Dr. Lee sat in a chair, staring at the person before him as if trying to figure out a puzzle. In his two freshly bandaged hands was a clipboard and pen: "Mr. Dransel, age forty, current address is unknown, three times widowed by accidental death of the spouse, or should I say murder?" He fought to stand, rattling the chains binding him to his blood-stained chair.Hector sat across from him, a silhouette of black within the other shadows of the bas.e.m.e.nt. "Just call me Hector, doctor." His voice was plain, calm. "The last one to call me Dransel is buried in the backyard, or did I burn her?" He shrugged. "Let"s get back to subject doctor, what do you think of me, sparing the profanity?"
"That you"ll never get away with this," Dr. Lee said. "I am a respected psychiatrist and people will look for me after my disappearance."
"No," Hector stood up, making Dr. Lee stop his fighting. "You won"t be missed, just like the others." Hector neared, letting Dr. Lee see his deformed face. Burns, scars, st.i.tches, bruises, they were all fresh, self-inflicted.
Dr. Lee swallowed his saliva. "And after I tell you, aren"t you just going to kill me?"
"Yes," Hector wrapped his three-fingered hand around Dr. Lee"s ears. "You know, I don"t know what to do to you. I"ve tried being a police interrogator, never harming but prying for information," He pulled the clipboard away. "I"ve tried being a s.a.d.i.s.t, trying to take pleasure in your pain, but you know how that went." He flipped over the pages. "I"ve tried being a cannibal, but I don"t understand them either."
"Have you tried being a sane human being?" Dr. Lee muttered, shrugging the hands off.
"I"ve tried that too," Hector sighed as he held one of the three rings on his fingers. "She found out who…what I was too quickly." He took off the ring and stomped on it. "I feel like if I just had a few more years with her…No a few more weeks." He placed a sheet of paper on the clipboard and handed it back.
Dr. Lee looked it over and grimaced. "What is this trying to accomplish? Why am I supposed to choose my own method of death? You"re a psycho."
"Yes," Hector got close to Dr. Lee. "That"s why you"re here, to fix me. Now, before I kill you, what can you do for me?"
"Nothing." Dr. Lee dropped the clipboard. "You will never feel anything. There is no cure for a case this bad. Just turn yourself in and maybe we can research your brain and help others like you."
"No," Hector checked the camera, making sure it was still recording. "I"m just so curious, what are you guys hiding from me inside of that fleshy organ?" He flicked Dr. Lee"s forehead. "Why am I not human like the rest of you?" He shook the chair around, flexing his eyebrows to appear angry.
"I don"t know!" Dr. Lee yelled. "You were just born without empathy. There is no biological reason. Have you tried pills? Antipsychotics?"
"Doctor," Hector let his limbs droop. "I thought you would be better than this." He folded up the camera"s tripod, strapped the camera to the side of his head, and walked around the back of the chair, sliding it and Dr. Lee up the stairs.
"No no no no no," Dr. Lee"s tears streamed down his dirty cheeks. "I"m sorry. I can fix you. I can fix you!" The clipboard fell in his hands again. He yelled but was gagged. He couldn"t see much, just the four walls he a.s.sumed to be a house and a wide field of something inside. The chains and the air grew chilly.
"Choose," Hector focused the camera. "How do you want to die?" Dr. Lee"s eyes refused to focus, no matter how much he blinked away the tears. His hands shook his pen around. "I hear suffocation sounds peaceful," Hector chimed in.
Dr. Lee looked over the clipboard, not finding an option for it. He flipped the paper over but it was blank. Glancing back at Hector, he paled. "I knew you would go for it," Hector said. "People like to go for that one, having realized I won"t let you have a quick death." He pointed to the option at the top, starvation. "This is a popular one. Over eight to twelve weeks, the body cannibalizes itself, chewing away at your fat and muscle. Your organs will shrink and you will turn into a skeleton. In your case," He stepped back and rubbed his chin. "I"d say you"ll last ten." Upon seeing Dr. Lee"s indecision, he pointed to another option, Roman Candle. "It sounds like the firework doesn"t it? You"re wrong. I"m just going to douse you in gasoline and light you on fire like the emperor Nero did to Christians."
"What…" Dr. Lee"s hands shook from cold and fear. "What"s the most painless option?"
Hector frowned and walked to the side of his house and flipped a switch. Lights came on, filling the large meat locker. Instead of stalks of wheat or corn, it was people on hooks. "I tried to make it colorful." Hector pointed left to right. "People who went white with blood-loss to the left and the crispier ones to the right. Smallest to biggest. Baby to adult."
Dr. Lee dropped the clipboard and turned his head away. "Why are you doing all of this? No amount of trauma should turn a human being into something like you. I don"t understand."
Hector put a hand on Dr. Lee"s shoulder. "That"s because you"re in a panicked state and cannot think correctly. You"re buying time for your overclocked brain to turn out an answer. They didn"t understand either. Want to hear something funny? Neither do I. I"ve tried happiness," He gestured to his rings. "Sadness," He pointed to one of the bodies with the words, "Wife number one" carved into her decaying chest. "Pain," pointing to his face. "Now I"m just doing things out of boredom, not that this is entertaining." He sighed and stabbed Dr. Lee in the throat. "You probably would have chosen live surgery anyway."
He took out an old list, stained over the decades, and crossed out a word, serial killer. "Next is…" He fumbled through the pages. "Manipulating people for personal gain. People like me are supposed to be good at this one already. What the heck, let"s try it." Out of his other pocket he pulled out a manga. "People seem to like protagonists of anime and the fanbase seems easy to manipulate." He flipped through the pages as Dr. Lee"s blood stained his shoes. "Loud, eat a lot, continually spout their ideas like some broken record, yet get people to follow them." He forced the edges of his lips in a smile. He left Dr. Lee"s body with the rest and emerged out of his large abandoned house. Getting to his car, he drove for a day to the city.
"I"m going to be the Hokage," he thought out loud as he drove. "I"m going to be the Wizard King. I"m going to be the pirate king. I"m going to become a hero. All of these characters seem to have a goal that is considered to be impossible yet they work hard to achieve it with the help of friends. I"ve never had friends, well permanent ones, so this might become a problem."
He got out of his car while flipping through the pages of his manga. "I can never be like them in this world, but maybe in another. I"m out of ideas so what the heck? To get into an isekai…" He flipped to the first page. "It"s always a truck, jumped into because the protagonist is a moron that needs to establish themselves as good." He walked through the crowds on the sidewalk, scanning for a young innocent-looking child. He found his target with her hand wrapped around her mother"s. He followed them, going deeper into the higher traffic areas. After getting to suitable place, he snapped the mother"s neck and grabbed the girl. She cried and screamed like the crowd around her. Hector dragged her.
"You," one person grabbed his shoulder. "You can"t-" He screamed as a pen was jammed into his eyes. The crowd backed away. Before anyone could catch him, Hector threw the girl into traffic, right in front of a truck. Before she was turned into paste, Hector punted her away like a football and embraced his end. "So this is death?" he thought as his should drifted away. His world turned into a dot among the countless stars around him as he drifted through s.p.a.ce. Death"s hand wrapped around him like a blanket but let go a few seconds later. His vision flashed white. A woman in a dress made of light appeared in front of him, smiling. "You"re perfect."
"I"m broken," Hector said. "So do you need me to fight the demon king?"
"No," the woman smiled. "Something else. Something…entertaining."