Mystery Thriller- Wright's Campaign

[Guest]

The city of Chicago is uneasy as something has stirred up a series of brutal gang wars. Someone started them, and is continuing the fuel the blood bath by ruthlessly abducting, torturing, and killing increasingly important members of the underworld; the killer then deposits the mutilated remains with the calling card of the gang's biggest rival. Gang leaders and Mafia Dons know that they are next on the list, and are desperately trying to find the killer before they too get dragged into a pointless war and massacred. The police and the local FBI are also on the tail of the vigilante that is destabilizing their city. The problem is that their suspect has left no evidence on the bodies they suspect he has killed.

Basically, you get to pick your character to try and find who or what is killing the gangsters, and Dons and corrupt politicos know they are next. The police and the local Families suspect a rival underworld organization, but are unsure who. You can be a police inspector, a mafia gangster, a reporter trying to find a good story, or even someone on the street. Below is a little teaser.

[Guest]

Garret held a knife, examining it for flaws. It was the first knife he had ever bought himself, three hundred dollars of high grade tensile steel with impeccable sharpness. The balance was perfect, just were the blade met the haft. It gleamed in the light, polished enough to see a reflection of lusterless dark eyes. When they had held a spark of life, women had thought they were beautiful; Garret thought it a worthless memory now. He placed the blade down for a minute and just stared forward without blinking, for perhaps a minute. He brown eyes then examined his arms, tracing his vascular veins. It had always been easy for the phlebotomist to draw his blood. This too was dismissed as another worthless thought. He still ignored the muffled sound in the background, simply staring at his veins. It would be easy to take the sharp, polished blade and stain it dark red. He had even practiced the motions before, tracing down his arms. Only incompetents would cut across and not down, and Garret despised incompetence, especially his own. Another thought was to cut deep into the elbow, severing the major veins and arteries there, but this was also dismissed. The carotid and jugular would be a more dramatic, evidence of both his unusual mind and resolve. The thought there was two separate cuts, lengthwise down. A minute, maybe less, before blood loss made him unconscious and sped him away to death. He sighed.

The tip of the blade reflected in the light, and he examined it. It really would be easy to slice open flesh with this. His mind had been trained as a scientist, and with a natural inclination towards perfection, he would test the theory before elucidating it into a more comprehensive protocol. One must always start small, a proof of concept as it was known to him. He set the tip against pale flesh. Initially, the tip merely creased the skin without pressure. Another fact was known to him, that skin was much easier to penetrate without lying flush, but he was contemplating cutting and the blade's ability to cut through his skin was the main issue at hand. He slowly increased the pressure against the callused skin. It was a very sharp blade, Garret silently observed. It didn't take much pressure to perforate his skin, or much force to slowly draw it along his thumb. If asked, it could always be mistaken for an error in cooking, but no one would. He had little relative value to society. His theory was correct, and that was always reassuring. Success was a thing he prized when achieved alone, and had happened all to little. Perhaps if he had more, Garret would not be in this situation, contemplating outcomes of his life. He squeezed his thumb a little bit, allowing some blood to trickle out and splatter against the surface below. The sound in the background grew louder, more frantic.

He wrapped a pristine white towel around the shallow cut, mildly noting that the bleeding was slowing slightly. He disinfected the shallow incision with hydrogen peroxide, not even flinching at the painful sensation while the liquid bubbled. Filtered water was next, washing out the residue. A different corner of the white cotton hand towel was used to dry the cut. While Garret currently lacked the capacity to describe the sound of ripping tape, it was universally recognizable. He wrapped it firmly around the cut on his thumb, again noting that medical tape was much more effective than a band-aid on a digit. He cleaned the blade next, running some fairly pure 90% ethanol along the blade. While bleach was effective, it was also bad for the steel. Garret flicked open a lighter he habitually carried even after quitting smoking. The flame flared against the blade for a few seconds, and he waved it around while it burned. It wouldn't do to get an infection from his best knife. The noise in the background was frantic now, and he could here some pounding. Garret didn't want to disturb the neighbors in any event, regardless of the effect, and could be considered courteous that way. He sighed again, a melancholy sound.

The noise was simply to loud to ignore now, and he looked up into terrified eyes holding a gleaming, razor-sharp knife. Garret could understand the terror and desperation in those eyes. Death was something most people feared; Garret simply didn't, apathetic to the small value of his own existence. It wasn't worth losing sleep over; the man had considered this long ago. Fear and hatred of dying had grown to artificially heightened levels in today's society, still limited to the base biological impulses hard wired into the human genome. In today's society, there were simply too many members of his race to cause the Homo sapiens to be doomed from the loss of one member. Garret stood up with the knife, and caused a blessed stillness and quiet. No doubt the other perspective considered him quite insane, but Garret considered insanity differently than most. To expect a different outcome from same event after a multitude of trials was insanity. The inability to understand a common moral system was insanity, and he was neither of these things. He simply lacked the normal capacity to care about the latter.

Green eyes shone with tears as he handled the knife. The person wasn't going to make any desperate moves, to horrified to startle this man into a potential harmful action. This was a good example of insanity, Garret thought. It lacked a fundamental reasoning skill, where emotional judgment overruled logic. There was no data available to the other person to project that harm would not be inflicted in this case. An observation about his thumb would easily provide contradictory data, as would the blood still easily visible to him. In fact, logic would dictate that some action to prevent damage should be undertaken if that person valued the life involved. Garret simply did not. Tears formed in those green eyes as Garret positioned the recently tested blade against pale soft flesh, and he could hear crying. Garret understood this reaction perfectly. He decided to test another hypothesis, and give this person a chance to postulate a perfectly viable alternative to the present situation.

Garret wondered if a multivariate analysis of these types of situation would reveal that physical traits may play a part in discussion, and mentally noted that the man was approximately six foot two, fairly wide, maybe three feet across the shoulders, and would have possessed a gangly look, if he were muscularly fit. This man appeared to seriously workout for at least two hours a day, five time a week. A good habit to have if one wanted to maintain cardiovascular health, and muscular capability. He followed a similar regimen himself. He had short, thick black hair, and square features. Garret supposed the man could be considered attractive by the opposite sex but had no personal capability to define such a statistic. His features were fairly symmetrical though, and that was good indicator towards physical attraction. Still, the most important factor for interpersonal interactions was charisma and confidence, and this man had little of either.

Garret did possess confidence, and all indications said that he projected it. Charisma was an intangible to him though. He shrugged a little helplessly at the vagaries of life, the knife still casually gripped in his right hand, shining. He supposed the man was unused to the switch, although a man with a weapon still invariably possessed an edge in almost any situation, even if his body postured had been hunched forward the entire time. He straightened his back and shoulders and put for his third best smile. He had been told it was charming. It seemed to have the opposite effect on the man before him. It was understandable, he supposed, that a man with a knife becoming more confident after being confronted would also become correspondingly intimidating. Perhaps, it was the dead look in Garret's eyes; perhaps, the man saw brief mortality in those dark eyes, bottomless eyes. Garret was only idly curious about this outcome, irrelevant to his hypothesis for this interaction.

He bent forward and ripped off some silver tape and yanked out a sodden piece of cotton cloth. He was immediately treated loud sobbing and terrified mewling. The man's masculine quivered in emotion, his lips twitching uncontrollably. His shoulders rose and fell rapidly, and his breathing could almost be characterized as wheezing. Drool was dripping from his mouth, and Garret idly noted the yellowed teeth. It was both a lack of hygiene and a probably sign of drug use. This was consistent with the track marks around the man's forearm. Garret had some experience with this situation, and his subject would start begging soon. He hated that. His right hand curled into a ball, and chambered back near his chest. The lower lip dropped, and the man drew in a long sobbing breath. He shuddered and started to whine. Garret lashed out, fully rotating his fist right at the moment of impact. Garret felt the first two knuckles of his fist break the man's occipital arch. The whine turned into an agonized cry as man undoubtedly felt like his face was dipped into molten steel.

“I have a theory to test.” Garret had to raise his voice over the man's sobbing. “I said I have a theory to test. I believe, if you are given two choices, you will choose the more logical of the two.” He walked behind the man and started dragging the dull back of the blade against the metal chair. Garret had observed an increase in terror and compliance with the chilling ring. It sent shivers up the spine. Garret continued, even louder over the pathetic pleading. “You have two choices here. You will tell me what I wish to know, the only unknown component in that equation of time.” The man continued to whine, and Garret sighed. He also buried a fist into the man's floating ribs. Garret also felt those crack, with the corresponding effect of making it painful to breathe. This was confirmed by shallower rapid breathing. The right corner of Garret's mouth rose a bit in satisfaction.

“As I was explaining to you, you have to choices: Mercy...” Garret trailed off. The man attempted to speak, but just sent streams of spittle out. Garret picked up another white towel, and cleaned the drool and snot from the man's face tenderly. He continued in a compassionate tone, “Mercy, where you simply tell me what I want to know, and this all ends. If you are a good boy, I will let you go and even give you some pain medication.” The man nodded, with a small kindle of hope. He could even hear the gentle beeping of the heart rate monitor. “Or pain. It would sadden me, but I would have to hurt you until you told me the truth.” The green eyes went even wider, and the pupils started dilating in shock. Garett couldn't have that or he would have to start over. He slapped the man across the right cheek, the broken half of his face.

His tone shifted to steel for a moment, “Pay attention.” It became compassionate again. “You see that heart rate monitor, hear it beeping?” The man nodded urgently, afraid of the knife idly being toyed with in front of his face. “It is beeping quite rapidly, isn't it?” The man frantically nodded again, seeing his eyes reflected in the gleaming blade. “Sadly, it will still speed up even faster if you lie, and I will know. I think honesty is very important, and am very disappointed when others lie to me. You won't lie to me?” Garret tapped him hard on the broken area, “...will you?” He placed the blade next to the swelling right eye, so the iris could focus on it before he went blind. The man shook his head, and the blade got closer.

“You should answer with words, you are an adult aren't you?”
“N-N-no.”
“Good.” Garret laid the blade on the table in front of the man. It was tantalizing, a dream of hope. A short dream that would be crushed quickly. Garret simply turned his back to get a cold pack, a towel, paper, and a black pen. He wiped the swollen face, and gently applied the cold pack for a second. If the man didn't talk, or lied more than 50% in ten questions, Garret would switch to alternate methods. Withdrawal from heroin made people much more compliant. If they still lied, the experiment would be a failure and he would simply start a new trial. Garret took off the cold pack and picked up a pencil and a pen.

“So, tell me your name.”
“Mad Dawg.” He even pronounced it that way. It was disappointing.

Garret slowly shook his head and put down the paper and pen. Garret smacked the broken arch hard fracturing it further. He also grabbed the his hair at the back of the head and yanked the head upright. The knife slowly approached the swollen eye, and sliced it open the swollen cheek. He let the blood drip down. The man didn't even really feel it initially, so sharp was the blade. He held it up, and let the blood drip off into the exposed eye.

“This knife is so sharp, you won't even feel it until later, when I tell you what I carved into your flesh. And then you feel it. I just carved a C into your cheek.” The man screamed. “I hate to do this, but I need real names, not a street alias.”

“I want your real name.”
“Reginald Coxx.” Garret check the heart rate monitor. This was both embarrassing and correct. It was good sign.
“Good, Reginald, good. I want the name of your bosses, and your suppliers if you know them.” The man drew a shuddering breathe, looked at the psychotic man in front of him and began to talk.

[HawktheThird]

Are you still interested in doing this? Because I'll join you. And I am serious about joining. While I may be only able to post once a week (college), they'll be of good length, and I wont disappear on you.

[Crimson Saint]

If it's not too late, I'll express my interest in this idea. I also may only be able to post once or twice in a week, but I won't disappear either

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