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🕑 Added 2025-07-06 05:05:30 +0000 UTCAnatomy of a Killer
Chapter 94 – The Death Game
Malcolm jerked his head around. There was no one there. All he could see was his old phonograph spinning in the shadows.
A few seconds passed. Then, as if his gaze had activated something in the darkness, the needle dropped, and the recording began to play.
Malcolm froze.
“Today, we will broadcast a heinous case of serial rape and murder. Before the execution, we’ll review unresolved crimes from the last twenty years,” a metallic, almost ceremonial voice announced.
The narration unfolded like a slow blade, cutting deep into both the listeners and the perpetrator of these crimes. “In September 1977, a high school student disappeared near the art museum in Queens. Everyone thought he had run away from home, but in reality, you raped and murdered him. You buried the body in the museum’s gardens.”
“In April 1978, a university student from Columbia went missing. She was never seen again. She was kept alive for three months. Then you dismembered her, cooked her, and sold the meat mixed in street food stands.”
“In November 1979, a 22-year-old sex worker entered your coastal villa. She never left. After a month of torture, you ground her into meat paste. You fed her to your wolfdog, but you left clear evidence behind…”
“Shut up! Shut your damn mouth!” Malcolm shouted, covering his ears.
“Damn you! I’ll kill you! You’ll never see the light of day again!” Malcolm frantically looked around. He didn’t know if someone was watching him, but the idea that the walls might be listening terrified him.
That someone might be there, somewhere in the darkness. His eyes widened so much they looked like they might pop out of his face. Suddenly, he roared, as if something in his mind had snapped.
“Who are you? How do you know all that? Not even the FBI could find me! How did you find out? What do you want? Name your price! I’ll make you rich—you’ll be the most powerful man in this city!”
Malcolm’s face was red. The veins in his neck stood out like thick ropes. There was no trace of elegance or power left. Only a desperate beast remained, cornered.
Meanwhile, millions of people were watching the broadcast. In living rooms, bars, restaurants, on dying phone batteries or street-mounted screens. No one said a word—at first.
Then, everything erupted.
“No way… That guy did all that?” murmured a woman, fork suspended in the air as she watched the dining room TV in her home.
“Look at him. He’s losing his mind,” said an older man at a bar counter. “If he were innocent, he wouldn’t react like that.”
“He just admitted it! The FBI couldn’t find him, but this host... he exposed him live,” said a young woman, watching from her room while eating pizza.
“Disgusting! And he looked like a decent man. What a damn psychopath!” spat another woman on a terrace.
“A beast in a tie…” said an old man in a calm tone, shaking his head. “Let him rot. He deserves it.”
The seed of hatred had been planted in everyone watching the live broadcast, hijacked in real time by Larry’s team.
This was justice. That feeling had to be savored by everyone.
Every human being must remember that retribution exists, and every action has a consequence.
In the end, there’s always a predator stronger than you.
Meanwhile, the voice from the phonograph continued.
“Let me introduce today’s torturer—Malcolm. He’s one of the main shareholders of Malcolm Petroleum and one of the wealthiest people in the United States.”
“Go to hell, you bastard!”
“Hurry up and rot in hell!”
“Is this real? It’s not some publicity stunt, is it?”
Malcolm heard every word and opened a bottle of mineral water to take a long gulp. He forced himself to calm down. His eyes were full of rage.
He was so furious that he could kill anyone right now. All he could think about was punishing whoever was behind this trap.
He was determined to make them regret ever being born.
“Torturer, my judgment is a game. If you win, you may survive,” said Larry, savoring the sensation of superiority.
“I’m not playing your game. Just tell me what you want. I can give you anything!” Malcolm roared, refusing to give Larry what he wanted.
Every viewer was glued to the screen, many seething with fury at Malcolm. Anyone, if they had been there, would have volunteered to beat this old man to a pulp.
The audience silently hoped Larry wouldn’t accept anything the old man offered.
If Larry’s organization claimed to be just, then there should be no bribes.
“There’s a box in the hallway by the door. You need to check what’s inside.”
The air felt foul, thick, as if the walls themselves were tainted by horror.
Malcolm thought this had to be a bad joke, something that couldn’t be happening to him.
But no. When the monotonous voice began to speak again, calm and unsettling, he knew it wasn’t a joke.
“The water you just drank was poisoned,” Larry said through the speakers.
Malcolm went silent. The truth sank into his mind like a sharpened dagger. There was no time for doubt. Every word drove fear deeper into his bones, weakening him, though the poison was the least of his worries.
“If you don’t get medical help in time, your muscles will contract, causing your heart to stop and you’ll die of cardiac arrest.”
“You’re lying!” Malcolm shouted, terrified that it might be true.
“Come on, old man. I’m sure we’d all love to see you die slowly, so go ahead and wait,” said Larry, his voice cold and monstrous, making Malcolm feel real fear.
He knew time was ticking, and the dread gripped him in increasingly disturbing ways. His body began to feel strange.
Tension took hold of his muscles, his breathing became erratic, and pain slowly overtook him. It was as if his bones had turned to lead.
“However, the antidote to this poison is very common. Any hospital can save your life.”
The idea that such a simple antidote could save him should have given Malcolm hope—but it didn’t. Because in the next sentence, Larry’s real game was revealed.
“Now, the entire building has been sealed. No one is here except you and your son, little Bobby.”
Just when Malcolm thought nothing could get worse, he heard that his son was here.
In that instant, everything stopped. The poison, the pain—everything blurred in the image of his son trapped somewhere in this nightmare.
“When you committed these crimes, Bobby—your son—helped you a lot. He’s in the room next door. There’s a wooden box in the room, and there’s a knife in that wooden box. The master key to this building is inside Bobby’s intestines. By the way, you’ve got thirty minutes left.”
Malcolm’s head was spinning, his hands trembling not just from the poison, but from the abyss he now faced.
What had he done? How had it come to this? He had reached a point of no return—a crossroads where every decision would doom him.
The sound of the recording faded. And when he opened the door to the next room, what he saw wasn’t what he expected. There was no trap, no physical torture, no menacing figure. Just his son—Bobby, his teenage son—motionless inside the wooden box, still, with an unreadable expression, as if trapped in a dream he couldn’t wake from.
Bobby wasn’t hurt. He didn’t seem to be suffering… yet. But something wasn’t right. Those memories Malcolm had of his son made any possible action unbearably painful.
On the carpet beside Bobby, there was a box. Small, about the size of a shoebox, with a hole in its center.
The symbolism was clear: Larry had left his signature, as always. A closed box, a trap for the soul.
The knife was inside.
And the poison… the poison was still spreading through Malcolm’s body, burning his insides, distorting his mind.
He could feel it like a physical venom, an invisible noose tightening around his chest, suffocating him. The thirty minutes were slipping away.
The memories of his past crimes returned. Every wrong decision he had made, every mistake that led him to this moment. Did he deserve this? What good would regret do now?
But the boy… his son. How could he condemn him to such a horrible death? How could he look into that innocent boy’s eyes and decide his life was worth less than his own?
“Nooo!”
A guttural scream filled the room, but it wasn’t his son’s. It was his own. In that moment, Malcolm realized the true game wasn’t just physical—it was psychological.
Larry was forcing him to face his own morality, to make a choice that would tear him apart.
Malcolm, his face drenched in sweat, looked at the box, then at his son. The agony from the poison blurred his vision, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t think clearly.
The key to escaping this prison was inside his son. Larry had given him one final option—one that came at an unspeakable cost.
Would he be capable of killing his own son to save himself?
The clock on the wall seemed to pound louder with every tick, each one sounding closer, more terrifying.
“Your time is running out, Malcolm,” whispered Larry, shrouded in darkness, patiently awaiting the outcome of his little experiment.
