Author's Note: This is a very old piece of mine, done back in 2007. I liked it enough to post it here.

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What is murder?

He's covered in blood, only a bit of his own, and the rest belonged to his victim. His white shirt's torn a bit; the right sleeve was slipping from his shoulder. In his hands, he held the firm wooden handle of a scythe. The weapon's arched blade dripped with more blood…

He stands over in his gardens, covered in an assortment of roses, daisies and posies. In the middle stood a tall sakura tree, petals drifting from the branches after each breeze that passed. It seems like midnight, or even later. The sky is its usual deep, deep navy, not a star in the sky. Only the moon, waning. It's the only light gleaming down on that dreary garden.

His eyes seem to gleam like sapphires, and he's smiling. Not toothily, but enough to show that he is not at all sane.

The air reeks of death and flowers, pooled together to form a sickening scent. And he still smiles madly, wipes his forehead and eyelids from the beads of sweat, and then swings away at his newly captured victim. Oh, what an event…

It's lovely, he tells himself... It's not a crime. It's merely a… hobby. A sick hobby, but a hobby, nonetheless.

He's arrogant, sadistic. The blood that accumulates with each slice of his scythe, and the few scratches on his arms that indicated the victim's futile attempts to struggle against his whim, he loves it. Even the tears and cries and pleads for help and the begging. It's torture. Pure torture…

He never sees the blood as something terrifying or grotesque. It's like paint to him, red paint that dries to a beautiful shade of brown.

And the screams… He doesn't think of the screams as cries of terror. Instead, he thinks of them as part of an orchestra, a symphony of different pitches.

It's music to his ears.

He slices again, just as his victim is about to crawl away. The symphony dies, and the only sound left in the night is the chirping of the crickets, the croaking of frogs and his insane laughter.

He continues to smiles at his accomplishment and lies down in his blood-stained garden. The white roses were now speckled with small, sanguine spots and the sakura trees swayed slowly in the warm breeze. The petals drifted from the branches and onto his body.

The scythe in his hand was soaked in blood, from the blade to the handle. And the moonlight reflected in the clean specs of the blade, in a twisted smile, just like his.

Murder… is a graceful art.