Souvenir (part 2 of ?) [considerably longer than the last part..]

As I hit the floor, I woke up suddenly on the cold stone floor. I must've fallen off, I thought. Rubbing my head tenderly, I quickly glanced at my legs, then praised the fact that they were back to their normal, non-bloodied self. I sighed with relief. It was just another dream. I stretched on the floor, not bothering to get up, and lay there motionless letting the sounds of life above ground soothe me. My brain started to tick as I concentrated on what my next victim's fate will be. I thought of all my previous victims and wondered if anyone had even bothered to try and track me down. The truth was I had no personal connections to any of my victims so it would be impossible to link me with any of them.  I almost always had a motive, but the authorities could never connect me. I liked to think of it as trying to find a needle in a haystack. I was the needle in this haystack of a city. With a population of over 10,000,000, I was invisible. I glanced at my watch: 11:28am. I groaned and pulled myself to my feet. Swaying on the spot, I blinked several times, hoping that in doing so my eyesight would improve. The dizziness faded gently and I pulled my boots on and gathered my things, ready for another victim.

***

I must've been studying her for weeks before I knew that this had to be done. It had been an accident that I focused my attention on her. I was originally aiming for her younger brother but something about her caught my eye. Was it the way she would constantly threaten to kill herself if her brother moved away? Or maybe it was the way she would invoke verbal abuse upon him if he forgot to empty the water from the sink after doing the dishes? No. It was the way she forced her brother into her sick rituals which she performed regularly. Almost every night, around 10pm, she would take a machete and glide it slowly down her brother's back. She would then collect as much blood as she can from the wound in a glass cup. Her brother wouldn't howl in pain as he had already endured it so many times... So many times she had literally, stole his blood and stored it... So many times she would laugh at her brother as he tried desperately to stop the bleeding... It's time for this bitch to pay, I had thought. So I devised a plan. A lovely plan to give her a taste of her own medicine.

With so much excitement buzzing around in the back of my skull, I prepared my instruments of torture; scalpel, check. Miniature katana, check. Latex gloves, check. Thin wiring, check. Zippo, check. I arranged them all neatly in my suitcase, admiring my choices. My lips curled into a grin as I thought of all the possible paths which my plan could take from here. As she went about her daily routine, I hovered on the spot, hidden by the darkness. I looked at my watch; 9:59pm. A minute passed and her evil cackles shortly followed. I grimaced at her reactions as she, again, watched her brother writhe about on the floor while blood continuously pulsed from his back. An hour later, the deed was done and the lights went out. I then assumed the room was empty. It was time. I clicked my suitcase shut and crawled up to the side of the house. My heart was pounding in my throat as I imagined her expression when I... What was that? My eyes darted to the left when I saw the front door open and the girl walking out to dump something in the rubbish bin. Now was my chance.

Moving with elegance as well as speed, I approached the front door just as she closed it. I pressed my ear against the door and heard her footsteps getting further away. I got up and whipped out a paperclip and picked the lock as quietly as I could. It was luck that as I entered the house, the girl was settled down in the front room with the TV on. It was also even luckier that she was sitting with her back to the doorway, where I stood. My self-taught arts of stealth paid off well here as I crept up behind her. Slowly edging my way to serving ironic justice. I stopped moving and quickly calculated the distance between me and the sofa, and me and the door. With a kick of my foot, I slammed the door shut and grabbed the girl around her neck in a split second. With my free hand, I turned the volume of the TV up as high as it would go. The girl squirmed and fought as I firmly held the back of her neck with my right hand, my previously manicured fingernails digging into her flesh. She was too focused on trying to escape than scream in the agony I was causing her. Almost as though she had planned for it. I growled loudly as I grabbed the front of her neck with my other hand, my face twisted in an evil grimace as I did so. She coughed and spluttered as I strangled her, but I didn't go the whole way, I didn't want to kill her... Yet. I threw her at the wall opposite the door and rummaged through the room. The girl sat, cowering in the corner, unsure on how to react. She caressed her neck with her hands which were slowly filling with blood. I found some tape and grabbed her wrists and pulled them behind her back then taped them together as tight as I could before violently wrapping tape around her mouth. I stood back and admired my work so far; it looked quite like bondage. I tried not to laugh as I wanted to keep the atmosphere tense and terrifying - for her.

Lifting my fist high, I brought it down swiftly to the back of her head. She grunted as the blow made a loud crack. I looked around. On the coffee table was, ironically, a cup of coffee. I picked it up and smelt the stench. I always hated coffee. I tipped the cup and spilt it over her head, scorching her neck. I then rammed the cup into the back of her head, smashing the cup into smithereens, most of which, embedded into the back of her skull. Another grunt escaped her mouth, but was trapped behind the tape. I repeatedly hit the back of her head with my fist, not worrying about catching bits of the cup in my knuckles. I carried on, the blows varying in strength, until her mouth filled with blood. She began to choke. And with that, I stopped and looked at my suitcase.

Her wide eyes stared at me in horror as I opened my suitcase and studied each of my little torture-bringers. Smiling cruelly, I picked up the scalpel. My friend, I thought. As I held the thin length of metal, images of Sweeny Todd partially decapitating his victims swamped my mind. This was bliss. I closed my eyes held the scalpel to the back of her neck. Very slowly, I began to slice all the way down to the base of her back, cutting through the back of her clothing, but not so deep as I didn't want this to end so quickly. I dropped the scalpel and wrapped my hands around her throat and felt her life weakly pulse through my fingers. I got up and shook my hands. The blood sprayed lightly on the beige walls behind me, setting the familiar scene of the elderly man. I smiled at the thought. I bent to feel the girl's pulse. She was still alive, but only just. I sat her up and propped her against the wall and removed the tape from her mouth. Her blood poured out of her mouth like a ruby waterfall. After tearing a small amount of her white top off, I dipped my finger in her blood and scribbled down something as neat as I could. I then cut a chunk of her hair out with the scalpel and shoved it down her throat, cutting off her main air supply. Smirking evilly, I nudged her so that she lay face-down on a pillow which I set down and put the note on the back of her head. After taking a photo of the gruesome scene on my mobile phone, I collected my equipment and left the house for good. All I heard was the TV blaring and the brother's quiet yells of 'Turn it down, would you? You'll wake the dead!'