Some folks turn into serial killers due to something within that is broken. It may be spiritual, a darkness within that swirls about their soul and causes them a twisted excitement as they see the life drain from the eyes of their victims.
Absolutely detestable.
There are those who are broken mentally. Consumed by hatred, or anger, they lash out at a specific typecast victim that is a mortal effigy of those whom they wish to harm but cannot.
Totally pitiful.
Some become serial killers by accident.
Now, I was not supposed to be a veterinarian. I was supposed to be a doctor. A surgeon. A skilled blade that could help anyone with anything. That was the plan anyway, though much like most of my plans, it kind of deviated along the way.
The path that led me to being unable to go through med school and resorting to animal medicine is about as convoluted as what led me to practicing surgery in the dark of night on people who were sort of willing. Or at least would have been had they been with it. My first unfortunate victim, if some insist on calling him such, was a fellow by the name of Martin. I don’t know if that is a first name or last name. I just knew him as Martin, and he hung out down the block from my office. Every day, he would ask for enough change for coffee until I just told him to come on down and get a fresh cup from my building.
It was through the little conversations over the course of the next couple weeks that led me to suspect he was having gallbladder issues. Now, to be fair, I did tell him he should go to the hospital. I told him it was serious, and that he could die, but he laughed at me.
A few days of his grumbling of midnight pains, and vomiting, as well as some yellowing of his skin, and I had to act. I spent the weekend studying. That Monday, I told him to meet me there later that night, tell no one, and I would see if I had anything in the cabinets that could help. His eyes lit up, and I knew that I had said just the thing to convince him to come in. An offer of pills? The only thing that could have made it a sweeter deal is if I had offered free booze.
That night, he came walking up the alley as I had directed him and knocked on the back door. I looked hard down both sides of the alley to ensure that no one had accompanied him, followed, or was watching before I let him in. He entered the surgery room with some expectation, and he was not disappointed, as I had left a couple blank labeled bottles on the desk. As he leaned over to inspect them, I jumped to action with the chloroform-soaked rag. After I wrestled his limp body onto the operating table, I gassed him to keep him under for a while.
Cutting away his filthy clothes was a chore, and I knew that it would make it even more difficult to keep things sanitary and sterile, but I did my best. Operating by oneself has some drawbacks that a proper ER surgeon would not know about.
The initial incision went well. I cut slowly, and deliberately, doing my best to make sure that I would leave as dignified a scar as possible. Now, up to this point, I have only watched videos and read online texts in regard to the surgery, so I had never seen a gallbladder in real life, let alone had my fingers on one. Even though I thought I was prepared properly about what to expect via research and my experience on animals, a human subject was new to me.
Martin either had a lower tolerance for what I gave him, or I fouled up on how much I should have given him. Either way, suddenly, he gasped a big breath of air, and let out a scream at the precise moment that I was making an incision to remove the diseased organ. I accidentally sliced it open, spilling bile everywhere inside the abdominal cavity. That would have been a disaster by itself, except that Martin was now awake, confused, in pain, and struggling to get away from me. Blood spilling through his dirty fingers as he attempted to hold himself closed with one hand, and push me away with the other, he tried backing away. His shoes, soles smoothed to nothing long ago, slipped quickly on the linoleum flooring, and his head came down on the operating table, and I heard what I instinctively knew to be his neck breaking.
I would be lying if I didn’t stand there for a good few minutes just staring at the mess, and silently cursing at his corpse. A quick cleanup and short drive later, and that is how Martin became my first failed patient, as well as my first kill.
I have gotten quite good since then. Some folks accept my help willingly due to being afraid of getting arrested or committed if they try to go to the clinic or the hospital, so I have the basics down pat. Larger surgeries are a wee trickier, and the willing are hard to come by. So, with some determined survelience, and some careful scheduling, I can usually obtain my patients from the homeless.
While those who survive never seem to report the procedures, those who do not have given me quite a bit of grief. Not only are they testimony to my failures and shortcomings as a Doctor, but they have led to something of a small media sensation calling my failures the work of a modern “wanna be” Jack the Ripper.
The only good thing about the media following my work, is it has been described as “Less Grotesque”, and one reporter commenting that I am “Really refining” my skills. Rave reviews, if there could be any…
