Anyone know of the CreepyPasta Character Clockwork? She's the girl with a clock for an eye? Well this is a similar premise except The Tinkerer has been through a hell of a lot more (self inflicted) and doesn't kill, he merely "improves" the people he captures. You'll see.
There once was a boy named Edward, a kind child he loved building and making things out of anything, wood, metal, plastic, anything he could get his hands on he built into something and his parents were proud. He'd grow up to do wonderful things they'd say, he'd help people and improve their lives. Oh how wrong they were.
Edward was fifteen when his parents passed away in a fatal car crash that claimed their lives and his left arm. It was a jarring wakeup call to the once kind child that the world wasn't all good. The man who'd been driving drunk that night got off scot free while his father who'd been behind the wheel was blamed due to a number of the man's friends backing him up saying they'd been there when it happened.
Edward had stood in front of the court, his ripped and filthy jeans from that night still spattered with the blood of his parents and himself shoes scraped and scarred from where the heavy leather had been drug across sharp bits of metal that had punctured through the backs of his parents' seats and that had severed his arm. His prosthetic had itched the entire time he stood their the plastic rubbing against the bandages and the connections they'd sunk into his shoulder joint to fasten the useless plastic limb to his arm were still sore causing him to hold the arm the entire time he was in the room getting a few snickers from the man's friends and himself.
Ten months later Edward was released from the hospital "fully recovered" to an empty house coated in dust and memories that no amount of therapy could remove and medication did not touch. The first thing he did was replace the useless hunk of plastic that they called his "arm" with something useful.
The metal was painful and cut his flesh when he moved it a certain way and the fastening was rough but it was sturdier than the plastic one. Now how to get it to move. Computers were smart and simple to work with; why couldn't he use one of those?
The bone saw had hurt and he had a terrible headache but he'd managed to wire it up, his brain sent electrical signals to the CPU which now socketed securely into the hole in his head interpreted them and sent it to the limb, the fluidity of it was amazing; why hadn't people done this before? And then Edward started thinking… why only replace that which had been lost? His eyes were great sure they let him see and interpret things but they could be so much better.
A spoon solved the issue of how to get it out, next was getting the cable to his brain and a drill solved that problem as well and then he worked on making a replacement. A camera lens let him see again and also zoom in on items he needed to focus on more. The lens didn't fully fit in the hole his eye had occupied and it left small hollows around it but it performed better than his eye had. So why not share his improvements with others.
The townspeople were definitely a no, they'd all been appalled by his limb replacement project and that was just the arm he'd worn a hat to protect his head which was extremely sensitive until he'd fashioned a plate of metal over it which he covered with hair he'd cut from the chunk of skull he'd removed and fully hid when he grew out his hair. His goggles for welding he used to hide his eye which could easily see through the thick lens of the goggles if he wanted it to, after all it could see in the dark much better than he could.
No his patients would be outsiders, drifters, people who were down on their luck and needed to be improved. So out went the memory containing items, the pictures, the furniture, the tables, everything. In came operation tables, piles of tools old and new alike, welding kits, pieces of scrap metal, restraints.
His first patient awoke from the procedure well enough, he wasn't pleased though. No he ran through the town screaming of the "terrible" things that Edward had done to him. Wasn't he pleased? He'd replaced the man's once faulty eyes which required glasses to see with lenses just like his own, the man could see anything at any time; he'd be a perfect overseer or spotter or any other job that required great eyesight.
His second sadly didn't ever awaken, the blood he lost apparently proving a problem for the man; odd. Hadn't Edward lost just as much if not more before he gained his own replacement? Oh well onto number three.
And so The Tinkerer was born, the townspeople feared him, the modern day Frankenstein he was called, the one person you hoped never caught you lest he "improve" you just like he had himself.
His parents in the end had been right though, the youth had changed peoples' lives; just not the way they thought he would.