• I looked at his hands as he worked, his elegant hands. Everything they did seemed so effortless, so in control, (gentle in a way) and I wondered what they looked like when he had them wrapped around someone’s throat-- I bet they were utterly beautiful.

    I saw them in my mind, all those countless countless people he had hunted down, had worked on with those perfect hands of his and I envied them. I knew what he was, what he did-- and sometimes I think he knows I know because sometimes his gaze would linger a little bit too long, with a look a little bit too dark and satisfied. But then the moment would pass and the look would be gone and I would wonder if I even saw it at all. But I knew.

    And so I would wander back to all those countless people and feel the beginnings of a jealousy so strong it left me feeling weak and nauseous. Because in those moments, with his perfect hands working away so steadfastly, they had known him, seen him in a way I’m not sure I ever would. As he hacked away at them, mutilated as others would say, but it was not mutilation, this man didn’t do anything as base as mutilation-- he did art. They didn’t understand how tender he was in those moment, how unabashedly open he must be with them-- how could something that thoughtful be mutilation?

    He paused for a moment, his hand stilling across the paper as he quickly glanced over what he just wrote, and even as his hands did nothing they looked so beautiful. And then his eyes looked up to me, and there was a flicker of surprise (I suppose for my benefit, or just to keep at the rouse because there was no doubt that he knew that I had been looking this whole time-- he was always so aware of everything) before a gentle (if somewhat lacking) smile graced his features, as well as a sliver of amusement in his eyes before he looked back to what he was working on.

    I let my breath go as his eyes left me. It had only been a mere moment, a couple of seconds at the most, but his attention on me, so focused and intense (as it always was, but it was rarely solely on me) always left me breathless with some nameless emotion. For a moment I looked at the clock hanging on the wall behind his desk (10:30 at night) and I tried to categorize our relationship.

    It was not a professional one, though most of our topics stayed on our professions (or at least mine, we rarely talked about him), there was something too familiar about our meetings, our conversations, to be merely professional. And yet I don’t think I could come to call us friends, for our friendship was unlike one I had ever experienced (though that was a small number). Perhaps we were friends, and I think I remember him calling us that once (though whether this was the truth for him or another game or just a simple lie to keep up appearances I could not tell). If it is friendship, it is a highly unorthodox one.

    And then I thought about them again, as I have been doing with an ever increasing frequency as of late, and thought back to how intimately they must’ve known one another in those moments of his working, of his artistry. The jealousy was back, as was the terrible want that left me exhausted with its need. The want to have those perfect hands around my own neck, for us to be so intimate with one another, so raw. And it was of little consequence to me that to know him in such a way meant that in the end I would cease to know all things, and that thought terrified me.

    At first.

    Because the want was so overpowering, that even my death seemed inconsequential, that others' deaths were inconsequential if except for the fact that I envied them so much. The want to know him, for him to take such thing from me that would irrevocably become apart of him from that blessed moment forward.

    It is times like this that I wonder if that is why he has not moved, has not hunted me in the way he has hunted so many others-- that he might actually miss me at the end of it all. And that thought is just as exciting as the thought of his hands around my neck.

    It used to make me sick, the sight of the bodies, the sight of his masterpieces (for that’s what he surely thought of them as). It used to make my stomach roll and knees shake, my mouth watering with the waves of nausea. But that was a long time ago and all that’s left in the place of all that terror and disgust is envy and want. I used to hate him, him who was so sick and grotesque, insane. And then I began to hate them, them who had felt his touch, had seen him, in all his unabashed glory, hate them with a fervor that left me weak and terrified.

    And as I looked back to the clock (nearly midnight now) I thought about how I had to start getting home, the drive was a long one from here. But his hands were still moving in such serene, fluid movements that I could not make myself look away even if it was for the best.