Content Warning // Gore. Self harm.
Cordons. Flashing lights. Around the back of a corner shop called Alfie’s. There is blood. The body stays where it is. The police are here but none of them dare enter that ally. They saw what happened to Officer Banning. It doesn’t take long for those unmarked SUVs to turn up.
They send him in to assess it. They know he can handle most of them. The moment he finds one he can’t- well, it’ll be too late.
The first victim is slumped against a skip. The surrounding gore suggests she brained herself on its sharp corner. Officer Banning sits against the wall. He’s dug the open end of his handcuffs into his wrist and dragged it up the forearm.
He steps around the pools of blood smeared around by thrashing legs. The woman’s caved head hangs limp. Officer Banning’s sightless eyes stare up at the wall opposite. He knows what the Officer was looking at.
Another one. She’s carved it into the brickwork with something. Done a poor job of imitating the original. It isn’t precise or intricate like the other one. Or beautiful. But it's good enough to affect the vulnerable. You can see the mathematical chaos of it, beneath the chaos of the mind that etched it. At least, he can. Makes him feel a tad nauseated to look at it, but no more. It’s relatively powerful. Not instant death like The Angel.
He hangs up the cover over the image. When he steps back out onto the street, his superiors have moved the police out to a wider perimeter. He nods. It's safe for them to clear up. Now they have the long and difficult task of finding out where she first found that image. And who else saw it. Not everyone turns the violence on themselves.
Paddy Dobson
19th August 2021