What follows is an excerpt from a mystery I am working on.  It is an interview between the antagonist of the story and a psychologist who is studying him.  It takes place after the main body of the novel, and will probably be broken up in-between chapters as a sort of filler.  Very spooky and stylish.  It's rough, unedited, and, like everything I write, will probably see very little revision.  Bon apetit!

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Three solid columns of white light fell from the high windows and
dissected the open room. At another point in the day, the light would
have been in Silas’ eyes, but at the moment, he sat across from the
dark figure, watching dust particles fall upwards in the glow. The man
in front of him was almost featureless as the bank of fluorescents
paled in comparison to the mighty sun.

The darkness was broken by the metallic clink and subsequent glow of
a small lighter which Silas had smuggled in. The yellow flame
illuminated the unfiltered end of a thin white cigarette. It glowed
orange, then dimmed, filling the light columns with an eerie grey
ghost. A moment of silence passed as the man appreciated the cigarette.
Silas glanced nervously over his shoulder, making sure the guard wasn’t
watching. The voice broke from behind the imagined curtain.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s afraid of me. They took away his gun, so he’s as impotent as an old man.”

Silas nodded and opened his notebook and checked his pen. He cleared
his throat for the fifth time that afternoon and took a deep breath. He
spoke deliberately, but not as confidently as he’d practiced sounding
in the mirror in the hotel room before. “So, um, Sir, please, tell me
your story.”

His voice cracked. He hadn’t slept well the night before, but he
knew that wasn’t the problem. This wasn’t just a man he was sitting
alone with. He was an abomination, one of the devil’s own horrible
creations, disguised as a man. Silas had been surprised that he wasn’t
all that big. However, as was the case of all legends, both good and
evil, the idea exceeded the reality both in presentation and awareness.

The man finally spoke. “You are scared of me, huh?” He sounded
amused, even slightly annoyed. The chuckle filled the room. The small
specter sitting in the shadow suddenly filled the room with just his
voice. “You, son, aren’t my type. You aren’t…pretty enough. You lack
certain features I find desirable.”

Silas cleared his throat again, taking a sip of water. He checked
his notes. “Um, yes, you are a sexual sadist who preys on women…”

His statement was interrupted by the sharp bang of chair legs on the
concrete floor. The sound echoed through the room as the bald man
leaned forward into the light. Lighting from above has a way of making
even the most innocent of persons appear more sinister, and Mr. K. Lee
Browning needed no help.

He was smiling. “The first time I killed, I didn’t even realize it had happened.”

Startled, Silas tried to hide his noticeable discomfort by taking on
the clinical appearance he’d seen his post-graduate professors take
during stressful sessions. He opened his mouth to say something to like
‘that’s interesting’ or ‘tell me more’, but nothing came out. He sat
there and scribbled something illegible on his pad then coughed a
little.

Lee blew smoke over the notepad from across the table then continued.

“It was the summer after I turned 14. Back then we didn’t have any
disorders or deficiencies or medications. If a boy acted out, it was
just boys will be boys. My ma was some hippy ***** and when I started
killing neighborhood cats she started getting me pets to kill hoping
it’d make me bored of it. And it worked. I got so bored, I started
thinking about doing it to something bigger.”

A drag on the diminutive cigarette. “Us neighborhood kids used to
run around at this lake in the woods. We’d do stupid **** like jump out
of trees into that rocky water you were supposed to be afraid of
breaking your neck in. Classic kid stuff. We were from the a****** of
nowhere, so we didn’t know bunkum. This one kid, Jimmy, was the king
moron of the morons. He used to eat frogs, drink coke with pop rocks,
that stuff. I hated him. I thought about making him eat rat poison or
something, but that didn’t do it.
“There was this sort of skiff and we used to go out on it and have
wrestling matches, see who could fall off first. Well this kid, this
Jimmy, well he was 3 years younger than me, but as you can see, I
wasn’t blessed with size. He told me I couldn’t last a minute on that
boat. Said I was a shrimp or some bull****.” Browning grunted. Silas
breathed uneasily for a minute, tapping his pen on the bottom of the
table, causing a metallic sound to permeate the mood. Browning looked
down, as if he were staring through the table at the pen, and glared.
Silas stopped, and coughed an apology.

“Please continue, Mr. er.. Lee.” Keep yourself from appearing too far under his spell of fear, Silas reminded himself.

Browning replied by snubbing out the cigarette and taking another
from the pack. He lit it and took another long drag. “You know, these
things are supposed to kill you, but I say that there’s too much in
this world threatening us on this cheery planet trying to snuff out our
candle too be afraid of a little poison. You know that’s what it’s
like, right? Snuffing out a candle. It’s easy, and if you do it with
your bare hands, you get hurt a little, but when that little breath of
smoke is all that’s left of what was once bright…” he blew out a small,
wandering wisp of smoke for effect, then chuckled lightly, letting
smoke spill everywhere. Silas took a note in the margin, then looked
straight at Browning. He realized the sunlight had moved as to make him
invisible to his maniacal companion, so he did as he’d seen on his
favorite crime show and asked a leading question.

“Was killing Jimmy like snuffing out a candle, Lee?” He was surprised at his own steadiness as he asked that question.

Browning laughed.

“No, Jimmy died hard. When he went in the water, I just wanted to
scare him some. Maybe he’d stop being so damned annoying. He tried
climbing back in, and I kicked him in the chin. Looked at me all
wide-eyed as he fell back. I reached down and shoved his useless head
under the water. I remember feeling how strong he was, and feeling even
stronger. The other kids looked really scared. Felt good. Real good. I
wasn’t even paying attention anymore. I just acted; like an animal. I
was a crocodile drowning his victim, just doing the natural thing,
strong killing weak, like Darwin.

“When I pulled him up and hollered at him about respecting me, all
he did was stare at me. He stared and stared and stared. Dumb ****
drowned to death there in my hands. I didn’t feel a thing. Nothing.
These profilers and psycho-whatevers keep calling me a sexual sadist or
something, but it’s not about joy or anything. I don’t get off from
something like that. I want to get off, I get myself a living breathing
***** to fulfill my needs. No, when I felt nothing, nothing at all…
that was it.”

Browning paused and looked at his cigarette with a disapproving
glare. It slowly burned itself down in his hand, a long trail of ash
slowly replacing the white paper. Silas looked intently, then scribbled
a note. Browning set the cigarette gently on the table, scattering the
ash at the foot of the cigarette. He straightened up and resumed his
very straightforward, clinical history.

“All the kids who were there were too scared of me to say anything
to anyone. None of them said anything, so the cops thought maybe they
were in shock or some **** so I told him that Jimmy had hit his head
and drowned. Funny thing was, they shut off the lake with a fence so no
one else would die. But it wasn’t the lake they had to be worried with.

“It was 3 years before the feeling of the kill wore off and I felt
the need to start again. I knew I wasn’t any good at killing, and that
if I wanted to do it right, I’d need to be good. Otherwise I’d get
caught and end up getting hung or fried, and that would’ve been
unfortunate. So I started practicing with animals. Horses were best.
Eyes with lots of expression. Ever see a horse in fear? Powerful thing.
Like an orgasm.”

Silas interrupted, “That’s when you came across the boy.”

Browning nodded slowly. “Should’ve killed him, but I had standards
to go up against. I had to be disciplined. So I hoped he’d just get
eaten by a bear or something. It’s why I broke his leg. Guess he got
lucky.”

Silas lifted the page and read off a document. The child was James
Hatfield. He chuckled. Even he appreciated the irony. He read aloud.

“Jimmy Hatfield. Age 7. Found 36 hours later in the woods.
Unconscious, broken leg, slight concussion. In a ditch with 4 dead
horses.”

Browning nodded. “Like I said, should have killed the kid.”

Silas nodded, “You are aware he was the detective who is credited with your arrest.”

Browning scoffed, “Detective, eh? I’ve met a lot of cops since I
moved in here. That boy hardly seemed like a detective. Certainly was
easy enough to kill. But yeah, Jimmy started it all, and Jimmy ended it
all. Is that what you smiled about? I have a sense of humor, too, son.”

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