The title is banned for security purposes

A Story by NeonOne

The first story in my series of light detectives

A crowd of police officers were gathering around a laptop that

was screening a live video call. A thin guy with huge black

circles around his eyes and long oily hair was looking back at

them, showing absolutely no emotions on his face.

The captain entered the room, silencing everyone who was making a sound.

“You said you have important information about “The Chain

Man”, so what is it all about, Mr..?” Said the captain.

“First, I’m not giving you my name” answered the guy,

“maybe because I’m a criminal, from what I just did about 15 hours

ago”

“And what is that you did?” Demanded the captain, obviously

losing his temper

“I killed a man” answered the guy with a smile “to be

precise, I killed the so-called (Chain Man)By the way does the media always

have to give serial killers those ridiculous names?”

The captain, along with the rest of the officers, was offended

with the attitude of the guy that talked to them. It felt like it all was a

stupid prank.

“You know, young man, if this is a prank, you are in serious

trouble for doi..”

“This is not a prank” interrupted the guy quickly, as he opened a bottle of

soda and started drinking it making a particularly annoying sound.

“I’m going to tell you where the body is, I’m going to tell you everything.”

“You better do” said one of the officers angrily.

“Before I tell you anything, I want you to know why I did it. The answer is simple, because I was bored and I wanted to do something exciting. I read about the serial killer that is raging and that took his 19th victim a couple of days ago and it just popped up into my head, why not go and catch him? I never meant to kill him, I just

wanted to stop him, but a few things went wrong along the way.”

“This guy is a lunatic..” said someone.

“Shut up.” Said the captain sharply “young man, do you understand how bad will it turn out for you if you are lying?”

“Mhm”

“Then carry on”

“Well, for those who don’t understand, I want to explain why did I call like a hundred times saying that I have information about the serial killer and that I’ll talk only on a video call with the captain and as many officers with him as possible. That’s

simply for attention” as the guy talked, he kept on making this awful noise by drinking his soda as if intentionally wanting to piss the police off.

“See, finding the killer that you were chasing for a year now within 8 hours is actually cool, isn’t it? That’s something you want to share with somebody and as long as I

don’t have friends or people to talk to, I thought you would make perfect listeners.”

Officers were getting more and more irritated, one of them even cussed the guy and walked out of the room slamming the door shut after him.

The captain, though, pulled a chair and took a seat as he listened to the guy. He didn’t completely believe that the guy took the chain man down but there something about this character on the screen that caught his attention.

“By now I’m assuming someone got angry and left the room. I’m sorry I can’t know for sure, since this is recorded, not live as you may have thought. But as long as I answer all of your questions, it doesn’t matter, right?”

The guy was to show his superiority over the police with every cell of his body, he was obviously showing off and trying to humiliate them with every word and gesture he made.

Silence covered the room with a cold blanket, making officers look at each other and wondering, “is this really a recording..?”

“He made a recording so we won’t be able to track him..” mumbled the captain, his conclusion was more like an out loud thought than actually saying it to anyone.

“Exactly. Picked this trick up from Saw II, always wanted to try it out, it seemed very cool in the movie.” Answered the guy fromthe recording just in time, as if he knew that the captain would say that.

“Oh, cut this out, it can’t be a recording, how would he know when to answer?” Said a fat officer, waving away on the screen.

The officers looked at each other again as if they were unsure of what to really believe.

“Anyways, let me begin my story:”

“As I said, I was bored and I decided to find The Chain Man. As you know, he picks only teenage girls, all crimes happen at night or late evening with no witnesses, he kills the victims quickly and hangs the body somewhere else on a chain. So when I started to think about him, the first thing I wanted to understand is why does he kill in this specific way? He never sexually abuses his victims as you must know, he never mutilates the body, he always kills quickly, whether by cutting the throat or suffocating the victim.

So why in hell does he hang the bodies in streets or public places? That didn’t take me a long time to figure out. Let me lead you through the chain of my thoughts really quickly just so you would understand what was really going on.

So I close my eyes, I imagine a girl, I slice her throat open and and hang her body on a tree… Well, obviously, I’m a strong man because that takes some strength to hang a body on a tree with a chain within minutes, right? So I’m a grown-up, with a strong complexion. Killing teenage girls without sexually abusing them. Who am I?

As you know, erotophonophilia is one of the commons among serial killers, 95% of serial killers kill either for sexual purposes or attention or sense of power. In our case the chain man didn’t kill for any of these reasons, so I went deeper. I kept asking myself. Who am I? Why do I hang bodies?

Then I got it.

It is really simple.

Look, a serial killer kills people who share something in common, a color of hair or a way of dressing, in our case its age.

All of them are teenagers. And why does someone would hang a body in a public place? All of the psychologists that were working with the police and made psychological portraits of him were wrong. He didn’t hang the body for attention. At least not for the attention they thought about. You see, if he wanted to gain as much attention as possible he would mutilate the body, right?

I knew this from the beginning, but I couldn’t understand his reason till I just figured one thing. One possibility.

It’s a remainder. He hangs the body as a remainder of the victim’s death. Think about it for a moment, it will be all over the internet, on tv and even in the papers. He

wants the parents to be reminded of the death for as long as possible. This sounds stupid, right? I mean parents will always be reminded… They would not forget their loss even if it never appeared anywhere. Isn’t it the rational way of thinking? But

who said the offender is a rational person? Soon as I understood this, I started understanding everything.

He wants to remind the parents because these girls are reminding

him of his loss.. He is a father who lost his daughter and his sanity. He remembers his teenage daughter every time he sees a teenage girl. He wants to kill those girls because, for him, it is only fair. If life took away his daughter, no one deserves to have theirs.

This allowed me to minimize the number of potential killers to everyone who lost their daughters in the past 5 years.

I didn’t find any unusual or large orders of similar chains, so I assumed that it’s someone that already had easy access to such tools, and that minimized potential murderers to only one, the real serial killer.

After finding him through your base which I hacked into earlier, I went to his store. He was a fine man, named (the material is banned for security reasons), he was in his mid-forties, had a huge beard and a husky voice. I asked him a couple of questions about the hammers he had then I asked for a chain. As he showed me the types of chains he had, I asked him to give me the one he uses to hang the victims he kills to grieve for his daughter.

Boy, did those words drive him crazy. He attacked me and of course won the battle for I’m somehow physically weak. I lost my consciousness.

When I woke up I was handcuffed to a metal pole somewhere dark all

alone. I wasn’t killed like all his victims. I wasn’t his victim…”

When the guy from the recording reached this point of his story, an officer entered the

room and informed the captain that this video call was really just a recording, and that they just found the source.

Right after, that the room fell back into perfect silence as all of them kept listening very carefully to what the guy was saying.

“.. I want to tell you this, in movies and books about someone

being trapped alone they always make someone imaginary come to them and help, so you should know that that doesn’t really happen. When you are trapped you are all by yourself.

My eyes took some time to adjust to the darkness before they began to see a little. I was in a warehouse of some kind. Shelves with tools covered with a thick layer of dust all around the place, even the air was dusty and it was hard to breathe.

I didn’t have many possibilities to escape, so I simply broke my wrist. I broke my right hand and kept my dominant hand safe in case I needed to fight. I was able to free the other hand by using some oil that I found lying near me. The only issue was that I just needed to grab it with my broken hand. Believe me this simple task can be very difficult when you do it with a broken hand.

Now I was half way free. I still needed to get out of the warehouse, so I started searching for the door.

When I found it and examined it with my hand, I realized there’s no way to break through. All I could do was wait for him to come. I was left there for about two days.

Curiosity gets the best of us, it’s human nature. Therefore I was sure he would come back to know how I found him, but with a broken wrist and no food, I was on the edge. I was slowly losing hope. I never screamed for help, he’s not dumb, he wouldn’t put me anywhere where people could hear me.

I slept resting my body on the door. Time passed very slowly and all I could do was get prepared.

I searched all around for a nail gun but you never get this lucky in real life, so I didn’t find one. I found a lot of other useful stuff though.

In two days I was able to craft something like a small catapult that shoots only once, but then you’ll have to place the spring again which would take time. It was kind of big, too big to hold a nail, so I decided to use a screwdriver instead.

I placed it on a shelf right in front of the door and took my position behind it. Because I was no longer able to sleep on the door, so I needed to do something that would help me wake up if the door opened, so I found some sandpaper and stuffed it underneath the door. I figured it would make a loud enough noise to wake me up.

Like that I kept waiting.

My energy was leaving my body, the pain was gradually increasing in my swollen wrist and I was not able to control myself. Out of survival

instincts, my body was trying to put me to sleep.

After some time, the door started opening. I wasn’t asleep by that time, so that whole sandpaper thing was kind of useless. He opened the door making an awful sound by dragging the sandpaper, which that distracted him, and that gave me a good opportunity to shoot. The screwdriver hit his thigh. It wasn’t strong enough to damage him seriously, but it gave me enough time to grab another screwdriver and start running towards the door.

He was still trying to understand what was going on. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to escape this huge man, so my only chance was to complete the work by the screw driver I had in my hand. Thinking of the pain in my hand and the two days of isolation with no food or water, I ran at him.

I pushed the screwdriver as hard as I could deep inside his neck a couple of times. I believe I looked very creepy with blood all over my hand and clothes. I wish I was able to see it from a third person’s perspective.

A huge man is being killed by a slim guy with one hand. Isn’t that kinda cool?”

Whispers of disapproval and accuses spread among the police officers while they were listening

“He is crazy!”

“Murderer!”

“We have to get this guy!”

“Shut up, all of you!” Shouted the captain. He wanted to know

what does this guy want. Why would he tell them all of that?

Only for credit?

“I don’t think the rest of the story is interesting. The warehouse

is in (the material is banned for security reasons), there

you can find the body and at his house you can find the

evidences that claim that he is The Chain Man. I’m also very

sorry, I didn’t mean to kill anyone. Let’s just look at the bright

side, I got you the serial killer you couldn’t find.”

The picture on the screen disappeared, the screen went

black and another voice continued talking:

“I know you will be trying to find me, that’s why I just want to save

your time. The guy in the video is just a student whom I hired to

act this speech. He has a strong alibi on his whereabouts in last two weeks so you can not accuse him of anything, even if you found him. Even though I don’t think you can carry out even a finding of a student. Anyways. Don’t waste your

time, I’m not a danger for anyone.

I’ll be in touch.

By the way, this whole conversation is being uploaded on

internet. It would be fun to see how media is going to eat you up.

Bye.”