"If done right, killing someone gives you all the time they had left.", said the teacher to her student.
"How is that even possible? And what does it even mean?"
"One day, when you have seen and learnt enough, you will understand..."
It was four o'clock on Sunday afternoon when John finally reached his little cabin in the woods. In the next half an hour, he neatly packed all his suitcases and tidied up the place. A few minutes later he was in his car heading back to the city.
The cabin had belonged to his mother, and had been passed on to him after her death. He went there every weekend to escape from the stress and noise of the city life. He had many fond memories of spending holidays there as a child. Among those, one of the more memorable ones was the day when he had first taken a life.
It was a tramp passing through the woods, who had been pestering him on the way back to the cabin. At first he had ignored him. But something inside him suddenly snapped, and before John knew it the tramp was on the ground, with John bashing his skull with a rock.He remembered being at it even after the tramp had died.
He also remembered being covered in blood, and running into his mother's arms, feeling confused, scared and thrilled at the same time. He had told her everything. What he never understood was that by some way or the other, his mother already had an inkling of what had happened (what he would never know was that it was she who had paid the tramp to harass John on the way back). She first calmed him down and then told him to go clean himself up. Afterwards, they had gone to the scene of the crime to bury the body. That night, they burned the bloodstained clothes in a small campfire by the cabin. She made him promise not to tell anybody about it. "Its our little secret", she would say to him.
Over the course of the next few months, John gradually learnt to control his urges and use them for more constructive (and occasionally, murderous) purposes. Due to this, he now had a steady job with a good income, and was also one of the more notorious serial killers in the country.
Over time he had perfected his technique. He had experimented a lot a first but had finally found one he liked the most. He primarily preferred weak or old men (another idea subtly planted into his mind by his mother), as their chances of escaping from the woods was low, and they could also be lifted and carried around without much exertion. If the news reports were to be any indication, the investigators were calling his work as a mixture of the 'Hunter' and 'Angel of Death' themes commonly used by serial killers.
What the investigators did not know, was that right before he killed them, John made each of his victims record a so called 'final message' for their loved ones. This stash of videos was to be his bargaining chip in case of an arrest. But that was not happening anytime soon.
For John went to great lengths to 'tidy up' the crime scenes. Since the accidental discovery of his main burial sites by some campers which had alerted the authorities about him, he had started taking additional precautions.
When he reached home, he found a flyer stuck in his door. He pulled it out and casually glanced at it. It was an advertisement from the local non-profit for an upcoming toy donation drive. 'Donate your toys so that underprivileged kids may enjoy a better childhood' was the slogan printed at the top.
And then it dawned upon him.
If he had let his addiction run unchecked, he was bound to have made some mistake leading to his downfall. But because he had found a way to keep himself in control, he was still alive, and would probably die an old man.
"I finally understand what you meant, mother.", he said softly to himself. "I finally understand."
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