Disclaimer: I own nothing, except for my bicycle.


All of the people around me sit with eyes glued to the screen. They listen with rapt attention to every detail that the newswoman expertly doles out with tantalizing slowness. It has something to do with death. I listen more carefully. It is about the miniature killer, their latest freak star. "Authorities have released new information stating…" I tune out her babbling. Same shit, different day. I take a sip of my coffee. It has gone cold.

The newswoman finally signs off and a plastic-looking man with a fake smile starts droning about the weather. I listen without really listening as the volume in the coffee shop slowly increases, as if someone is turning up a dial. Snatches of conversation start to penetrate. They are discussing the serial killer. A frumpy-looking woman to my left is talking animatedly to her equally frumpy friend.

"How could someone do things like that?" she gasps. Her tone of horrified fascination would be comical if it weren't so nauseating. "All those people…"

"He's got to be a psychopath Charlotte," her friend tells her. "Anyone who would even think of that kind of rampage can't be sane."

'Rampage.' That was one of the words used by the newswoman. And this female sitting next to me, this friend of Charlotte's, probably doesn't even realize that she is only regurgitating what she has heard, vomiting her idiotic ignorance onto the countertop for the entire world to observe.

"And they say he planned them," Charlotte gushes, "down to the last detail. And to think that he's just walking around, a madman out on the streets with you and me."

'Down to the last detail.' Another regurgitated phrase. I get up and throw away my nearly empty cup. 'Those stupid women,' I think savagely, 'have no idea what they are talking about.' A madman on the streets? Who cares? They aren't the ones you have to worry about. It's the ones in your home, in your everyday life, that pose real threats. It's the madmen in your brain… An encounter with an unhinged serial killer might do them both a world of good. At the very least, it would shut them up.

I step out of the shop and onto the sidewalk. A madman eh? Planned down to the last detail…walking the streets. I wonder what they would say about me if they knew. It would probably involve few words and many decibels. Or perhaps they wouldn't believe it at all. People can be oblivious that way when their comfortable misconceptions are threatened. Perhaps they wouldn't believe me until I slit their throats.

How could someone do that? Do you really want to know? Of course you do. You want to know every last and vicious detail. I shall tell you. 'Listen my children and you shall hear…'

It is quite easy. Not simple, not by any means, but it is oh so very easy once it is begun. It doesn't even require insanity. At least, not permanently.

My name is Dr. Lurie. If you knew my public face, you would trust me. You would put your life in my hands without a moment's hesitation over my character. You would feel safe, knowing that I am one of the best, most steady-handed and precise surgeons in the state of Nevada.

So you see, when the need arose, I had all of the skills required of me to do the job properly. But how could I?

How could I?

All it took was rage. Rage caused by previously unimaginable pain. It is quite amazing how quickly loving someone can make you hate them. I did love her, I do. I loved her even as her life sprayed out over the bathroom from the wound my hand had made. I loved her as I killed him and packaged him away. I loved her as I scrubbed every inch of the bathroom and took him out with the trash, another plaything that once corrupted, had to be destroyed.

I killed them for her you know. I had to, in order to save her. She once told me that she never wanted to love another man as she loved me, and never would. I gave her that wish. Now, there will be no more wanting. Now, she never will.

*****************

AN: After I saw the episode Butterflied, I wondered 'What happened to Dr. Lurie? How did all of it affect him?' We see how it affects Grissom and some of how it affects Sara, but after playing out probably the most life-changing event of his life, Lurie just disappears.