Anne
This was so much better. No more aching lower back from dragging bodies around, sweating and swearing my way through it. It was fine if I didn’t bring them home, but then I couldn’t always get the pieces I needed on site—and sometimes I just wanted to carve them up.
Snip, stitch, slice. Then finish it all with my trusty chainsaw.
They were so supple while alive. But sometimes I wanted to watch the light die in their pathetic eyes. Owen and Daddy Dearest had underestimated me—underestimated the sheer amount of rage pent up inside me. It still surfaced from time to time, and part of me loved living inside it.
Then there was the police, the social workers, the therapists.
No one could believe a sixteen-year-old capable of such brutality. They found me lying between the two men’s body parts with a few superficial cuts—in deep shock, unable to help them much with their enquiries. Or so they believed.
After years of useless jobs, booze, drugs, and general self-destructive behaviour, I began to see my kills as a form of beauty. The red smears over surfaces, blades, and me. It took me back to my art lessons in high school.
The dull thud made me focus.
Ethan had Gareth on the operating table and began strapping him in. Gareth knew it was the end. The gutless sack of shit finally took action—he swung for Ethan, who swerved just in time, the punch grazing his ear instead of landing clean.
In real time, I watched Ethan’s carefully constructed control collapse like a paper house. Beneath the harsh lighting above the table, his face darkened, colour flooding high in his cheeks.
His jaw clenched, and the simmering tension reached its conclusion. Before I could react, his arm whipped up, knuckles white as his fingers coiled into an iron fist. He cocked back, ready to drive it straight into Gareth’s face.
His hands were what created his art. They shouldn’t be damaged. Ever.
I walked calmly around them, listening to Ethan pound Gareth’s face in, and inspected the table of tools he’d set out before choosing the longest scalpel.
Each strike landed with a wonderful, metallic crunch as bone met bone—a relentless, meat-grinder sound, a series of wet, heavy thuds vibrating off the metal table.
I turned and gripped Gareth’s cock and balls, stretching them out until he howled. There was little finesse in how I sliced them off—jagged little cuts I knew Ethan would be appalled by.
“NOOOOO!” Gareth screamed.
A little late for that, given I’d already cut most of them off. All that remained was the final piece of skin holding his left testicle.
I turned again and dropped the dick and ball into the metal kidney bowl. Blood dripped down my hand, and the scalpel wasn’t any cleaner—both hands were red by now. No wonder surgeons wore gloves.
Gareth was sobbing, and Ethan stared at me like I’d turned into a Martian.
“That is not how I conduct my operations,” he said stiffly. “Look at the mess.”
Blood pooled on the table, drops scattered across the floor, even the neat metal trolley of tools speckled with it.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said, rolling my eyes.
He stared at Gareth’s ruined crotch for a moment.
“Get some gauze,” he snapped.
“Yes, Dr Hammond.”
His eyes dropped lower, and that’s when I realised there was blood on my lingerie. One moment he was looking at me with familiar, exasperated tightness, pupils sharp with annoyance. Then his focus softened.
The frustration evaporated, replaced by a sudden, predatory stillness. Warmth flooded back into his eyes all at once—not a gentle glow, but a heavy, smouldering heat that seemed to catalogue every breath I took, stripping his anger away to reveal raw hunger underneath.
“Never mind using the gauze. Give me your underwear,” he said, voice low and rough.
Gareth’s cries had faded to whimpers.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I slipped my hands beneath the soft mesh and lace to remove my G-string. His hand was already out, waiting. I pressed the white scrap of fabric into his palm.
He pried Gareth’s bloody mouth open and shoved it inside, then went to the trolley for tape.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ethan growled, pressing the tape across Gareth’s lips in one swift motion. The whimpering dulled to a muffled groan. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth, soaking into the lace.
I watched, transfixed, as Ethan’s hands moved with surgical precision—cleaning the wound I’d created, clamping arteries, stopping the bleeding that now soaked the table.
He applied a gauze to soak up excess blood weeping from the wound.
His earlier fury had evaporated, replaced by that cold, clinical focus I'd come to crave.
“You've damaged the pelvic floor,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “I’ll have to work around your mess.”
“Sorry,” I said, not sorry at all. The taste of copper lingered in my mouth—I must have bitten my lip at some point.
Ethan glanced up, his expression softening when he saw me licking the blood away. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Come here.”
I smiled and walked around the table, swaying my hips, knowing he could see everything.
He did, and couldn’t take his eyes off me. They travelled back up to meet mine—no anger now, only a twisted adoration that bound us tighter than the straps on his table.
Heat flooded my cheeks as the bloodlust drained away, the manic energy replaced instantly by something darker and heavier, a desire that kept my gaze locked on his.
It would have been the perfect moment, if not for Eva sucking up the drool from her dislocated jaw and her pitiful whimper.
“When are you going to fix her jaw?”
I noticed his knuckles were grazed. I reached for his hand and felt him tense as I gently touched the raw skin with my bloodied thumb.
“You should get these hands insured,” I said casually. “And make me the sole beneficiary of the policy.”
His hand relaxed, and he placed his fingers beneath my chin, tilting my head up.
“Would money make you happy?” he murmured.
There was so much emptiness inside me—a void that couldn’t be filled with something as mundane as money.
I shook my head.
This was something I couldn’t deny.
Ethan Hammond made me feel more alive than killing.