The Gleaming - a Friend Appears - Rainy Day Killer Slays Seven, One Escapes Blood Bath
A friend appears.
The next day the papers read, "Rainy Day Killer Slays Seven, One Escapes Blood Bath."
"My" he thought. "If I could only find that writer, I could see if he could escape." Today he missed his usual breakfast and found himself standing on a bridge that separated the hustling city from the relative quiet of the suburbs. He could see the faces of the people in the cars as they whizzed by and he wondered what their life was like. Did they have peace in the their eyes or was the look on their faces really hiding some unspoken fear as he had come to realize in his own life?
Would he go days or months without this pain to kill returning or would he finally just find the strength to defeat this thing once and for all?
He would have a chance at beating it if he knew what he was up against. Something in his head ordered him to do this and he could not disobey. He could not see his own eyes to see what was there but he knew that there was something. He had tried seeing it once before but the event nearly killed him. He had stared into a mirror trying to find the secret but fell dizzy and collapsed to the floor deadly ill.
For days he suffered in agony with no hope. The pain was so severe that he could not see living through it. Then on the 3rd day, he was released from deaths grip and stumbled back to his bed, where he collapsed once more. When he finally came to his senses, it had been seven days of torturous hell and he did not ever want to experience it again.
Better if he find someone to look for him and maybe they could tell him what his own eyes would not.
He had decided that when the need to kill consumed him, he would demand of those who were about to perish, that they tell him what they saw in his eyes, if anything.
And that's the way he had planned it until the events of yesterday. Before then, he had no one tell him anything they had seen, neither had this one but he felt that he had seen something. Now he had found someone who may help him make sense of his life and gain control over his nature. But whatever he saw was so frightening and so horrifying that it almost killed the young man and probably would have if he had not passed out.
The cars were thinning out now and the rush hour was almost over and he had some time to kill, breakfast was waiting. He looked towards the pedestrian path where two bodies lay headless. He had approached their broken down cycle on the bridge a few minutes earlier and wanted to ask them about the "gleaming" but things got out of hand and he tossed the bikes off the bridge and left their bodies to be found.
But now he was hungry and only one thing would do, scrambled eggs!
He entered the doors to the restaurant and immediately the familiar aroma of the kitchen engulfed him as he walked to his table and took his seat by the window. It was where he studied the street as usual, looking for a target.
He ordered his meal and watched carefully through the dew-covered glass.
When his food arrived, he thanked the waiter and began his usually wonderful meal.
But something was wrong this day. Something made his senses tingle with alert and it was not like anything he had felt before or was it?
He hurried to finish his meal and returned to the alley where he had stood many hours earlier. Something seemed to be drawing him back to the scene of the crime committed the night before. He did not know why but he had to return there, now.
He knew there would be something there, something he had missed maybe a clue to himself. Whatever it was, it was pulling him back to the scene of his last crime.
When he reached Broad Street, the police were still on the scene and although they were busy collecting evidence, people were coming and going as if they were unaware or uncaring of what had happened just a few hours earlier. It took him only a few minutes to find what he was looking for as he stared from the alley out to the sidewalk. Down the street, he recognized a figure that he had not seen in a long time, Tom Sheppard. He was now on the case. Why? How does this rank him?
For the first time in his memory, he panicked and started to run back towards familiar streets. He temporarily lost his bearings and found himself back near the bridge. He thought he might escape by crossing over into the suburbs, putting distance between him and this threat. The reason for his panic was not quite certain; he just knew he had to get away. Crossing the bridge, he passed the place he had placed the bodies of the motorcycle riders and took a moment to glance at their lifeless decapitated bodies. He had not been able to ask them if they could see the "gleaming" because they had been in too much of a fighting mood and actually attacked him. He had no time this morning to fight and quickly dispatched them.
They were still there and he stared back at them while he hurriedly walked past.
When he turned his head back, a figure stood before him. It was Sheppard and he was walking towards him, his hand extended. "Why do you run from me old friend, I am hear to be of help to you. I have a deal for you". "You are here to capture me and that can not happen," He shouted back as he climbed a pillar and leaned precariously on a cable." Not yet, not now, when I am so close to an answer". And with that he leaped from the bridge, tumbling hundreds and hundreds of feet to the water. Sheppard stood for a while looking down into the fast moving water, regretting what had just happened. This was going to be hard to adjust to. He had just witnessed the death of the only man who had even the slightest chance of saving mankind.
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The Harvesting
"There may not be a perfect crime but there is near perfection in some criminals. These 'harvesters of man' wander the Earth avoiding capture or detection. You seldom learn of their horrendous crimes unless they are accidentally uncovered and even then, they are hushed up and spirited away to unknown locations, to await their fate from a justice system who would rather forget their atrocities than alert the public of their crimes." - Thomas Sheppard 2009.
Those were my words and I am, did I mention, uniquely qualified for this job, which I will explain later, until then, my code name is "Reaper".
The Gleaming - Continue the Gleaming
