Chapter Three: Screams BThe blood on Jay's hands had dried into black crust by morning, but it clung to him like a second skin.
He didn't wash it off.
Water couldn't cleanse what he'd become.
He sat alone in a half-collapsed motel room outside the city limits, the walls covered in yellowed wallpaper that peeled like rotting flesh. Mold crept along the ceiling, and the air reeked of mildew, cigarettes, and something sweetly metallic—like rust and old blood. He liked it. It felt honest.
His right eye glowed faintly, golden and swirling, as if Lina herself were watching through it.
"He screamed like they did," she whispered.
Jay smiled, slow and crooked. "Not enough."
---
Name Two: Agent Wallace Brent.
The man who shot his mother in the back while she screamed for her children.
Jay stalked Brent for four nights.
The bastard lived alone now. A luxury house in the hills. White walls, big glass windows, modern furniture. Sterile. Clean. Soulless.
It was midnight when Jay slipped in through the patio door. No security system. No dogs. Just a man confident the world was still afraid of his badge.
But tonight, the badge wouldn't save him.
Jay found him asleep in his bed, sprawled on Egyptian cotton sheets, breathing like a pig at slaughter. He didn't wake until Jay had tied his arms and legs to the bedposts with barbed wire, strips of it coiled tight, digging into skin with every twitch.
Brent woke to pain—and the sound of a girl humming a lullaby.
Not Jay. Lina.
"You remember her, don't you?" Jay asked, kneeling by the bed. "Ten years old. Big brown eyes. She tried to hide behind the couch while you laughed."
Brent's eyes widened. He started to scream.
Jay shoved a rag into his mouth.
"Shh. This is the part where you repent."
He didn't use a knife at first. He used a pair of pliers. Ripped the nails from Brent's fingers one by one. Brent thrashed, the barbed wire pulling deeper, shredding muscle. The sheets soaked crimson.
Jay took his time.
He carved the names of his family into Brent's chest with a broken bottle—MOTHER. FATHER. LINA.
When he reached her name, his right eye flared.
"He's crying," Lina whispered, soft and childlike.
Jay leaned in close. "You cried, too."
Then he took the knife.
Not for a killing blow. Not yet. He peeled back skin from Brent's thigh, slow and deliberate, like unwrapping a gift soaked in sin. The man gurgled, shaking violently, blood painting the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
Jay pressed his face against Brent's, cheek to cheek.
"I want you to remember this in Hell. I want your soul to smell like fear for eternity."
And then, finally, mercifully, Jay plunged the blade through Brent's eye. Not quick. Not deep. Just enough to rupture. He let him choke on his own blood before he finally cut the throat—deep, fast, final.
The silence that followed was almost holy.
---
Jay stood in the living room, drenched in gore, golden eye glowing like a demon's curse. His breath was slow. Measured. Almost calm.
"Do you think they can feel it?" he asked aloud.
Lina's voice was barely a whisper: "I hope they do."
He walked out into the cold night, leaving bloody footprints on polished floors.
Two down.
Too many to go.
And the madness was only just beginning.