Fear made flesh

“Predator” (“Patient №1095” part 2)

Fire. A force that no one will ever truly master. An untamed nightmare for all living beings.
It devours everything in its path without a second thought — causing pain, destroying beauty, or obliterating something essential. Fire doesn’t care. It knows nothing of regret or justice, spares no one, and never hesitates. It simply fulfills its purpose: to annihilate. And it couldn’t care less what others think or say — whether they’re grateful or writhing in anguish over their losses, unable even to scream, or entirely numb to feeling anything at all. Fire doesn’t discriminate. Whether reducing insignificant scraps to ashes or consuming something that requires focus and patience to obliterate, it only bows to one master: time.

Time determines everything — how many souls fire will claim, how many hectares of forest it will scorch, how many memories it will turn to soot before the rescuers arrive to extinguish the raging spirit of one of nature’s most terrifying forces. Time never takes sides. One moment, it may favor you, letting you snuff out a tiny spark before it razes everything to the ground. But the next, it will betray you, empowering that same spark to sear you alive, trapping you in its fiery embrace with no escape. While you choke on smoke, firefighters struggle to cut through traffic that couldn’t have come at a worse time. Time is the only true king ruling this world.

Fire can be fought. Its birth can be prevented. But time bends to no one. It cannot be stopped or hurried, manipulated, or made to flow under our watchful eye. It just moves forward, irretrievable and unyielding.

I am like fire in a way. I do my job, burning away the filth of this planet, incinerating monsters who should never have existed. Creatures you’d have to scour the earth to find — the cruelest, wildest, and most brutal beasts ever created by nature: humans. Not ordinary humans, of course. Not at all. Invisible people you might overlook your entire life: a chatty taxi driver who takes you to work in the morning, a friendly nurse at the clinic down the street, a loving grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, or even the kind reflection in your bathroom mirror.

At first glance, they seem like regular people, no different from anyone else. But after ten years as a Tracker, I can point out a potential serial killer with a single glance into their eyes. Those eyes could express any emotion, wear any look, but there was always something — a hint of madness. Barely perceptible, but unmistakable. It was there in every monster I’ve dealt with, from my first to my second-to-last.
“Why second-to-last?” you ask.
Because now, standing in the middle of a burning house, I’m staring into the puppy-like blue eyes of a little boy with tousled hair. And I can’t see that madness in him. I know he’s the one I’ve been hunting, my final monster. But I don’t see it. I can’t find the bloodthirsty killer, the genius strategist, the manipulative psychopath, or the ruthless cannibal I’d read about and watched for the past month.

Instead, I see something else. I see all of it — at once.

Yes, I’ve dealt with scum before who had one or more of these traits. But even then, something always clashed within their psychological profile. There was always a dissonance. But now, I see these characteristics intertwined, seamless and harmonious. Yet somehow, it doesn’t fit. It breaks my understanding because standing before me isn’t a fully formed person but a child.

We’re used to children being helpless, kind, and curious — sensitive to others, endearingly clumsy, and innocent. But this psychological portrait doesn’t align when I look at this boy. Neither a monster nor a child stands before me — a true predator does.

For the first time in my career, I felt like a victim — of the situation and of the monster I was hunting. For the first time, time turned its back on me. For the first time, I was genuinely afraid.

For the first time, my soul wavered. My conscience struggled, as two conflicting emotions warred within me, robbing me of my precious time with every passing second.

I start gasping for air, choking on the acrid smoke filling my lungs, tears stinging my eyes.
“It’s just a child... I can’t do it. I just can’t,” one thought screams. But it’s drowned out by another—a deafening sense of duty to society and the unwavering instinct to follow the script. Now, without hesitation, I should plunge the knife where a normal person’s heart would be —where monsters keep only a cold shard of ice — or pull the trigger and let the bullet do the work for me. It would slide effortlessly through a brain that always thought differently, never like that of a normal human.

But never before have I encountered such a unique case. For the first time, I — someone who always chose ‘fight’ — stood frozen, like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck.

***

The L96A1 rifle. It has never failed me. It was with this rifle that I killed my first monster — a pedophile-murderer — a 45-year-old man who worked tirelessly at two jobs to afford spoiling his two beautiful children and his stunning wife. He would take them on lavish vacations, buy them whatever they desired, take them to fancy restaurants, and so on endlessly. Or so it appeared. More accurately, he pretended to work. In reality, this scumbag was earning a massive amount of cash in dollars for ‘harvesting’ the internal organs of children.

First, he stalked them at playgrounds, then snatched them into his car, plunging their innocent souls into a deep sleep with a chloroform-soaked cloth. He’d take them to abandoned, hidden places, where he indulged his animalistic instincts — there’s no other way to describe it. He unleashed his monstrous nature to the fullest extent, oh God. He beat them, cut them, crushed their spirits, and desecrated their pure bodies and souls. When he had ‘played’ enough, he discarded the lifeless, battered bodies like trash. He would then calmly walk to his car, retrieve a large cleaver and black plastic bags, and return to the scene, knowing there was no escape for his victims.