Author's note I hope all of you enjoy this. Thank you so much for everyone reading and replying. I will say one thing

If you're going to read this chapter, don't eat anything while reading it; that's all.

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Alastor's weekend went by as most did. He went into the studio several times in the afternoon and evening to host for a few hours and do night specials, including Saturday's NEW ORLEANS' MOST VICIOUS CRIMES. Though the other special shows were good fun and were undoubtedly better than announcing dreary news or speaking monotonous facts about the bands that were playing, he always felt he peaked on Friday and Saturday evenings when he did his bi-weekly gory stories.

In a big city like New Orleans, gruesome murders weren't hard to come by, so he usually covered a few stories between the two days. It was what his 'fans' (if one could call them that) liked to hear most, and looking at the ratings, it got the most attention even when people were going out and heading to parties. Though he enjoyed his other work and never faltered in it, he spent Sundays through Thursdays waiting for the weekend to come so that he could do his unique hosting, sometimes with guests, sometimes alone.

Recently, however, they had incorporated a new segment that was of particular amusement to Alastor, courtesy of Mr. Brady. The piece consisted of making fun of a specific group of people. Though the concept seemed cruel and not something the general public would enjoy, these people were typically so deranged and dramatic that nobody felt terrible for them. Every Wednesday, they would do their NEW ORLEANS' CRAZIEST CONSPIRACIES and invite some nut that was convinced that the government put tiny robots into people through coffee consumption or something equally as over-the-top and far-fetched. Alastor sure had fun with them.

He asked the right questions to keep them going in their madness and teased them just enough so that he'd provoke a few laughs and still not make their guests feel attacked. It was a swell time toeing that line. It was actually funny how some of them actually more or less got a good idea of what would happen. In decades to come, that was. Great fun, all in all, but still not as good as speaking and laughing about crime. Crimes that Alastor himself had committed very often.

Wednesday was coming to a close, and it was after the new nutty show that Alastor realized he had been getting restless. Naturally, anything that could throw him off his game was something he had to eradicate immediately. He knew well enough by then to know exactly what he had to do to get rid of that strange, dull anxiety he got periodically.

He had been watching for any opportunity since the week had begun, and the steaks in his freezer had been running low. As the world would have it, his next victim was handed to him on a silver platter.

He was coming into his building after work when, just as he crossed the street, he noticed someone quite distastefully spitting their opinions at Albert. As was his custom, Albert meekly hung his head and nodded at the pointing, nagging figure. Alastor barely heard the words being said before reaching the building, only a few scatterings of slurs that the Lundelvilles themselves had used quite liberally, and then the man who had so rudely nearly bumped into him a few days past almost bumped into him again, his face red with agitation. Still, an evident satisfaction was visible after having yelled at Albert. Alastor regarded him with indifference, and once the man was gone, he talked to Albert before stepping inside.

"Say, what was all that about?"

"Oh, nothing, Mr. Cormier. Mr. Allans, the new tenant, wanted to let me know that the faucets in his apartment weren't working correctly."

"And…"

"Well, I informed him that he would have to take it up with the landlord. He didn't take it all that well, I fear. He thought I was being rude to him. Must've had a bad day, probably."

"Come, now. There's no reason to take out one's own frustrations on another person!"

"No, Mr. Cormier, I agree, but it's alright, really. It's one of the things about this job. What can you do?" He said with a meek shrug of his shoulders. There was plenty he could do. Alastor smiled at him politely and bid him a good day as he stepped inside. But not before asking him what apartment the rude man was in (out of curiosity, of course). Albert was a good man, a true professional. He certainly hadn't deserved the treatment that he had been given. Alastor did not consider himself an evil person but rather a good person, like Albert, in a very different way.

And so, since Alastor had infinite patience, he returned to his apartment, fed little Harry, and then made his way to the floor where Mr. Allans lived. He stayed there for what must've been at least three hours, lurking in the shadows of the corridor before the unsavory man made his appearance. Alastor made his presence known as Mr. Allans was fumbling for his keys. He cast a fleeting glimpse at Alastor and opened his mouth to say something, but before he spoke a single word, as he made contact with the strange man, Alastor thumped down his cane on the floor twice, and Mr. Allans' gaze turned blank.

"You will leave your apartment in precisely one hour and take the 23rd bus as far out of the city as possible. After that, you will continue on foot until you see the sign welcoming you into the city. You will walk into the shrubbery a bit further away and wait for me. You will not speak to anyone at this time, you will not make eye contact with anyone, and you will most certainly not let anyone know of your whereabouts. Are we understood?" Alastor was looking straight into his eyes, and though he never knew what he looked like when he was hypnotizing someone, he knew that something strange happened to his pupils when he did it.

"Yes," the man said with the same blank expression, lost in Alastor's peculiar, ever-shifting eyes.

"Do you have a cat? Dog? Any other form of pet?"

"No."

"Stands to reason, a bitter chap like you. Well, I'll see you in a few hours." Alastor said, bringing his cane down two more times before leaving the man behind with a stupid, dumbfounded expression on his face.

That was another of Alastor's particular characteristics. His cane.

It was a beautiful thing, made of a dense, dark wood that had been ornately carved at the top into the head of a cute little fox. Alastor immediately fell in love with it the moment he saw it, though he couldn't precisely say why. Funnily enough, he had found it in a dumpster in a high-end part of New Orleans. It was crazy to see what rich people threw away.

It hadn't taken Alastor a minute to realize how easy and naturally it came to him to hypnotize people. It was almost a pleasure to see how susceptible and malleable their expressions became as he had his way with them and persuaded them into doing whatever it was that he wanted. Hypnotism had, in its way, been one of the most useful little tricks he had up his sleeve, and yet he didn't use it very often, finding that he got more and more tired the more he used it. Besides, he liked the challenge of manipulating people without hypnotism.

And so, from the day he had found that cane on the side of the road on one of his nightly strolls, he had immediately adopted it. It certainly wasn't necessary for him to carry out hypnotism, but he did find that he felt more focused and efficient when he used it, almost as if he were utilizing it as a magical conduit, like a wand. He had forgotten how comforting it was to have something physical in his hand that eased the flow of magic from him, and now he was inseparable from his cane, leaning on it in more ways than one.

If anyone cared to look at his gait for more than a moment, they certainly would've realized that a young, healthy man like Alastor didn't have any real need for a cane. Still, it was pretty popular for people to use such things as accessories during that time. In any case, it was generally acknowledged as one of Alastor's charming eccentricities and never honestly questioned. It was rather comforting to hear the clack-clack of his walking stick against the floor or see him waving it around expertly. In time, the cane had acquired a hypnotic nature of its own after Alastor seeped it in magic.

Alastor took his leave, making sure not to make any further noise on the floor and that the rest of the hallways were deserted. Though he didn't have much cause to worry, he was still overly precautious, living his life as if he was being persecuted. Confident that the coast was clear and that there had been no one even near during his interaction with Mr. Allans, once Alastor was back home, he comfortably set himself up in his armchair, propped open a book, and with Harry purring in his lap, waiting for two hours before leaving once more.

Although Alastor had noticed his increasing restlessness, it was still early enough in his symptoms that he could easily control it. He would never let the anxiety of abstinence get out of hand, and he was incredibly effective at nipping it in the bud.

He sipped his tea and stroked his cat, and when the clock struck ten, precisely two hours after he had spoken to Mr. Allans, he left some food out for Harry along with a new squeaky toy he had bought him for his long hours alone and headed out. No need to have dinner just yet. He would be eating his fill tonight.

Thankfully, since it was a weekday, there weren't many people coming in and out of the building, and he caught Albert completely alone.

"Heading out, Mr. Cormier?" He asked politely.

"Yes," Alastor said, and in a moment, he had rapped his cane on the ground twice, and Albert's expression was immediately replaced with as much emotion as a blank sheet of paper.

"And though I am heading out now, you will remember having seen me fifteen minutes after this going inside the building and not coming back out until tomorrow afternoon," Alastor told him, gazing him dead in the eyes and doing his little trick. "You will have a pleasant rest of your evening," Alastor added for good measure before returning his cane and breaking the spell. He said goodbye to Albert and then headed towards his car.

Now, Alastor's building didn't have a parking lot, and that little fact was one of the things that had actually sold Alastor on living there because no one would see him pulling out from his home and heading someplace else in the car. No one would know that he knew how to drive or would question why he didn't keep it in the building if he had a car. Instead, they'd see a man strolling down the street doing god-knew. What if they were a bit curious?

Since Alastor loved to walk everywhere, he had no problem leaving his car in a run-down excuse of a parking lot in one of the more desolate areas of the city, where he had to pay a few dollars every year and nobody ever administered who went in and who came out. It wasn't a good place to leave a car in; sure enough, most of the vehicles there were in a deplorable state that nearly no one would like to rob. Although Alastor's vehicle was in tip-top shape, it had been made to look rusted and decaying to keep people from paying too much attention to it. For good measure, since Alastor had some sensitive materials in it, he had charmed it so that it was nearly impossible even to notice the car, let alone try to steal it or look inside.

And so Alastor made his way ever so slowly, the crowds in the streets thinning out as night closed in. He enjoyed this part just as much as the other sequences. He no longer felt flustered or easily irritated; instead, his anticipation set in. He could smell everything distinctly, from the freshest gust of wind between the buildings to the dirtiest gutter rat in the sewers. His body felt electric and alive, prepared for the thrill and power that he would soon hold in his hands, the sweet revelation that would be coming his way. Entirely at his ease, he never rushed but never dawdled, and even as he walked through the shadier sides of the city towards the parking lot, his lazy, fox-like smile never faltered.

When he arrived at the parking lot, he checked the car to make sure it hadn't been tampered with and then hopped into the driver's seat and made his way out of town to meet Mr. Allans. He turned on the radio, tuning in and out from the (scarce) different stations available until he finally found a song he liked and sang along with it happily as he wound through the mostly deserted roads of outer New Orleans. Though the drive was pleasant in the calm state that he was in, the walks were always better. But no matter, it was all still enjoyable.

A while later, he rounded the corner to where he had told Mr. Allans to meet him and, sure enough, the man was standing there, like a video game character awaiting to be commanded, looking like one of those lost, far-gone old people that had accidentally wandered too far from home. Alastor slowed down his vehicle and popped his head out of the window.

"Come along now!" He indicated, and the man went over to the passenger side, opened the door mechanically, and sat alongside Alastor quietly as they drove away.

A few weeks after Alastor had first arrived in New Orleans, he had already known that he couldn't keep on piling on his mostly eaten corpses on the outskirts of town or in trash dumps without calling attention to himself immediately. Though he took care never to reveal a 'signature' that would tip off the police to it being a single person perpetrating the crimes, he still knew it was a risk he would not be willing to take.

He knew there was nothing like stalking a victim, scaring them, having them walk down the street, and knowing there was a shadow chasing them, a shadow that looked hungry. He had tasted that first bite of beautiful power when he had snuffed out all the candles at the Lundelville house and toyed with Carmelita a bit before knocking her out. But now he learned how much he likes to stretch out the chase and stretch out the kill.

But as much as he enjoyed making his victims pulsate with paranoia and fear before finally unleashing himself upon them, he knew that a big city was a dangerous playground for murder. Sure, there was the factor of anonymity and the impossibility of finding a single person in a massive city full of people. Still, it took only one nosy neighbor, one wandering junkie, or a person looking out the window to get a description, and if the police dedicated themselves enough to the case, he would be caught.

No, the city was a perfect setting to find massive amounts of victims as they usually went missing unperceived, but it was not the ideal place to do the actual killing. Thus, Alastor devised a plan as he lay awake in the hotel he had first 'rented' out when he arrived in New Orleans. But first, he had to come up with money and people he could hypnotize without drawing too much attention. His car was, of course, not under his name, and the cabin in the swamp where he was taking Mr. Allans now was most certainly not under his name.

Alastor parked the car as far into the wilderness as he dared to, and though there really were no people out here, it was always better to conceal things just in case. He wouldn't be there very long, and it would be in the hours most people slept.

The rest of the way to the cabin had to be made on foot, which Alastor would've rather liked if it hadn't implicated walking alongside his future victim. As they were getting out of the car, Alastor grabbed his raincoat and his toolkit, even though the weather was excellent outside, and then urged Mr. Allans along. It was a somewhat awkward walk, though decidedly less so since Mr. Allans was fully immersed in the hypnotism and therefore waddled after Alastor like a confounded toddler, not making a single sound.

Once they had reached the cabin doorway, Alastor halted before going inside. He looked Mr. Allans dead in the eye, thwacked his walking stick on the ground three times, and in a second, Mr. Allans returned to his senses in a strange sort of stupor. He rubbed at his head as if he had been hit with a club and stared at Alastor with wide, scared eyes. He didn't bother taking in his surroundings - Alastor's method wasn't like other forms of hypnosis, in which the victims were usually asleep and completely unaware of their actions and surroundings. Still, it was instead like they were working on autopilot, not even desiring to do anything other than what Alastor had asked them to do. They always knew exactly what was going on.

Mr. Allans took a few steps back as if Alastor were a wild cougar that had suddenly materialized before him as Alastor, completely calm, knelt to unlatch his toolkit. He opened it to reveal a vast array of weapons. No guns, however. He wasn't that confident in his spells. And besides, he had always had an aversion to firearms. He explained it to himself as bullets being too quick, too merciful, too loud, but it might've had to do with a certain fateful night in a little town in Louisiana.

"Mr. Allans," he said quite casually, smiling to himself as he selected a peculiar, curved knife: incredibly sharpened at the top but with a serrated blade. Alastor looked up with that same smile he always had, but now it seemed to have widened horribly, occupying the whole of his face as if it were stretchy putty.

"I believe this is the part where you run."

Mr. Allans dashed off in a panic, screaming.

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Now, Alastor was no fool.

He would've been an idiot not to set up boundaries along his little cabin in the swamp, and taking what he had learned at the Triwizard Tournament and the little stunt the Cormiers had pulled by locking him in his room, he had figured out very quickly how he could enclose the area around his cabin, making it wholly impenetrable and soundproof. It wasn't all too large, but it was big enough to give way to the chase.

Alastor pocketed a few more knives just in case and shut his raincoat air-tight around his clothes, rolling up his pants for good measure lest the swamp mud should spatter on them. He could still hear Mr. Allans screaming as he shut up the toolkit and stood upright, his heart beating hard at the prospect of what would come. He looked at his watch and waited a minute, two minutes. Mr. Allans was such a blundering imbecile that he would likely trip up on some hidden root or fall at the hands of treacherous mud. Alastor wanted to give him a good head start so that the whole thing wouldn't be too dull.

He was kind enough to give Mr. Allans three minutes before taking off, his face wholly transformed. He looked like a demon, hungry for his victim and the chase.

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The victim ran as fast as he could, his brain still feeling foggy from the long hours it had taken him to get to the edge of town while hypnotized. He couldn't think straight, couldn't even see straight in his state, panic blurring his vision.

He wasn't a very fit man, working as an accountant and barely moving to save to go from his office back to his home, and it wasn't long before he was out of breath despite the adrenaline that helped propel his thin limbs forward. He kept remembering that maniac's smile, the knife glinting sinisterly even in the cold darkness of the swamp. He could feel the murk and the dampness closing in on him, and he was stupid enough to curse himself for having moved to Louisiana.

The drooping trees, the awful stench, the mud, and the way that the very nature seemed to be calling to him in terrible whispers were all enough to make him feel afraid out of his mind. His very fear was overpowering him, and on top of it all, he had stopped for a single moment to think and wondered whether he wasn't making things worse for himself by running into the swamp. What if it never ended? What if he ended up falling into a body of water and having a gator sneak up and bite his head off? He didn't know which would be worse: falling into the hands of that maniac or being eaten alive by a gator.

Suddenly, the most horrible sound he had ever heard came not too far in the distance. A laugh. It echoed throughout the swamp, bouncing off every dead tree bark and slinking under the shadows of Mr. Allans' feet. Though he wasn't too sharp, he knew what that laugh meant. One: the man was not too far off. Two: he indeed was coming to hunt him down; and three: he didn't care about the noise, and no scream that Mr. Allans uttered would bring him any closer to safety. It would likely have the opposite effect: giving away his location, like an insect caught in a spider's web.

He soon realized he had no choice but to start creeping around slowly, and once he had reached the ramshackle shelter of a nearby tree, he stopped to think. He would have to reserve his energy if the maniac caught up to him, and besides, if he wanted to escape, he would undoubtedly have to be silent enough to actually make his way back to the cabin and then find the road where they had come from again. It was the only real way to survive, he thought. Once on the road, he would bolt into a dead sprint and pray that a car would come along eventually to help him.

It was hard to concentrate, with the crazy man's laughter still seeming to permeate his ears, but he realized he could use this to his advantage. The man willingly gave away his position - just how insane could he be to do such a thing if he really wanted to kill him? Without giving it much further thought, Mr. Allans crept around the swamp, making sure he didn't get caught in any of the funny traps the earth gave way to, using the man's eerie, serrating laughter as a reference to where he could not go.

He had made it a few paces before becoming confused. He thought the man was farther away, his laughter booming in the distance, but suddenly, it felt like someone was breathing down his neck. He brought his hand down and swatted a mosquito. It's only fear, it's only fear, he told himself silently several times, but still, he had lost his placement of the man. Was the laugh coming from his left? His right? Was he circling back in the direction of the cabin, or was he farther away, weaving deeper into the swamp to which he had thought his victim had run off?

Mr. Allans was getting a headache but decided to venture forward. Even if he couldn't pinpoint the man's exact location, and it seemed like he was everywhere at once, he couldn't let it freeze him. If he stayed rooted to a single spot, he was a sitting duck, and he might as well turn himself over to the man with his throat exposed to help with the cutting.

They choked down the image of the maniac he had had the misfortune of having in his building and continued his ever-silent trek, but the fact of the matter was that he knew he wasn't cut out for this survival crap. His mother had once told him that if they had lived in any other time period, he would've died as an infant or become so consumptive he wouldn't be able to get out of bed. Naturally, Mr. Allans had grown up as a bitter man, full of resentment towards the entire world.

But like most people without a purpose or will to live, he kept going as if propelled by the inability to decide to either end their pathetic lives or search for something better. He was incapable of thinking of anything other than the fact that he had to survive this, even if, on his day-to-day, he had been as listless and craving for death as most miserable, bitter fools. For a moment, he briefly questioned the god that he still believed why this madman had chosen him. He stopped after a second, and though he couldn't pinpoint why he had been so mainly selected, he knew that god would not heed his pleas.

And so Mr. Allans tread on, considering for a moment blocking his ears to stop that infernal siren from drilling into his head, but he couldn't bring himself to do so if, at some point, it could seem to come from a specific topic and he could use it to his advantage. At certain moments he thought he could hear it coming from someplace specific, and then he would move faster, only for a laugh to change in volume and distance, and then he would slow down, doubting himself horribly.

It seemed to him that his little run-and-hiding adventure had lasted for hours on end when realistically, it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes. Several times he thought he had lost his way and was winding his way further into the swamp, and despite his alertness, he could even find himself straying away from where he knew the cabin to be. Was there something in the air that made him so ridiculously hopeless, or did the dreadful fear overpower him that increased with each passing cackle?

He had to slap himself to keep from straying from where he wanted to go, and so, in a remarkable feat of sudden strength of mind, Mr. Allans finally caught sight of the cabin. He hadn't realized that the area around the cabin provided so few hiding places and that if the maniac behind him were anywhere near, he would be able to spot him. Panicked, Mr. Allans ran forward to the cabin and hoped the walls would provide enough shadow in the darkness to keep him perfectly concealed. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the toolbox the madman had taken with him from the car. That was where he had gotten his knife.

The victim weighed his options. Taking a weapon could even the playing field slightly - he wasn't insane, and he wasn't very handy with a knife, but then he wouldn't be completely vulnerable should the man catch up to him. He considered the two options before him: taking a weapon and then sprinting away or sprinting away immediately without anything to defend himself with. His sweat pooled heavily around his forehead and landed thickly in his eyes. He swiped it away and swatted at a mosquito that had landed on his slick neck.

Choose, just choose, he told himself. Every minute he spent huddling by the cabin was another minute that the maniac could get closer to him once he realized he wasn't in the thick of the swamp any longer. God, he had always been terrible at making decisions - he hadn't even been able to decide what he wanted to study in college. His mother had smacked him upside the head and commanded him to study something that would bring in money, and so accounting it was.

Choose. For the love of god, choose. He took a deep breath and sprinted towards the toolbox.

Wrong choice.

Stumbling forward and dropping on his knees to open the toolbox, Mr. Allans kicked the whole thing on its side, the contents falling in a loud screech on the ground.

"Naughty, naughty," came a voice from everywhere, whistling through the trees and shaking from the ground. "Rude and a thief… what does your mother think of you?!" The voice screamed hysterically, breaking apart in laughter. The man grabbed the first thing he saw - a small, stunted knife - and pointed it at the shadows lurking around the trees that enclosed the cabin. He held it in front of his chest, looking to see where the man would emerge.

"Truly… did no one teach you any manners?" The voice asked with some amusement, even seeming to come from the heavens, to which Mr. Allans pointed with his knife foolishly. God, indeed had never shown any favoritism towards him.

"No… I suppose I shall have to," came the voice, but now it was impossible to mistake. His killer was breathing down his neck. The putrid scent of the maniac's breath had just reached Mr. Allan's nostrils when Alastor kicked him in the back and sent him sprawling forwards. He was still laughing, but it no longer reverberated through the swamp and instead seemed to be burrowing into Mr. Allan's very being. The man scrambled onto his back, immediately thrusting his arms out and picking up another nearby tool, holding it in front of himself as a way of defense.

"Oh, and what are you going to do with that, hm? Nick me?" Alastor asked, opening his mouth. Mr. Allans realized that he hadn't been smiling but was actually baring his teeth.

"Y-You-" Mr. Allans stuttered, trying to find some word to explain what he was seeing, the sheer and utter terror he felt when looking into Alastor's face. How could a single man seem so terrifying? It was beyond all explanation.

"I…?" Alastor asked sarcastically, and with a single, swift kick, he had knocked the man's tool from his hand, breaking one of his fingers as well. Allans howled out in pain, and before he could gather himself and try for another weapon, Alastor kicked him on the side, making him double over in pain.

"You know," Alastor said through grunts. "I have found…" he kicked, and kicked, and kicked, "that the best way to tenderize meat," he huffed, smashing the man's teeth in with his boots. "Is to beat it while it's still alive."

Alastor continued that way until Allans lost consciousness and continued a while longer, laughing hysterically, his eyes unfocused, the unchecked sweat on his brow and head making his hair matted, sticking out in all directions. His laughs eked out of fuel after Allans had passed out, and without the sweet soundtrack of his despair, the little kicking game had lost its… kick for Alastor.

He lifted the man wordlessly and entered the cabin with Allan's body hovering behind him.

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Harry had been terrible at anatomy, biology, and all those kinds of things. But Alastor? Oh, Alastor knew the best-paid surgeon in all of New Orleans. His kills were only found to be sloppy and aesthetically gruesome when he wished them to be. The reality was that the moment he had had some extra cash (which wasn't hard to come by since most of his things he paid by hypnotizing people), he had bought every anatomy book he could find.

He wanted to know the exact way to cut up a limb without having his victim bleed to death, wanted to know how many arteries there were and how long each of them would take to make someone dry - how to kill and make it look like an accident, how many and which organs he could take without killing his victim, and in what order he had to take them. Anything and everything fascinated him, and he only wished that the information were presented in a more serial-killer-friendly format, but no matter, no matter.

Everything that he read inspired him and gave him ideas. He would find himself poring over medical textbooks over his breakfast coffee, letting it get cold as he neglected it in favor of learning how to preserve eyeballs. The books gave him the wildest, most insane ideas, which he wrote down so that he wouldn't forget them in the flurry of imagination he was in. After a particular session, he would memorize everything he had planned to try out and then burn the pages he had written. And he had had his fair share of unwilling subjects to test his theories.

When Mr. Allans awoke, he first noticed the flickering overhead lights of his room. Candle-light? The cabin must've been so old that electricity didn't get there. The man was keenly aware of lying down on a sort of table and looking down at the rest of his body, and he found that the table was slightly rusty, made out of metal, like the kind you would find in second-rate hospitals. Or asylums. In fact, the clasps in place to restrain the arms and feet, secure around Allan's limbs, reinforced the idea of being a medical experiment.

He twitched around with what little energy he had left after Alastor had beaten the will from his body, and as he wiggled, he managed to crane his neck enough to see his predator. Alastor lingered a little farther from the man's feet, doing satan knew what on another rusted steel table. As close as he was, Allans could hear the clinking of metal hitting softly against metal as the madman selected and arranged his tools gently. The man tried to scream, but he had been gagged - heavens knew the reason for that since he had run all around the swamp screaming his lungs out.

He tried to get a good look at his surroundings in his confused state. If Allans had been born when cinema was widespread and serial killer movies dominated the screen, he would've known that the space he was in was, to a T, the lair of a murderer. It was an old-fashioned one, however, one that was illuminated by the soft light of candles as opposed to the harsh, cold overhead light that most serial killers in movies seemed to be so partial to.

"Ah, you're up," Alastor muttered to himself. A lot of the time, he actually liked to speak with his victims, really get a feel of what they were thinking, the panic that had invaded their systems, but he mostly liked to speak with them when he knew more of their deeds, what kind of people they were, and when they had really pissed him off. In terms of uniqueness and interest, Mr. Allans provided little flesh for his satisfaction, but he had enough real flesh to compensate for it. Despite what most movies about cannibals would say, whether a subject is skinny or not was that relevant regarding the taste test. When cooked correctly, any person could taste right. Alastor had theories that the difference between tastes was in the sin, not the flesh.

Well, maybe he was peculiar in that way, different from other cannibals. But he hadn't had many opportunities to meet other cannibals, much less have an open conversation with them about their eating habits. Besides, most murderers were beasts, downright monsters that liked to prey on the weak, the less advantageous of the world. They targeted women who were alone, women who had to sell their bodies to disgusting men to make a living, innocent children, and things like that. There weren't many serial killers that particularly liked to kill grown, perverse men, and surely that could be attributed to the fact that a grown man would be harder to subdue than, say, a child. Still, there was nothing impressive or righteous about killing a child, was there?

When Alastor, back in the times when he had been Harry, heard about killers and the cold-blooded murder of women and children, even at his ripe young age, he questioned how satisfied those (mostly) men could be with what they did. Weren't they ashamed of themselves? Preying on the weak? Leaving on earth people that did not deserve to live? Scumbags? Thieves? Rapists? They themselves were like them, so that would explain perhaps the affinity. They had no sense of right and wrong, not even the slightest hint of a moral compass or principles.

But if there was something Alastor knew, it was that the world would be better off without the vermin that he exterminated. Eating them was a little thing he rewarded himself with so that he could continue doing his job. He would stop getting the jitters and avoid getting sloppy.

When he had left the swamp, he had thought that he had been mostly unchanged physically, but it hadn't taken long before the itching, the irritability, the restlessness, and insomnia had set in. He had simply been shaking with the need to murder something, to feed on something substantial, and no amount of chicken or raw steak had satiated him.

The first time it had happened to him, he didn't understand what was going on and attributed his murderous state to the feverish conditions of his body. Still, when he wrung the neck of that creepy man who leered over the woman in his first hotel, he knew that everything was related.

Of course, he would pick his victims out delicately - what kind of person would select a person at random, careless of whether they had family, children, or a purpose in this life? What if he were to kill the next great scientist without knowing it? No, he couldn't do such a thing. Before the swamp had changed him - hell, before life itself had changed him, he had, too, shared the common misconception that most people have about murderers: that they were all the same trash. But he saw himself rather as the person taking out the trash. Surely, the average person did not have the stomach to remove scum themselves, which was the reason everything failed at its core. The police, the laws being passed every day, all of that, didn't really take care of evil people the way they were supposed to, did they?

A man stalking a young girl in the dead of night, his twisted, salacious thoughts evident in his crooked face? Alastor took care of that. A wretched old woman cursing a young black man for even approaching her in the street and asking her for spare change, calling him unspeakable names? Alastor took care of that. Pedophiles? Thieves that stole from already poor families? The scum, the dirtbags, the terrible people of the city? Alastor took care of that. The lesser the crime, the more he was willing to forgive. But sometimes, he got hungry, and the people were terrible, anyway. He had had a few pleasant surprises, though, underestimating how bad a person really was - and he had a nose for sniffing out sins.

After many corpses and tastings, Alastor found that the worse the person was, the better they tasted. And it wasn't just about the taste, and it was about the experience. As he took his first bite of his victim, he could see every bad thing that they had done in their life - from pushing a kid in the playground when they were five to the murder of their spouses.

Each horrible scene flashed before his eyes as he bit down on a thigh, or an arm, or - especially - their brains. The brain stored all the good stuff - all the really gory, shameful details were in there, waiting to be scooped up with a spoon and served with lemon. When Alastor killed someone in the city, he had to be quick and efficient and therefore rarely ever had the time to crack open skulls, but when he took them back to the cabin… God, how he wished he could get his hands on prisoners!

Sometimes the memories, the sins, would fall short, be slightly dissatisfying, and nothing too terrible. Sometimes the man stalking the girl in the street just liked to feel her pulsating fear but left her alone and then went back home and led a relatively calm day-to-day life. But every once in a while, Alastor would catch an odd fish. The random woman he had seen spitting at an elderly black woman would end up being a serial abuser of many different kinds of people, and the petty thief would end up being nothing short of a rapist and murderer. People were surprised in the strangest, worst ways, and whenever Alastor found out he had taken a worse fish than he had thought, he was reassured that what he was doing was right.

Alastor came to a decision regarding Mr. Allans after much deliberation on how he wanted to chop him up. After finally deciding upon a method, he picked up a saw and went over to the man's right leg.

"Are you a good man, Mr. Allans?" He asked quite calmly, taking a pen and drawing right above the man's knee where he would be cutting it. He set the saw beside the man's body and then made an expert tourniquet around the leg. Naturally, he had no answer from Mr. Allans, only incomprehensible screams. People in these kinds of situations rarely ever answered fully, only screamed. If Alastor suspected they had something interesting to say, he removed their gag for a moment. The gag wasn't really a form of discretion since no one would've heard anything anyway, but rather save poor Alastor's ears. His job required attentive listening, and music wasn't enjoyed to the fullest with a ringing in one's ears.

"Well, that's a silly question, I suppose," Alastor muttered, making the tourniquet blood-cuttingly tight. "The real question is just how bad are you?" Alastor calmly took the saw and began his work.

"Hey, hobo man, hey, Dapper Dan…" the first tooth of the saw bit into Allans. His screams intensified, but Alastor's eyes glinted with pleasure as that first bead of blood bubbled up from the incision. If Allans hadn't been experiencing such keen pain, he would've thought Alastor's singing voice was unexpectedly pleasant.

"You've both got your style…." Alastor went deeper and deeper in, his movements becoming increasingly rough and hard, the blood splattering violently around him, his raincoat catching it all.

"But brother, you're never fully dressed without a smile!" The muffled screams made for a sweet background symphony.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The man was completely passed out when Alastor put the burning poker on Allan's thigh to sear the wound and stop the bleeding. Thankfully for Alastor (who, for many reasons, always preferred to have his victims awake), the scorching fire brought him to screaming consciousness once more. With one leg removed right at the juiciest bit, carefully severed so that no major arteries were open, Alastor was prepared to go into the more delicate things.

He had learned from his little incident with the Lundelvilles that brains were best served alive, so to speak, with the person they came from still kicking. And if they were conscious when Alastor took that first bite, it was heaven.

The study of the cranium and the brain was one of the things that Alastor had focused on the most when he had begun his research, and it fascinated him how certain more experimental doctors had managed to crack open the skull and take out certain parts of the brain without killing their victim or incapacitating them. Of course, it was a rather sensitive matter: one-quarter of an inch off and you could kill the person - that's how delicate the brain was and, therefore, how precious Alastor perceived it to be.

Now, Alastor had practiced many times, and though the first times had been a fiasco and he had accidentally murdered his victims before even catching a glimpse of the sweet, sweet brains in their skulls, he had made of all his failures lessons, and now he rarely missed. He had seen which specific areas he could tamper with while keeping the person alive, how to properly scalp someone without killing them, and what tools to use. And once or twice he had even managed to eat a few bites out of a person's brain before they finally convulsed on their table like a flopping fish and promptly died.

Each time he was more patient and more meticulous - alas, some things couldn't be helped, and it wasn't like he was performing the 'surgery' in an operating room, with good light and assistants to hand him things. He was carrying out the procedures in the darkness of a dingy basement. Still, he made due.

He cranked the lever on the side of the table where Allans was still twitching and moaning in despair, and the table propped Allans' top half up. It wasn't very good at stopping the bleeding on his leg, but he couldn't reach his brain properly in any other way. Alastor liked to keep his victims alive often because otherwise, he wouldn't know whether he was opening their brains and rummaging through them correctly. He propped his candles as close and high as possible and rolled a little stand beside him with most of the necessary tools. And then he set to work.

It was slow, painstaking stuff, but just as he enjoyed the walk, the drive, the hunt, the screaming, and the smell of charred flesh hanging in the air, he enjoyed his queer form of surgery. He barely muttered his little song now, as focused as he was, but every once in a while, Allans would hear a snippet of it.

"Who cares what they're wearing… on main street or Seville row…" he hummed, his tongue sticking out as he worked with as much delicacy and precision as a miniaturist. Allans had nearly given up on moaning, but every once in a while, that infernal scalpel of Alastor's would revive all of his pain, and he would start twitching again, which he soon found out disturbed Alastor.

"Please, my bad, sir. If you move too much, you'll ruin my work," he said, not impolitely, but the edge was there. Allans didn't listen. He didn't even know the point since it was plain to see that he wouldn't be getting out of theIndeedinly, his severe pain had obstructed the path for other thoughts to form, but he would be damned if he sat at that goddamn table, and let this maniac crack his skull open. He twitched and writhed so much that finally, Alastor was forced to set down his scalpel with a loud, annoyed clang.

With a few strides, he went to the torture table, where he had the rest of his tools. He promptly picked out a pair of massive tweezers, went over to Allans, removed his gag, and forced his mouth open. Allans tried to scream or clamp his mouth down and remove one of Alastor's fingers, but the man was preternaturally strong. Alastor looked him dead in the eye, his patience wavering and stomach growling. But he didn't hypnotize the man.

"You're going to die today," he told him quite casually, pursing his lips together as if trying to hold back laughter. That would just be tasteless. The man screamed into his face, but Alastor was unmoved. "It will hurt. But every time you move and interrupt my work, I will pull out a tooth. Or a nail. Depending on whether I'm feeling fancy." The man screamed again, but Alastor kept his mouth open and still as, with his other hand, he reached into the man's mouth and pulled out a tooth in a single tug. Allans screamed his lungs out as the floppy root of the tooth hit the floor, blood bursting into his mouth. Alastor gagged him again, making sure the rag scraped against the wound where one of his teeth used to be.

"Now, I sure hope you'll be good for once in your life and stay still," Alastor said lightly, as if he were a parent chastising their daughter for not standing still as they did her hair. Whatever Allans had intended to do when he was wriggling, his resolve had been tossed to the ground together with his tooth.

It was hard, however, in the state of constant pain he was in, not twitching whenever Alastor removed a long strip of his scalp. Still, the maniac must've known that that was inevitable, and so he only hummed along to himself as the man beneath him writhed and screamed in complete and utter pain. He passed out one more time and again. Alastor woke him up by burning several parts of his body - mainly his hands. Hands weren't very good to eat, so it was fine if he charred them a bit. One time, he had even fashioned a necklace out of finger bones, but it wasn't very pretty, and he had scrapped it. He found that making body jewelry was quite fun, but his work always ended up on fire.

After what had seemed to be an eternity in hell, Alastor finally cracked open the man's skull. Now came the most challenging part. Alastor took his tinier tools with his magnifying glass and, remembering everything he had learned from the medical textbooks, proceeded to remove Allan's tiniest morsel of the brain.

The man was still twitching while Alastor did this, but he had stopped screaming. That was an exciting reaction - he would have to remember that one for future study. But right at that moment, he couldn't really think about anything but the small piece of the brain he had just extracted from his victim - oh, how it shone in the light! Still slick with blood and something that he liked to call brain juice, it was the perfect little thing he had ever seen in his life! With all the time in the world, Alastor opened his mouth, and in it plopped.

As a young boy, Allans broke one of the heels on his hag mother's most expensive shoes. As an older boy, Allans taunts a kid in the playground with a crowd of other people. Allan as a teenager, a girl unconscious on a bed and a group of boys hovering with their tongues out around her. Allan's sweating, one of the boys already crawling on top of the girl.

Allan screamed at his girlfriend. She screams back a single time. Allans hits her.

Allan was crying on the bus ride to New Orleans, snot running slick down his upper lip. An elderly black woman goes up to ask him if he's alright. He calls her a filthy nigger and tells her to get off him.

Allans. Allans. All the memories blur together into one giant void of pain, shame, and violence. The blackness swirls and collapses in one dark mass like a giant whirlpool of ink, penetrating Alastor's very sockets. God, Allans is bad, terrible. Alastor can feel the thrill of the dark, and the morbid pleasure Allans has taken, and the crippling shame he has faced lying alone in the dark. His father's revolver pressed up against his chin. Cowardice. Anguish. The cold metal pressed against the stubble at his throat. A hard swallow. Why keep living? How thrilling it would be to pull the trigger, pull it, and end it. Nothing good of a life, nothing worthwhile, only pain to others, a nuisance to himself. Pull the trigger. He doesn't. Allans spirals out of Alastor's eyes, and the moment the vision ends, Alastor lets out a howl of pleasure and exhilaration.

He felt as if he had sky-dived and watched a movie that encompassed his life. Holding his stomach as he laughed in pleasure, he doubled over, his stomach seizing. Tears of ecstasy and sweet, sweet pain filled his eyes. He took in the madness he had just witnessed, the complete rollercoaster of insanity, and then dug in for seconds.