I like cats.

They have a calming effect on me even though I know freakin’ well that every feline out there has an agenda and they pull stupid shit like knocking a half-full glass of water off the coffee table and onto your hardwood floor at three in the morning. I’ve tried to keep a cat or two over the years, but because of what I am or possibly what I’ve done, well, whenever I get within ten feet of a cat, it’ll go into a violent display of hissing and spitting and stress shedding.

A few even shit themselves.

I’m serious.

Some cats, believe it or not, literally shit standing up whenever they catch a glimpse of me. Now there’s reasons why this happens and I’m not going to get into that right now because despite the fact that cats generally dislike me, I still retain a measure of admiration for them due to their uncomplicated nature.

Human beings, on the other hand … well, that’s another story entirely.

I’m going to throw out a word that you might consider to be archaic, but I can’t really find a better term to describe the true nature of those who slink about in the shadows brandishing a shining steel blade or a garroting wire, and who like to prey on women with the same predatory qualities as the best killing machines in the animal kingdom. Let’s just call them, evildoers.

I make it my business to kill certain kinds of evildoers.

Of the Ted Bundy variety.

Serial killers are a cosmic abomination and while I don’t claim to understand the complexities of the human mind, I enjoy removing their stain from this earth not because of any personal sense of duty to protect women. Far from it, actually.

Women generally piss me off, freak me out, or both.

That’s why in addition to cats, I also retain a certain fondness for hookers. I get what I want, they get paid and money continues to make the world go around. Everyone is cool.

Anyway, the reason I like to whack serial killers is because I’m sort of like the guy at the grocery store produce department who sifts through hundreds of wax covered crates of red peppers, separating the cosmetically perfect ones from those that look like some kind of weird-ass genetic mutation. (The vast majority of humanity is far from perfect, incidentally, but serial killers like to think they’re perfect in every conceivable way, and nobody likes a narcissist, especially if he’s armed. There’s also the issue of career progression as well, because serial killers have the unmitigated gall to think they have a right to do my fucking job.)

No, I’m not a serial killer like that dude on Showtime. If he were in fact a real human being, I’d pay him a visit, too.

I’d probably show up when he’s about to kill one of his own kind because there are few things better in this world than a two-for-one deal, am I right?

My name is Tim Reaper, so, you know, draw your own conclusions from that.

The dick du-jour I’d been alerted to had an interesting modus operandi. While assholes like the aforementioned Ted Bundy liked to fake an injury to get their victim close enough to whack on the head and stuff into the back of a van, this asshole liked to use cats to lure his prey, and more precisely, kittens.

You don’t hurt kitties. Ever.

My concern about the welfare of the little fuzzballs had intensified considerably after I’d read in the paper about a couple of maimed kittens that had been found alongside the dismembered remains of a pair of women. The cops weren’t yet ready to say that a serial killer was on the loose, but the press sure as hell was. Normally I let these things play themselves out because while I know who the murderous assholes are and precisely where to find them, I’m required to allow certain events to occur before I step in.

Like getting paid, for starters.

Now, you might be asking yourself why this Tim Reaper dude won’t go to the cops and spill the beans as to the whereabouts of a brutal monster who likes prey on young women, I get that. I suppose I have it within my power to assist the police, but there’s this old saying you might be familiar with, and it governs my actions for better or worse: everyone has their time.

I’ll throw another one out for you to chew on: fate determines your ultimate destiny. Cue creepy organ music.

By now you’ve probably surmised that I ain’t exactly human, right? I suppose my name gave it away, I mean, how many people have the word Reaper for a surname? Well, I come from a long, proud line of Reapers, as in The Grim Reaper, and brother, there are thousands of us.

I just happen to be the only one who got punted out of the affiliation for stirring up the shit nearly a century ago. What did I do?

Google Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.

Yeah – that was me.

To make a long story breathtakingly short, I got the old heave-ho from my order. They stripped me of my ability to offer the touch of death; that cosmic fickle finger of fate that causes all manner of life to wither and die when I make my presence known. I still possess my innate ability to know precisely where every human being alive might be at a given moment in time, (assuming I actually give a rat’s ass) but I’m no longer allowed to claim them in accordance with the natural order of life and death.

Pretty crazy, huh?

I kicked at the still blood-stained soil beneath a massive chestnut tree with the heel of my boot. There was a faint hint of autumn in the air and a moist breeze carried the scent of raw sewage from Halifax Harbour a few miles away.

This was where he did it.

Fifteen year-old Bonnie Teller’s disemboweled corpse was found here less than two days ago. She’d been cut wide open from between her legs right up to her sternum and there was a three month old Tabby that was tied to Bonnie’s left wrist by a two foot length of braided cotton. The kitten’s hind legs were broken and it was still alive (barely) when some mountain bikers found the corpse. The coroner said the girl had been dead for about a day and amazingly, coyotes and other scavengers had steered clear of her remains.

Alright, listen.

You don’t have to be a fucking rocket scientist to figure out that this was the work of a serial killer because the body was deliberately laid out on a well-used bike trail. The killer wanted someone to find Bonnie’s torn open remains about a thousand kinds of fast. Shit like this is a hallmark of a serial killer.

Two weeks before Bonnie; a family of three found twenty year-old Elaine Lahey’s internal organs in a blue bag hanging from a spruce tree. Her hollowed out body was found about thirty feet away, lying against a twelve foot length of driftwood out at Cow Bay. She too had been cut from stem to stern and there was a three month old dead Calico, again with two broken rear legs, lashed to Elaine’s left wrist.

I clenched my jaw and drew in a breath of air as I collected a handful of soil from where Bonnie met another one of my kind. It was her time, unfortunately. The whirring, spinning clockwork mechanism that runs our universe chose to end her before her first cries in the delivery room; before she was even a thought in her horny father’s brain as he slammed the nuts to his girlfriend in the back of a minivan on their third date.

Fuck me.

Conceived on a bench seat in the back of a 1990 Dodge Caravan only to be gutted by a knife-wielding cat abuser a mere fifteen years and nine months later. I can’t explain the workings of the universe, the meaning of life, or even the meaning in Bonnie murder. I can’t question why out of six billion people inhabiting the planet, she was selected to meet her gruesome and terrifying end at the hands of a sick bastard who breaks the legs of kittens to lure his prey.

I knew who did it, though, and it was time to pay him a visit. To hell with what fate had to say about it. I’d deal with her later.

I came to him in the darkness, my black trench coat billowing back over my heels as a gust of supernatural force blew a scattering of litter against a garbage bin outside the old warehouse on Bayer’s Road. I could hear the mewling of a kitten in the back of a cargo van that was parked adjacent to the bin and I instinctively knew he was planning to break the kitten’s legs and gut another young woman.

Tonight.

I ran a leather-clad sleeve across my brow as I reached into my trench coat and clasped my hand across the pistol grip of my nine millimeter Beretta. I slid it out, silencer and all, as I gripped the door handle and pulled up. The door swung open and there he was, hunched over a pretty blond whose legs were bound together with silver duct tape. Her arms were bound too, stretched out over her head, and her eyes were a pair of enormous white O’s. She would have screamed save for the fact there was a sock in her mouth, and dickhead?

If I could have packaged the look on his face and sold it to Walmart, I’d be able to bankroll a small nation.

He stared at me, his mouth wide open. In his left hand was a tiny Siamese kitten, and in his right hand he brandished a pair of blood stained vice-grip pliers.

“Danny Mackie Hooper,” I growled, as I aimed my weapon. “It’s your time.”

Both the vice grip pliers and the kitten slipped out of his hands simultaneously. The kitten, of course, took one look at me, hissed, and then shit all over the floor of the van. It arched its back and puffed out its white and black fur until the tiny creature appeared twice its size.

“W-Who are you?” Hooper croaked, as a large wet spot slowly appeared on his jeans. “How did you find me?”

I cocked an eyebrow as my eyes bore right through his.

“I heard the kitty,” I said, squeezing the trigger. “Thanks for coming out.”

There was a muffled pop as the back of his skull along with a bright red mixture of blood and brain matter splattered against the back of the passenger seat and he fell back, the rest of his head thumping against the side wall of the van. The kitten tore past me at something close to Mach One as I climbed inside. I pulled my hunting knife from its sheath and cut the tape from the girl’s bound wrists; then I pulled the sock out of her mouth.

“Kelly Jameson, you get to live another day,” I said calmly, as I slid my Beretta back into its holster. “You’re three months shy of your nineteenth birthday so, you know, maybe in the future you might wanna try to avoid climbing into vehicles with sociopath kitten-maiming assholes.”

What happened next was kind of awkward.

The pretty blond threw herself at my chest and started bawling. “H-He was going to kill me – he was the guy who killed those two other girls,” she blubbered.

I gently placed my hands on her shoulders and gave her a slight push as she dropped to her knees and sobbed. I clenched my jaw as I pulled out my wallet and slipped her a twenty dollar bill.

“Maybe, you know – uh… call a cab or something, huh?” I said as I tucked the note into her clenched fist.

She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “But the police will want to talk to you – you’re not leaving are you? I don’t want to wait here all by myself. Please, just stay with me … please?”

Well crap.

See, this is why women bug the shit out of me. I mean, I killed the living fuck out of the guy who’d planned on gutting her and now she wanted me to baby-sit until the cops showed up. I glanced over my shoulder to where my pickup was parked, just around the corner from the warehouse. If I was going to hang around, I’d definitely wind up being hauled in for questioning about precisely how I was able to locate Danny-boy, and then there was the issue of why the back of his head was splashed all over the passenger seat. With my luck, I’d probably be charged with manslaughter. I pursed my lips tightly and looked down at Kelly who’d managed to get the tape off her legs.

“Give me my twenty bucks back,” I said, holding out my hand.

She gazed up at me and handed me the twenty dollar bill.

“Here,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“You okay to walk half a block?” I asked, as I crawled out of the van.

She sniffled back a big gob of snot as she started rifling through her purse. “Yeah – are you going to hang here with me while I call the cops?”

“Looks that way,” I said, handing her a business card. “Here’s the number for the homicide division. Ask for Detective Sergeant Sparks. When she answers, tell her Tim Reaper told you to call and that I’ve solved her serial killer problem.”

The blond nodded slowly and gave me one of those looks that told me exactly what she was thinking.

“Yeah-yeah,” I groaned, as I slipped a cigarette between my lips. “My name really is Tim Reaper … just make the call.”

Copyright 2010 by Sean Cummings