Killing Field

by Brad Chacos

"He seemed like a decent enough guy," the neighbors said. Don't they always say that about killers?

They caught him eventually, in a sting operation. Only so many people, even hookers and junkies and street people, can be killed before Things Are Noticed. And they locked the man (if one can call him that) away for a hundred lifetimes, sentencing him to die the drawn-out gray death of boredom and certainty that his victims never had.

But they never found the bodies.

You may have noticed the field of wild roses outside of town, their petals drawn in on themselves, bright red and shivering in the autumn wind; once a month, when the moon is at its apex, they bloom in the cold, dark night, shedding dew like so many tears. And the smell... oh, the smell...

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Brad Chacos is hairy fellow who inspects sapphire products for aerospace and semiconductor applications by day and scribbles down semi-readable fiction by night. He has both a short story and a non-fiction article appearing in upcoming issues of Withersin magazine and has been featured on Nanoism, a Twitter-fiction site.