Alright, so I haven't written in a really long time and I actually started this one a long while ago but never really finished it. Last week, I felt the inspiration to finish this. So I've decided to write a new story? Yes... Yes I have. Is this like the longest first chapter to a story... ever? Yes, it really is. I know I should continue this... but I dunno if I have the spirit to. It might be good how it is. What do you think?

Leave a comment, you know I always love to hear what you think. :]

POV-Edward

She smiled at me as I walked out the door. A kiss on the cheek and a quick goodbye. She knew where I was going and knew what I was going to do, though she didn't protest. I knew she did it, too. We didn't argue with each other about things like this. It was based solely on need. Neither of us had any ulterior motives. We cared for each other more than we cared for almost anything else. But sometimes… need finds a way of controlling you far more than you could know.

Neither of us really knew what it was to love, to feel the surge and course of emotions that flooded your very essence at the sight of that one single person. Yet I loved her in a way that I'm sure only she could understand. To me, love was something entirely different from puppy dogs and rainbow kisses. Love was… being understood. It was the strongest thing I'd ever felt, but it wasn't an emotion. Does a monster even have a heart?

People explained love such in the way that I would explain The Game—though I would never tell a soul the truths that lie in my desolate chest; at least not a soul that wasn't condemned to lose their life and become another Polaroid in my album. It was adrenaline and the ultimate euphoria. It was finding a place where you fit in and felt completely safe.

That was all true for The Game. Adrenaline, then release. I fit in amongst the dead and betrayed. I felt safe with the ones who were no longer breathing.

I used to wonder if there was anyone else out there that felt the same way; empty and emotionless. I wondered if anyone ever had the same gut wrenching needs as I do, to feel the last strings of life slipping away through the fingers of Mother Nature. I wondered if anyone ever did what I did. Did anyone else play my game?

They did.

I found her when I was 24, just a few years ago. She was deceivingly beautiful, brown hair that flowed to her waist, soft brown eyes and curves that Marilyn Monroe would have been jealous of. I saw through it though. I'd taught myself to spot others when they were near. Instinct drove most of my senses, controlling the way my brain processed sight and sounds.

I couldn't resist The Game though. I'd been alone for so many years; she seemed like the perfect partner; now I could play doubles.

I remember stalking her for days. I broke into her apartment, slipping in through a damaged window. The place was impeccably neat and organized, despite the chaotic surroundings that bordered the building. The outside had been run down and riddled with trash and potential tetanus with a hint of bubonic plague. While the inside was almost silent and peacefully white.

She had something I didn't. A place to think.

It had been so long since I'd had any time to just think about nothing in particular. Though, knowing me, there would always be something particular.

Everything was a crisp black and white in the room. There was no color, only shades. Even the floor had been remodeled. There had undoubtedly been some form of dirty pressed carpet here. She had be renovating.

I wanted to know what her trade was. What was her signature? What did she keep? This could be the ultimate game. The one where it ends in either the best fun I've had in my life, or possibly with me on a metal metal slab not unlike the ones I've set so many others on before.

Working as a medical coroner, it's simple to continue my way of life with very little effort. Though I must always follow my rules. The rules to the game are simple and clean. They are the only factor that holds control over my head, and even then, I know there are exceptions to every rule. I must be careful with that knowledge however, as it is a literal case of life and death.

I'd made my way through the living room, looking through photo albums and scanning the titles of books. She had a lot about tattoos, maybe she had one, though I doubted that. It just gave me a hint of what I was looking for.

I scanned her closet, noting the perfectly arranged clothing and way all the hangers were placed at equal intervals from each other. Her side table held host to a clock radio, a lamp and a vase with a single white rose on it. I stepped closer to the rose, wanting to examine it's delicate folds and natural beauty.

Creak…

Eureka.

An apartment like hers, so carefully placed and scrupulous, would never tolerate a creaking floor board. I knelt beside the bed and peered carefully and planks that made up her wooden floor.

Yes.

A small scratch mark in the wood, made most likely from something prying the board from the floor. The multi-tool was pulled from my pocket and the knife selected. I made sure to keep the blade in the exact space she had all these years. A red leather box lay peacefully between two floor beams; a gold catch glittered in the sunlight. I pulled the box from the floor and set it beside the pried plank.

It was a beautiful thing really, a tribute to the human sacrifices that she undoubtedly held inside. It made me envious to see such a beautiful encasement to hold her trophies. There was nothing so beautiful in my mind as a trophy stored and preserved to perfection. We weren't killers, we were collectors. Most of us anyway. I was justified in my game in many ways. I had to seek and destroy all those who murdered for no reason other than to kill. It was rule number one; never harm the innocent. I guess that's how I got to work with the police. A forensic coroner. I liked to put away the bad guys… and rid the earth of the really bad guys.

I flipped the lid on the box and smiled. She was maniacal and obsessive. Each of her trophies was shrink-wrapped in clear plastic with a square label that read the name and date of each victim. They were tattoos. Different tattoos of each man she'd ever killed. She was a black widow. There must have been forty little disks of plastic in there. Each one was no bigger than 9 inches in circumference… except the bottom one. It was about two feet around and filled the entire bottom of the box. It was dated back to the nineties. She couldn't have been more than 18 when she'd taken this one.

Her first kill.

It was a tattoo of a spider, ironically enough. The spider was set into a web of delicate grey silk. It was climbing its way up the web, a stripe of red streaking up its lower abdomen. A black widow spider. How poetic. The female spider has been known to find a mate and use him for nothing more that to fertilize her eggs. She then kills and devours him.

This woman used these men for nothing more than her own pleasure. She would kill them slowly; savoring the way they begged, the way they had trusted her. She would kill them with a look of fear and betrayal on their faces. How did I know this? We were somewhat similar in that sense.

It made me wonder what had happened in her past that had made her this way. Why she was merciless and heartless.

I snapped the lid to the leather box closed and replace it in the floor. Her secret was safe with me.

Her apartment had been so meticulous that I think I loved her before I knew her name. Her home was just as beautiful as she was, organized down the order of crackers in the pantry. She would be my downfall, I knew it. Yet I didn't stop. I didn't care. If I could have her, even for just a short time, I would take my sentence with a plea of guilty. She was the one person on the planet who held the chance of understanding me.

No one did.

No one understood me. I was the outcast, the pariah, though most people didn't know that. I was a well liked person by many. I had pretended and faked my way to where I was now. I had become so good at faking human emotions and conversations that it was almost instinct now. It was still forced, it would always be forced, but it didn't take as much energy and concentration as it once did.

The monster has been trained well.

I remember the first time I saw her. She was sitting in a diner—though I knew the real main course wasn't on the table in front of her, but sitting in the vinyl seat across—sharing a meal with a man who looked about thirty. I watched from a table across the room as they made their polite conversation. The man couldn't keep his eyes off of her plunging cleavage.

I don't think I'll ever understand the obsession men hold with breasts. Sex is a touchy subject on itself, but I can sometimes understand the certain appeal it holds. Breasts, to me, hold no particular attraction. The act of being caught with your testosterone showing and your eyes trained on a woman's more private features just seems… degrading. Yet the male race seems to hold some sort of affixation to them, idolizing and venerating a woman because she is a woman. Undignified.

The man stood and she followed shortly thereafter. Her eyes never left his form though I knew she was scanning the room for any potential threats. This Game was only to be played by those with highly skilled instincts and precise planning abilities. It was not a light hearted sport, you had to follow the rules or you would get quickly disqualified.

When the door opened and the sun shone on her face in just the way that made it light up, I saw then, that she had her eye on me. It was then that I knew who she really was.

My stomach did a flip—which scared me more than the look, I don't frighten easily. Her look clearly said something between "I'm on to you" and "watch out". The latter was a certain cause for alarm. She was skilled, possibly more than I was. I would be foolish to doubt a such a creature.

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

Patience was one of the most important tools we had. Besides instincts that trumped the regular mind, we held the key to ultimate success; patience. When you had unlimited patience, it was simple to stay on track. The only reason killers like myself were ever caught was because they became impatient. Impatience makes you messy, and being messy means making mistakes. Mistakes always lead to downfall.

Los Angeles was a good place for me. There were four hundred-thousand murders a year in this city, I just had to find the sick bastards who committed them and make him or her… disappear. People would probably thank me if they knew what I did for a living. I was keeping their children and family safe from mass murders and people who polluted their neighborhoods and suburbs.

Not that I cared about the people I helped. I cared about the rules of The Game. If you didn't follow the rules, you would get caught. You would get caught by me. And you wouldn't like it.

Derek Wayland walked past then. He was the one I was looking for. He'd been shamelessly killing prostitutes and leaving them in random trash bins throughout upper Hollywood. He was playing The Game, but he was forgetting the first rule. It was my move next.

I had been following him for 23 days now. He wasn't like me or my friend, the Black Widow - as I called her. Wayland worked for the manager of the strip club in East Hollywood. He'd started on this little killing spree back when the manager had hired him on to kill of a few of his girls who had let slip to the authorities about an underground drug ring he also happened to manage. It took only a two lengths of rope, a can of gasoline and a lighter to become a cold-blooded killer. He strangled them both, trashed them in a dumpster and doused their bodies in flames. And he'd been doing it ever since.

I knew his M.O. I'd been tracking his kills for months. It was amazing he'd avoided police attention for so long. I guess no one but me pays attention to dead, slightly charcoaled hookers. It was just 4 weeks ago the police finally caught a hint that lead them to Wayland, along with 2 dozen other men. He'd killed a girl while another was watching. He'd gotten impatient. He'd gotten sloppy. That meant I got to catch him.

The woman who'd witnessed tried to give her best description of Wayland, but it had been dark and she hadn't wanted to move closer. Understandably, I assume, as human nature is to run from fear and hide from terror. I, however, never run, never hide.

The woman said she recognized him as a bouncer at a bar she used to work at. Problem was, her testimony wouldn't stand up in court as the only evidence was a woman who wasn't quite sure what she'd seen in the dark and when approached with pictures of the bouncers from the bar it was evident she was really only guessing which man it was.

But I knew it was Wayland. I'd been following him long enough now. I knew his routines. I knew who he was. But he violated the first rule of The Game: don't make mistakes.

So Derek Wayland had to die.

I moved in behind him.

He heard the quick thudding of the soles of my shoes and turned just as I reached him. The gasp left his mouth just as my wire wrapped around his neck.

He attempted to suck in a few breaths, but got nowhere. My wire was cutting off the airflow to his trachea thus cutting off the air to his brain. All I had to do was wait now, ten seconds and he would hit the ground.

Three, two, one.

Derek passed out. He wasn't dead—that would be no fun—just unconscious. I lifted him over my shoulder and carried him into the warehouse we were positioned near. The tables and lights were already set up. Plastic sheets hung on the walls and over every surface, even the floor. My tools and toys sat neatly lined on a table to the right of where Wayland would be laying in only moment. There was a drill with multitudes of cold, metal bits, an electric reciprocating saw, an array of knives… my knives. All of them with a story and a price. Each knife was worth something different to me and none of them held any sort of personal monetary value. These knives had been won. Each tool had a purpose. Each tool had a story from the pawns in my game. My tools were as precious to me as the red covered photo album I kept safe above all else.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck as a cold draft rattled through the building and ruffled the plastic sheets. It was eerie, but I wasn't afraid. It was hard to be afraid when you were the biggest monster out there.

I dropped Derek on the metal-slab table. I placed him on his back, removed all this clothes and tied him to the table, using plastic wrap, in four places; around his forehead, his chest and shoulders, his hips and his ankles. He couldn't struggle, he couldn't move and he sure as hell couldn't escape. I was a doctor, any slip in this delicate procedure and he could put himself into more pain then necessary.

Derek slept. I sat on an aluminum stool and waited for him to wake up. He had to know what he was dying for before he could be allowed to die for it. That was another rule of the game. Make each person accountable for their actions. The lights were vivid white and blinding. My surroundings were beginning to bleed together when I heard the plastic squeak.

My attention snapped onto Wayland. His eyes opened slowly and he attempted to take in his surroundings. Unfortunately when the human body finds itself in a frightening and potentially dangerous, unfamiliar situation, it goes into shock, dissembling us from being able to process that which should be perfectly obvious. So I gave him a little help with the… processing.

"Did you enjoy feeling the last breath of air from the women you killed, Derek?" I ran my thumb down the edge of my favorite bowie knife, testing it for sharpness as well as intimidating Wayland. I could smell the fear radiating from his body now. It came off him in waves of heat. I would soon destroy the source of all that heat.

"I don't know what you're talking about, man." Derek shuddered. He kept his eyes on the knife in my hand.

"I'm sure you don't." I replied, sarcastically. "I'm sure you have no idea who Katie Harverd, or Dianne Kipling, or Julia Davenport were, either." at each of these names I drew a picture of said woman from a folder.

"I d-don't know, m-m-man. I j-just work for a guy." He stammered.

I held up the first picture again.

"Did you know Katie was studying to become an engineer, but she didn't have the money so she stripped on weekends?" I flashed him the second photo again, "or that Dianne was the mother of two young boys who now have no one to tuck them in tonight? And did you…" I pulled the third picture from the folder, looked at it then flipped it around so he was nose to nose with the image.

"Did you know…. Julia was the daughter of Frank and Sylvia Davenport? She loved to sing. Her favorite thing in the world was her dog and her favorite thing to do was dance."

Derek was quite now. Tears were running out of the corners of his eyes. He was staring into mine. Searching for something he wasn't going to find. Pity. He was feeling it now. Pity. I didn't feel pity, I didn't feel anything. He wasn't a monster, like me. He was just another lost soul.

"You didn't know any of that, did you?" I asked, staring back.

"No." He breathed.

"That's why you and I are different, Derek. You see, you go about your life, pretending you are god. You get to decide who lives and who dies, when, where and why. You don't take the time to find out about them; their passions, lives, what really makes them… tick."

"Please, I'll do anything. J-just let me go." Wayland struggled against his bonds. I watched the veins throb in his arms and neck as adrenaline coursed wildly through his bloodstream.

"Now don't beg. It just makes you look small and weak. It's not going to make me change my mind." I was laughing now. This was the best part of the game; the great ascension to the climax. The fun was about to peak. "Die with a little dignity, why don't you?"

"B-but I can change! I WILL change!" Derek was crying freely now and hyperventilating. I poised my bowie above his heart and moved the tip so the light reflection danced in his eyes. He never took his stare off the tip of the knife. His breath moved so quickly and forcefully through his teeth, little bits of spittle landed on my wrist and the shining silver blade of my knife.

"No, Derek, you won't. See, I've learned all about you. I know what you love, I know what you hate, I know what need and I know what you are." I breathed the last part into his ear. "I know you won't change. I'm not even going to give you the chance. But I am merciful, so I'll make this quick."

"N-!"

My knife plunged into his chest. I could feel the blade vibrate as his heart fought for life. Each 'lub-dub' made the shaft quiver. I held perfectly still as the beats became weaker and farther apart. I watched Wayland's face fall. He went from scared, to weak, to oddly peaceful. I didn't draw away until I felt the final breath rattle from his ribcage. A small trickle of deep, red blood ran in contrast with his pale skin when it teetered over the edge of his lip and down the side of his chin. Everything was peaceful in my moments alone, all alone. I compare it to a sort of high. I held life in my hands. I ended it. Just like that.

Bzzzzzzzzzzz Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Notifying me of an incoming call. I peeled off one of my latex gloves and reached for it.

Unknown Caller, the screen read. I tapped the lit-up green button and held the phone to my ear.

"Hello?"

And just like that, it all changed.