Page 64 of Peak Cruelty

Marlowe

I t starts with a little black book.

Graduates to a spreadsheet.

Just names, at first. First names only. The kind you whisper when you’re not ready to admit you remember more.

Then the rest comes. Slowly. Then all at once.

City. Occupation. What they did. What they took. What it cost.

I don’t rank them by severity. Not anymore.

Severity’s for courts and cowards. Pain is binary—you bleed or you don’t.

The first ten are easy.

The ones I remember without effort. Faces I could sketch blindfolded.

A teacher.

A nurse.

A man who ran a charity and wore kindness like a suit.

The kind that stinks more coming off than going on.

Patterns emerge on their own. I don’t force them. I just write them down.

They always want to be seen. That’s the thing.

It’s not enough to be cruel. They need a witness.

Applause, even if the act’s staged in private.

I watch for tells now. Every room I enter becomes a test.

Who’s performing. Who’s waiting. Who’s watching the wrong things.

I stop sleeping through the night. Not because I’m haunted. Because I’m working.

Each name gets a column.

I don’t delete anything. That would make it a hit list.

This isn’t revenge.

It’s inventory.

Eventually, I stop hiding the book and the spreadsheet.

No one comes over.

I build rules as I go.

No children present.

No mess someone else has to clean.

No deaths that look like vengeance.

If it’s going to look like an accident, it has to be one.

I’ve researched more about breaker boxes and valve corrosion than I ever cared to know.

The point is to leave no pattern they can trace.

But there’s a pattern. Of course there is.

Just not the kind they’d expect.

There’s a woman at a clinic nearby. Pediatric.

On paper, she’s harmless. Compassionate, even.

But when I watch her, I see the flickers.

The way her tone changes around kids who don’t smile.

The way she stiffens when a child interrupts her.

The way she touches them—too soft, too often. Like she wants credit for the gentleness.

Her name goes in the spreadsheet.

Not because I’m certain.

Because I’ve learned what certainty costs.

Each mark gets a date.

Each date gets a countdown.

Sometimes I don’t act. Just to see if I can.

I call it restraint.

Vance would call it dangerous, stupid even.

He wouldn’t be wrong. But he wouldn’t be right, either.

If he were still alive, he’d worry. I’d hear it in the way he closed the cabinets too softly, like sound might break me.

He’d leave coffee out for me, like I was going to sit and drink it instead of pacing and watching the window.

He’d want me to stop this. To heal.

But healing is a story people tell when they want you to stop making them uncomfortable.

This isn’t about healing.

It’s about not wasting the time he bought with his blood.

I don’t keep trophies.

But I keep patterns.

When they lie. How they cover. Who they hurt first.

My notes have stopped using full sentences.

They don’t need to.

“Yellow blouse. 2:14 p.m. Kid flinched. She smiled.”

“Apartment 3B. He said, ‘You’ll ruin my life’ before anything else.”

They always tell on themselves. They just hope no one’s listening.

I do recon the way he did.

Wait. Watch. Wait longer.

Let the pattern show itself. Then act.

I keep a second spreadsheet labeled: Future.

Not because I expect to get the one I thought I’d have.

Maybe exactly for that reason.

Maybe because now I have to build a different one.

Not for me.

For someone else. Someone like I used to be.

If she ever finds this, I want her to have a head start.

I believe in prep.

I believe in evidence.

I believe in letting people dig their own graves—and handing them a better shovel when they start using a spoon.

The names grow.

The columns grow.

I don’t ask if this is the right way.

There is no right way. Only right now.

I’m not trying to be a savior. I’m not trying to be Vance.

But someone has to do the work.

They call it coincidence, when men like him go missing.

When women like her lose their jobs.

When the carefully curated performance slips and there’s no one left clapping.

Let them call it that.

Let them believe it was luck. That the world caught up to them all on its own.

I won’t correct them.

Because that’s the trick, isn’t it?

They don’t see the hand behind the curtain.

And I don’t need them to.

Let them call it coincidence.

I call it craft.