The search was invariably fruitless.
The path was cluttered with the debris of the past.
The parade of childhood humiliations always led him down blind alleys.
Religion and psychoanalysis failed.
Rationalism was but a damp squib.
Travel to foreign lands yielded nothing but more sores to scratch.
Satiation, indulgence, rather than healing his scars, only lacerated him more.
And then a chance encounter in a snow-smothered car park, as the night creaked into morning, brought a flash of anger.
The s***h of a knife.
And release.
For a time.
Until the scars slowly returned.
And he killed again.
And again.
* * *
Another long hot summer had cast dark, elongated shadows that smothered The City’s pitch-black secrets. As the sweltering, hazy days stretched out to snapping point, those
