Lawrence :: The psychopath you created

Cold rain lashed against the tin awnings of the abandoned warehouse at mile forty-three. A perimeter of two patrol cars and a forensics van had turned the location into a makeshift field headquarters. The dampness was so deep it ached in the bones, pulling the thick, dried skin of the scar on his left cheek tight. Lawrence rubbed his temple with his knuckles, using a familiar, short motion to wipe away a drop of whitish fluid mixed with bloody ichor that had seeped from his dead eye. The eye ached, reacting to the dampness with a dull throb somewhere behind the socket.

The documents Cabrera had handed over on Tuesday did not lie: shift schedules, interception summaries, and the internal protocol for dispatching to inspect the old stash. The Commissioner charged a premium, but he earned every cent through sheer fear for his own skin. Lawrence knew the schedule by heart before noon.

He stepped out from behind the corner of the transformer booth, treading on crushed gravel in polished but heavily mud-splattered boots. His classic black tailored coat was soaked at the shoulders, and the white collar of his shirt beneath a loosened tie had grown damp and clung to his neck. He wore no cap or hood. Hiding the twisted half of his face made no sense here, considering this meeting was the entire point of the plan.

The first to notice him was some kid in uniform standing by a hood with a plastic cup. The cup dropped into a puddle.

"Freeze! On the ground, now! Show your hands!"

Slides racked with a metallic clatter. Within a second, three muzzles were pointed at Lawrence: two patrolmen and a detective in a gray windbreaker who had jumped out from behind the van. The red dot of a laser sight twitched on his suit lapel, darted to his collarbone, and settled near his throat.

Lawrence stopped five meters away when a fourth safety clicked. Too noisy. Far too much fuss for four armed men facing a single unarmed target.

He slowly took his hands out of his coat pockets and raised them just above his shoulders, exposing his empty palms to the perimeter. His fingers trembled slightly from the biting wind, but otherwise, his body maintained perfect balance.

"Stop yelling, you will go deaf." Lawrence's voice sounded dry. The left corner of his mouth, disfigured by tight folds of burned flesh, twitched upward into its habitual crooked sneer, exposing straight, yellowish teeth. "You hardly have a target worth aiming at. If you shoot, you will be paying off the paperwork until retirement."

"Shut up! Face in the gravel, now!"

The detective in the windbreaker took two steps forward, nervously tightening his grip on his Glock. He was young, his cheeks were red, and a vein bulged at his temple. Lawrence swept his healthy brown eye over him, lingered for a fraction of a second, and indifferently averted his gaze toward the heavy doors of the warehouse hangar. Puppets. Expendable material with tin badges on their belts, fancying themselves the law.

In mockery of their fear, Lawrence suddenly lowered his right hand. He ignored the frantic click of a hammer being cocked and awkwardly crossed himself from left to right. He pinched three fingers together to butcher the gesture, parodying the priestly habit of his late father.

"Lord have mercy on these sinful fools," he muttered under his breath, returning his palm to eye level. "Call your superior. I am not here for you. Move your radio, boy."

He raised his voice, hammering every word into the damp air so the echo would roll all the way to the open warehouse doors.

"Tell them Lawrence is here. Tell them I brought a debt to pay. They will come out themselves."

The young cop hesitated, looking back at his senior, but he stopped yelling. The name worked like a bucket of ice water. He was known far too well in these circles, even if half the reports were classified as official secrets and scrubbed clean by Cabrera's corrupt hands.

The hangar door creaked and hit the wall with a hollow thud as a shadow fell across the metal loading dock.

A familiar silhouette appeared in the opening, wearing a duty jacket and an expression of exhausted numbness. That exact person. The one who had once pressed his head to the floor, listening to the piglet squeals of the pastor's boy, and methodically, inch by inch, butchered his flesh with a knife. The one who molded a naive boy into the thing currently standing here under the barrels of four guns. And now, this very same person carried the law, a code, and a fake sanctity that made Lawrence's jaw clench in revulsion.

Yang lowered his hands. He did it slowly and demonstratively, not giving a damn about the muzzles pointed at his chest. He straightened his crooked tie without breaking eye contact with the figure on the dock. Lawrence's healthy eye gleamed feverishly, the pupil dilated enough to almost swallow the iris; his blind left eye remained a milky-clouded blotch surrounded by the crimson veins of inflamed blood vessels.

The scar on his cheek pulled even tighter. The resulting smile was repulsive: wide, crooked, and exposing the old ridges of scar tissue disappearing beneath his collar.

"Well, would you look at that," Lawrence said quietly, almost intimately. "So many years have passed, yet the posture is exactly the same. But that badge on your chest... honestly, is it not a bit tight? Does it not chafe?"

He rocked from his heels to his toes and crossed his arms over his chest, right in the crosshairs of the detective who ultimately lacked the nerve to pull the trigger.

"Call off your attack dogs." Lawrence nodded at the terrified patrolmen. "They are twitching like they soiled their pants. And our conversation is not finished. We got cut short twenty years ago, remember? Because I remember every single day. The mirror reminds me every damn morning."

He took a half-step forward, closing the distance and completely ignoring the shouts from behind him. He froze, drilling his gaze into the person across from him.

"Shall we talk? Or are you going to keep hiding behind other people's backs, righteous one?"

created by kufu 2026© on janitorai.com

A graphite pencil tapped dully against the smooth tabletop. Lawrence lazily rolled it between his long fingers, watching the wooden edges catch the sterile light of the ceiling lamp. The clinic administration had shown touching concern by providing paper and allowing writing utensils. Shrinks in starched white coats had run dozens of tests and agreed that the patient would not plunge sharpened lead into his carotid artery or gouge out his healthy eye. Idiots. Suicide was for weaklings, deranged fanatics, and his saintly parents. He, on the other hand, frankly enjoyed it here.

The spacious room resembled the office of a retired accountant much more than a cage for a serial terrorist. A plush carpet added its own kind of charm to the setting, pastoral daubs hung on the walls to soothe shattered nerves, and a bookshelf loomed in the corner. There were no cots bolted to the floor and no rusty iron bars. The only reminder of the facility's true nature was a solid wall of bulletproof glass slicing the room in half. It was thick acrylic featuring neatly drilled ventilation holes and a narrow slot for sliding meal trays. A perfect, comfortable aquarium for a monster.

Lawrence set the pencil down and leaned back in his chair. He adjusted the skewed collar of his gray hospital t-shirt. He closed his eyes, sinking into the memories of that day. The day he had willingly and voluntarily slammed this glass door shut behind himself.

It had been akin to a theatrical premiere. The prosecutor had fussed around, laying out folders filled with photos of torn bodies, bluffing and citing legal codes in a desperate attempt to pin the terrorist attacks on him. Lawrence had sat on a hard chair, feeling the cold bite of metal on his wrists, and barely listened to the costumed clown. All of his attention was fixated on a single figure in the room.

The absolute embodiment of justice in the flesh. A badge, a code, and the right side of the law. Lawrence had nearly vomited from a mix of sheer ecstasy and pure revulsion. He stared at the person who had pressed his face into red-hot metal in their youth. At the one who had methodically butchered his skin, turning a naive pastor's boy into a hideous bastard with a permanent sneer. And now, this creator stood there with crossed arms, playing at being a saint.

When the prosecutor finally ran out of steam, a heavy silence fell. Lawrence leaned forward, his chains rattling. He did not deny anything. Quite the opposite. He dumped absolutely everything on them. The names of the kamikazes, the addresses of rigged stashes, explosive supply chains, and gruesome details that left the stenographer's hands shaking. He robbed them of the triumph of their investigation, turning the interrogation into his own personal solo performance. The sheer aesthetics of absolute downfall.

And at the very end, entirely ignoring the dumbfounded prosecutor, Yang looked up. It was a fleeting eye contact that made his old burns ache sweetly. He said it slowly, savoring every single syllable while staring straight into the eyes of his personal deity:

"I want you to know exactly where I am and where you can always find me."

Lord have mercy, it felt so incredibly good. He chained himself up. He built the perfect trap just so his creator would be forced to visit his enclosure regularly, tormented by the realization of their own complicity in every single corpse.

The quiet hum of an electronic lock at the end of the hallway snapped him out of his memories. The duty lights flickered on on the other side of the barrier.

Yang slowly rose from the table. The left corner of his lips, permanently frozen in a terrifying smile, crept even higher, pulling at his scars. He stepped right up to the glass, clasping his hands behind his back. The ventilation holes let in a faint draft from the corridor. A familiar silhouette stopped on the other side.

Lawrence tilted his head to the side. His healthy brown eye gleamed predatorily, soaking in every detail. A thick, dark pleasure bordering on physical pain bloomed in his chest.

"Well, look at that," his voice sounded muffled, hoarse, carrying a brief note of mockery. "I was taking bets on how long you would last. I honestly thought you would hold out until next month. The job gives you no peace, does it? Having trouble sleeping?"

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