The origins of evil 6

One more month, and eventually, it happened, what all the members of the Sage gang feared: their activities were found out!

It was already too late to do anything about it, most their faces and crimes had already been exposed. Now, all the hope they had left was to hide, and try to buy time praying for a miracle.

As of now, every member of the gang, except for Denis and Melany, had assembled in their most safe hiding place. But even then, they knew they were just hiding from the inevitable. They were all gathered in a single room, but nobody said anything. This situation lasted for several minutes before one of the men finally broke the silence, turning toward Wises:

"Saginus, what do we do?" he asked.

Wises loked at him, slightly confused, raising an eyebrow:

"What do you mean, what do we do? There's nothing we can do at this point, we're obviously fucked" he calmly replied.

"F-fucked? Come on, don't play with us like this, Saginus, you obligatorily have a back-up plan for this kind of situation!" another man said.

"Yeah, you have acquired litteraly every skill needed in prison, obviously you also have some to escape death! Come on, craft us new identities, find us a boat to evade the country, Saginus!"

"Y-yeah, find a solution Saginus, you're the boss, so that's your job!"

Wises kept listening to the complaints without saying anything... until one of the men snapped:

"Hey, Wises, stop ignoring us you fucker! You got us in this situation, you'll also get us out, do you get it?"

Slowly, every discussion died, as everyone turned toward him, including Wises himself:

"I'm sorry, how did you call me?" the latter asked, more surprised than angry.

The man already seemed to regret his reaction, but he knew it was too late to back up:

"You heard me, you bastard! In the first place, Saginus is just one of the codenames we use in on the street so witnesses won't be able to hear our real names" he said. "But do you think we have to care about this anymore? We-"

He could never finish his sentence as, the next moment, Wises suddenly took out his gun, and shot him in the head. Everybody else looked at him in pure shock.

"Wi- Saginus, why did you do this?"

"Are you that attached to your nickname?"

"Saginus, we're in a crisis already, it's not the time to lose yourself to anger"

Wises looked at them for a second, then burst into laughter and started shooting at them too:

"Angry? Oh, I'm not angry" he said as he kept firing more bullets toward his men. "I also know it's just a nickname, what do you think? A cool one, yes, but do you really think I'd get angry about it? No, I'm not angry in the slightest..."

He grinned:

"I'm just following the original plan" he said as he shot the last one of them.

Now left alone, he couldn't help but laugh at their stupidity. How could they ever even think that it would end up differently? From the very beginning, their dreams were all the same: living a life of luxury, getting away indefinitely with the infamous crimes they had committed and kept committing. Yes, from the very beginning, they had willingly struck a deal with the devil.

And now that their dreams had been broken, it was only natural that the devil had fulfilled the second half of the deal.

"Ahh... I think I'll miss these guys a bit" Wises sighed.

More important, there was something that ruined this perfect ending for him: the corpses. Usually, to concretize the death of another one's dreams, he just threw their corpse in the Thames but in this situation, it wasn't really possible in the current settings. That left him a bitter taste in the mouth.

'But it's okay, I'll just find some substitutes'

With the determination of the man who had nothing more to lose, he started to walk toward the building's exit, but stopped for a second. Near the front door was another corpse, belonging to someone he hadn't killed: Denis. He was fully naked, and laid in a puddle of blood. And looking down, even dead, he was still bleeding profusely... from his privates.

'Well, Melany must have come to the same conclusion as me... good' he thought. "I'll feel less lonely in death I guess"

For the next hour, he did his best to gather as much of 'them' as he could. It was far easier than usual, since this time he didn't have to worry about the cameras. Then, as night was falling on London, he retreated to hide, until he could find an opportunity to reach the Thames. There, he opened a large back gathering all these he had assembled in the last hours: babies. Not breathing anymore of course, so he wouldn't have to worry about their cries getting him noticed.

'Let's see, I have six babies, for seven Sage gang members I killed, minus Denis and Melany' he counted. 'Too bad, it's just short one... Heh, good enough'

Without a word, he threw in the first baby, causing a satisfying ripple in the river, that was sadly dissipated almost immediately He threw in the second one, but momentarily stopped after this one, sighing: babies were not as good of substitutes as he thought they would be.

"You seem shaken, do you have something on your mind?"

"Ahh... it's okay, nothing much, I'm just sad that my grand evil final isn't as satisfying as I thought"

"Wow, the great Saginus feeling down while killing people, that's truly a sight worth dying for... Well, that's pretty much what's going to happen to us anyway, so I basically get to see that for free. Isn't life wonderful?"

"You know, at this point you can just call me Wises, since the Sage gang is already buried in the depth of history"

"Don't say that, there's still the two of us"

Saying that, Melany sat besides Wises at the edge, swinging her legs above the Thames.

"Don't you agree?" she asked.

"Meh, not really, we won't be staying there for long either" Wises replied, throwing another baby in the river. "You want one?"

"No, thanks, I'm not the damn devil"

"Haha, the devil? You're mean, I'm just a guy with a dream. Speaking about that, did you hear about this guy that made it on the news last week?"

"The one that stabbed himself multiple times in the eyes after saying he had seen the devil? Yes, it would have been hard not to, since everybody was speaking about it for the following days. Honestly, I thought he had seen you in the shower"

"Haha, very funny"

Wises threw a fourth one in the river.

"Melany, can I ask you something?"

"You just did" she replied.

"..."

"Joke aside, yes you can"

"Thank you. So, I've been thinking a lot about why you joined the Sage gang. After all, even though you don't have much family, you have a master degree, had a clean criminal record until we got exposed, and you're not even socially inapt in any way, so why would you risk everything like that? Well, I think I finally found the answer to this question, can I try to make a guess, and you tell me if I'm right?"

"...

Make a guess and I'll see"

"Alright then"

He threw in the fifth baby.

"Here is my guess, as for why you're so hellbent on destroying men that don't respect women" he said. "In truth, that's not about justice for women, but for yourself: because when you were younger, something like this happened to you"

Melany tried answering, but he kept talking, not giving her a chance:

"But that's not all, I think the key lays in your method: before killing them, you first let them have their way as they want" he continued. "I've always been confused as for why you choose to do something so weird, but now I wonder... is it that, unconsciously, you want to reassure yourself? When younger, you couldn't do anything to defend yourself and had to let this person do what he wanted. Now, by doing this, you fool yourself into believing that even back then, you only let him do as he wanted to then kill him

But then, it would mean you also killed this person... and at the time, as a child, I don't think you had the skills to hide the crime, or anything like this. Meaning, this same person you killed was someone that the authorities would have never suspected you to end his life, no matter how much the clues pointed towards you. From this, everything clicks: why you give 'love' to your victims before killing them, why you go so far just in reaction to this trauma, even today, and why this story about what happened to you never came to the surface..."

He finally threw the last baby's body in the river:

"In truth, you were abused by your father, right?" he asked.

Melany's eyes met his, but she ended up looking away:

"My father never had any problem" she said. "He wasn't drinking, doing drugs, had no mental nor physical illness, nor any marital problem. It wasn't even a bad day, it was just raining outside. My mother wasn't there, and it happened. After that, I don't remember what happened, I just remember I had a knife in my hand, and he was there, naked on the floor. I don't remember how it happened either but, in the end, my mother is the one who ended up being imprisonned. To this day, I never heard about her again. Maybe she died in some dirty cell, or maybe she just ddidn't want anything to do anymore with an ungrateful brat like me, that ruined her life. I wouldn't blame her if this was the case"

"Don't be so harsh on yourself, at least you have a reason to act like this" Wises replied. "I said you were an hypocrite last time, but at least you're not like all these trashes that think their reason justify every decision they make, and every crime they commit. You're different, you're better"

He gently put his hand on her shoulder and smiled warmly:

"And that's why I forgive you" he concluded.

"You forgive me?" Melany repeated, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Forgive me for what?"

"Well, we both came here to make sure our career in crime ends in a more satisfying manner than an idiot like Denis, or a few babies, right? From the very beginning, it was established there would only be one member of the Sage gang living up to face justice. The only question left is which of us it will be"

After Wises said that, there was a blank, at the end of which Melany took out a knife and spun her waist, ready to end his life. But she could never finish her move as a sharp pain made her drop the knife. She looked down and saw that the handle of a knife was sticking out of her stomach.

"Nice try, I almost became your last victim" Wises praised. "But I'm sorry Melany, your dream ends here"

He gently pushed her forward, causing her to fall at a high speed. Before her body connected with the water, Wises saw her use her last bit of strenght to extend her arms and legs, getting in a star position. Thanks to that, when she finally crashed with it, water splashed around more than it ever did with any of the Sage gang's victims' corpses ever did. And following that was what Saginus considered as the most beautiful ripples he had ever seen.

"Splendid..." he thought out loud.

Soon after, he heard the sirens of police approaching, but didn't try to run or escape his fate. He simply raised his hands in the air while he kept looking at the river:

"Thank you for this beautiful conclusion, Melany" he said. "Thank you"