Jake stood in the rain like a dark shadow outside the house he’d once called home, homicidally furious at every drop that fell on him.

He almost wanted to grin at the ridiculousness of his anger.

The rain wasn’t intentionally trying to get to him and amusing as the image would be, it wasn’t some deity up there pissing onto him from the skies. Again, Jake almost grinned. Even in this situation, his sense of humor refused to die. Which in its own way was ironic, because if there was ever a time for it to die, now was that time. The seven-room house he was outside of had, just yesterday, been the murder grounds for his seven friends and roommates, his longtime girlfriend Becky among the victims. Seven rooms, seven deaths, one corpse in each room spread out in the center and positioned like a rag doll. The thought of stepping inside tugged at emotional corners of his mind that he had forgotten even existed. The house that stood behind him carried a dark, foreboding presence.

So why was he even here? Among all the bottled up emotions, it was almost easy to forget. He’d called up Detective William Iscariot to examine the situation. Iscariot had given precise instructions to meet him at the house.

Following the investigator’s plans was the correct approach; William Iscariot’s methods were unconventional as hell but his track record was a constant line of successes. Jake had actually seen one of these successes in action; the same detective had solved the whole stolen wallet situation a week ago. A week ago things were so different, so normal…

Jake shook his head and refused to let himself reminisce as he unsuccessfully tried to light up a cigarette in the rain. He looked up, and through the downpour caught a glimpse of an old, tired brown car approaching. William Iscariot had arrived.

Jake examined Iscariot’s wide shoulders as the Detective walked towards him. Clothed in a dark trench coat, it was hard not to notice the contrast between Iscariot’s heavy shoulders and his disproportionately lanky arms. As he walked up to Jake, they both knew instinctively that there wasn’t a need for verbal “hellos.” The relationship between the two men only became stranger every time they conversed. It was as if both of them preferred to hint at each other through plastic filters.

“Follow me inside.”

Jake followed Iscariot to the porch of the house and gulped hard as he glanced through the cracked windows. He made sure to divert his eyes from the fanciful graffiti covering the porch. Iscariot calmly pushed the door open.

“Your housekeeping skills don’t seem to be your most admirable trait,” Iscariot said in his usual husky voice as he examined all the haplessly crammed in cardboard boxes, shelves and tables in the main hall. Jake thought for a moment he could see Iscariot smirking but no, it was just a grimace that only pulled lightly at all the scars decorating the man’s weathered face. He should have known. The Detective never smiled. Jake tried to think of an appropriate sarcastic response to William Iscariot’s comment.

“Yeah,” his lips were barely able to form.

Iscariot turned to look at Jake, penetrating deeply into his eyes; “I made sure they didn’t drag the corpses out of here or reposition them in any way.”

“What?”

Jake quickly looked toward the door with a panicked turn. Iscariot responded in a wordless manner by closing it. He rested his arched back against the handle, forming a barrier.

“No backing out, kid. Now look to the center of the room.”

“All I see are boxes. If you’re going to tell me that all the boxes are full of body parts or any kind of shit like that, then no thanks, I’ll stick to watching horror movies.”

“Funny,” Iscariot muttered under his breath. A statement soaked in sarcasm and said in an annoyed tone.

Jake looked toward the center of the main hall again. Stacked boxes littered the floor filled with old cereal bags, clothing and comic books. Jake examined closer and noticed the huge table in the center of the room. He looked again. It was resting on an uneven surface and littered with red stains toward the bottom. As soon as his eyes hit the table, the observant Iscariot walked up and flung his small, lanky arms over the table’s surface. He moved it remarkably fast, seemingly only by the power of his large shoulders.

A dead body was underneath, slathered in its own blood and unrecognizable. It had the appearance of something beaten with a crowbar. Jake dropped to the floor and buried his head in his hands.

It wasn’t just the fact that it was a corpse that hit him so hard. It was how deliberately positioned, ruined, it was ghastly to see how sadistically mutilated the body was. It didn’t look human anymore. The body was positioned by ropes and pulleys strapped around the room into a very distinct position. The back was curved inward, and the arms and legs both were pulled into the same position, so the whole body formed the shape of a half-circle--open on the right side, closed on the other.

“I believe this man’s name was Juan Alberto. Supposedly, he and you used to go ‘hit on the ladies’ at the local restaurant. Sources say he was popular. He’s a real pretty boy now, eh?”

Jake gasped and looked at Juan’s face, the skin cut apart. No, it wasn’t Juan, it couldn’t be Juan; he had just seen Juan two days ago. Juan wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead. He looked again. He couldn’t deny it anymore, it was Juan. Juan was dead.

“Shut up!”

Iscariot looked away at hearing this and replied quietly, “Sorry. Emotional attachment to a case is something that’s got to be avoided, kid, or I’d risk getting too wrapped up in it. I have to be merciless about this.”

“Well how about just keeping those fucking comments to your own goddamn self next time?”

“Let’s go to the next room.”

“You’re cutting me off.”

“Let’s go to the next room”, Iscariot repeated. He patted Jake on the back as he stood up. Jake again noticed the weird physical contrasts of the Detective; his hands were heavy but his fingers seemed as thin as blades of grass.

They went through the main hall and into the kitchen. Another corpse was strapped on top of the kitchen table and he could recognize this one instantly. It was Robbie, the lanky older guy. He tried to look away, fruitlessly. Detective Iscariot was again subtly positioning himself in front of the door to make escape impossible.

“Quite the creative killer we have here, wouldn’t you say?”

Jake looked back at Robbie’s corpse. It was positioned like a hideous mocking of Rob’s own skinniness; the arms were ripped cleanly off the body, and the legs were tied straight together.

Before he could respond, Iscariot grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the next room. It was the living room and yet again there was another corpse. This one was in exactly the same straight line shape. Jake couldn’t help but recognize Jenny.

“It’s in the same position, isn’t it? This is an extremely creative killer here,” Iscariot rasped.

Jake turned around; “Why are you doing this? What did I do to deserve this? I’m getting out of here right--”

“Then you’ll be condemning yourself right there, won’t you?”

Jake turned around. He studied Iscariot’s eyes, glowing under his thick-brimmed hat. Even when he looked into the Detective’s dark pupils, no contact was made.

“What does that mean?”

“Well,” Iscariot leaned against a wall, “I’ve got a strange feeling, kid, that this creative murderer is standing in this very room.”

Jake stepped back. The Detective was blaming him? How could he even think to do that? Jake didn’t respond. He looked at the corpse again and started walking into the next room without a word.

“Nice pocketknife you got hanging off your sleeve there, by the way.”

Jake refused to give Iscariot the dignity of a response and merely examined the knife rolled up in his sleeve. He walked into the next room and Iscariot followed him slowly, glancing around the room for clues. Jake would not let his conscious mind or eyes recognize who the dead people were anymore. As far as he was concerned, from now on, every body was nothing more than a lifeless corpse on the floor.

This next corpse was stretched into the shape of a circle. Not a half-circle this time but a whole circle. Dozens of little circles had carved into the person’s skin. He knew this person, it was…

No. He wouldn’t remember who it was. He wouldn’t allow himself to remember.

No matter how hard it was to setup these mental blocks in his head, he had to do it. Otherwise this situation would drive him completely insane.

“So where were you when all this happened, anyway?” Iscariot coughed.

“Fuck off.”

“Ah.”

“I was at the fitness club.”

“Okay then.”

Jake again could almost swear he saw Iscariot smirk. Again he was wrong. Between all the brittle scars and half-shaved stubble covering the Detective’s face, no genuine expression other than contempt and sardonic curiosity ever seemed to seep through the wounds.

He mentally told himself to stop thinking. He had to stop thinking, stop pondering and only act. Jake and the Detective went upstairs to the fifth room of the house, never uttering a word. The silence was only physical. Mentally, they both seemed to be screaming at each other.

The next corpse wouldn’t have been recognizable even if Jake was still trying to recognize it. The skin was ripped straight off, the person’s head was nowhere to be seen and this body was positioned and pulley-tied across the room. Jake couldn’t contain the creeping notion that no matter how much he denied it to himself, that he had once known that poor bastard, whoever it was.

The skinless, dark red and bloody arms had been curved into a freakish “loop” position, circling off into a round shape off to the right side of the body. The legs were a different matter entirely. The man’s, no, not man, corpse, corpse’s left leg had been snapped and pulled down in a line, while it’s right leg was snapped into a diagonal position going out to the right, interestingly parallel to the looped arms.

Jake swallowed the attempts at tears coming out his eyes and continued walking into the next room in a dead, zombie-like manner, going hurriedly enough that Iscariot’s massively disproportionate body frame had to speed-walk to keep up. He tried to amuse himself with the image but it was of no use. His sense of humor had finally been killed.

“Look at this next one,” Iscariot said emotionlessly, “Twisted, don’t you think? Or do you?”

This perversion of a corpse had its legs were tied to one side of the room, the arms to the opposing diagonal side and the body itself was twisted into some sick kind of S-shape. Jake stared at it thoughtlessly.

Detective Iscariot went ahead of him into the last room. He looked back and actually stared him in the eyes. Without a moment’s notice, Jake ran ahead to the final room.

Immediately, he tripped over what felt like a tennis ball. He picked the object up and as he did so brain matter spilled out of a hole on the bottom. Jake collapsed onto the ground and cried. It was a human head. Not just any human head, either. It was Becky. His girlfriend.

This corpse was the worst mutilation of them all. The two legs were still connected by only a strand of intestine and had been spread out into a split shape. The arms were connected at the top to make a triangle.

“Why, why, WHY?!”

He looked again. He wiped the tears from his reddened eyes and withheld his gagging to stare at the shape of Becky’s corpse and its positioning. Even more than the other bodies, it looked familiar. Something he had seen every day. He’d seen it on a keyboard, seen in signs, seen in writing. It was the capital letter A. He thought back to the last room, where the corpse had been torn into that confusing S position. He pulled out a notebook and pen from his pocket and wrote the letters down: A-S.

Jake ran to the top of the stairs and looked at the body there. It was clearly an R. He pulled out the paper and pen again--A-S-R. He stood out at the ledge of the stairs, where he could get a clear view of every other room in the house and wrote down the letters of every dead body.

A-S-R-I-I-C-O.

He ran over and showed this to Iscariot. The Detective squinted at the letters but looked strangely unsurprised. This seemed suspicious to Jake but he didn’t want concern himself with suspicions right now, only facts. Iscariot walked down the stairs and beckoned Jake forward.

“Hmm. We have one last room to go to, kid.”

“What? Seven rooms, seven people, seven letters…there’s nothing else to go to.”

“Funny how you say that. People always seem to forget about the basement.”

They walked to the basement door. Jake grabbed the handle and began to turn it. Iscariot took hold of his wrist quickly.

“Careful. I have a suspicion that the killer is in there.”

Jake flung the door open and flicked on the light. He ran across the room violently and overturned boxes, shelves, anything he could get his hand on. He looked at his paper again. There was an arrangement of letters but they didn’t make any sense. He looked up at William Iscariot.

“What are you talking about? There’s no one in here!”

“Yes there is. The killer is in here.”

“Listen up, fucker, I didn’t kill my friends. I didn’t kill my lover. I’ve never killed anyone in my life, you got that?”

Iscariot’s gaze never lessoned, and didn't need to speak any words. He had a stare that looked straight into a person’s soul. Jake looked at his paper one more time and realized the letters were scrambled. The truth dawned on him as he unscrambled the letters in his mind.

Shocked, Jake dropped the paper and it flew off into the depths of the basement floor.

A-S-R-I-I-C-O.

I-S-C-A-R-I-O.

Iscario_?

For the first time, William Iscariot smiled. The corners of his mouth pulled into a tight, malicious grin. The Detective lunged forward and knocked Jake to the ground.

“Sure took your time.”

Before Jake even knew what was happening, Iscariot’s small but steady arms had snapped both of his arms out of their sockets. Pulley ropes were tied onto his wrists, tight enough to cut the circulation off. His legs were also snapped out of their sockets and tied together. He had become the final letter--he was the “T”.

“Why are you doing this?” Jake gasped.

Iscariot tied the pulleys. He turned his head to smile again in that same unsettling manner. The way that grin twisted his face around seemed supernatural.

“You see, kid…I’m a creative fella. One that doesn’t let morality hold me back.”

Iscariot dusted off his jacket and continued; “I don’t have any formal detective training. I don’t know shit about fingerprints and I don’t know shit about looking for clues but you see when you make your own crimes, it doesn’t take much to solve them.”

“So you’ve been faking it all this time? You kill people, steal things, then find some nobody and frame them for the crimes? Who are you gonna frame for this one, huh?”

“Look kid, I’m just like any other guy that needs his paycheck. Maybe I get mine the wrong way but as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.”

“Why did you only get me now?”

“What can I say, I wanted to show off to somebody. Lucky you.”

“Are you even a fucking real detective?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Let’s just say I haven’t been incredibly honest. You don’t think my name is really ‘Iscariot’ do you?”

Iscariot glared at Jake with his eyes, wrinkling up all the scars on his face menacingly. He patted down Jake’s jacket and took out the pack of cigarettes. With a sidelong glance, he got up and walked out of the room, wordlessly. Jake struggled to break out of his bonds. His arms, popped out of their sockets, weren’t much use. His head had been smashed against the ground when Iscariot jumped at him and Jake could feel warm blood beginning to pool on the back of his skull. He gasped and his body shivered as if it was in a freezer. He knew that if he couldn’t save himself fast, he would die, forever immortalized as the last letter.

Tears welled up in Jake’s eyes, tears that only increased his will to live. With a strenuous, screaming grunt, he was able to push his shoulder against the ground and snap it back into place. He could feel his fingers again.

Jake almost wanted to smirk, because as intelligent and scheming as detective Iscariot had been, he’d forgotten one thing. Jake bent his hand downward in an awkward position and pulled out that exact one thing the bastard has forgotten; the pocketknife rolled up in his sleeve. As Jake started to cut through the pulley tied around his arm, he looked over to the nearest telephone. If he could cut these pulleys fast enough, the Detective was done for.

William Iscariot walked calmly out of the house and leaned back on the front porch. He ignored the sounds of the kid’s screams and grunts. It wasn’t hard to ignore, really. The basement was effectively a vault, so you’d have to actually try to hear the screams to hear them, especially with all that pouring rain. He ran his lanky fingers against the pack of cigarettes he’d stolen, slightly stained with blood. Taking one out, he lit it up under the shelter of the porch’s roof and breathed smoke calmly into the night air.

Iscariot suddenly caught sight of something in the distance. He gagged on his cigarette and spat it onto the ground in shock. The police were pulling up, right this second and there was no way the kid was dead yet. Iscariot turned around to go back inside and was shocked yet again to see Jake walking right up to him, bloodstained but very much alive.

“You want to count those police cars for me, Iscariot?” Jake panted out with a vengeful smile.

The Detective turned back around. His jaw dropped. He leaned his heavy shoulders up against the front railing of the porch and took off his hat.

Eight police cars. Even in his last torturous moments, as he caught sight of those eight cars driving up to the house, William Iscariot couldn’t help but smirk at the final irony.