The Carnival Master

10.

Oliver drank his coffee and gazed at the blank white-tiled wall opposite him. But he wasn’t seeing anything. Instead his mind dwelt on what had happened in the hotel room. It had been five days now and he had heard nothing. But he knew it would take the police some time to trace him, if ever. He had been extremely careful in his planning; in ensuring that his tracks were covered. She had made so much fuss, so much noise. She had known what he had wanted, that he had special needs: so why had she started to scream? Why did the stupid sluts always scream when they knew all along what he had to do to them? Oliver had had no choice other than to shut her up before someone in the hotel heard her.

He took another sip of coffee. No. He had nothing to worry about. He would never use that escort agency again and he would lie low for a while. And if he needed to exercise that deliciously dark side of his nature, then he would travel to another city.

Oliver drained his cup. He pulled on surgical gloves of a particularly heavy latex and snapped the cuffs around the sleeves of his protective gown. He went through the door and into a room flooded with a cheerless, harsh luminescence from neon strip lights. The steel tray was already set out with all the blades and tools he would need.

The taint hung faint but growing in the air. Oliver knew the causes of it, understood the science behind it: the smell of cellular degradation escaping from the large open wounds, the pooling of stagnant blood in livid blotches in the lowest points, the odour leeching out through the skin. But no matter how scientific the explanation or professional the understanding, it was still quite simply the smell of death. He took a deep breath, picked up a large-bladed scalpel and held it poised for a moment as he looked down on the corpse, already split with large gashes, before him.