Serial killers always slip up, sooner or later. In this case, it was targeting the daughter of someone very prominent. A daughter who managed to escape before he could "finish the job". The "Past Victims Club" had a way to expose him now, "we were not dead, he left us for dead, but we were just badly hurt."
But some of the survivors are now taking an interest in the dear necromancer's work, and asking to be students. So ones like him get their comeuppance in the future.
@internutter/challenge-03345-i057-grim-findings -- Anon Guest
Some of them are coming to me alive. Alive, but in bad shape. They know "crazy old Zahilde" will not let someone die without true cause.
I have been asked, many times, to curse the boy who loves killing. I should not, and I have refused. To do that is to invite evil into your home, corrupt your good heart, and rot your soul. To do that is to throw aside every good in favour of revenge.
Revenge can kill a good heart, in time. Better by far to heal and mend and make things better. My patients often don't see it that way.
Camden thinks he is mad. He thinks he can kill and kill again, and it is just a dream. He has watched animals he kills for the butcher, and wondered if they will wake. He has laid out parts of a pig and watched, waiting, for them to be whole and living once more.
Honestly, being mad would be a mercy at this point.
The butcher has brought the boy to me. Asking me to mend his mind. It was broken long before he lifted a blade. Shattered by forces unseen. And I, crazy old Zahilde, tried my best to divine what went wrong with him.
There is no ghost telling him to kill. No demon, imp, or devil driving his bloodlust. No past of torment to send him into a love of death.
He just likes to do it.
So I gave him a gift. A piece he lacked until he came to my hut. I let his victims watch. First and most needed, the poor souls who he has killed more than once.
I gifted the boy with empathy.
He will always know that others have feelings. He will know that others have wants of their own. Lives of their own. Passions and dreams of their own.
He has felt what it is like to die at his own hands. He has felt his every murder. One. By. One. He lived them all, and after each one, I asked, "Are you sorry?" and, "Have you learned?"
Crazy old Zahilde has her ways.
He has learned. At long last. He has learned that being cruel is a choice, and not a good one. He has learned that killing should never be fun.
He has put down the butchers' knife, and is growing grain for people's breads. The wheat does not feel pain as people do. It dies all the same, but not in fear.
He's a much kinder boy, and I can get back to healing people who are sick.
His victims will forgive him in time. I hope.
[AN: I was challenged to write a story in simple words by tupperhunter on Twitch. This is the result]
[Image by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash]
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