HILLSIDE FALLS – Local serial killer, Stanley “The Hillside Reaper” Chisolm, has reported experiencing mixed emotions regarding the reopening of workplaces, hoping to maintain work-from-home for at least part of his side gig murdering people.
“I guess I just got used to it, you know? And then once I settled into the groove of performing my standard pre-hunt rituals from the comfort of my cozy bedroom, I wondered how I ever lived without it,” Chisolm commented via hastily recorded, static-filled VHS cassette delivered to his grandmother’s gravestone, “I mean why bother systematically carving a list of fears into my flesh from a dark, dingy gas station bathroom when I can just do it in my en suite?”
Chisolm, who previously dispatched no more than three to four victims each year pre-pandemic, has seen his productivity sky-rocket since adopting a remote working approach. He credits the bump in numbers to a combination of less time commuting and the increased availability of trusting, lone individuals through various food-delivery apps. Neighbours have chalked up the constant screams and pleas for mercy emanating from Chisolm’s house as generic, pandemic-inspired frustration and malaise.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots I miss about the in-person experience that I’m happy to return to. There’s just something about seeing the light go out in a middle-aged nurse’s eyes through the moonlight filtering between the dark pines covering Old Knot’s Canyon on the edge of a cliff that doesn’t compare to doing the deed in my cramped two-bedroom,” Chisolm admitted, “Plus I’ve run out of room in the basement and I’ve had to start stacking them like cordwood.”
Serial killers across the nation have agreed with Chisolm’s views, desiring a balance where they are free to methodically hunt and feast upon the anguished cries of poor souls representing their repressed childhood trauma either from home or from the lair where they display their trophies. Indeed, the killer known to the media only as “The Red Flesh” finally gave up the lease on the abandoned slaughterhouse/asylum in favour of a nice townhouse in tony Upper Westland. It comes out cheaper plus it’s right by some nice schools, according to him.
Similarly, law enforcement have admitted that the bud is off the rose in their socially-distanced interactions with suspected killers. Cryptically coded threats referencing the “Majesty of the Bones” on the eve of Samhain are far more effective when delivered branded into the skin of a newly butchered hog, rather than via Zoom with a superimposed background of a relaxing beach. Detectives nation-wide agree that the cat-and-mouse thrill between hunter and hunted as they trail the psychopath through an underground Blood Carnival is important for office morale and team building.
“Look, it’s still an up close and personal profession so I know that the industry is going to start forcing us back soon. I just hope that they realize that we are not pieces of meat to be abused by a cold, uncaring capitalist system,” Chisolm stuttered from behind his pig mask.
“It’s everyone else. Everyone else are just pieces of meat, ready for the culling,” he continued.
