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【 'it's me she must escape.' 】
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Dark gloves coated in sticky, sickly red ooze and bloody instruments clutched in his hands, the man garbed in a rubber sanitary suit and a large medical helmet drove the highly sharpened blade of his scalpel across slick flesh. A muffled shriek boiled passed his victim's gagged lips, large green eyes watching their assailant cut his flesh to ribbons. The man in rubber grew impatient with the screams the man were breaking his concentration in removing the blonde man's barrowed heart, so he reached behind himself to his tray of bloodied tools and grabbed onto the hilt of a larger kitchen knife.
In the soiled reflection of the knife, the blonde man strapped to an office chair felt another scream of terror rise in his throat. Sensing as such, the homicidal doctor cutting him apart sliced the answering-end of the blade across his victim's throat – blood spurted from broken veins and a shriek was lost in blood, lulling the struggling to a complete stop.
Finally, he was able to retrieve the heart without a resistance. Bringing out his scalpel from the pocket on his right breast again, the doctor severed all the arteries that were attached to the bloody organ and ripped it, still beating, from the large open cavity he cut in his victim's chest and was keen to keep the heart unscathed. Entrails spilled from the giant hole and onto the cold concrete floor of his basement.
Having finished his work, the doctor tossed the heart haphazardly into a bin and threw his bloody scalpel onto his tray of instruments and made his way across the room to the dirty sink where he removed his stained gloves, running them under warm water to erase the unpleasant residue. Ludwig removed his helmet and set it off to the side on the counter, running a hand through his slick blonde hair and staring at his own disgusting reflection in the mirror.
He was a monster. A murderer. A killer. An assassin. He was horrible and he knew that very well; the blue-eyed man couldn't look at himself without wanting to vomit. He wasn't proud of any of the things he did, but he did them all with his precious girl's best interests in mind. [Name] was all he had left in his pathetic excuse for a life ever since his wife died nearly seventeen years previous. If his sweet and gentle wife saw the nightmare he had become after her death, he wouldn't know what to do with himself.
Ludwig worked under the rule of the country's most powerful man in the profession of the Repo Man; the Grim Reaper in this decaying society of severe organ failures. The silver lining in this catastrophe was the company GeneCo, an empire run by a man named Antonio Carriedo and his three children – they sold donor organs to people who were in need of them, for the right price, of course. If the citizens couldn't pay the full fee, they could sign up for a plan that would involve paying small monthly bills for their barrowed organs. But, if you didn't pay them on time, they would send in the Repo Man – Ludwig – to re-claim them.
He couldn't tell his precious daughter his horrible secret; he knew that she would fear him, resent him, and run out of his life just like his dearest wife had so many years ago. Ludwig tried so hard to raise Lilly without the aid of her mother, but it slowly ate away at his psyche. When the German male had agreed to becoming the Repo Man, he hadn't imagined loving cutting people up like he did – and that frightened him. What if Lilly would need an organ transplant in the future and they weren't able to keep up on the monthly fee? He would have to murder his own daughter, his own flesh and blood.
He felt so lost without Daisy; she would know what to do. But, he knew there was no way to bring her back. Lilly was his everything, all he had, he felt awful for being such a monster and hiding it from her.
Ludwig looked at his face in the mirror again and splashed himself with the warm water dripping from the faucet, running it through his disheveled hair. He then proceeded to hose the blood from his sanitary gear, a hard line forming to his lips as his gaze flickered over to the dead man strapped to his chair then back to cleaning his rubber suit.
A ringing was coming from his wrist watch as he was receiving an in-coming call from his daughter upstairs in her bedroom.
"Ja? Lilly, is everything alright?"
'Y-yeah, Dad; I was just wondering when you were coming home. I was going to make dinner tonight.'
"Nien, Lilly; you know you're not allowed to leave your room. What if you miss your medicine time and can't get to it on time? You could—"
'Die. Yeah, I know, Dad. Okay, I guess I'll talk to you later…'
"Ich liebe dich, Lilly. I will see you when I get home from work."
'Okay, bye.'
His large hand went over the communication device to end the transmission and lowered his eyes to his shoes, they were still bloody. She didn't know that his work was right below the house in their hidden basement, she didn't know a lot about her own father and yet she complied with his wishes for seventeen years.
He was living such a horrible lie.
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【 'the nightmare she should fear is the husband you left alone.' 】
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"Legal Assassin" © Anthony Stewart Head
