Before this one there had been four others. This was going to be the 5th and final one. Then he would stop. He had to stop - something deep inside him knew that it was wrong. This part of him was maybe only 1%. The other 99% of him didn’t care about right or wrong, the 99% wanted satisfaction. But the 1% that was telling him to stop was always on his mind. Always talking to him, always telling him to get help. When he was doing it there was no 1% or 99%. It was 100%. But after - the 1% came back and talked to him. But there was no help to be had. He couldn’t say to a doctor or the police that he liked to torture and kill prostitutes, and that he needed help. The help they would give him would be a lethal injection.

He always worked in the same way. He would buy a used phone from the Chinese market, and a prepaid sim card from a kiosk. He would message the prostitutes and arrange a meeting. Sometimes he would meet them and it wouldn’t seem right. Something about them just didn’t excite him. He wouldn’t be able to get it up, and he would leave.

He didn’t know what he was looking for until he found it. With the last one it was her neck. He just looked at it and knew that she was the right one. The texture of her skin, on her neck. It was perfect.

He had met her at her apartment. She was in her thirties and blonde - just like his mother. It was a grimy apartment. She was using drugs. He said, ‘why don’t we go to mine? It's nicer,’ and she said, ‘sure’.

She had turned and he saw her neck. And then he knew she was perfect.

She climbed into his car, and he opened the glove box and handed her a half bottle of vodka. She took a swig, and then drank some more. The vodka was spiked, and she became dizzy and drowsy. She passed out as he was driving, and he leaned over and reclined her seat a little so she didn’t flop forward. He pulled over at the side of the road and found her phone. He pulled the sim card out and destroyed it, and then did the same to his phone. He then went to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He took out a brown burlap sack that he placed the two phones in, and then he smashed them up with a hammer.

He admired her neck as he drove.

He drove for miles to the farmhouse in the country. The farmhouse had belonged to his grandmother - and was now his. It was deserted and isolated. He parked the car and then carried the girl to the barn. In the barn was a cage, and inside the cage was a chair with shackles. He laid the girl down on the floor of the cage, and undressed her. He then lifted her into the chair and secured her arms, feet, and throat with the restraints before placing a ball gag in her mouth. He collected her clothes, bag, and shoes and burned them. And then he locked the cage. He went to the farm house and got his things ready, and watched some pornographic films.

About four hours later he walked back to the barn. He was naked and carrying a bag.

The girl was awake. It was dark in the barn, but he could hear her groaning and fighting and struggling. He turned the lights on. He walked up to the cage.

‘Hello mommy’ - he said.

The woman looked at him, terrified.

‘You’re probably wondering what is going on’ - he said solemnly.

The girl had stopped struggling. She was staring at him with tears running down her cheeks from her red eyes.

‘I want to have some fun with you’ - he said.

He unlocked the cage and stepped in. He put the bag down and pulled out a cattle prod.

‘I have modified this - it doesn’t produce as much power, but it is ideal for what I need.’

The man began to masturbate until his penis was erect.

‘Okay - now open your hand and hold it’ - he ordered her.

The terrified woman began struggling again.

‘Hold it or you get the prod.’

The man held the cattle prod centimeters from the girl's naked chest.

‘DO IT!’ - He screamed

The girl took hold of his erect penis with tears rolling down her face, and then he jabbed the cattle prod into her chest. The girl spasmed, and her grip tightened around his penis.

‘Oh yes’ - he gasped.

He held the cattle prod against the girl's chest, as he pumped his penis in her clenched hand. This continued for another hour.

The girl's chest was covered with red welts and burns. She was crying.

‘One more good one’ - he said, jabbing the girl’s chest again.

Her hand tightened around his penis and he pumped his body until he ejaculated.

He stepped out of the cage with the bag and the cattle prod and then locked it.

He turned the barn lights off and went back to the farmhouse.

####

The following day The man went back to the barn, wearing clothes this time. He was dressed in a long leather butcher’s apron, and was carrying the bag. The girl was still in the cage. He unlocked the cage and she stirred.

‘Ready for more?’ - He said with a faint smile.

The woman began fighting and struggling. He stepped into the cage. He pulled a syringe from the bag, and injected the woman in the neck. She continued fighting, but slowed down and then passed out. The man removed the ball gag from her throat, and then opened her mouth and examined her teeth. He then took a dentist’s clamp out of the bag, and inserted it into the woman's mouth. He then took a pair of pliers from the bag and began extracting the woman's teeth. Many of the teeth were rotten, and came out easily. It took about 40 minutes to extract all of the teeth. The woman's face and body were covered in blood and saliva.

The man removed the dentist’s clamp from the woman’s mouth, and then replaced the ball gag. He picked up the bag and left the cage, locking it behind him. He went back to the farmhouse, leaving the woman unconscious and bloodied, her teeth scattered on the barn floor around her.

The man returned to the barn two hours later, naked again. The woman was still drugged, and was groggy. He unlocked the cage and climbed up onto the chair. He unclipped the ball gag and the torture and the assault continued. He screamed and yelled and howled like a wild angry animal.

The next day he repeated the torture and assault of the woman. She was now in a bad way. At this point she was hardly resisting. He knew their time together was drawing to an end. He pulled out a large tarpaulin on the floor of the barn and then strangled the woman. He unclipped the restraints, and dragged her body over to the tarpaulin. He had sex with her still warm corpse twice, and then cut off her head, arms, and legs. He went back to the farmhouse and washed the blood off of himself, and put on some clothes.

The man wrapped the body pieces up in the tarpaulin and then lifted them into the back of his car. He drove about a half mile from the farmhouse along a dirt track to a spot where he had prepared the burial site. Using the farm’s auger he had cut a narrow 8 foot-deep hole in the ground, just inside the tree line of the forest.

He lifted the body of the woman out of the car, and over to the hole. He unwrapped the tarpaulin and dropped the body pieces into the hole. He then covered the corpse with broken bricks and concrete slabs, to stop the hole collapsing. Finally he filled the hole in. He raked the surface of the forest, and covered any signs of disturbance.

He drove back to the barn, cleaning up as well as he could. The woman's teeth he scattered in the forest behind the barn, and he scrubbed the floor with soapy water. He burned the tarpaulin immediately after.

He went back to the farmhouse and watched pornographic films and masturbated.

The next day he drove back into the city. That was the fifth woman he had taken to the farmhouse. There were five bodies now buried in the woods, and about 150 human teeth in the forest behind the barn.

He sat in his apartment and the 1% told him that enough was enough.

‘You are going to have to answer for everything sooner or later’ - said the voice - ‘Your only chance is to stop now, and get help.’

He had ignored the 1%. The 99% of him re-lived his time at the farmhouse. The horror of it. The perversity of it. The eroticism of it. He re-lived that moment time and time again - thinking about the next one. What he would do differently, what he enjoyed. He masturbated furiously and constantly thought about the farmhouse.

No one seemed to care about these girls, these prostitutes. No one asked any questions. He looked in the local newspapers, looking for stories about a missing woman. There was nothing. He drove past her apartment building, and there were no police.

The 1% was wrong. The 1% could go fuck himself. He could do whatever he wanted. And then there was a knock at the door.

‘Yes’ - the man replied through the door.

‘Police. We just need to ask you a few questions.’

‘What about?’ - the man said nervously.

‘Can you open up? It’ll make things easier.’

He opened the door.

‘Hello sir, I’m detective Hamm, and this is my partner detective Cooper.’

‘How can I help you, detectives?’ - The man replied.

‘Do you mind if we step in for a moment?’

‘I was just heading out to work - is this going to be quick?’

‘Two minutes.’

The man opened the door wider, and the detectives stepped in.

They were in the kitchen.

‘You live alone?’

‘Yes’ - said the man.

‘So we’re following up on a missing person’s case.’

‘Okay’ - said the man

‘Do you know a Cindy McDonald?’ - Detective Hamm asked, handing him a photo of the woman he had just killed.

‘No’ - he said, swallowing a lump as he looked at the photo.

‘About 34. Blonde?’

‘I don’t know her.’

‘Do you drive a red Ford?’

The other detective peered down the corridor towards the bedroom.

‘Yes.’

‘Where were you on Friday, two weeks ago?’

‘Erm…’

‘About 6PM?’

‘I was at my grandmother’s old farmhouse - doing some renovations’ - the man replied with haste.

‘Farmhouse?’

‘Yeah, I’m trying to sell it but the roof and the kitchen need a whole lot of work’

‘Were you alone?’

‘Yep - I head up there after work on a Friday. Just trying to save some money and get the place ready to sell. I do a bit every weekend.’

‘Okay, thank you very much for your time.’

‘Is this woman in some kind of trouble?’ The man asked.

‘Nope. Just a junkie hooker who disappeared. We’re just following up on a few leads. She probably owed her drug dealer money and split town.’

‘Well good luck,’ the man said with a wave of his hand.

‘Thank you sir.’

He opened the door for the detectives as they left. The man sat at the kitchen table and smoked a cigarette.

The 1% had become the 99%.

He drove up to the farmhouse and dismantled the cage and the chair. He burnt the chair, and cut the cage up and took it to the scrap metal yard, dumping it in a pile of metal to be recycled.

He ripped up the flooring of the barn, and burnt the boards. The dirt under the boards was stained with black dried blood. He shoveled out the dirt, and dumped it along the dirt track about two miles from the farmhouse. He paid a local construction company to pour a concrete floor in the barn. He raked the forest floor behind the barn, and collected 148 human teeth. He drove down to the river, and threw the teeth off of the bridge.

He read a book about psychosis and its treatments. He then went to see a psychiatrist. He lied to them and said that he was going through a crisis, describing symptoms from the book he had read. They diagnosed him as having bipolar disorder, and prescribed the behavior modifying drugs to make him feel more normal.

That was four years ago.