Ezra Lynn: A Short Story

His breath was cold and shallow, a soft smoke escaping his mouth every time he managed to take a full lungful of air. The man stared downward at his dark, brown shaded hand, trembling softly. He caught ahold of himself, and focussed back at the window, slightly covered in a layer of frost. The drapes, normally a vibrant burgundy tone, were pulled away, allowing him to catch sight of the woman he was after. Ezra Lynn. So many times he had watcher the woman walk in and out of the old, redwood door, but never once did he make the move that he had been yearning for. Months have passed since he started stalking the girl, this young woman, deprived of hope or care. Yet, there she was, still sitting in her home, alone, mocking him. Mocking him with
every breath she was able to take. Mocking him, his earlier attempts to drive her to madness failing. Mocking him. So why had he not just ended her life? Consistently mocking him, driving him even further into the desperate form of madness that he was entranced in. His mind flooded with possibilities, until he found one that he could settle on, one that he agreed with. It was like killing a rat. Sure, you could trap the menace and choose to end it quickly for them, but where is the fun in that? No, he wanted her to suffer. He convinced himself that there would be nothing more rewarding than scaring her senseless, then having the ability to watch every last drop of blood spill from her delicate, blue veins.

Days go by at a blink of an eye, stalking her, no matter where she was or what she was doing.
He was committed to learning everything about her. The things she loves, the things she fears, everything that causes pain in her life. He has been following her for months, going on three years. They have met, on many occasions, face to face, under very different circumstances. Yes, she knew what he looked like. Ezra knew him by name and could identify them from a mile away. She was never afraid, never terrified, at least, not as much as he had hoped she would have been. He followed her to and from college, to the cafe when she was with friends, anywhere she decided to go, he was always two steps behind her. In the end, though, it was no use. He had done the worst things imaginable to the brown-headed woman. He could see the images of her blood, her screams, all of the pain he had caused her, skipping through his head like a slideshow. He grinned at the thoughts of her pain, he always found himself overjoyed when he was able to remember all of the time that he had hurt her. It was a game to him, one he knew well, one he loved. His happiness, however, faded away as a long-passed memory entered his mind. One that haunted him, like a never ending cloud of black that only goes away when she either admits defeat, or gives up, and sees that he is the fabric of human horror from a blanket of logical fear. She spoke five words, five simple words that had cut him from the inside out,
leaving him a mess, overwhelming pain that he could not explain. Five words that he had never heard spoken to him, and five words that he hopes he never hears again.

It was Halloween. October, 31st 2013. The then 16 year old Ezra sat, tied to an old, slightly molded wooden chair in the basement of a place unknown to her. Her eyes, which were a bright shade of blue, were red from crying, bloodshot from the stress that they were put through. Throat sore from screaming slurs to him as he let out his rage on the innocence of the young woman's parents. A memory that would have put him on Cloud 9, if it wasn’t for her impractical stubbornness. He knew that she was strong, and that she was different, it just never hit him that she was such an impossible target. Placed in front of her, tied to a chair just as she was, mirroring her, but doubled, were her parents. Knocked out, so the young woman's screams are drowned out by those of her parents, they sit with their heads hung, bodies still and lifeless, even though they were still alive, at least for the moment. The boy had thrown many threats at her. “Shut your eyes, and you die. Scream and I’ll rip your vocal cords out.” Empty threats that she was able to sense. Ezra, at this point, had no way of telling the man's true intentions, she only knew that he was going to hurt her parents, and perhaps worse, her. She watched as the man, now masked in an eerie, slightly torn mask made of black leather and tweed. The killer, who she at this point did not know, kept the unseeable grin on his face as he admired the soft glimmer of tears that ran down her face. “How do you like the show?” He asked her, spreading his arms, presenting a knife in the closed palm of his right hand. The blade glimmered, she was able to recall to this day, and seems beautiful, with a sort of elegant carving into the thicker park, near the polished wood handle. For a moment, there was a sort of ironic beauty that offset the despair that she was feeling a moment earlier. Still, she cried, and cried violently at that. The boy used that to fuel his passion and, moving behind the mother, drove the blade deep into the elder womans throat. Blood spurt immediately, creating a terrible sound as the blade drove through the rest of the muscle and tissue. Ezra, unable to look away from the spectacle, even if she wanted to, found herself forced to keep staring. Not because the man told him to, but because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the near corpse of her mother. With a large, dainty step, the man moved from the chair that held her mother, to the chair that held her father. He presented the blade again, covered in a film of red ooze, causing the knife to release its purity and now shimmer a red color. Her eyes were directed at the blade once again, her somehow still seeing the beauty in it, and being nearly overwhelmed by it in its present state. Her sobbing came to a halt, and a chilling, uneasy calm came about her. The man did not notice this at first, especially not as he drove the knife into the side of what would no longer be her father, and lead the knife to the other side, completely opening his stomach, blood and strange liquids falling effortlessly to the floor. She sat still, no noise coming from her form. She was still staring at the knife, obsessed with the knife, she didn’t even really notice the incision that it made, but admired it’s beauty as it made it. Admired the stroke, the shimmer, the shape. Nothing particular, but something that filled her with a sense of awe. The man, finishing his show, wiping the knife off with a delicate red cloth, looks up to her, grinning under the mask. He notices, finally, that she has lost any expression. He noticed that the crying, the screaming, the pain that she had felt had disappeared entirely. The vain-inspired smile has faded from his face. Speaking in a gruff, scratchy voice, he asked the woman a question that he usually wouldn’t care to know the answer to. With a look to Ezra, he spoke to her, “How did you like my show, Ezra?”

She smiled, not falsely. The smile she held was genuine, unnaturally so. She tilted her head delicately, her eyes still reddened, and gave a girlish laugh. “I’m not scared of you”.

Oh, how Ezra was a constant reminder of his every failure. His pointless, meaningless, drawn out existence. He was made to kill, created to maim. He remembered the argument after that moment. He had lost control of himself and, like a teenage boy, started arguing with her. She laughed at him, mocking him, her eyes wide. The girlish laugh quickly changed to wild laughter, showing signs of psychosis as her head tilted from side to side, the bodies that were then lifeless behind the killer not seeming to matter to her in the slightest. Cops sirens rang from down the road, and he ran. It was a few months after that when he began to, once again, stalk her. She eventually noticed him, and he was forced to conversate with her. Immediately, as he began to speak, she identified the voice as the one in the basement, and did not hesitate to call him out on it. No excuses were made on his part, asking her if she planned on calling the police. With a strange sense of calm, Ezra replied plainly that they had identified her as psychotic after weeks of therapy, and that they would not believe her if she tried, being that she had no proof behind the voice. It bothered him so much more than it likely should have that she did not fear his presence. That she did not try to run, try to get him caught, try to retaliate at him. She spoke to him like an old friend from middle school, not unfriendly, but not with a big smile and active conversation about how things have been going. It was utterly uncomfortable for him.

The man pulled himself out of his reminiscent state, and then, with a grunt, climbed one of the thick oak tree that outlined the side of her yard. Sitting carefully on a thicker branch, after nearly following a dozen times, he manages to stare directly into the home. Into her room. Finally being high enough to see the second story of the Victorian styled house, he stared into her bedroom window. Without a shock, there she was, lying on the purple fabric on her bed as she did almost every day, not a trace of fear in her eyes. He turned his head to the TV. She was flipping through her favorite channels, it seemed. A paranormal investigation show, maybe two panned through, a horror movie channel. She finally settled on a channel that usually featured homicide investigations or documentaries and murders/murderers. It was her favorite channel, maybe because she was forced into a life that caused her to think about things like this on a daily basis. He figured that she enjoyed it, however, because she had a smile plastered on her face. Or maybe it was something more than that, he did not actually know, and he forced himself to act like he did not care.

The girl was laying on her stomach, her head staring intently at the documentary that was playing, holding her head with her palms, her elbows against the bedding.
She was dressed in pajamas, wearing deep purple sweatpants and a white hoodie, which hung off of her stomach lazily. Of course, he had seen that hoodie before, many times. It was previously her ex-boyfriends, who gave it to her sometime last year. He watched as the boy hurt her, lied to her, cheated on her, and eventually began to corrupt her and make her feel like she was worth less than she really was because of her psychological impairments. The killer knew that he should have smiled at the thought of her misfortune, knowing it was natural for him to feel happy at the sight of others pain, but the happiness would not
come.