29 Dec A Unifying Theory

ONE

Unlike most psychiatrists, Fiszman didn’t have a sofa or a chaise longue in his office. Nor did he have a bookshelf. Nor were there any sharp objects on his desk like pens or paperclips. He didn’t wear a tie, either, or shoelaces. In fact, anything that could be used as a weapon was wisely absent from his workspace. The only furniture that was present in the room—a desk and two chairs—was securely bolted to the floor. A large window allowed other staff members to see into the office, in case things got unruly. A CCTV camera in the corner of the room watched over him, and a panic button had been installed on the underside of his desk.

This kind of setup didn’t project a warm, relaxed atmosphere, but Toxwich Penitentiary wasn’t a very warm, relaxed place.

Fiszman sat behind his desk, waiting for his patient to arrive. Edgar McCracken.

McCracken was a serial killer with a body count of thirty. Serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the man was going to die behind bars, and he knew it. This made him dangerous, and so, as Fiszman saw him approaching through the window, his pulse quickened.

A prison warden tapped on the window. ‘Are you ready, doctor?’

‘Yes,’ coughed Fiszman. ‘Bring him in.’

McCracken awkwardly lowered himself into the chair opposite Fiszman, his wrists cuffed in front of him, then stared at Fiszman through the lenses of his thick, Coke-bottle glasses.

‘I want to talk some more about your childhood,’ said Fiszman. ‘During our last session, you told me that your mother…had a rather violent temper.’

‘She sure did.’

‘When did she get angry?’

‘If she had an awkward client, she would get angry,’ shrugged McCracken, his shoulders rising like two mountains.

‘Awkward client? You mean, a client paying for sex?’

McCracken nodded. ‘Yup.’

It hadn’t surprised Fiszman when, during the previous session, McCracken had told him that his mother used their family home as a brothel. It was very common for serial killers to come from broken homes, and several infamous killers had been forced to watch their mother having sex with clients, Henry Lee Lucas being a notable example.

‘What did your mother do when she was angry?’

Looking down at his lap, fiddling with his cuffs, McCracken muttered, ‘All kinds of things.’

‘Like what?’

‘She used to slap me, punch me, kick me…lock me in the cellar.’ McCracken paused, then added, ‘One time, as a form of punishment, she made me wear a girl’s dress and then sent me to the supermarket to buy groceries.’

Again, Fiszman wasn’t surprised to hear this. Numerous male serial killers had been forced to wear dresses when they were young boys, including Charles Manson, Charles Albright, and Henry Lee Lucas.

‘What else did she do?’

Fiszman listened carefully as McCracken reeled off stories relating to his childhood traumas. He listened carefully because he was searching for something, something that many psychiatrists before him had tried to discover, but to no avail: a unifying theory of serial killers.

After having treated numerous serial killers in the past, as well as immersing himself in the available literature, Fiszman was aware of several common threads. For instance, he knew that most serial killers experienced bed wetting as children, and enjoyed torturing animals. He also knew that a lot of killers committed acts of arson before their first kill, and that they tended to experience a certain amount of isolation in their adolescence.

Fiszman had read extensively about the study conducted by the FBI’s Behavioural Sciences Unit back in 1979, where they interviewed thirty-six convicted sex murderers, twenty-nine of whom were serial killers. From this, he knew that sixty-nine percent of those interviewed reported alcohol abuse in the family, and eighty-one percent reported a history of stealing.

Fiszman was also familiar with the work of renowned psychologist, Joel Norris, who identified twenty-three physical characteristics of which three or more would indicate congenital genetic disorders frequently found in serial killers, which include: malformed ears, a curved fifth finger, an abnormal gap between the first and second toe, fine hair that will not comb down, bulbous fingertips, and a speckled tongue.

Furthermore, Fiszman had learnt, from various other publications, that psychopathic killers tended to possess imbalances of chemicals linked to depression and compulsive behaviour, namely monoamine oxidase and serotonin.

But despite all of the available data, and in spite of the theory held by some that the formation of a serial killer was rooted in a delicate balance between abusive family elements and biochemical factors, there was still no grand unifying theory, no equation that could wrap everything up in a neat fashion.

But this was Fiszman’s mission.

Fiszman had decided that, as a prison psychiatrist, he would make it his life’s work to discover a unifying theory of serial killers.

Towards the end of the therapy session, as McCracken described the trials and tribulations of his adolescent years, Fiszman noticed that the man looked fatigued. Bags were visible under the rims of his thick glasses, and his words were laced with weariness.

‘You look tired.’

‘I haven’t been sleeping too well just lately,’ replied McCracken, adjusting his weight in the bolted chair.

‘Why not?’

A flicker of embarrassment crossed McCracken’s face. ‘Oh…I don’t know. I keep having a bad dream.’

‘Is it something you’d like to talk about?’

Before McCracken had a chance to reply, there was a tap on the big window behind him. The warden peered in through the glass, then tapped his watch, signaling that the inmate was due to be returned to his cell.

Fiszman waved the warden in, thanked McCracken for his time, then leaned back in his chair and watched as the big man was escorted back out through the noisy wing.

He remained in this position for a long time, slouched behind his desk, pondering what McCracken had told him.

A bad dream.

Like any psychiatrist worth his salt, Fiszman had consumed a fair amount of Sigmund Freud’s work, as well as Carl Jung’s, and so he understood the significance of dreams.

What kind of dreams does McCracken have?

The more Fiszman considered this question, the more he realized how much of a treasure trove of information McCracken’s dreams must have been. He decided that he would question McCracken about his dreams during their next session, but he suspected the outcome would probably be unsatisfactory. People seldom remembered their dreams in an accurate fashion, and even if they did, all they could do was describe their dreams verbally.

If only I could get inside that man’s head.

Fiszman remembered something. He had read an article a while ago, a feature in a psychology magazine. The article had been about dream psychology or, more specifically, a dream machine that had been invented in Japan.

Mulling everything over, Fiszman decided that he would find the magazine when he got home later. For now, though, there was more work to do.

His next patient had arrived.

TWO

For obvious reasons, Fiszman tended not to discuss his work over the family dinner table, especially when his children were present.

Loading up his plate with roast potatoes, he turned to his daughter, and asked, ‘So, how was school today, Meg?

It was a question no child particularly enjoyed answering, and Meg was no exception. Brushing a strand of blond hair away from her face, she said, ‘Hmm. It was okay. I made a poster in art class.’

‘A poster? What kind of poster?’

‘A collage. A collage of historical figures.’

After drowning his dinner in a large quantity of gravy and mint sauce, Fiszman replied, ‘Sounds very interesting. I’ll have a look at that later. What about you, Eric?’

Fiszman’s son, Eric, being two years older than Meg, had a sulkier disposition.

‘What?’

‘How was school?’

‘Crap, as usual.’

Fiszman raised his eyebrows. ‘Crap? Why was it crap?’

‘I don’t know, it just was.’

‘Did you learn anything?’

‘I learnt about the periodic table, but I couldn’t concentrate because this girl called Claire kept chatting and talking behind me, and then, when the teacher got her to stand in the corner of the classroom, she started playing around with a test tube in a wooden rack and it exploded and the cork shot out of it.’

Fiszman’s wife, Claudia, emerged from the kitchen at this point, carrying a tray of sliced beef.

‘Don’t you miss school, honey?’

Claudia tutted, then sat down. ‘Well, their school seems like a barrel of laughs.’

‘So it does,’ agreed Fiszman.

* * * * * *

The magazine article had been at the forefront of Fiszman’s mind during dinner, but he had refrained from mentioning it. Later that night, however, whilst helping Claudia with the dishes, he enquired, ‘Honey, what happened to those magazines?’

‘What magazines?’

‘I had a pile of magazines. Psychology Today and Science Review, I think. Have you seen them?’

Claudia pursed her lips, then, after a moment, replied, ‘I think they’re in one of the cupboard drawers. In our bedroom. Why’s that?’

‘Oh, nothing. I just want to reread something.’

‘I won’t ask what,’ said Claudia, reaching for a plate.

Probably for the best, thought Fiszman.

Sure enough, when Fiszman opened one of the wardrobe drawers later that night, the stack of magazines were in there, curled and dog eared. As the kids brushed their teeth across the hallway, getting ready for bed, Fiszman sat on the floor and flicked through them, searching for the relevant issue.

Ten minutes later, he found what he was looking for. The article was in an issue of Science Review, titled, “The Japanese Dream Machine”.

Fiszman poured over the article, eagerly reviewing its details, but he didn’t get very far. A ruckus broke out in the bathroom between Meg and Eric, and his parental assistance was called upon.

‘What’s going on in there?’ he yelled, climbing to his feet.

Meg’s high-pitched voice rang out across the landing: ‘Eric keeps splashing me with water.’

Fiszman marched towards the door, throwing the magazine down on the bed as he went.

He would have to read it later.

THREE

The chief medical officer of Toxwich Penitentiary was a bald, rotund man who went by the name of Boland. When Fiszman entered his office, he looked up from his screen and grinned.

‘Fiszman? To what do I owe the pleasure?’

Taking a seat, Fiszman proceeded to hum and haw, avoiding the topic he planned to broach for fear of being laughed at. Eventually, though, he pushed himself towards it. ‘Boland, do you have any experience with dream analysis?’

‘Dream analysis? Not really. It’s not my specialty.’

‘Me neither. But I want to propose that we should try it out on some of the inmates.’

Boland took a deep breath. ‘What kind of dream analysis?’

‘Probably not the kind you have in mind,’ stated Fiszman. ‘A few years ago, a team of Japanese scientists developed a machine that can record and reconstruct dreams. The technology is based on fMRI; it’s all about detecting and monitoring changes in brain activity by monitoring blood flow. By monitoring brain activity in this way, you can reconstruct what the subject was visualizing in their dream.’

‘Have you been reading those science fiction novels again, Fiszman?’ chided Bowman, playfully.

Fiszman laughed. ‘No, I’ve actually been reading an article in Science Review.’

‘Fair enough. fMRI, you say?’

‘Yes. Using fMRI, along with special AI software that can decode neural activity into corresponding images, this machine can create a video of someone’s dream.’

Boland looked directly at Fiszman, his bald head shining like a bowling ball. ‘Why exactly would you want to record the inmates’ dreams?’

‘To further my understanding of the inner workings of the mind of a serial killer. A dream is the product of a person’s subconscious mind; if I could bear witness to the dreams of the inmates in this facility, I would undoubtedly gain some kind of insight into their underlying emotions, desires, and fears.’

Boland tapped his fingernails on the desk. ‘fMRI machines are not cheap, Fiszman. Something like this would have to be approved by the prison governor.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Fiszman. After a contemplative silence, he added, ‘So…would you be willing to run it past him?’

Boland reached for his notepad. ‘I’ll certainly run it past him. But don’t build your hopes up. Anything costly like this is hard to get approved.’

‘I understand.’ As an afterthought, Fiszman added, ‘You could mention to the governor that if this goes well, it could lead to the discovery of a unifying theory of serial killers. And if we discovered that, here at Toxwich Penitentiary, it would generate a huge amount of positive publicity for the prison.’

Boland grinned as he jotted this down in his pad. ‘Very enterprising. I like it.’ Slapping his pen down on the desk, he met Fiszman’s gaze once again. ‘Okay, leave it with me. You’ll be informed once a decision has been made.’

FOUR

Behind Fiszman’s desk, a small, barred window looked out onto the entrance courtyard of the prison. Standing on tiptoes, pressing his face against the bars, Fiszman watched as an articulated lorry drove into the prison grounds.

Several weeks had passed since his meeting with Boland, during which he had wisely followed Boland’s advice regarding not building his hopes up, but, low and behold, it seemed as though his dream project was going to happen.

Even after the rumours had begun to circulate about the governor giving a green light to the proposal, even after Boland had informed him personally about the acceptance of the project, and to begin researching and training himself on the protocols and procedures of using the machine, even then, Fiszman still had not allowed himself to get excited.

I’ll believe it when I see it, had become his daily mantra.

But now he was actually seeing it: an articulated lorry driving through the entrance gates of the jail; a lorry with the logo of a well-known medical supply company printed across the side of it; a lorry that was, without a doubt, laden with an fMRI machine.

The machine would be at Fiszman’s disposal for six weeks. After that, it would be returned to the rental company. During this six-week period, it was Fiszman’s intention to record the dreams of every single serial killer in Toxwich Penitentiary, in the hope of making a scientific discovery that would propel him to dizzying heights within the world of psychiatry: a unifying theory of serial killers.

Once the lorry had entered the prison grounds proper, Fiszman turned away from the window and proceeded to pace his office, jittery with childlike anticipation and joy.

It was all coming together.

FIVE

It was going to be a long night, and everyone knew it. Fiszman usually finished his shift at 18:00 p.m., as did Boland, but tonight they would be working overtime. Stood beside the tall, circular fMRI machine in a sterilized room within the medical wing, they waited for the first patient to arrive: Edgar McCracken.

While they waited, Fiszman reviewed the protocol with Boland, and explained a few extra things that he had learnt from his weeks of research.

‘A few years ago, this project would have taken ten times longer. We would have needed to scan each prisoner’s brain first in order to make a unique neural map, which would have taken two to three days, then we would have been able to record their dreams.’

‘Right,’ said Boland, leaning against a wheeled stretcher in front of the machine.

‘Now, though, thanks to a large-scale AI model trained on thousands of brains and dream reports, we only need to spend fifteen minutes on the pre-scan. It’s akin to calibrating a fingerprint scanner to a new finger, if you will. Once the calibration’s done, we just need to wait until the prisoner enters REM sleep, the sleep stage in which people dream. Then—’

Fiszman was cut off by the sound of the door opening, followed by a warden stepping into the room. After a nod and a thumbs up, McCracken was led into the medical room, crouching so his head didn’t hit the door frame.

‘Good evening, McCracken. How are you?’

There was a detectable hint of nervousness in Fiszman’s voice as he said this, and for good reason. Tonight was the first time he had ever been in the company of McCracken without McCracken’s wrists being cuffed. However much they all wanted him to be handcuffed, it simply wasn’t possible whilst using an fMRI machine. Not without him being transformed into a human magnet.

The presence of the armed wardens put Fiszman at relative ease, however, and so he was able to move things forward.

Furthermore, McCracken displayed a cooperative attitude. After all, for someone who spends twenty-three hours a day in a cramped cell, any change of scenery is welcomed.

Addressing the cylindrical contraption, McCracken said, ‘This is the dream machine, is it?’

‘It certainly is,’ replied Fiszman. ‘When you’re ready, could you get onto the wheeled stretcher for me?’

‘Sure,’ said McCracken. ‘It looks comfier than the bed in my cell.’

Once he was in position, spectacles removed, Fiszman continued, ‘I’m going to put something on your head now. It’s called a neurocap. It won’t hurt you in any way. It will just read the electrical activity in your brain, as well as magnetic patterns.’

McCracken gazed up at him from the stretcher. ‘Are you sure you want to look inside my brain, doctor?’

Fiszman paused. For the first time ever, he was looking directly into McCracken’s unspectacled eyes, locked into them, mere inches away, sucked into his cold, shark-like gaze.

Good question, he thought. Do I really want to look inside this man’s brain? Who knows what’s lurking in there?

Cancelling the project was simply out of the question, though, so Fiszman placed the non-metallic neurocap on McCracken’s head, a device which resembled a rubber swim cap with lots of circular nodes all over it.

‘I’m going to show you some pictures now,’ said Fiszman. ‘You don’t need to do anything. Just concentrate on the pictures, focus on them, and the neurocap will read your neural signatures.’

McCracken grunted his approval, and as Boland and the wardens watched on, Fiszman held a series of flashcards in front of McCracken’s face. The flashcard images included faces, scenery, animals, tools, utensils, and all sorts of everyday, common objects.

Next, he played some audio clips for McCracken to listen to. Using a small Bluetooth speaker, Fiszman played a variety of recognisable sounds like laughter, crying, music, explosions, bangs, rattles, and voices reading certain words.

The final part of the neural mapping process involved asking McCracken to recall certain events from his memory.

‘Could you describe some memories for me?’ asked Fiszman.

McCracken frowned. ‘What kind of memories?’

‘Anything you can think of. Let’s start with childhood memories. What’s the earliest thing you can remember?’

‘The earliest thing I can remember?’ McCracken thought for a moment, then said, ‘I can remember running across a field when I was about ten.’

‘Good,’ said Fiszman, making a note. ‘What else?’

‘What else? Well…I remember when I was a bit older, eleven maybe, walking into the living room one afternoon and seeing my mum gettin’ a good seeing to by a couple of strange-looking men.’

The wardens exchanged a look while Fiszman jotted this one down.

‘What else?’

‘I remember being on a quiet street one day. I was alone, as usual. A cat came strolling by. A little brown and white thing. Somebody’s pet, no doubt. I called it over, makin’ stupid noises, tryin’ to coax it towards me. Over it came, sniffing at my leg, curious. I swooped down, grabbed hold of its fluffy little neck, then snapped it like a pencil. Then I stamped on its head a few times for good measure. Huh. Maybe the old saying’s true. Curiosity killed the cat!’

McCracken described several more memories, and Fiszman made notes and typed certain details into a computer beside the fMRI machine. Once he was satisfied that the AI software recognised McCracken’s brain patterns, and how his visual cortex reacted to certain images and sounds, it was time for McCracken to have a little nap.

Holding up a small white tablet, Fiszman said, ‘This is Zolpidem, 10mg. Have you ever taken this before?’

McCracken shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘It’ll send you to sleep within fifteen minutes.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said McCracken.

As promised, McCracken was dozing within fifteen minutes. Fiszman and Boland then pushed the stretcher into the open arc of the fMRI machine, and placed foam blocks on either side of McCracken’s head to prevent movement.

Fiszman then produced an fMRI head coil, a white horseshoe-shaped object, and positioned it over the top half of McCracken’s head, securing each end to built-in locking mechanisms.

Taking a step back, checking the various screens and contraptions, Fiszman said, ‘Now we need to wait until he enters REM sleep.’

When McCracken entered REM sleep, the fMRI machine began to scan the blood oxygen levels in his brain. Real-time brain data was then processed by the deep learning model which had been pre-calibrated for McCracken’s brain, mapping neural patterns to associated images, sounds and emotions.

Using this real-time data, the AI software constructed a video of McCracken’s dream, matching his visual cortex activity to a vast database of visual inputs. Layers of audio were also added, using data siphoned from McCracken’s auditory cortex, and the software was even able to weave different emotions into the video visuals using data from his amygdala; fear was portrayed by sharpening certain images, for example, and confusion was portrayed by blurring them.

When the computer signified that the dream video was complete, Fiszman and Boland disconnected the fMRI head coil from McCracken’s head, took off the neurocap, and the wardens wheeled him out of the room.

Boland looked at his watch. ‘That took just under one hour.’

Staring at the computer screen, transferring McCracken’s dream onto a USB stick, Fiszman said, ‘That’s not too bad. Who’s next?’

Ruffling through some notes on a nearby table, Boland said, ‘Patrick Doyle. Killer of thirteen prostitutes.’

Fiszman rubbed his eyes. ‘Fancy a quick coffee before he arrives?’

SIX

As Fiszman inserted the USB stick into his laptop, the usual prison sounds drifted into his office, and lines of inmates passed by on the other side of the big glass window. There were no counselling sessions scheduled for today, though. Today, Fiszman had some editing to do.

It had been a tiring week. Working overtime seven nights in a row, he and Boland had recorded the dreams of the worst serial murderers in Toxwich Penitentiary. There were twenty-eight in total: a young man who had chopped his mother to bits with a meat cleaver, then fed her remains to wild hogs; an ex-pornstar who liked to stalk and kill his coworkers after shoots; an ice cream vendor who had murdered a dozen children in the back of his van; a lorry driver who had confessed to raping and killing fifty hitchhikers whilst parked in lay-bys; and a chef who had enjoyed adding extra ingredients, mainly cyanide, to his beef stew whilst working for a well-known restaurant.

Fiszman’s USB stick now contained the dreams of these killers, the visual and auditory representations of their subconscious minds. It was Fiszman’s intention to analyse each and every dream, and in an effort to make things easier, he decided to paste all of the videos together into one large file.

Opening up some editing software on his computer, he went to work.

* * * * * *

Evening.

After working overtime for so long, it felt nice for Fiszman to get home at a decent time and have dinner with his family.

Whilst his wife, Claudia, dished up some macaroni cheese, Fiszman chatted with Meg and Eric, catching up on the last seven days.

After dinner, all four of them snuggled up on the sofa and watched an animated Disney film, eating biscuits and drinking hot chocolate. Fiszman struggled to focus on the film; this was partly due to the fact that he didn’t like animated films, and partly due to the fact that there was another film he was itching to watch. He persevered, though, savouring the cosy family time, keeping quiet about the USB stick he planned on inserting into the TV set once the kids were in bed.

It was 10:00 p.m. by the time the children had showered, brushed their teeth, and grudgingly gone to bed.

After doing the dishes, Fiszman showered himself, and then disappointed Claudia by informing her that he had some work to do.

‘What?’ she said, looking up at him from the bed covers.

‘I’m sorry, honey. But I really need to do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘I need to make some notes about a video.’

Claudia slumped her head down on the pillow, turning away from him. ‘You’ve been working nights all week. I thought—’

‘Look, once this project is finished I’ll treat you. I’ll take you out for dinner. We’ll leave the kids with the babysitter, and we’ll have a nice drink and a meal over at that Italian restaurant, and—’

‘Yeah, yeah, okay,’ mumbled Claudia.

There was a reason why Fiszman had graduated from Mapharno City University with an MA in psychiatry, and it was this. Whereas most men would have given in to their fatigue and carnal desires, climbing into bed with their wives, Fiszman didn’t. Instead, he stepped over to the bed, kissed Claudia’s cheek, rubbed his nose against her soft, moisterised skin, then peeled himself away, utterly dedicated to his current work project.

Walking out onto the landing, Fiszman could see that the children’s bedroom door was ajar, and he poked his head around the doorframe, peering in playfully. ‘Goodnight, my little ones.’

Meg and Eric looked up from their beds, wearing their cartoon-emblazoned pajamas. ‘Goodnight, Daddy.’

Blowing them both a kiss, Fiszman walked away and went back downstairs.

After making himself a cup of tea, Fiszman inserted the USB stick into the side control panel of the living room TV set, then slumped down on the sofa. With a notepad and pen by his side, he pressed play.

There was a brief pause, then the living room was awash with colour. Dazzling greens, blues and violets burst from the TV set in rapid succession, shapes forming then disintegrating, objects swirling in and out of sight.

Fiszman couldn’t remember the order in which he had spliced the video, so he wasn’t sure whose dream he was currently watching, but for now it didn’t matter; for now, he simply wanted to watch the footage all at once, back to back, and search for any common threads that he could find.

The first thing that struck Fiszman was the quality of the video, or the lack thereof. As energetic and chromatic as it was, the graphics were rather blocky, and Fiszman was reminded of certain 90s video games he had played during his adolescence. Solid clumps of pixels morphed and scattered across the screen, arranging themselves into mountains, fields, and streets, before spinning apart and rearranging themselves again into grinning, leering faces. Human figures coalesced and gesticulated, their outlines sharpening and blurring, their jerky movements accompanied by screeching noises. Yellows exploded into oranges, golds blended into indigos, backgrounds merged into foregrounds, foregrounds crumbled to dust, and dust turned into rain.

The sound was an experience in itself. Sipping his tea, jotting down the odd observation into his notepad, Fiszman listened as a cacophony of white noise and crackly static rang out from the TVs speakers, the volume and pitch rising and falling in unpredictable waves. The sounds were animalistic in places and, in conjunction with the kaleidoscopic images flashing away on the screen, Fiszman felt as though he had landed in some kind of psychedelic jungle, a trippy realm of rainbow hues, dancing geometric shapes, and visceral screams.

Such was the intensity of the footage, after a while Fiszman became aware of his heart beating wildly in his chest, and a quickening of his pulse. Sitting there on the sofa, eyes glued to the screen, Fiszman felt as though he was strapped into a carnival rollercoaster ride, his stomach turning over with each tableau that slid across the display.

On and on it went, the footage flashing and pulsing in a relentless manner, limbs melting into rivers, clouds evaporated by flames, maggots crawling from eye sockets, planes falling from the sky like plunging knives, cityscape rooftops switching to cemetery gravestones…

Fiszman’s jaw slackened.

…volcanoes spewing bone fragments, butterflies fluttering over a charred poppy field, horns blaring as rush-hour traffic raced along motorways slickened with arterial blood…

Fiszman’s eyes became glazed.

…swarms of flies feasting on the mouldy remains of aborted fetuses, a steam train shaped like a Samurai sword speeding along its tracks towards a giant throat, a roadside billboard sliding from its frame like a giant guillotine…

A line of drool spilled from the corner of Fiszman’s mouth.

…copulating couples eating each other’s faces, spinning flowers turning into circular saw blades, decapitated buffaloes roaming across dead grass, clotted blood spurting from the chimneys of industrial factories, dried ribcages rolling across town squares like tumbleweed…

Fiszman sprang up in his seat, startled. His notepad lay on the floor, torn in half, and broken shards from his teacup were scattered across the carpet.

‘What? What’s going on?’

Panicked, realizing that some kind of time lapse had occurred, Fiszman rose to his feet and gazed around the living room. It was then that he noticed the footprints on the carpet.

Red footprints.

A kitchen knife lay a few feet away from the footprints, its shaft coated in blood.

‘W…What is this?’

When Fiszman finally looked down at his hands, and his clothing, he let out a terrified wail. He was covered in blood, warm, wet blood, and it ran down his forearms like syrup.

The video was still playing on the TV, vivid colours and wild sounds bursting out across the room. Unable to take any more of the jarring noise, Fiszman switched it off, then lingered for a few seconds in the silence that followed, trying to gather his dazed thoughts.

Following the footsteps, Fiszman walked out of the living room towards the staircase. A trail of blood led all the way up to the upper landing, and Fiszman ascended the stairs, taking one step at a time, trembling like a leaf.

When he reached the landing, his pulse quickened even more, and an icy chill ran through his veins.

His bedroom door was wide open, and the light was switched on.

‘Claudia?’

Fiszman stepped into the bedroom—then wailed in horror.

The bedroom looked like a bomb had exploded in it. Smashed ornaments littered the floor, shelves hung from their screws, and every single picture frame was cracked.

The bed.

At first, Fiszman couldn’t even see his wife, or didn’t realize that he was looking at her. A tangle of twisted flesh lay upon the mattress, limbs poking out in unnatural angles, pale skin stained scarlet. Her torso was peppered with so many stab wounds it would have been impossible for Fiszman to count them all.

Raising his hands, studying the caked blood between his fingers, Fiszman croaked, ‘No! I didn’t do this! I didn’t!’

Fiszman took a step towards the bed, in a futile attempt to help Claudia, but stopped short as a thought popped into his head: the kids.

Making his way along the hallway, Fiszman could see that the children’s bedroom door was also open, and the light was on.

Fiszman didn’t want to enter the room, but he had to.

‘Oh, no!’

The children’s beds were empty, but this offered little consolation to Fiszman, because as he gazed around the room he could see that their bodies had been strewn across the walls and ceiling, among other places.

The top half of Eric’s body lay upon a stack of board games and toys, discarded like a broken doll, and his legs dangled from a rocking horse by the window. Meg’s body was harder to locate, due to it being everywhere all at once. One of her arms protruded from a laundry basket, the other from a bin. Her headless torso sat in a toy pram, and her decapitated head swung from the overhead lampshade, her blond hair twisted around the bulb in a messy knot.

Surrounded by this carnival of death and mutilation, Fiszman fell to his knees. ‘What have I done? Oh, no! What have I done?’

Fiszman’s despair gradually turned to fear. Due to his profession, he knew full well what happened to convicted murderers. Furthermore, he knew what happened to prison staff members who were stupid enough to get incarcerated themselves. Images of jail cells flashed across his mind, shared showers, taunts from young inmates eager to prove themselves, sleepless nights on a hard bed, dodging attacks from psychotics wielding sharpened toothbrushes…

I can’t do jail time! I just can’t!

Darting back into the master bedroom, Fiszman threw on a fresh set of clothes and rummaged through some drawers until he found his passport. He then stuffed his wallet, keys, phone, and a handful of other essential items into a satchel, and turned for the door. Before leaving, he looked at Claudia, gazing down at her lifeless face.

‘You were right, honey. I should’ve just called it a night and gone to bed.’

Bag strewn over his shoulder, Fiszman stopped as he passed through the living room on his way to the front door. Walking over to the TV set, he pulled out the USB stick and held it in his hand.

He now knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the video contained some kind of doorway into the mind of a serial killer. Perhaps it even contained the unifying theory that he had been searching for for so long, the Holy Grail of his career. This presented a dilemma for Fiszman, because even though he knew that what he held in his hand was invaluable to the psychiatric community, it was also the cause of his family’s death.

What should I do with this? thought Fiszman, cradling the USB stick in his hand.

After a moment, Fiszman’s jaw tightened, and he marched into the kitchen. Placing the USB stick on the kitchen worktop, he pulled out a meat hammer from a drawer, and raised it high above his head.

There was a flicker of hesitation as Fiszman gripped the hammer. The video on the USB stick was priceless, his life’s work, completely irreplaceable. But then, as an afterimage of the massacre upstairs flashed across his mind, Fiszman squeezed the handle of the hammer tighter, then brought it down as hard as he could.

The USB stick shattered into a thousand pieces, shards of plastic and fibreglass bouncing across the cooker and saucepans like bullets.

‘How’s that for a broken dream?’ mumbled Fiszman, before running out of the house and into the night.