In Blood

​“I am blinded,” Roderick murmured. “But soon I will see the light. There comes a time in a man's life where he must accept his destiny and mine is to fulfill the wishes of a greater power. Let there be a change in this world that nobody has seen for years and let that change carry heavy in the hearts of every non-believer.”

​Roderick murmured to himself as he painted the blood across the walls. It was a violent painting, but one that would carry his message better than any of his other actions. There were so many victims of his actions, yet the law always seemed to find some other criminal to throw in prison. It was terrible for them, but worse for Roderick who sought the punishment he earned. Only then would he fulfill his plan to bring an age of horror and darkness.

Once the painting was done he walked past the line of victims taped to their chairs and through the door. He walked down the decrepit steps past his neighbours who didn’t seem to notice the blood that covered his hands. The reckoning would be now and the police weren’t too far. Roderick sped up his pace and began a brisk jog up the streets towards the corner building where the police HQ was. He entered through the front and slapped his hands on the front desk angrily.

“I would like to report a crime,” Roderick explained as the nearest cops turned to him. 

Twenty minutes later the victims were being cut from their chairs while Roderick was being pushed into the cop car after showing them where he kept the people. For once his work was being recognised, but he simply had too much faith in the law system before. He didn’t understand that the suspect with greatest suspicion and with a single piece of proof was all that the police need to make an arrest.

Weeks passed now, lawyers spoke to Roderick, but he simply told them he wanted to plead guilty. Of course, his reasons behind wanting to plead guilty had nothing to do with guilt. He spoke of ‘tasks’ to be complete when he was in prison, but whenever somebody tried to ask what those tasks were he would keep his mouth shut for the rest of the day. Nevertheless, Roderick seemed to insane to plead guilty so the lawyer assigned to him pleaded madness. Roderick felt this was unfitting and a commotion grew in the court as he fought his way to guilty.

Eventually, the court ruled him as insane and he would be thrown in a prison of sorts where there were people like him receiving treatment for the insanity. Of course, this was all to Roderick’s displeasure, but he couldn’t do much about it. He waited, patiently, with his sick mind whirling away in silence until those fools at the mad house decided he was ready to receive therapy without a straight jacket. The moment his arms were free it only took him four hours to concoct and follow through with his plan to escape. He succeeded and now he is in this world once more.

There is nothing that one can do except find the madman before he continued with his streak of pain and suffering. Not a single victim has died by his hands, but he has spilled enough blood into his paintings to give you the impression he has killed many. It was awful when his ‘work’ became common knowledge, but today it is so rare that you have to worry where he would strike next.

Now, here is the kicker of the story. A man by the name of Louis was thrown into prison recently for assault in a public area. There was no identification of this man, not even fingerprints, so it was easy for the police to skip a few steps in the process and throw him straight into prison. This man, on his very own, escape his cell in the night and broke into thirty others. Every prisoner he found was torn to shreds, killed with his own bare hands. He returned to his cell and went back to sleep with flesh still beneath his nails.

The police walked into his cell and beat him with clubs, but he didn’t scream. A few broken bones and plenty of bruises later the maniac by the name of Louis turned out to be Roderick. Fake name, new identity, years after his trial finally in prison and his ‘tasks’ complete. Despite the huge amount of pain he was in he was carried from his cell to solitary confinement without a hint of regret, just a smile.

On the floor of the prison there was another painting of blood of what seemed to be a circular vortex. The maniac was sure to start from the inside and work his way out so by morning the centre was the darkened mass of blood where the outside was still a fresh red. It was disgusting and the living prisoners felt nothing but a superstitious fear. Nobody knew how he escaped, nobody knew how he killed all thirty in silence. Roderick was Death to that prison and somehow the fact that Death was in solitary confinement nobody felt safe. Guards were posted outside his cell, every now and then staring through the narrow slit  in the door at the madman who looked right back at you.

His time in solitary was supposed to only be three months, but the prison just faked records and kept him there for a year. On the anniversary of his killings he had escaped and from the camera footage that was installed before his escape, he simply opened the door. That prison today is empty, filled with bodies of everyone who didn’t quit or get out early. The footage of those killings was burned and the ‘paintings’ cleaned, but one could not be scrubbed from the walls. It was a message that spread fear and crippled the county.

“Know now that the Devil walks amongst you”