Around 5:50 PM, a breathless caller reported a strange noise coming from a house on suburban Laurel Path. The caller described it as a combination of a power sander and screaming child. They worried that there had either been a power tool accident or a case of child abuse, or perhaps both. The caller wished to remain nameless. A few puzzled officers were sent to the scene.

They knocked on the doors of each house, and three of them, which were lit inside, answered. There were three residents who happened to be home that New Year’s Eve, and all of them were extremely friendly, and seemed more than willing to invite the officers into their homes for some tea or pastries. Perhaps that was the natural inclination of someone home on New Year’s. But there was work to be done. While tending to some Danishes at the house of a kindly old woman, a call came in reporting some violent activity at the old church. The officers bid their host farewell and headed out.

At 6:10, Ravel called his supervisor while standing under the lamppost a few blocks from Val’s house. Maybe thirty minutes after he had left for the church, a patrol car arrived. The officers knocked on the door and tried the door. It was locked.

Still concerned with the ‘mess’ that had been reported within, the officers used their flashlights to peer through the windows. It was a confusing night for the police force.

The room within was much larger than expected. Someone had knocked down all the walls within the row of houses and formed one large room, which was surely illegal. But it could hardly have been described as a mess. Save for a few refrigerators sitting against the back wall, and a darkly colored wall-to-wall carpet, the entire complex was empty.

The officers were discussing the possible prices of such a home when they received an emergency call requesting support at the church, then they were off.

At 7:30, Ravel was lying on the floor of the church thinking about hair and silk.

Around the same time, Lei emerged from the door of Val’s house with a package wrapped in brown paper. She headed in the opposite direction that Ravel had gone. She jogged by the closed convenience store and over a footbridge crossing an empty road. From there, it was a half hour straight walk down several streets full of houses. The final four streets had the names of flowers. The fourth was Laurel Path. She strode through the garden of the second house from the corner, which still had a block of ice on its lawn, and from under the tin canopy, checked her phone for around two minutes, balancing the package on the wooden railing. Then she opened the door to her house.

Laurel Path had three people home when the police had visited earlier that night. Now there were four. And one guest.

—

Lei wiped her feet on the old doormat and let the door swing shut behind her. There were two more small taps that followed the click of the door.

‘Hello?’

The curtains were drawn and the lights were all out except the blipping red dot on the TV’s cable box and some flickering coming from the back of the house. Reaching for the light switch, Lei remembered that the bulb had burned out a few days ago.

Lei sighed and walked into the dining area, or what would be the dining area had she actually unpacked and set up a table. It would have also made a more secure setting for her package, but instead she settled with leaving it on top of one of the cardboard boxes. From there, she opened the door to the back porch, which had been sealed with walls and formed an addition to the house that she didn’t really need, but space was space. She lifted the curtain at the back window and saw that the bulb that lit the tiny backyard area was on the verge of going out.

She had never really looked out this window before, nor had she ever turned on that light. She had, however, seen the garden a few times, but that only bolstered her resistance to looking at it again. The garden was kind of foul. It was more mud than grass and had more visible mosquitoes per square foot than she cared to think about. They were there right now, clustering around the ground, dancing in the flashing lights with the energy of small partygoers. At least they were having a fun New Year’s Eve.

‘Gross.’

She let the curtain fall back into place, the weak bulb’s last efforts still making its way into the back porch but no further. The porch was chilly. She shut the door, peering out at the window through the glass panels. And that was when she heard the breathing.

She frowned into the shadows of her own house. The darkness could have been infinitely large. It could almost have been hiding a space small enough to trip one up and dash them into a wall in the same step.

‘Hello?’ She asked again. Nothing.

‘Did you turn the light on?’

Her voice remained level but was gradually gaining a hard edge.

‘If you opened the back door, you better not have let those fucking mosquitoes in.’

Still no answer, though. But another breath.

‘You’re loud as hell.’

The offender did nothing to repair his tact, but then she couldn’t see who it was anyway.

‘Whatever. if you’re not coming out, I’ll come find you.’

There was some rustling in the general area of the boxes and a snap. The light of a single pink and white wax candle slowly rose to illuminate Lei’s face, and only her face. She was smiling as she looked from the flame to her surroundings. There was not much to be seen in the dining room. Just boxes and more boxes. She wished the movers hadn’t piled them so high. Someone could easily be hiding in there among the clothes or table parts.

Of course, there was also a pretty long row of boxes sitting beside the solitary couch in the living room, across from the TV that a moderately sized person could be lying in. Lei checked around there next. Naturally, there was nobody there.

Lei doubted that the person she was looking for was upstairs. Instead, she went to check on the kitchen next. The microwave clock had not been set so she wasn’t sure what time it was. Even if the time had been set, it did not seem to be showing its usual display. The green lights on the panel said ‘Finished!’ Frowning, she realized that the microwave door was also open. She closed it. The kitchen smelled odd, like someone had been cooking something, albeit not something entirely appetizing, but it was a food-like smell. Very strange. The light revealed some burnt remains of some tragic cooking attempt on the counter. Retching, Lei swept them off and vowed to sweep them up later.

As she left the kitchen, she suddenly felt the breathing looming very close. In the middle of the room, It grazed the top of her hair. Then, of all sounds, there was a little crunch. She swooped around and narrowly missed cutting into the ribs of an intruder with her hooked elbow.

Her hand holding the candle came to rest just under the chin of Val.

There was nothing to see in the darkness but their floating faces. And Lei’s floating face was taking a very dark turn. She was still wearing an smile but it was waning fast.

‘Of course, who else would the least subtle home intruder ever be?’

Val didn’t respond. His teeth clicked against something hard in his mouth.

‘Oh, come on. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?’

Val swallowed with exaggeration. ‘I didn’t want to talk while eating.’

‘Sure. You’re a master of manners.’ Lei rolled her eyes then pulled them back onto Val and glared. ‘What the hell are you eating? I don’t keep food in the house.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘That’s what you think.’ As usual, Val looked blatantly unconcerned with what he dumped into his stomach. He did, however, turn cagey when the saw the candle, and eyed it as if it were a stick of dynamite. ‘What’s that?’

Now it was Lei’s turn to be silent.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘It’s a candle, you brick. A birthday candle.’

He looked hesitant, so she continued. ‘It’s maybe 6 months old.’

Val bit his lip.

‘You know?’

‘Put it away.’ He made a sudden one armed lurch towards the candle, which Lei easily sidestepped thanks to his obscenely noisy movements. It was as though he were grinding an aluminum chair along the ground with each stride. As Lei was contemplating this, Val regained his footing and tried again. This time, Lei let him snatch the candle, but no sooner had he laid his hands on it that Lei was holding another, already lit. This one was blue and white with the same striped pattern. She quickly pulled this one out of his reach.

‘Wondering how many there are?’ she chirped.

‘This isn’t very funny,’ Val, a master of comedy, complained.

Lei lowered the candle and glared. ‘Also not funny: the state of your house.’

Val put out the candle and threw it into the ocean of blackness. Then he fell back against the wall looking somewhat guilty. Lei noticed again, a strange scraping sound that arose every time he moved. ‘I agree. I wonder what happened there.’

‘You sound way too cool about it.’

‘I am cool about it.’

‘Then I hope you won’t take offense when I say the mess is gone now. Just some mopping left to do.’

‘You broke into my house?’

‘For the love of god, you saying this- why did you leave a letter for me in the house then?’

‘Left a… oh, that! I thought you found it weeks ago.’

‘Weeks ago? How would I have found it weeks ago? Let’s say it was in the shelf these “weeks ago,” what exactly was it that I did that made you ever think I found it? I didn’t do anything different. I wouldn’t have just sat there thinking “a lunatic knows where I live, that’s great,” I would have knocked your teeth out.’

‘I thought you just… understood it.’

‘If I understood it, I would have done nothing?’

Val looked taken aback but mostly unhurt. ‘I thought that meant we were friends.’

Lei set her forehead against her hand and groaned.

‘Maybe not understood… more like, approved.’

Coming ever closer to blows, Lei waved a hand at his accusingly. ‘You barely ever talk sense. Who has ever approved of the way you think?’

‘My friends.’

‘Who are we talking about?’

At this, Val’s face began falling back into the darkness with the same grating noise. ‘You say that anymore. You met them.’

‘I haven’t met anyone that I would call your friend.’

‘But you saw…’

‘Everyone you’ve introduced me to has looked like a lunatic or a criminal. Are they what you call friends?’

His eye was gaining that grey chalky tint to it again, and his face was growing ever more shadowy. Not quite liking the look of him, Lei responded in kind. There was nothing but glaring for a while and finally, Lei backed into the stack of boxes, the foot of which was a flat box with the brown package on top.

‘Oh yeah, you wanted an explanation for something, right?’

She touched the top of the package, crinkling the paper. ‘There’s probably something you should see.

When he didn’t respond, she blinked into the dark. ‘Val?’

He had disappeared entirely. Lei stumbled over to where he had been standing a moment ago. ‘Val? Are you seriously that hung up over what I said about those friends of yours?’

She looked into the kitchen.

‘I was kidding, okay? I’m not doubting they exist anymore…’

She took a look around the living room.

‘I’m sure they’re decent people.’

The dining room, or cardboard box storage room, did not reveal anything.

‘Fine, fine. You can call them over or something. And I can show them this.’ She pushed the package with one hand under the light for Val to see, wherever he was lurking. ‘They understand you, you said. And if they approve of you, as you called it, they’ll like this.’

Nothing. She could even hear the buzzing of the lamp from the back room. The thought of it flickering over the wave of mosquitoes was vaguely distracting her from the task at hand. She wanted to go turn it off now, but Val didn’t need another room to roam around in. Then she wondered, what if he was in there? No, he’d have to have been absolutely silent, and incredibly fast to get into the back unnoticed in the few seconds she was in the kitchen or living room. And he’d been holding something obviously heavy or large that scraped the ground if he swaggered around without care.

She looked into the back room through the glass paneled door. Yeah, the light bulb was still going crazy out there. It would probably be going out soon. She sighed. The light fizzled on and off, the empty room flashing like someone were photographing it rapidly though there was nothing to see. The only constant light was coming from the candle, and its reflection in the glass. Above it, there was her face. And above that, with the next flicker of light…

The shape of a person in the dark behind her.

With the next flash, the shape had doubled in size. Streaming up from the shape to the ceiling was a huge, heavy, jagged shadow.

A horrible sound, somewhere between a scream and a truck starting and metal being pulled across concrete flew from the grates and openings of the jagged shadow.

Lei made about half a whimper and huff of exasperation and dove between two boxes to the left. The floor she had just left was now open for an assault with a tool nobody in the town had ever had a real use for. A massive, grinding, howling chainsaw.

Well, maybe to say “nobody” is inaccurate. One person found a use for it. To be more precise, one person at any one time. That person was always the Weeping Blade.

The mosquitoes swayed close to the house.

The floorboards leapt alive and flew to shreds on contact with the ferocious metal teeth. And the concrete below, until the dent grew deep enough to catch the beast and throw off sparks instead. Then it stopped and slowly lifted from the ground. The candle had gone out as Lei disappeared behind the boxes but the blade was still content with letting itself be known. It continued growling and filled the enclosed air with a putrid gas while waiting for the next swing.

The mosquitoes scattered as the bulb in the back burst, leaving nothing but the candle and its partner in the glass reflection.

—

Normally, if somebody brings a large gas powered cutting machine into a fight, you can be sure that fight isn’t going to last much longer. However, the powers that be had decided that the appearance of the chainsaw would be the start of the plan as opposed to the end. The plan would last as long as it took for the chainsaw and its holder to run out of gas. The amount of noise was unimportant. The amount of time was also unimportant. This was under the unfortunate assumption that such an outdate model of saw could not keep going for hours on end.

As with other events in which everybody is only there to see the ending, there wasn’t much record of the process it took to get there. It didn’t help that only two participants were really close enough to see the action at all. Even they did not quite trust what they remembered. They had good reason not to.

The first thing that Lei remembered telling Val for sure was that he was surrounded and if he wanted to avoid possible harm he should drop the weapon and turn himself in now. Val did not have a polite response to that so Lei amended her offer to not harming his friends and family either. The impolite response seemed a little more genuine and warranted the second time.

Val seemed to make a lot of noise and cause a lot of damage all to the outsiders. Sometimes the frame of the house would shake throughout the night but no windows burst and no walls were perforated as far as the eyes outside could see. An inspection by the watchers (long after he had finished his work, of course) would reveal that he only caused damage to the walls inside the building. Lei suspected Val had given the explanation that he didn’t want to ruin the insulation, although that might have been something she recalled him saying at some earlier point in time. The night had been very cold, though.

It wasn’t the last strange thing she remembered him saying, although she was remembered saying some offbeat things herself. Early in the confrontation, she asked Val why he was late and he said he had actually gotten there early.

When corrected to question why he was late in coming to town, he was confused.

Although he had only started appearing late autumn, he said he had been in town for at least a month prior to that, in hospital. There was not a single leaf of paper that confirmed this but nobody checked until day had well set in. Val said he had been injured in a terrorist attack in the big city but had rushed back to his hometown when called.

When Lei asked what he had heard that called him, he asked her, shouldn’t she know?

There had been a series of bombings in the city not long ago.

But not everything Val said was remotely believable. When he laid the saw into the pile of boxes, the spilling contents reminded him that he had to ask where the bodies were. Lei did not have an answer, at least not one for him. That was when he started going to work at the walls, and in them he seemed to be looking for what he wanted. Lei’s temper rose at that, and Val admitted he might have been looking in the wrong place but it seemed such a likely place to hide bodies. He had seen it done before.

The last time he had seen it had been in an old abandoned building with the roof caved in and the pillars fallen, and to comfort Lei a little he assured her that he had not been the one behind those damages. He punctuated this assurance by showing Lei that the chainsaw with all its might could not quite rip through the solid concrete flooring, and the entire old cathedral had been made of that, or stone, or something else that just sent sparks and screeching flying through the air. It had also been way too tall and smooth-walled for him to navigate his way to the top and cut out the roof in the way that had been done, sending the cracked murals and rusty window frames careening into the soft lavender petals below. Then he changed his story to say he had not even set foot into the place before it was already ruined.

So if he had been unable to cut into it, how did he know what was in the walls, not just the bodies in the framework but the treasure in the bodies and the condition of this treasure?

Anytime such an obstruction to his narrative came up, Val plowed through something else in the house, as though that gave his irrevocably broken logic any more leeway.

Speaking of broken logic, when faced with a hint rather than a definite statement that he was wrong, Val was much quieter and began to consider that maybe he had absorbed some substances that he shouldn’t have over the years, but whether that was eating garbage or cadavers or smoking his lungs with something similarly disgusting or normal (who could say) Lei couldn’t be prepared to guess, although she supposed the medical examiners could take a look at him later. At some faint backwater parts of her brain she feared that if the body was brought in somewhere with people in light it would spring right back up again and there he would be in the light of day to cut them apart and win rather than be safely blocked from mind’s eye by the night. For some reason the idea of Val as a body to her looked no different to Val alive and slightly less dirty looking after a hose down, he might even be clean like he did the day the supposed roommate arrived.

Yeah, he seemed like he would be wearing something even laid on a slab, there wasn’t much to see under the shitty shirts and odd white jacket, maybe there was nothing at all or maybe there was a mass of black screeching bugs that everyone was always talking about or maybe it was the chainsaw itself because where could he have been keeping it before it appeared? The Weeping Blade was known for being able to whip the thing out like a penny as a party trick right before the party went south and the sound and feel of this one certainly looked like the one in the records, except for the chain itself but that had to be replaced once in a while anyhow. This was when Lei thought that maybe he was carrying the stuff on him, and maybe that stuff was just chainsaw exhaust because she couldn’t think totally straight either and the place did smell conspicuously of burning, more so than it did later when it had better reason.

There was a string of major demolitions that occurred when Val was asked about what had happened some twenty-odd years ago which would have been the time he acquired his title. The rage she got for this was overwhelming. The resulting noise was so deafening and uninterrupted that nobody really heard what response he had to give, it was also the first time any outside felt vaguely inclined to kick down the door and see if everything was alright, but also too terrifying for anybody to get close willingly. There had been enough light from the sparks given out by the chain to tell he had said something. The sparks were red and white and Lei was not entirely certain if Val knew what he was cutting into, but the lights, upstairs or downstairs, weren’t coming on anytime soon.

No light other than the bloom of red that sprang from the cut to the chain to Val’s arms and upper body. It rolled up in fragments and waves, like it was fall again. The saw was also red, bright red, and it was not just because of the reflection, it was painted that way. It was bright enough to see now that there was no blood involved either. Not yet, and not for a bit longer. There was time to light another candle and peel the melted wax from the old one off and throw it onto the wood and metal and soft organic slush that had issued from the boxes now.

At this point the room was in such a state that one couldn’t be sure where the door was in case one wanted to make an exit, and the windows were foreground by piles of mush that made an alternative exit very unpalatable. Just getting to the sides of the house from the inside or outside or top or bottom felt like taxing exercise when lightheaded with the flu – press forward and the world slipped sideways or maybe your body or just your head was doing the slipping. And there was the 90 degree tilt and fall like a dream world going sideways until your head hit the pavement and eyes hit the back of your head and then you were really in the dream world and left wondering What the hell was that, then?

—

It was bright enough to see, although there was no way it was the AM yet, let alone time for a sunrise. The walls were far too white for the light to be anything natural; it was more like a fluorescent light bulb. The rays shot through cracked red rock of some kind, casting scattered red polygons on the walls.

Lei wiped her eyes and leant off the floor. She had not realized she was on the floor. In fact, everything about her stance said that she was still standing but she was leaning against something that encouraged pushing off. She put out the futilely burning third candle with her fingers and tossed it away. It pressed into the whiteness, went gray and was eventually consumed.

Puzzled, Lei stared into the blank light until she heard a creak nearby. She whirled and went flying into a black body of sludge and out the other side. The next blink revealed she was standing next to the body, and the body was just Val wincing like he had been kicked in the face. The lighting was flattering for him, his clothes looked pressed and bleached, and his face was clear. Only his eyes were slightly swollen, like he had stayed up too late, or rubbed them with unclean hands.

‘Are we still surrounded?’ he asked.

Lei was not totally sure they were even in the same place, but responded, ‘It’s not ‘we,’ it’s just you that is surrounded.’

‘Are you sure it’s still true?’

‘How are you sure it’s not?’

‘Why did you want me here?’ Val still held the saw at his side like it was a pet. Although Lei knew his care of pets was not exactly consistent. She could see now in the light though, the sheer red coat on its cover, and the tiny slits which issued heat and that rancid smoke, and the sanded and re-sanded metal bar which had the etching (without its original paint) S-92.

‘Funny of you to ask this now. Why not six months ago, when you were called and supposedly heard the call and arrived?’

‘I told you I was in hospital.’

‘Then there would have been no need for a fight.’

‘We haven’t been… fighting,’ he said painfully.

‘You’re the one with the weapon,’ she scowled. She would have liked to believe that was what made him continue holding it down. ‘You’re late and you’re overreacting. Is that any way to treat your family after twenty years?’

‘Twenty five?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘You seem to know a lot about what is happening, even though there’s no way you were born until years after I left this place. Although maybe since you’re a Cake Killer, someone told you?’

‘A Cake Killer? Is that another question?’

‘There’s more than one.’

‘More than one killer, or more than one parts to a killer, I guess that is true enough. So how long have you thought that?’

‘Since the beginning. How else would you have pulled off all those absurd replacements if everybody wasn’t in on it?’ He stopped for consideration. ‘Maybe that’s a little strong. I don’t know if everybody was in on it. Some weren’t. That’s a mistake Ravel is going to have to deal with. Do you mind that?’

‘I don’t know if minding is going to stop him from getting pummeled, or whatever you planned to have happen to him.’

‘If it’s any consolation, he probably won’t die.’

‘Okay.’

‘I couldn’t handle him the same way as the rest, you know, just sending them away. I didn’t have anyone in the police with the power to do that. Just had Ravel.’

‘Useless.’

Val smiled. ‘If he had been a little faster on the uptake, maybe I could have helped him out a little. It would have been nice to have him on my side. I haven’t worked alone in a long time. Even then, it was just a matter of getting Uriel into a traffic accident, and that was easy.’

The red shapes were making slow progress over their faces. Lei stepped out from under them but Val stayed as they cut over and by his skin.

‘You don’t like being alone?’

‘Yeah.’ Val stared into the sky. ‘But I had to send them away. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t one of you – working against me. They act like they have a lot of reason to. All of them. I don’t understand why.’

‘You let one stay.’

‘Patches? Yes…’ He brightened a little. ‘He’s from here too, you know. Lived right near the house where I lived, although it wasn’t my house anymore by the time he moved in. Of course.’

‘He told us something along those lines. And you trust him enough to let him stay while the others – who never lived here – were more at risk of betraying you?’

‘I thought about that. Although, I didn’t tell him. But I couldn’t make him leave.’ He scraped a tight ring into the white floor with the blade. ‘That’s fine. If I have to, I can get rid of him easily enough.’

‘You hope it won’t come to that.’

‘Of course not. I wouldn’t want to have to get rid of you either.’

‘That’s touching. What is your body count, anyway?’

This was funny enough for both of them to chuckle a little.

‘I like that. It’s such an irrelevant question. I’ve kept track of… five or six. Or ten. Take away the ones I had the others carry out, and I don’t even know. How many cakes have you put down?’

‘Myself, or the Cake Killer as a whole? I think you know the number better than I do. I do know that it’s been more since you arrived on the scene.’

‘Then maybe you have a better idea of my number! If you hadn’t been so hard to track down, the number probably wouldn’t be so high either. Oh… that didn’t come out right. Plural “you” being hard to find. Or the bodies, that’s it. Not that you will become one of the bodies.’

Choosing wisely to disregard that as possible smack talk, Lei continued levelly. ‘And if you hadn’t brought the trail of bodies out of town, we would have avoided this whole confrontation altogether.’

‘Is that what this was about?’

‘Can you explain why you did the things you did out there as opposed to in here?’ She swung out an arm and it hit something. She frowned. ‘Were you looking for something?’

Val sighed. ‘Aren’t you kids supposed to be the ones who know the feeling? Do you have to head towards something, can’t you just leave? Living things move away from the competition, their old folks. We’re not acorns or abortions, we could always leave. It always looked better to leave. There’s nothing out there… threatening what you have here.’

‘Then why did you kill people?’

‘It didn’t seem like a lot.’ Val took a few moments of disengagement to come up with a better answer. ‘They were weak.’ One more time. ‘I didn’t go there to kill people. A lot of those were accidents.’

‘Huh. Then answer this, why did you come back?’

He did not seem as eager to answer this question, even with a lousy answer. He looked at the void underneath him and shifted the saw behind him. A pendulum generation of grating noises. The red lights fluttered wildly like nervous butterflies.

‘I can’t speak for the Cake Killer’s intention as a whole, but I know you well enough. You took a challenge that the Cake Killer proposed to you. It looks like it is a challenge, not to immediately mow down whatever bothers you.’

Still not speaking, he wound back a little with a terrible, echoing scrape.

‘There’s gotta be a reason why you haven’t just killed me yet, especially if you knew, and if you’re as cautious as you say you are. It’s not about the bodies, is it?’

The colorless gap between them was closing. Backing up a little, Lei felt her back hit a solid yet invisible shape but continued on.

‘You’re obviously here hoping for something else.’

The scraping continued, it rose from the radiant ground like lightning and stayed suspended, building up and generally giving Lei a good headache. Val was dragging himself around like a child.

‘We just want to know what you are wanting so-‘

Uninterested in what the Cake Killer wanted, Val said something that sounded a lot like ‘eating.’

The rumbling still thick in the air, Lei had to raise her voice. ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know why the Cake Killer wants me to stay. But I’ll talk to you as if you were my assistant here too. If you want to know what I want, I think we can reach a truce.’ He paused, letting the rumbling intensify. ‘Well, no, it won’t just be putting the fight off; it will be a permanent agreement.’

‘Okay, your assistant is listening. Over all the crap in the air. What is that–?’

Blissfully deaf to the noise but somehow still projecting loudly enough, he said, ‘No more killings in the city. That seems to be one of the big draws. And I’ll give up on the bodies, and the Cake Killer. No more chases. No more bodies here to try to lure him or her out. Actually, there will be a stop in bodies altogether. I can handle that. No more killing. The Weeping Blade will be done. But the Cake Killer, with all his or her power…’ he stopped and waited for a particularly loud mechanical choking in the thunder to pass. ‘… They have to forget that I existed here.’

‘Here, like today?’

‘Like ever.’

‘You can’t just tell someone to do that. Not even someone, some people.’

‘Don’t roll your eyes. I can help it along.’

Lei slumped against the soft wall behind her. ‘I’m not rolling my eyes.’

‘Yes, you are. I just saw you! Like this.’ Val rolled his eyes back, so far back that the pupils were in the back of his head and all that was there were the whites. That combined with the rumbling, Lei felt the old urge to slap him returning.

‘You know, I wish I could forget you existed but it’s not going to happen.’

‘I knew you would be eager to try it out. That’s why I thought it would be best to start with you.’

Lei stared. His eyes had still not returned to their correct orientation, but that was the least of her concerns. ‘The saw?’

‘It’s out of gas. Like you planned, right?’

‘Then what’s that noise?’

Val took a step forward and the sound that was undoubtedly the saw ripped the room in half, tearing a gash through the whiteness covering her vision. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

The little red pieces of light had disappeared, swallowed back into the familiar darkness. The black hole’s edges chipped and tattered and slowly drew vein-like lines up and down the walls.

‘Why are you raising the saw then?’

‘It’s still a saw.’

‘I can still fight that.’

‘Can you? You did always look like you wanted to try.’SCrrrraaape. ‘With that kind of spirit, you shouldn’t even be in this town. You should have left, like me.’

‘Are you offering?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s fine. I’m not like you.’

‘But it’s a shame… you’re still young…’

Lei looked left and right in a hurry and realized she was backed against a stack of cardboard boxes. ‘Young? How old were you when you left?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it important for someone to know?’

The blade was undoubtedly causing the rumbling. She saw the chain shuddering furiously, the vents coughing up a deadly amount of noxious gas. Her eyes watered. Lei clapped one hand over her mouth and the other on the boxes behind her. And that was when her hand landed in the strange patch. It was wetter than usual, but still drier than it should have been. It was on a larger patch against a texture and color surfacing from the light that hid it well, but unless somebody got quite close and noticed the other distinguishing characteristics of the patch on the patch.

‘Are you like thirty now?’

‘Around that,’ he seemed to be slurring through the mist now.

Lei’s jaw felt like it may be seizing up pretty soon. For the first time that she could remember, he voice was shaking of its own volition. ‘Even if you don’t know the day or year, you know your birthday is sometime in the summer.’

The dream world white had dispersed like any good dream, and the dark had returned like any reality, awful and nonsensical or real or what have you.

‘And you came late, just admit it.’ Three candles on the floor, twenty plus in the bag, and the damp patch on it… ‘And you saw a challenge. But the Cake Killer called to you in July. And it was nothing as dangerous as you suspected.’

There wasn’t much point in talking because the chain was already in motion, and the motion was kicking up a horrendous noise. Val’s face was entirely hidden behind the blade, and the little blinking eyes in the dark behemoth were not yellow or gray but white as his dream had been and still looked. Lei took a deep, rancid breath and finally withdrew her hand from the clotted package and grasped the crushed brown paper bag on the brown cardboard box behind her.

‘Fine, here’s your truce.’

She pulled it forward and grasped it in all its six month old rot against her chest. She prepared for the last replacement she would have to make on behalf of the Cake Killer. A long vacation away from town looked like a better idea now than it ever had.

It wasn’t the time to be looking anywhere but ahead.

The final brutal cry and the silence that followed told the outsiders still standing that the competition had been slaughtered. It was over.

—

—

—

The police station had a good time that New Year’s Eve. When everyone’s wounds were checked and the damages were safely out of sight for the time being, everyone looked upon the night’s events as a nice teambuilding exercise. Rigel cracked open one of the ornamental bottles of wine that had been sitting in the office for a few years and let everyone hang loose, police and patrol hand in hand singing songs and getting along fine. Ravel hung around in the corners like someone’s younger brother at a party, had viewed the offer of alcohol with horror and gone home more graciously than the later partiers. A few remained dutifully for their shifts the next day and fell asleep at their desks or wheels.

Patches had been left tied up like a Christmas present inside one of the holding rooms.  He had been allowed a restroom visit (where someone plastered some new gauze to his face with tape) and a taste of the old Christmas cookies by some of the more friendly officers during the party. The room he was in seemed a bit discourteous considering the occasion but they were all in agreement the occasion would be at risk if he were put in behind a weaker door. Although they tried to invite him to join the festivities, he seemed just as sulky as Ravel, so they decided to let him sleep.

He had his head down on the cushioned bench when the door clicked. Still a feeling like a sack of lead weights, he just barely cracked his eye open to take a look. It was hard to determine the time from the intense lighting in the cell. And blocking even the light was Val’s face, hanging sideways, scrutinizing him like a zoo animal.

‘Are you awake?’ Val asked cautiously.

Groaning, Patches attempted to swing himself upright but quickly gave up. The stitches in his side still stung from the night before. Having not been allowed to tend to himself with his own hands, he looked a lot like trash.

‘You look like an angel,’ Val said, beaming.

Patches glared at Val with his one baleful eye. Val was wearing an officer’s hat and jacket over his own filthy graying shirt and Patches worried briefly about the safety of the officers who had once owned those articles of clothing.

The next thing to note was what Val had brought with him. In one hand he held a leash. In the other, an oversized butcher’s knife. Before any signs of panic began to surface, he shoved Patches’ shoulder back to get a better look at the rope around his hands. ‘I’m glad they didn’t go with chains and million handcuffs. I wouldn’t know how to deal with those.’ He flipped the knife around and got to work.

Patches spent the next few moments trying to avoiding jabs to the torso while still allowing Val to cut the bindings. His head still felt like a wet towel, and the noise of the blade grating through rope didn’t help.

‘Where’s Ravel?’ Val asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Patches croaked. ‘Off crying about his missed dinner date.’

Val finished with the ropes and dumped them on the floor. ‘Ah, so he’s still alive.’

‘Yeah. But there’s no way he’s staying around here much longer. I don’t think he can handle another night like that.’

‘Where’s he going?’

‘I don’t know. Back where he came from.’

Val checked the hallway. Of course, there was nobody around. ‘Well, if he’s heading back to the city then maybe there’s hope for his dinner date after all.’

Patches finally rose sorely from the bench. His surprise shielded him from the pain in his side temporarily. ‘So she’s not dead either?’

‘More like, she got away.’ Val shrugged lightly, as though the whole night, or week or even month, did not mean anything to him. ‘But with the Cake Killer, you never know. I don’t even know what happened. Maybe she did die. But… things are looking pretty good for her.’ His face lit up. ‘And for us! We’ll be leaving today too. I got a car ready.’

Patches yawned and gave an equally nonchalant shrug in response. But Val seemed in suspiciously good spirits after letting a particularly hefty prey go.

‘Are you okay?’ Val asked, wiping the enormous blade off on his shirt. As he flung his sleeve down, Patches noted that he smelled like a mix of rotting cream and sugar. Upon closer inspection, there was quite a bit of what looked like dull, ash-colored fungus around his face.

More than ever, he was ready to move on.

‘I’m good and ready. We can head out. I’ll drive.’

Val smiled and stowed the knife somewhere precarious in his jacket. ‘Another request, can we hit the first rest stop we see?’

Patches gave him a half amused, half disgusted glance. ‘Why, are you hungry?’

Val licked the dirt from his face. ‘I’m starving. Come on.’ He twirled the leash around his hand, whipping it by his friend’s face. When Patches opened his eyes again, Val had already left.

—

The moon, finally exhausted, slowly sank behind the hills.

As soon as the sky gained its early morning glow, the Cake Killer moved in. Black hoods took shape as the grass and mud regained their colors and began a funeral march around the house, circling in.

Thirty eyes began to look. They looked among the mess of cardboard and cotton and found nothing indicating violence against a human body, which was a good sign. There was also no body, which was a bad sign. There was only supposed to be one Killer who did not kill and I think you know well enough who that was and how they treated competition.

Several dozens of hands pawed through the wreckage for sign of their fallen compatriot. There were bits of concrete and wood from the walls, and some metal bits from table legs and even what looked like burnt unidentifiable trash. Once they burrowed deep enough, some of the Cake Killers found wax candle stubs underneath the disrupted floorboards, rolled down into the gashes cut into the concrete. There was also a half-shredded photograph that looked like a black and white image of the house’s exterior. But there was nothing to be found resembling a person.

There was no clothing, no hair or eyes or hands and feet. There was no blood. It was all very strange.

Strangest among the oddities of hell was the thing that was left at the top of the pile. At first it was thrown to the side in the rush to uncover the body that might be lying underneath, but later the Cake Killer wondered if it had been set there on purpose and not the remains of a failed plan. On the contrary, it meant that someone’s plan had gone exactly as they wished.

The brown paper bag on top of the pile of rubble, of broken walls and glass and dirt, was torn and exposing its fragile contents. The contents were known to all of the Killers, but it was not where it should have been. Instead of a body, in the cool winter sunrise, there was the cake. It was a six month old monstrosity. Its cottony innards were dark with age and mold. The icing, long since reduced to flakes in some places and melting mush in others, was dashed with black sludge at one end and what looked like red glass at the other. Nobody at the scene was willing to sample the grotesque piece of work, but it did look like someone, obviously a very sick person, had taken a substantial bite out of the side.

The Cake Killer only hoped he had enjoyed it.

 

THE END.