together and whispering to one another. He laid his bag down upon his desk gently and strained to listen to their muffled conversation. It appeared that none of them had noticed him enter; only the quiet students facing the front had seen him. They watched him as he leaned forward over his desk, tilting his head to gain a better vantage for hearing the group in the back. He managed to catch a few words about a girl (a fellow student it seemed) who had been assaulted on campus. He was right, after all. There had been an attack the night before, and now it was providing an interruption to his class. The Professor cleared his throat sharply causing the rumor mill to shut down almost instantly. The classroom turned in its entirety to face him.

“Did something happen that is more important than your educations? I should hope you all remember that you are paying me to be here.” A few of the talkers reacted to his words with expressions of either remorse or disdain, and some of the listeners smiled. Pointing to one of the talkers, he asked, “Are you going to share with the rest of the class?”

The young man he singled out frowned a bit, looking at the others near him. None of them returned his glance, leaving him to face the Professor alone.

“There was an attack last night.”

“Was there? Is anyone hurt?”

“A girl from the tower. She’s, uh…she’s dead.”

“That is troubling news. How is that you are privileged to know this? There has been no report of it this morning.”

“My friend’s uncle works for campus security. He told me the cops came last night and everything.” At this, one of the listeners piped in,

“I was wondering what was going on down by the Jungle. I figured it was just another fraternity stunt.” And then another spoke up,

“I heard one of the cops say that she was raped, too.” And another,

“Shut up! That’s sick, dude. Some messed up people out there.” Within a few moments, nearly everyone in the class had put in their share of the discussion. The Professor let them speak for a while, trying to catch all that was said, to piece together the truth among the fantasy. In a different life, he imagined he’d be a detective. Putting seemingly unrelated clues together to solve all manner of crimes. But his past had been on the other side of the law. His activities had been the subject of investigations for many years. Not one had ever been solved; he had never been caught.

Almost ten minutes after his class was due to start, the stories were still flying back and forth, with a couple of students becoming upset with the course of discussion. The Professor stepped in and quieted the room by clapping his hands loudly against one another. The voices faded away, and they again turned to face him.

“While I do appreciate current events, this is a literature course. Let us stay on task.” He opened his course book, and stepped around to the front of his desk, as he always did during lectures. He had been up late the night before preparing the day’s assignment, and he felt it was very well structured given the performance level his class demonstrated. But, even as he prepared to begin, he saw that many of them still had words on the tip of their tongues or thoughts about the attack they needed to share. He could not condone further interruptions in his day. Closing the course book softly he looked about the students. “I realize that what happened last night is upsetting to you. No one enjoys the idea of death or of another person’s suffering. Outside of a sadist, I mean. You cannot dwell on these thoughts, as they will do you harm in the long run. Whether that harm is in troubling visions or, more importantly, a detrimental performance in my class…” A few of the students smiled again, and he saw them begin to ease a bit in their postures, settling in to receive their assignment. All but one.

A young woman, perhaps half his age that sat near the front of the room had begun to cry. She wept silently, small tears rolling down her face, with her eyes tightly shut. Her hands were wrapped so tight around the edge of her writing platform that her knuckles had gone bone white. The Professor placed his book on the desk behind him, and stepped towards her, uncertain of what to do. His expertise was in tracking people, not consoling them. Before he had taken two steps she spoke in a small, choked voice,

“She was my roommate. She was my friend.”

“What…what was her name?”

“Jennifer Jenkins. We called her ‘JJ’. Why did this happen?” She turned her face to him, her eyes red and swollen with tears. He felt trapped by her gaze, which was a unique sensation for him. He didn’t entirely dislike it. He realized, after a few seconds of silence, that she expected him to answer her question.

“I am not certain of the reasons for something like this. Most people do their best not to harm another human being. There are those, the outcasts if you will, who do not abide with the philosophies of civilization. They make their own rules, and walk their own paths. No can know what drives them to do the things that they do. I hope you can take some consolation in the fact that they most often die alone.”

“So did she.” At this, her weeping turned to sobbing, and she began to gasp with the effort of it. Another young woman moved to help her gather her books and her pack, and they made their way to the door. The helper woman shot him a look full of venom, and they departed without another word.

The rest of his day passed without incident, and he made his way home as the evening came upon the campus. He would spend most nights walking about the grounds, taking a scenic stroll on the way to his car. That night, he made directly for home, with no pausing or unscheduled stops along the way. He was motivated in this by anxiety. Not anxiety born of fear, but rather a troubling sense of familiarity. He would always understand the motivations of a killer better than anyone else. After all, he was one himself once.

* * * * * * *

They talked about her the next day in class. He heard their whispered voices underscoring a sense of sorrow. It confounded him that they would treat her destruction as such. She was, after all, a demon and he had aided them all in ways that they might never understand, but should still be able to recognize. Perhaps her hold over his fellow students was fiercer than he had previously realized. If nothing else, he could be comforted in the knowledge that he had performed a sacred duty in stopping her.

He still found it troubling that they called her “a good person” or “friend”. It was not an isolated group that did so. In fact, it seemed as though the bulk of the room felt remorse at her end. Some expressed various notions and tokens of love and affection in her name. Among them all, the only one who was not visually shaken was the professor who taught the course. He stood at his desk and surveyed the room impassively. Showing no emotions or signs of distress, he attempted to maintain order among the scattered minds. When he finally did bring them back to the task at hand, a greater interruption than he could have anticipated presented itself. There was a young lady at the front of the room who burst into tears. She was crying for her friend and roommate, who was now gone. She was crying for the demon.

That was why, he knew then, that they were still affected by the “girl’s death”. It was because of her. She was corrupted too. There was nothing he could do about it now, being surrounded as he was by her drones, but he could wait. He would find her later, when she was separated from her minions. Then he would set it all right again. He would free their minds and they would thank him for the rescue.

She left the class soon after her crying had begun, and he watched her go. Turning his attention back to the front, he recalled the words the professor had spoken to the mourning demoness. He scribed them down, considering every word, every line. He didn’t think it was possible, but the professor did not show any signs of infection. There was some odd halo of purity about him that almost glowed from within his eyes. The professor was detached from and disinterested in their false suffering. He could see through the façade as well. It heartened him to think that there was another free soul in the world. He was not alone.

* * * * * * *

“Donovan Walker. The pleasure is mine.”

“Mr. Walker, had I known you’d be so formal, I would’ve dressed for the occasion.”

“Call me Donovan.” He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been out with a woman. It might have been decades. Literally. He rarely gave himself any spare time to actually be a person anymore. It had been habit and routine to stay single and separate from the rest of humanity. Being a professional killer all but required it.

“Then I insist that you call me Janet. No more of this ‘Ms. Algers’ nonsense. I don’t even let the students call me that.” It wasn’t exactly a date he was on, though he believed that she considered it such. Still, it was important to get out of the house and do things every once in a while. Even if such things were obnoxiously alien to him.

“I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I find my days are shorter now than in my youth.” Janet had asked him out twice before and twice before he had found some excuse to avoid her. He did find her attractive, both physically and intellectually, but he had lived without casual dating for so long, it was almost painful to him.

“You’re lucky you caught me when you did. I was on my way to hit on the philosophy chair.” There were his classes and all the work associated with them, which would be enough on its own. But he was also working on a novel. A crime fiction tale about a detective tracking a serial killer. He had yet to finish the first chapter.

“If you are referring to Doctor Robards, I should think you fortunate for the interruption.” His muse had been less than faithful to him. As a young man in high school, he could write for hours about all sorts of things. Poetry, short stories, a few plays…he tried anything he could think of so long as it involved putting words to paper. By the time he was a freshman in college, he’d filled a dozen different notebooks from front cover to back with thousands upon thousands of black scratches some might consider art.

“Was that a joke? It’s hard to tell with you sometimes, you know? You have an odd way of speaking. No offense intended, just an observation.”

He never wrote for anyone but himself. He wrote to commit thoughts to a slightly more permanent format. He wrote to better grasp the feelings that he had the most trouble understanding. He wrote to bring something into the world, as if he could somehow forecast his future vocation. His first job came soon after he started at college.

“None taken. I suppose the term ‘robotic’ would not be far from the truth. I have a habit of considering everything I say well before I have said it.” A stranger from his own past had called him, offering a magical job. Something he had thought about in the dark days of high school. Something he had actually considered as a viable opportunity. It never troubled him to kill for money. He could be called a monster, and he’d certainly thought such and worse. But for him, death was not something to be feared or even deified (as was a common practice among people), but rather a natural cycle that befell everyone. Some sooner than others.

“You have control issues, don’t you? How often do you just let go? Do something spontaneous?” For years, he made an excellent living through death. He was always detached from and disinterested in the lives that he ended. Until the inevitable day came that his friend was his target and his target was his friend. He couldn’t run from himself anymore. He had to face the thing that he had become and either let it consume him, or throw it away.

“Not often.” He looked down into his glass, and wondered why it was that even though he never liked the taste of beer he continued to drink it whenever he went out to eat. He then considered how rarely he spent time away from home that wasn’t in the classroom. He thought about his lectures for the next week, and his course structure, and the unfinished mediocrity that was his novel. He thought about where else he could be, and what else he could be doing.

“Donovan? Is something wrong?” He thought about the girl they had talked about in class the other day, the one who had been murdered. He thought about what her killer might have been thinking, or feeling. He thought about why she had been chosen, whether she knew her killer. He thought about death, and how, even after years distant from his old life, he still held the same lackluster apathy towards it.

“Janet, I need to go. I am sorry. This is not where I should be right now. Thank you for your time. Good evening.” He placed a few dollars for their drinks on the bar, and left.

* * * * * * *

He spent that night thinking about what it meant to belong somewhere. He lay in his dorm room, ignoring the rambling banter of this suitemate on the phone, and let his mind drift into a fantasy of acceptance and understanding. It was a uniquely alien sensation that he felt, as he had spent all of his life outside the supposedly normal bounds of human interaction. No one had ever pleased him, or concerned him, or treated him with compassion and respect. Only his mother had ever considered him as a feeling and thinking creature worthy of appreciation. He hadn’t spoken to her in a long time and it was becoming especially draining on him.

Loneliness had followed him his entire life, stepping where he stepped, tripping him up when it could. He was difficult for it to catch, but it never gave up pursuing him, and he sometimes lost the strength to run from it. When he did surrender to the aching solitude he felt, it would numb him to everything else. He didn’t feel the cold weather, or hear the emergency sirens of the ambulances that visited the campus every single weekend. He would never understand why they, the other students, chose to poison themselves. They had friends, families, and places where they belonged. What could drive them to attempt suicide on a weekly basis?

At first he was troubled to his very being by these thoughts. They haunted his waking hours and invaded his dreams at night. There seemed to be no reasonable answer to his quandary. But a voice kept repeating in his mind, telling him over and over again what the answer was. It took him nearly his entire first year to finally hear it. Once he knew it existed within him, he listened more intently and more often. It spoke of two women, both similar in appearance, yet with entirely different souls. They were the reason behind everything in one form or another.

One was a woman of grace and intellect, who loved for the sake of loving and never let a cruel word pass her lips. She was an angel in flesh who he searched for every night, to bring an end to the loneliness he suffered. She could heal with a touch, and a look. There were none who could resist her charms.

The other was a woman of guile and deception, who lied for the sake of lies, and never spoke an honest word. She was a wolf among the sheep, and she hunted every night for fresh souls to devour. She burned with her eyes, and her touch. There were none who could resist her charms, for she was just as beautiful as her counterpart, and a thousand times as cunning.

He searched for her every night as well, to prevent her evil from corrupting the innocent of the world. He was a warrior and a champion, a protector of the people who would never accept him. It was the best he could hope for.

* * * * * * *

“The man who did this is a very disturbed individual.” There was blood on the ground the next morning as he approached his classroom. Gathered outside the building were half a dozen police detectives and a few more officers of campus security. They had cordoned off a small area about a hundred feet from the main doors, just inside the realm colorfully referred to as “the Jungle”. He could see the stains on the trees from where he stood. They were deep crimson, almost black against the bark. Some blood was on the grass nearby as well. He broke it down easily enough, watching the detectives talk. The assailant had attacked his victim while they were leaving the building (or perhaps heading towards it) and struck them hard causing them to hemorrhage. Then, he dragged them into the brush a bit and finished what he’d started in a very brutal manner. For the blood to have sprayed across so many tree trunks, the beating would have to have been quite severe.

Something struck him as odd about the pattern of blood on the trees. The police had obviously noticed it as well, as they kept staring at it and discussing it with constant gestures towards it. He made his way closer to the gathering, taking care to stay out of direct view of the officers. The morning rush of students to their classes both aided and hindered his efforts. He received not a few odd looks as the only person heading against the forward flow of people. He couldn’t fully understand it, but something was driving him to get a closer look at the crime scene, to get a better view of the blood. He now realized that it formed markings; that it was made out into words.

It was surreal to him that no one else paid much attention to the grisly letters and the suited men standing so close to them. Hardly a glance was offered in their direction. Perhaps it was their busy lives that forced them to give no allowance to the state of affairs before them. It seemed more likely that they were afraid of getting bundled up into a lurid and disturbing narrative. They stood within their lives as faceless automatons, going through the routine as given to them by their parents and guidance counselors. This was the second murder on campus inside of a week, and it seemed to be getting closer to him. He would have liked to believe it was mild paranoia that made him think such things. Unfortunately, he read the words written in a young girl’s blood on the trees overlooking his classroom window. They read:

you are an outcast
you make your own rules
you walk your own path
i cannot know what drives you to do what you do
i am consoled in the fact that you will die
alone

His words from his classroom, paraphrased slightly. He had always had the uncanny ability of recalling the exact words he had spoken in a given conversation. He was certain of their origin. Whoever wrote them in blood was a student in his classroom. A student who had taken his professor’s words to heart, and perverted them into a new meaning. A man who had no qualms about murder (and worse) committed against his own peers. A killer that made him shudder to think of. A tiger of the fiercest mode, fuelled by blood and by pain. And he had only just begun his work.

The afternoon that followed was a troubled one for Donovan. He felt some level of responsibility for the deaths of the two women, even if he had no connection to them. He learned later that day that he did indeed have a connection to the second victim. She was a student of his as well. In fact, she was the student who roomed with the first victim. The woman that left his classroom early a few days before, in a fit of tears. He had not seen her since that time, allowing her absence for a period of mourning. He had no doubts that the roommate connection was being acted upon by the police, but he knew there was more to it than that.

He knew that the second victim had been chosen because of her relationship to the first. But she had been stalked in Donovan’s own classroom. The murderer had sat in on his lectures and listened to his words, all the while harboring a desire for the death of a fellow classmate. He might have been drawn to her because of her proximity to the first girl, but he suspected there was a deeper motive behind his selection.

Donovan reached his classroom nearly half an hour before any of his students were due to arrive. He expected them to take a good while to come in that afternoon, given all the recent commotion of the last several days. That, and the simple fact that most of them didn’t seem to like him would keep them away for a bit. He didn’t much care about the second reason. It was not in his nature to require the approval of anyone else. He was beyond the need for interpersonal validation. He flipped the overhead lights on, and stopped short, staring at the far side of his classroom. Seated there was a young man who had been calmly waiting for him in the dark room. Had such a surprise greeted him in his younger days, he would have undoubtedly drawn a weapon on the man. Almost reflexively, his right hand slid towards the far side of his rib cage.

The young man, whom he didn’t recognize, blinked beneath the fluorescents, and continued to stare out the window. He was watching the police at work in the Jungle. Donovan shut the door to the room, and placed his briefcase and jacket on his desk. The young man did not look in his direction; he merely nodded and said,

“Hello, Professor Walker. How was your morning?” Donovan sat down at his desk, never taking his eyes from the man.

“Well enough. And yours?”

“I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“How did you get in here?”

“The door was open.” He gestured lazily towards the door, and sighed lightly, “They look like insects when they work. Did you ever realize that?” Donovan bobbed his head slowly in agreement,

“Yes, I have. You are one of my students, are you not?” At this, the young man turned to face him, but his identity was still a mystery to the Professor. He smiled, showing bone-white teeth, and his eyes grew light.

“You honestly don’t recognize me?” There was something eerily familiar about the exchange he was having with this man, and Donovan noticed that he was beginning to feel slightly nauseous. It seemed like not so long ago that he had heard the very same words from someone who was once his friend. Someone that put him on the path he still found himself walking down. That man was a killer, and a lunatic. Donovan was quite certain this man was too.

* * * * * * *

“Am I too early? I wanted to get here early, but not too early.”

“Why is that?” He turned from the window to face the Professor, confusion darkening his face.

“Why is what? That I wanted to get here early or that I didn’t want to be too early?” The Professor’s face gave the impression of a smile. It was hardly recognizable, but he caught it nonetheless.

“Both.” He looked long and hard at the Professor, searching for any indication of sympathy or remorse for the dead beast. He also looked for any signs of recognition of his work. It wasn’t easy on him to stay out so late, and the exertion was unnatural to his general schedule of inactivity. But it was good to get outside for a while, and it had been a nice night. At least, it was until he saw her.

He had intended to track her, but it was completely coincidental that she crossed his path during his nightly walk. Never one to pass up an opportunity, he took firm hold of the situation, and did his duty. Even if they might complain about the mess, no one could fault his results. Because of him, one less demon walked among men.

“It’s because of the work I did. I finished it last night for you. It wasn’t easy.” He drew a small stack of printed papers from his pack, several hours of literature condensed into a single report. The Professor took the papers from him and thumbed through the stack as he moved over towards the window.

“I see that you did. What made it so difficult?” He shifted in his seat a bit, leaning forward in a conspiratorial crouch.

“I wasn’t sure it was really what you wanted.”

“What made you change you mind?” He grinned wide, like an animal barring its teeth, and leaned back in the chair.

“What you said in class the other day.” The Professor looked up at him then, and blinked once, seemingly oblivious to what the young man was saying. “You said, ‘no one enjoys the idea of death or of another person’s suffering’. That was my motivation.” The Professor returned to the papers, and read several lines of it, his eyes darting across the pages.

“I cannot say I fully understand your point.” He laughed briefly and stood from the chair.

“Someone had to do it, didn’t they? I merely gave the idea form and substance. I put it forth into the world…in writing. You helped me with that. Helped me find my voice.” He thought he saw the Professor shiver, as though a cold wind ran over him, but it was only for a moment.

“I think that you have misinterpreted me and my words. There are many ways to view a story. That is the prime element of any form of art, especially literature.”

“I heard you clearly.” The Professor looked up and into his face and his eyes. For a brief second, it felt as if the man before him was reading his thoughts. He could almost sense a foreign set of eyes within him, searching his soul. After what felt to him to be several minutes of silence, the Professor tossed the report to the desk in front of him.

“I give it a ‘D’.” A pang of disappointment stabbed at his chest. It was fast replaced by anger at the man that would have been his greatest teacher.

“How can you say that? How can you say that?! I don’t understand this. You must see what I’ve done…what I’m doing…”

“There is no obligation in my point of view. I am permitted my own unique opinion. I think yours is flawed.” He began to feel more than anger boiling in his blood. He snatched the papers from the desk and thumped towards the door. As he flung it open against the wall, he stopped.

“You don’t see it. I thought you were different, but you don’t see it.” He grabbed the knob and pulled, slamming the door hard behind him. The glass that made up the little window in it rattled sharply. The Professor turned back towards the green and red outside. More police had arrived and they were collecting interviews now. He pulled the shades down and headed back to his desk.

“I see more than you realize.”

* * * * * * *

It was just after lunch when the officer arrived at Donovan’s class. He was dressed in a dark suit that fit loose around his shoulders. It was almost humorous to see, but Donovan was in no mood to laugh. Everything about that moment seemed to fulfill some fantastical cliché. Even they way he presented his badge.

“James Westing. I’m the lead detective assigned to this morning’s investigation. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.” Donovan was still eating his sandwich, so he continued to finish it, while the detective waited patiently. Taking a short drink from his mug, he replied,

“What investigation is that?”

“The homicide. A young woman-a student here-was killed last night. I wanted to know if you could help me at all.”

“What would you like to know, Detective Westing?” Donovan gestured to a chair beside his desk. The detective unbuttoned his jacket and took a seat.

“It’s Jim. No need to be formal here, Professor.” Removing a small pad of paper and a pen from his inside pocket, he began to write down a few notes.

“Donovan.”

“Donovan…Walker, right?”

“That is correct.”

“How long have taught here?”

“Two years. Although I fail to see the relevance that has in a murder investigation.”

“Just getting my facts together.” James smiled politely, and continued. “Before you were a professor here…?”


“I interned for a short while at another university, which was preceded by graduate school.”

“Two years doesn’t seem very long to a man of your age. Unless you spent a decade in graduate school.”

“I do not favor this line of questioning. Would it not be more prudent to inquire regarding the death of the young lady?”

“Right.” He asked Donovan several questions about the classes he taught at the college, as well as anything he knew about the student who’d been killed. There was little information of value in his answers, but the detective wrote down everything he said. The meeting was short, and (in James’ opinion) less than informative. He gave Donovan a card with the local police department’s number. He told him that if he had any further information, he should contact the operator, who could patch a call to James’ cell phone. Donovan thanked him for the card and wished him the best in his investigation, and walked him to the door.

“I will be certain to contact you in case something comes to my attention, Detective Westing.”

“Again, ‘Jim’ is fine. Has anyone ever told you that you talk like a serial villain?”

“I cannot say I have ever heard such an appellation.”

“Right.” James shook his head as he left the room. Donovan turned the card over in his hand several times, with a distant, but all too familiar, look in his eyes.

When he got home that night, he tried to write. He tried to work on his book, but nothing would come. Wherever it was that his ideas were manufactured had shut down production for the evening. There was no telling when work would resume. He was distracted, thinking about the killings, and about the man who had done them. He could only presume it was the student he spoken with that morning, the one who chilled his blood when he spoke. The one with the look of a predator in his eyes. He could almost smell the blood on his hands, as close as they had been.

But there was no proof of this man’s crime, nothing but a feeling and a sense of his guilt. It was less then a gut instinct that he felt, because it didn’t come from his gut. It was from a part of him that knew what it was to kill. He never imagined he’d meet another of his ilk. How much alike were they? The boy’s eyes were not much different from his own at that age. The age when he first started. He turned off his computer and went to sleep, trying not to think about how close the boy had gotten to him.

* * * * * * *

He was frustrated with his inability to make a difference. It permeated every bit of his existence now. It was an eternal cloud of darkness hanging low over his head, mocking and deriding him. He was in constant shadow, never so much as glimpsing daylight. He knew it was there, just above him. He could almost feel it’s warmth behind the drenching disappointment. He never hated the dark until that night.

His professor had let him down. He had gone to him, ready to share everything about his work, and about his mission. The professor was not the man he thought he was. He was starting to have trouble making perfect sense out of his own thoughts. They began to blend together like a mousse. There was vanilla in the mousse. It reminded him of his cat. Or was it his mother’s cat? He wasn’t sure that he ever had a cat.

He shook his head fiercely. Like a beaten rug, he could feel the dust and cobwebs cleared away. He had a semblance of reality again, but it was a more tenacious hold than he would have liked. He thought of the demons he had killed, the two who had taken the form of female students. It turned his stomach, and he barely avoided vomiting there in his dorm room. He wasn’t entirely certain how he had come to be in his room that evening. The last he remembered, he was leaving the professor’s classroom, anger riding heavy in his throat.

His roommate wasn’t returned yet. The young man had gone to a social the night previous, and that was the last he’d seen of the boy. It was normal behavior for his roommate to stay with friends for days at a time, to the detriment of his schoolwork. He couldn’t imagine what they did together that excluded him, but he was certain he was better off without their company. No interruptions, or distractions, or determents to spread before him. No alcohol, or drugs, or any other vice to sway his mind. He would not be poisoned, or precluded. He had a purpose, and he would fulfill it. He would honor his mother and father through an unwavering devotion to the annihilation of evil. It would begin with a re-write on his term paper.

The professor didn’t understand it, and that hurt him. He sat at his desk, and started typing. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but words appeared on the screen anyway. They made little sense at first, but he toyed with them, back and forth, until the meaning slowly became clear. It was his story he was telling. He wasn’t a writer by nature. Crafting words was difficult for him and it never felt natural. It was an artificial experience in a manufactured world. He spent far too much of his time searching for reality.

His roommate came back to the dorm at that moment, and brought the foul stench of corruption with him. It threatened to overtake him, as he sat before his computer. Working on his paper had become second to retaining consciousness. The boy swayed about, like a leaf in the wind, and eventually made his stumbling way to his own bed. He stared at the boy, who in turn took no notice of him. They rarely spoke, and they never agreed on anything. He had doubts about the boy’s humanity at times. That particular moment was one of them. The boy made a week attempt at undressing himself, and subsequently passed out. He watched him lying there, awash in foul sin. The urge to help him was gently nudging at his soul, calling his sensibilities to give him aid of some sort. But his presence of mind prevented him, devising a more advisable course of action.

The boy was poisoned by them, and he knew it. The longer he stayed near to him, the greater his exposure to their taint, the worse it would become for him. He was left with little option in the matter. If he and the boy continued sharing space, and breathing the same air, he would sooner or later be overcome by the others. The demons would take him where he stood, as they had already sent an advance scout into his dorm room. He felt like he was being trapped by them, that they were leading him down a predetermined path towards his ultimate doom. Whether that doom was death or corruption, he was uncertain, but he knew that he preferred neither option. Action would have to be taken.

He crossed the room slowly, stepping over a small pile of empty pizza boxes and mostly empty bottles. The boy hiccoughed in his unnatural sleep, his hand rubbing his face. He stopped, and waited for the boy’s activity to cease, not wanting to wake him, as that would make things all the more difficult. A short belch later, and the boy returned a heavy breathed slumber. He allowed a quick glance towards the door, and took the last few steps to the boy’s bed. He looked down over his motionless form, his resolve set firm. There was no other way, this outcome was unavoidable. He took the bed sheets from their place on the floor and brought them over the boy’s body. He pulled them tight under the boy’s swollen neck.

* * * * * * *

It wasn’t easy for Donovan to find the student’s room. The administration had a strict policy of not giving out residence information, even to professors, but he had ways around the policy. Especially when he was, as of late, on a first name basis with the school’s bursar.

“Mr. Walker. Can I help you?”

“Ms. Algers. I need a favor, if you would be so inclined.”

“I thought I told you about that. Call me Janet. What’s the favor?”

“I need to locate a student.” She was resistant at first, adhering to school policy without fail. Donovan knew there was little in the way of convincing he could do. He knew she was still cross with him for walking out on their “date” the other day. But he pled with her, stressing how important it was to find the young man. He left out his suspicions concerning the student’s recent activities, and explained about how he was worried for his well-being.

“And you think he might do something irrational? Why not simply report it to campus security?”

“I think they have enough to attend to at this time. Besides, I think this is something he needs to hear from me. I think he’s trying to make a connection with me, and I am afraid that I may have broken that.” Even as she listened, Donovan noticed her chuckle to herself. “Is there something funny about this?”

“He’s.” Donovan was confused now and made no effort to conceal it. “You said ‘he’s’, as in ‘he is’. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you use a contraction. I think I was laughing at myself for even noticing something so ridiculous.” Professor Walker nodded silently, thinking about his lapse. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d used a contraction himself. Even in his own thoughts. He’d been too long from human company it seemed, as his self-imputed robotization was more realized each day. He loosed a minute smile and, nodding again, said,

“You have me there. Can you help me with this, Janet?” She hesitated for a few moments, considering refusing him again, he imagined. But, in the end, she agreed to give him the dorm information she had in the billing file for the student.

“I could get in real trouble if anyone finds out that I did this, Donovan.”

“I know. Thank you.” As he was leaving, a sudden and unexpected impulse passed through his body. “Janet. Would you like to have dinner with me next Friday?” She smiled sweetly, but shook her head.

“I don’t think so. I don’t see it going any better the second time around. But I appreciate the offer.”

He left the building wondering if there was something else he should have said to her. Perhaps he could have apologized for his behavior towards her. He wasn’t sure what was making him dwell on such things, when they so rarely stayed with him for long. Without even realizing it, Donovan was standing in front of the student’s dorm room door. He wasn’t entirely certain how he had come to be at the room that afternoon. Rather than consider the matter any further, he gave a few quick raps on the door. There was no answer, which he had expected. It was a class day, and the students in the room in front of him would most likely be out until the evening. Another impulse overtook him, and he tried the doorknob, which opened the door into the room before him. He wasn’t sure what to make of the unusual urges and whims he had only recently begun to feel. Pushing his disquiet aside, he entered the room.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. It was a mix of mildew and bile, and it seemed to be coming from only one side of the room. It was a chaotic muddle of unwashed clothes, unused books, and undisposed trash. Rising above the filth and clutter was a man-sized pile of blankets atop a twin size cot. There was a small puddle of some mostly dried substance on the carpet near the bed. As Donovan approached it, he could see, with some level of disgust, that it was vomit. The source of the regurgitated food was a young man lying on the bed. He was still sleeping off whatever he had done the night prior. There were stains of different liquids (including bodily fluids) on his clothes. Donovan opened the window to the room, letting the sharp fall air in. The wind, combined with the sounds from the campus outside, stirred the boy from his drunken slumber.

He immediately noticed Donovan standing by the window. Blinking and rubbing his eyes, he seemed rather unimpressed by the appearance of a strange man in his room.

“Whadda ya want, buddy?” Donovan looked about himself, taking stock of other side of the room this time. It was a beau ideal of how a room should look. Especially if it was unlived in.

“My name is Professor Walker. I teach literature at this school. I would like to ask you a few questions, if you do not mind.” The boy ran his hand through a tangled patch of hair and grimaced in the process. He too looked about the other side of the room, and then right at Donovan.

“This is about David, isn’t it? I always knew that kid was crazy.”

* * * * * * *

Despite what the others believed about him, he was always quite lucid. He never felt the sting of lunacy, or the wandering of his mind, no matter what stressors might be placed upon the shoulders of his psyche. He was a man of reason and rationality, which made his mission that much more important. The demons he had found were sent to circulate chaos, and to sow discord. They were the advance agents of a greater force that would sweep across this world to make way for a new and terrible age of flame and torment. He had never taken his mother’s teachings of faith and piety with less than a healthy amount of skepticism. He usually perked up when she would read from the latter biblical passages regarding the end of everything and the beginning of the end. She would say that there were signs. The signs were all around you if you knew what to look for. He was looking now, and he saw something that scared him.

The demons were spreading. There were more of them every day. He’d already destroyed two of them, which was a reasonable accomplishment for a man of his stature, but it was hardly a laudable achievement. There was more work to be done than one man could complete by himself. The Professor seemed to him to be a reasonable and rational man as well. He thought that he might be willing to assist him in his endeavors. No such luck. The set-back would not derail his plans though. He would merely have to amend them to suit the situation.

There was a nest of demons living on campus, disguised in the forms of sorority sisters. He had hoped to eliminate them all in one fell swoop, but he would require help to do so. Without any aid it would be a different battle to be waged. One by one, he would come for them, as he had done twice before. And one by one, they would fall. He knew they had human names, but they were not of this earth, and he would show no mercy for their fates. It was his duty to protect the unwitting populace. It was his honor to serve the betterment of mankind. It was his privilege to defend the world from evil in such a blatant and derisive form.

His roommate was tainted, but not lost yet to the wills of the beast. He could still save his soul, and bring him back from the edge. It would require quick action though, and any hesitation on his part could result in failure. He was excited, to say the least. To think of himself as a champion, was something he would never have imagined in his youth. It was harder back then to do the right thing, and to control his emotions. He would lose his temper or even have a nervous breakdown at a moment’s notice. He seemed, to his mother at times, to be a boy possessed. She would castigate him without end some days. But it never made a difference in his behavior. Despite the bruises, and the welts, and the burns, he remained unchanged.

So, she gave up. She could no longer stomach the punishments she felt obligated to mete out on his disobedient flesh. He was locked into a single room for weeks. She would only visit him for scant seconds to deliver him two meals a day and a jug of water, and also to replace his used waste bucket. She told him later that he had been chosen by god to stay in that room so that he might temper his soul into a finely edged weapon. At least, he thought she had said that. He was having difficulties remembering again. Everything was cloudy and wet inside his brain. He saw faces that he didn’t recall, and heard voices that he didn’t recognize. There were different memories in his mind, as well. They didn’t show him a beaten child locked into his room without the company of others. They didn’t show a mother who laid her hands upon an emotionally disturbed boy. They didn’t show him fighting the evil inside of himself since he was only a lad.

They didn’t show anything. There was a separate layer of recall that spread out a nothing existence. There was no joy or sorrow. There was no sun or moon. There was no mother or father. There was nothing. Emptiness was what he saw, eternal and unforgiving. It was a demon’s dream taken shape inside his soul. It was a lie. He would not be deceived by the deceit. He would not be troubled by the makers of his fate that had no sway over his never-less hunger that gave way to a void.

Another few quick shakes of his head to sweep away the tumbling thoughts. If they had enough time to take root, he found a feverish build-up of senseless words and images. It was getting a grip on him, this false madness that the demons disseminated. But he would fight it, and them, until his strength was exhausted. And beyond, perhaps. He wasn’t crazy at all. He was a reasonable and rational young man.

* * * * * * *

Reason and rationality were not words that sprang to Donovan’s mind when he thought about what the young man (whose name was David) had done. After speaking with the student’s roommate, he felt more certain than ever that this was the perpetrator of the two recent murders. He also knew that they wouldn’t be the last of his victims.

The young man was aloof and detached from all that surrounded him. He had no friends (that the roommate knew of), and no social interests of any sort. He hardly went out, apart from attending his classes, and in the early hours before dawn, when the roommate himself was just returning from this party, or that event. On the few occasions when they exchanged words, he expressed a narrow and skewed perspective of women and the world. The roommate didn’t care for the young man, or his thoughts. The roommate just liked to drink to excess and bed different women each week. Donovan pondered whose idea of a sick joke it was to room these two together.

He nodded thanks to the roommate and left without ado. Before he did, he spotted a short stack of notebooks near the clean side of the suite. Donovan picked them all up, and carried them away without a word from the roommate. Again, he seemed to be greatly disinterested in anything beyond sorority sisters and alcohol. Donovan was uncertain why he had grabbed the books. They were innocuous enough, being regular Mead tablet notebooks with no exterior markings to indicate their use. It was an odd whim that had advised him to collect the four books, and retire with them to his office. Perhaps some part of his subconscious considered them a clue to understanding not only David’s methods, but also his motivations.

That the young man was disturbed was more than obvious to him, even without the two murders he’d committed. The more he read of the words in those notebooks, the more he saw a young man who mirrored his own youth in frightening ways. There was a deluge of poetry (comprised of varying degrees of maladroit lyrics), a smattering of short stories, and the occasional journal entry. There seemed to be a semblance of talent in his work, but it was unpracticed and ill used. There were some pieces that were worded almost identical to things Donovan himself had written at the same age. He had never seen his words with the perspective that age and life experience bring. Not until that day, at least.

There were words he used when he was still a young man. Words like “mortality” and “faith” that meant so little to him then. How could someone on the side of youth understand these words? They reflected a grasp of what it meant to be alive, when there was so little life inside him. He was a lonely child, with words as his only friend. He’d grown into a professor of literature, giving those same words back to the students that attended his lectures. He was introducing his old loves to new minds. It was a tenet of his existence, the primary anchor for his fragile morality. He knew the sound of blood escaping a man’s arteries, and the feel of death taking hold of an empty body. Some nights, he thought of nothing else, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

This boy, this killer, this tiger. He was so much more unstable that Donovan ever was. He believed that. He had to believe that. He had to believe that his sanity was better crafted than David’s. He needed distance, separation from the events of the past week, to keep his emotions in the check that he forever maintained. It was his responsibility to protect the world from what he was. More than that, there was the threat of what he had the potential to become. This young man had become that creature. The beast he had feared he would manifest had taken form in one of his students. He wondered strange thoughts about the possible communicability of his derangement. He pondered the chances that whatever had allowed him to divest himself of any respect for the life of the humans he had killed, whatever part of his genetic structure had granted that “gift” to him, that it might have been passed on to this young man.

He had the eyes of a hunter. Donovan recognized them as they reflected his own. He most likely stalked his prey, taking several nights to learn their patterns and their routes. It was how he himself used to work. There was always the chance that serendipity would bring the prey into his path, but that was a slim possibility that could never be relied upon. David’s targets were chosen by their proximity to something he despised. From the entries in his notebooks, and the conversation with his roommate, Donovan believed that the catalyst was an embodiment of depraved behavior. He knew (from his casual observations and the details drawn from classroom gossips) that both girls were popular party-goers. They both indulged in alcohol, and cigarettes, and the occasional recreational drug.

There had to be more to it that that. There had to be some greater draw for him, or most of the women on campus would have been on his target list. They both shared similar physical characteristics. They had the same height, same approximant build, both with blond hair, and light eyes. They had roomed together in the same dorm. No, that wasn’t right. They had roomed in the same sorority house. That still didn’t make sense to him. There was some part of the equation that he was missing. Only David knew the answers to the riddle in his own mind. Nevertheless, Donovan knew where David was going next, and he planned to be there waiting.

* * * * * * *

When he entered the sorority, the music was deafening. It pounded hard in his ears and his feet practically bounced with each bass line. He had come here with only an idea of who or what he was looking for, but he trusted that he could find his target nonetheless. There were hundreds of college bodies pressed in the small space of the house, some dancing, others in various states of undress. It was a three-story structure that had been built before the campus it was now a part of, and it seemed to complain of it’s own accord at the abuse it had in the past (and still to that day) suffered at the hands of it’s occupants. He surveyed the room calmly, searching the sea of faces for the one he needed to find.

He saw her standing near the door to the kitchen, and he recognized her instantly. He’d seen her in class, near the front of the room. She was taller than the others, by half a head, but otherwise she was almost identical to them. She was the one he sought from the moment he entered the house. It was difficult to approach her, with the room packed tight with students. He was beginning to draw stares from some of them as they became aware of his unusual presence. They had never seen him there before, in their own halls. He was an outsider, an invader from another world come to disturb and frighten them. They knew so little about his motives, but he felt quite at home in their disconcertion. It nestled him in its familiarity.

She noticed him as well, as he approached her. She looked around to see if there was someone else that he was coming towards, but she stood alone. There was no one else he seemed interested in. The closer he got to her, the more he could sense her concern. It was quite apparent in the way she searched about for somewhere to escape him. Before he had crossed even half the distance between them both, she turned and entered the kitchen, vanishing from sight. He pushed a little more forcibly through the crowd, eliciting angry comments, and stunned gazes. This was too important to let go. She was pivotal in this, and he knew it. This girl was the president of her sorority, making her, (in many ways) the lynch pin to the entire thing.

He entered the kitchen hastily, nearly striking a young woman with the swinging door. She frowned and moved past him to get a beer from the refrigerator. The kitchen itself was large and accommodating to the groups it must have regularly hosted. Even with its spacious size, there were few people occupying it. He looked for the girl among the empty bottles, and used pizza plates. The one he was looking for had disappeared yet again. There was a door at the far side of the room that opened to a short set of stairs leading to the back stoop.

Once outside he spotted her near the back fence, through which she was exiting. Its gate led to a side street just off the campus’ main drag. She seemed more desperate than ever to remove herself from his presence. He quickened his pace, as she began to break into a halting, high-heel impaired run. He knew he could overtake her if he chose to, but he was concerned about attracting attention so close to the populated school grounds. In the same respect, he was afraid that she might call out if he didn’t catch up to her quickly.

Just then, he noticed that there was someone else out on that dark street with them. It was a lone man, sulking in the shadows between the trees that lined the street. They weren’t far from the edge of the Jungle now, and she seemed to be making a direct path towards the dilapidated woods. He hadn’t been there himself as of late, but there was a time when he would spend his evenings walking the path that bordered the Jungle, imagining what sort of twisted things might live within it. The man moved along in the darkness, watching the girl as she fled. He couldn’t quite make out who her pursuer was, but he had a pretty good idea who it might be.

Before he could take a closer look, the girl swung into the Jungle and, for the third time that night, she evaporated into the darkness. The man in the tress quickly followed suit, as did he. His eyes quickly adjusted to the starless canopy of the Jungle’s mutated trees. It had been many years since he had tracked a person through the night, and the reasons then were different than now. When he found her, she was lying motionless on the ground, with the man from the trees standing over her head. He had a large object in his hands that looked to be a board or a bat of some kind. He could see the blood stains around her temples from where the man had struck her.

As Donovan approached them both, David turned towards him. His eyes shined in the dark, like an animals, and he said in a low voice,

“I thought you’d come.” Donovan, who had chased this woman through a crowd of startled party-goers, and out into the empty streets of a vacant campus, only nodded. “You want to understand what’s happening to me, don’t you? You’re worried that what I’m doing is sick, or that I’m crazy. And you’re thinking that you might try and stop me.” Donovan looked at the women, whose breathing was shallow but apparent, and then up at David. He shook his head lightly, and said,

“No, David. I was thinking that I might teach you how to be a better hunter.”

* * * * * * *

Donovan was at a loss for the girl’s name, but he had a feeling it was Amanda. He recognized her, vaguely, from his classes. She was a young student, a freshman if he recalled correctly. She was quite verbal in his course, expressing her thoughts and opinions on nearly every topic that came under discussion. She was open and social among her classmates and peers, and they in turn seemed to enjoy her company. And, at that moment, she was lying on the dark ground of the Jungle with a head wound.

David regarded Donovan with obvious suspicion. He didn’t trust him and he didn’t understand his motives. It seemed far more likely to him that his professor had sided with the evil forces in the world. Perhaps what he sensed in him wasn’t willingness to help in his crusade against the beasts, but more an expression of his own baser, demon-driven need for chaos. His head was heavy on his shoulders, and the board in his hands suddenly felt difficult to grip. He wasn’t completely certain, but he suspected that the professor was using some sort of power over him. Before he could choose a course of action, the professor spoke to him,

“The key to being a good hunter is patience. You have to be able to wait for your prey to come to you.” David wondered if he had really meant what he had said, about teaching him. His confusion grew with the dull and steady throbbing in his head. The professor continued, “You must not ever pursue them, because in doing so, you give them power over you. They can lead you where they want to go. They can trap you, or ambush you. They have the advantage. Never give your prey an advantage over you.” David found himself responding with words, before he was aware he had formed thoughts on the matter,
“That hardly seems fair. The hunter has weapons, and surprise on his side. What chance would the prey have against that, even if you chased them down?” Donovan looked again at the girl, who was unconscious, but sill alive.

“Fair is not of consequence when you are the hunter. Fair only matters to the prey, and what matters to the prey should never matter to the hunter. Take her, for instance. You are armed, she was not. You had the night and her unwitting flight on your side. Would you have preferred it happened differently?” David thought for a moment, and considered how he had come up behind the girl and struck her before she was aware of him. He didn’t care if she was mistreated, since she was simply another demon to be destroyed.

“I see your point. How many have you hunted?” Donovan’s eyes dropped away from David, taking in the shadows that lay among the underbrush and warped trees. He didn’t hesitate long before answering,

“Forty-seven.” The number hardly seemed noteworthy to David, as he was a man half the professor’s age with three of the creatures destroyed to his credit in less then two weeks time. If he maintained that pace, he would surpass the professor’s number in less than a year.

“This makes three for me, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” Donovan looked back at David. “Why do you hunt them?” David’s expression was one of astonishment in response to the professor’s question.

“Why should I not? I was chosen. It’s my divine purpose. How can you yourself hunt demons, and still question my reasons?” Donovan’s eyebrow raised slightly at the mention of demons.

“Demons, is it? Why would you think I hunt demons?” Realization, sudden and painful, dawned on him. He all but gasped out his revelation, “You think these women are demons. You think you do god’s work.” David’s eyes narrowed. He tightened his grip on the bored, raising it slightly between them both.

“I knew it. You lied to me. You’re with them. You came here to stop me.” Donovan lowered his chin, and shook his head.

“No. I’m not with anyone. I came here to understand what was happening, to both of us.” He folded his hands in front of himself, and began to walk to David’s left, staying beyond the reach of his two-by-four. “Madness imbues a distinct clarity on its most loyal of apostates.”

“What does that mean?” David maintained a facing on him, as the professor paced around him.

“It means the side you believe you champion has abandoned you to the whims of chaos. There is no greater plan, or master work that guides our destinies. Only blind luck, foolish devotion, and occasional bouts of insanity.” He continued his circle around the young man, keeping his eyes on him all the while. “Do you know what it means to kill someone, David? It is not a rhetorical question. I am asking you if you understand the significance of what you have done.” David looked at the board in his hands, still fresh with blood and matted hair, and then at the young woman he had beaten with it. He snapped his head to the side once, quickly and forcibly,

“They aren’t people! You have to see that! How you can stand on the sidelines and not see the battle in front of you?”

“There is no battle, David. There is no war. There are no sidelines. The world is a hollow shell that carries the weight of a viral society on its shoulders. I had forgotten how much I loathe people. It was always there, in the back of my mind waiting patiently for me to remember. Like a hunter. That’s how I could do it, I think. I…killed them because I didn’t care enough not to. That’s what it means to kill someone.” Donovan stopped walking and crossed his arms. He’d made a complete circle around David. “I think I know now. I think I realize what I missed. The thing that was just beyond my reach for all these years. A challenge. Not a contest in a competitive sense, rather a question placed on my soul. You provided me with that. You reminded me what I really am.”

“What’s that?” Donovan’s right hand disappeared into his jacket for a brief second, and he drew a short barreled pistol, complete with silencer hitched to the front of it. It was pointed at David, before the young man had a chance to react. He raised the gory board over his shoulder and prepared to make a desperate swing at his literature professor. Donovan quickly pumped the trigger twice, loosing two 9mm rounds in David’s chest at point blank range. David snapped back from the force of the bullets, his convulsions accented by two short and fierce popping sounds. He dropped the board instantly, and clutched at his chest, as if trying to dig out the bullets. Donovan lowered the gun, and watched him cough and sputter from the holes in his lungs that were quickly filling with blood. He wore no expression. David fell to the knees, and reached out for Donovan. He raised the gun and fired again, this time into his former students face. David went suddenly rigid, and fell forward onto the hard forest floor. Two dark pools spread rapidly from beneath David’s head and torso, but there was no other movement. Donovan looked down at the back of his head, and spoke,

“I’m a shell of what I once was. I thought I could change my life, my world even. But it just trapped me in this cage of routine. We can’t deny ourselves. It’s worse than suicide to do that. I lied to myself for so many years, that I forgot what was true anymore. I’m a beast that hunts because it chooses to, not because it has to. I am the tiger.” He noticed then, that the young woman had stirred. She was still dazed from the blow to her head, and there was drying blood in her hair, and on her face. She leaned on her arm, and stared in a sort of stupor of terror at the scene beside her.

“Pro-professor Walker? Wh-what’s…oh my god. Is he dead?” Donovan blinked hard twice. It took no longer than that short space of time to make up his mind. He replied “yes” and then shot her dead as well. He put the gun back into his jacket, and walked away from the two bodies. One more and that makes fifty, he thought.

He would do it right this time. He would make no mistakes. He would improve upon his past work. He always knew he had the potential to be so much more. A better hunter…a better killer. He’d probably never finish his novel, but then he never was much of a writer after all. There was something about blank pages that appealed to him in a way that words filling them up never could.