Number 12!
He placed the two canisters with the dark red liquid on the musty floor of the cellar, took off his black rubber suit, crumpled it up and hurled it into the fire. The plastic threw bubbles that inflated and shrank, smacking and hissing, as the flames consumed the rubber and a pungent smell filled the high-ceiling room.
He threw everything he had worn into the fire: the mask, the goggles, the shoes.
12 suits.
12 victims.
12 lives.
His skull throbbed. Horrible pain raged in his brain. His stomach was a piece of burning coal.
In front of him he saw the coffin, and what was on it. He had seen it a thousand times. And again and again it ran through him like an electric shock. This time, too, the memory of the past struck him like a hammer blow, made him fall naked to his knees, while he vomited a torrent of green bile in a crescendo of disgust and despair.
Then he, too, collapsed, lying gasping and trembling on the stone floor while the fire consumed his clothes and his reddened eyes focused on the coffin looming above him in the diffuse light of the cellar vault.
And there she lay.
For years.
For decades.
Lost, but not gone. Hidden, but not forgotten. Dead, but dreaming.
And he lay naked on the damp floor, twitching, in his own filth, and something was building up inside him, just as earlier the vomit had built up and finally broken way. And then his scream tore the silence, as terribly as only Lucifer could let it out before, after he had been plunged by God into the bottomless abyss. A scream full of animal fear and suffocating hopelessness.
He had done what no human being was allowed to do. Something that condemned him to burn forever in the fires of hell. Something he would never forgive himself for.
He had killed the only person who had ever loved him.
He lost consciousness, and darkness surrounded him.
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Hi guys.
I've been going back and forth for a while now on whether to write a sequel to Seven Shades of Blood and The Anagramist, and I've decided to do it because I'm pretty happy with the storyline, especially after reading that some of you wanted Elizabeth to be a little more prominent after The Anagramist. So I've decided to go with The Final Cut. Jane and Maura will of course play a significant role in this, there's no question about that, you can't do it without the ladies.
Unfortunately I have to write this story on my smartphone, because my laptop doesn't want to work like I do and has to be repaired. However, 5 chapters are already typed on my smartphone, have a little mercy on me if errors have crept in.
Despite everything I hope you have fun reading.
See you then,
T73.