I washed my hands and swept the place up, all after carefully and swiftly removing the hearts of all of my other victims just to be safe. Thankfully the had already had autopsies done, so no one would notice a missing heart or two… or five. I left the room rather startled and shaken by what had just occurred, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my venom remaining in that man’s body had somehow given him some of my supernatural abilities. I pondered this the rest of the day, and after work I went to the chief’s office in the police department. I got quite a few stares when I arrived, being covered head to toe tends to get that reaction. One officer, upon seeing me, drew his weapon and demanded I not move. Thankfully, for his sake as I wasn’t about to allow myself to be shot, another officer recognized me from our dealings in the morgue and had the man lower his weapon. It was Detective Douglas, Mr. Fredrick’s old friend.

“Hello Mr. Drack,” he greeted and put out a hand for me to shake. I gripped it firmly, but not so that I would shatter any of his bones on accident.

“Hello detective. I was called to see the chief, is he in yet?” I asked in an attempt to limit my time around any officers. I knew one had spotted me last night, but I had no idea which one or how much they had truly seen.

“He is expecting you in his office, right this way.” Det. Douglas stated. He walked me to a set of double doors around the corner of the main “bull pen”, meaning the area where many of the officers do their work. He knocked on one of the large brown doors and loudly announced, “Chief, Mr. Vlad Drack is here.”

From inside, a smooth deep voice called out, “Come on in.” I opened the door and stepped inside to see the chief sitting behind his desk looking at opened documents. One was an autopsy report I had done a month ago, I could see the writing from across the room, it was about a rapist I had stalked and killed.

“Hello Chief Warren, how can I be of aid today?” I asked with a fake smile plastered onto my face. He smiled back, which caused his large busy mustache to bristle his nose.

“Hello Vlad, would you like to sit?” He asked and gestured to a chair.

“Thank you,” I said and walked to sit down. He flipped closed one of the folders and set it under his desk and into a drawer. It was unrelated to my work as far as I could tell, unless the “Body drainer” was getting blamed for breaking and entering now.

“Vlad,” Police Chief Warren began, “I have a few questions about some of the bodies that have come from the morgue recently. Questions that you can never repeat outside of this room… understand?”

He had my attention now, “I understand.”

“Vlad, has anything strange happened to any of the bodies in the morgue? Anything… seemingly impossible or unnatural?” He asked in an almost hushed tone, as if he didn’t want some invisible person on the other side of the room to hear us. My mind immediately went to the strange creature I killed in the storage room.

“Unnatural sir?” I asked.

“Do you remember a few months ago when the first major body pile showed up outside the morgue?” He asked and leaned back in his chair.

“I do.” I responded.

“And do you remember that after two days, my officers came and collected the rest of the bodies?” I did remember that. I had thought it strange, but just assumed that they were transferring them back to the families.

“Yes sir, I recall.”

“Well, we did that because something… odd. Happened to one of the bodies, and we wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to happen again.” He explained. If my heart were still beating, I’m sure it would have stopped for a moment. I wondered if I had missed some venom last time as well, and if another one of those creatures had formed. I kept my face as unresponsive as possible and feigned ignorance.

“What happened sir?” I asked.

“One of the bodies reanimated and attacked Mr. Fredrick and Detective Douglas.” I knew he was telling the truth, but I also knew most people wouldn’t believe him, so that’s how I acted.

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“I’m sorry sir, I don’t get the joke.” I said with a look of confusion. Although he probably couldn’t see most of it due to the scarf on my face.

“It’s no joke son, they would have been killed if the detective hadn’t shot that creature in the heart.” He said and pulled out photos from under the folder. They depicted a shriveled-up creature just like I had seen earlier, except this one had three bullet holes in the chest.

“Well, even if I did believe you sir, why tell me?” It was about that time I heard heavy footsteps outside the door. They were trying to be quiet, and to their credit they were succeeding, but nothing escapes my ears.

“Well Vlad, you were the one to do the autopsy on that person, and you concluded that nothing had been out of the ordinary. But once this happened, we did a second autopsy and found something quite abnormal. According to Mr. Fredrick, there was a strange substance in the man’s veins,” Chief Warren said and then paused for a moment before continuing. “Also, most of his organs were untouched, meaning you didn’t perform any of your duties, other than simply cutting into the man and then stitching him back up to make it appear as if an autopsy had been done.” The tension in the air was thick, so thick I didn’t even bother holding the plastered-on smile anymore; I knew what was happening.

“Is that why you’ve assembled so many men outside of this door, I’d say fifteen at least.” I asked him. He looked surprised.

“How did you?”

I interrupted him, “I’m sorry sir, I really am. I didn’t know that leaving any venom behind would create such monsters, I do hope all of your men are okay and no one was hurt.” I dropped all pretenses as I no longer cared; I knew my time here was going to be up soon anyway. I had killed too many people and understood that I would need to move on soon, or risk exactly this.

He smiled proudly and asked, “So you admit that you are the mysterious killer who has been draining people of their blood, and the man that created these unholy monsters?”

I nodded my head yes, “I am that man. But tell me Chief Warren, who were the men I killed?”

“Criminals, but that doesn’t matter. We really were happy to let you kill those men, you were doing the city a service really,” he said with an unwavering stare that pierced what was left of my tattered soul. He meant every word he spoke.

“Then why come after me now?” I asked him.

“These abominations, they are dangerous. Why… how would you even create something like that?”

“It doesn’t matter, I will be sure to be much more careful if I do it in the future.” I told him.

He scoffed, “There is a crowd of armed officers outside that door, we aren’t going to give you the chance to do it again.” I stood up from my chair and tightened my scarf around my face. I can only imagine how it must have seemed from his end, the man whom he had most likely assumed to have been trapped, simply disappear, and reappear behind him in an instant. Before he could shout for help, I had already jumped over the desk and injected my venom into his neck; I didn’t want him to scream for aid. It only took the amount of time it would take a human to blink for me to get to him and inject my venom, but that didn’t solve my problem. I still had a load of men outside with guns. I’m strong, but guns might still be able to kill me and I have to remember that I’m not who I used to be, so I don’t want to just kill them and be done with it, which I easily could. I needed a plan. After a second, I concluded that my only option was to use the chief as a hostage and try to make my way out. I determined that they wouldn’t try and shoot if they ran the risk of hitting their chief. I picked him up and turned him so that his face was pointing at the door and I was positioned behind him.

“Sorry Chief Warren, but I need a shield.” I held him close to my chest and kicked the door open and off its hinges. It flew back, knocking down five officers in the process, but I didn’t hear any bones crack. I loudly announced, and in the best crazy-person voice I could muster, “Stay back, or he dies!”

“Put him down!” Detective Douglas shouted.

“Sir, are you okay?” Another officer shouted.

“Just shoot him!” Someone on the ground under the door tried to say.

“No! He has the Chief!” An officer, who wore many different medals, commanded. I started walking around the corner, still holding the captain in front of me.

“Don’t follow me, if you do then he dies.” I ordered. It was a stalemate, I couldn’t move quickly, or risk being shot, and they couldn’t shoot, because I wasn’t giving them an opening. It took five full minutes of slow walking just to get halfway across the bullpen. But of course, I knew there wasn’t really a hope of me getting out of here without a scratch. I was so focused on keeping the immobile chief in front of me and between their guns, that I didn’t hear one officer sneak up behind me. I had plenty of time to react. I could have spun around and used the chief as a human shield, but then he would have died. I could have dodged, but the sudden change in direction might have really hurt the chief and killed him. I refused to be the person I used to be, so I didn’t do anything. I was content, I had lived a good life, seen a lot. Sure, there was much I regrated, but I had spent a long time trying, in my own way, to make up for it. I felt the bullet pass through everything in my body and go straight through my heart. I didn’t feel it come out the other side, but rather it got stuck in my chest. The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was hitting the cold tile floor and letting the chief fall on me.