Ethan
She lay flat on the bed and didn’t move, her hands resting at her sides. She was naked to her abdomen, but I was mentally making the cuts—neck, clavicle, one single incision straight down the middle, peeling her skin away like a jacket potato, revealing its core.
Hm. Almost lunchtime.
“Dr Hammond?”
I ignored her and turned to my assistant to make sure she was ready to write before I began the assessment.
“Oh,” she gasped as I handled her breasts.
I pressed two fingers into the upper quadrant, then the lower, working in slow, even passes. No masses palpable. Skin warm, no erythema.
“Any tenderness here?”
“No.”
I lifted her arm, checked the axilla. Nodes unremarkable.
“Sit up for me.”
She swung her legs over the side and straightened. I checked symmetry first—shoulders level, no visible asymmetry or skin dimpling—then palpated again from this angle, fingers tracing the same methodical grid. Some tissue felt different lying down than sitting; gravity told its own story.
“Raise your arms above your head.”
She did. I watched for puckering, retraction, anything pulling where it shouldn’t.
“Now stand, please.”
She stood, arms loose at her sides. One final pass, hands flat, working outward from the centre. Nothing irregular. Nothing that would explain the referral.
“You can get dressed.”
I turned to my desk and began dictating while she reached for her gown.
“Patient presents for routine assessment. Bilateral exam performed in supine, seated, and standing positions. No palpable masses. No skin changes, no nipple discharge, no axillary lymphadenopathy. Findings unremarkable. Recommend continued routine screening per guidelines.”
“Get a few photographs for the file before she leaves,” I said to my assistant, peeling the latex from my fingers one glove at a time.
Slicing people open at work wasn’t nearly as much fun as it was at home. I preferred them wide awake for that.
Mother would be horrified.
My foot hit the waste bin harder than I intended. The lid flipped open, and I threw the gloves in. It was such a pity she died by pickling her own liver. A few years older and I could have put her out of her misery myself.
No, you wouldn’t.
I left the consultation room.
No, I wouldn’t. The need for her approval had been hammered into me since childhood, deep enough that even now, with her ten years in the ground, I still flinched at the thought of disappointing a woman who couldn’t feel anything anymore.
No one will ever love you.
You’re evil.
Why didn’t you die instead of Olivia?
Horrid little boy. Get away from me.
In our big old house, I’d learned to hide—the gap behind the boiler, the dead space under the back stairs—learned which floorboards gave me away and which ones didn’t, learned to read the particular pitch of her voice that meant a glass was about to leave her hand.
I’d been good at it. Disappointing, evasive, quiet.
A boy-shaped silence moving through rooms she didn’t want him in.
My father had been lost in his own world, checked out long before his actual death. I often wondered if he’d stayed with her out of guilt. The rain had been lashing down that night, and there was nothing he could have done differently—but we survived the crash, and Olivia didn’t.
I’d always wished it had been me who died that night. That changed when I left home to study. For the first time in my life, I was away from my mother. I found enough confidence to mimic social normality. I learned to play the game.
This was how I recognised Anne.
She was as fake as me.
She’d kept the knives.
I walked down the corridor to my office and closed the door behind me. I opened the drawer and stared at the glass vials and needles.
Soon, Anne. Very soon, you’ll meet my monster.
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After work, I spent a little time in my basement—cleaning, polishing, checking on my subjects. I wanted everything to look flawless, because my workspace would reflect back on me.
I’d seen her studio, and it had fascinated me. Chaos, where I kept order. Yet even in her chaos, she’d known I’d touched one item among numerous others.
She might be the only one who’d seen my basement and lived.
No one could ever love you.
“Shut up,” I snapped.
Anne wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t like my mother. She loved her darkness, held it high for all to see. Hidden in plain sight, just like her art. Yet no one ever truly recognised her genius.
Oh, I’d spent hours in her home. Well kept and organised, except for the studio. Beneath the frozen peas and sweetcorn, I’d found some very interesting cuts of meat. In her garage, her tools.
What a sick little puppy she was. So damn nasty.
I stared at the woman crouched behind the bars. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she mumbled behind her gag. The man in the cage beside her had rage burning in his eyes.
Tonight, I needed to take the edge off. I reached for the keys, savouring the fear filling the woman’s eyes.
Mother had been right. I was evil.