User blog:Joeaikman/Ten Hated Wikians - Chapter 8

There was more blood around Joe’s corpse than with any of the others that had died during that night. He had stab wounds through his wrists, thighs, chest and throat. A puddle of thick red liquid and formed beneath him, and his clothes were soaked in the rest of it. A little river of the stuff had formed, running off the stage and pooling on the floor below. Wach sighed sadly as he gazed upon the body of the man that had been Joe Aikman. Had Assy been able to set this up? Was that why he had run away the moment that Wach agreed to tag along? Or had it been him who had done this, setting up this fashion of death at the same time to setting up Grav’s and Nail’s. He hoped that soon this would be over so he could finally know if his conscience could be clean, or if he would burn in the pits of hell for all eternity.

The body was still fastened to the chair, so Wach couldn’t move it to the room that all the other bodies had been stored in. He would have to leave it here, and the thought of doing so creeped him out. He started to think that maybe the person who killed Joe had some personal grudge against him, setting up his death as more of an insult to him than with any of the others who had died during that night. They could all be peacefully laid to rest elsewhere, whilst Joe’s body would have to stay on public display. The suspicion didn’t really help anything, however, as Joe had many enemies, including Assy, GIR and Sega, all of whom he had made it very public that he didn’t like. They would all have motives for giving him an insulting death.

Did he have a motive for this murder and for it to be such a public and humiliating one? Back in Wiki Wach had been an aspiring writer, releasing his first book some five years ago. Joe had been the local literary critic and expert, working for the Wiki Times. He had slammed the book, calling it a muddle of clichéd apocalyptic elements and poor characters, highlighting the sporadic writing at the end as a key reason to its failure. The book’s sales had plummeted after that, and Wach had never truly gotten over the harsh criticism that he had felt that day. It had driven him to all sorts of vices. He had drunk himself into oblivion, and more than once had ended up waking up in a back alley behind a garbage bin, the taste of his own vomit still in his mouth. So yes, he had all the motives and incentives to commit a murder as foul as this one on the man that had wronged him in the past.

-

He scratched at his neck anxiously. He had heard the screams that Joe had given off when the knives pierced his skin. He had watched from the corner as it happened, and he could tell from where he had stood that there was no way that he could be saved then. He could tell that death had already come knocking for the aspiring journalist, and that no matter what he could have done the blood loss would prove too much for anyone to overcome. Joe had screamed and cried as he died, letting off even more curse words than he had used during his anger driven tirades, that had come on a frequent basis. It had been horrible to watch. Even if they had never got along whist he was alive, he still wouldn’t wish that form of death on anybody.

There was a small puncture to his skin on his neck, and Sega wasn’t sure where it had come from. It was tingling and itchy, however, and he was trying to resist the urge to scratch at it, remembering that his mother had once told him that scratching at these kind of things can make them much worse in the long run. He didn’t remember where the break in his skin had come from, however, but he also didn’t remember entering the main room. He had been running away from someone, although he couldn’t remember who, and then suddenly there had been nothing. Then he had woken up here, watching and listening to the brutal death of one of his fellow captives. He had no idea what had happened. Someone must have subdued him, but who could have done that? It would have had to be someone stronger than him, so that ruled out Assy and GIR.

Then he saw Wach enter the room, and everything clicked into place. This was someone with the physique and experience to outmuscle him, as well as someone with the motives to murder both him and Joe. Maybe now he had come to review his handiwork, and laugh at the mangled corpse of his defeated enemy. Wach had a reason to hold a grudge with the newly dead man, and that could be why he was making no attempt to remove the body from the stage, where it had pride of place in the room. Maybe he wanted this to be a final insult to the man that he had killed. That seemed like a very plausible action, although he didn’t know Wach all that well.

-

He had left the room, intimidated by the body of the man that he thought he had killed. Could he have done it? He wasn’t sure, but the thoughts were causing him stress and he needed to get to the bottom of it. If he could check whether or not someone else had visited that room before him then maybe he could prove his own innocence to himself. Surely the killer would want to be the first to get to gloat over the body. If he had been the first in the room then it must surely have been him that did it though. Looking at that recording would finally confirm whether or not he was going insane and killing of his enemies, yet now that it came down to it he wasn’t sure if he could watch. What if it was him? What would he do then?

The room with the security footage was a dark one, small and cramped with a small ventilation shaft entrance on floor level. You would have to be a really small person to fit through that. He turned on the video and found it already set to the time of Joe’s death. He was calling out in pain and agony, but no one was coming to save him from the inevitable end of his life. Even if he had reached him before it had ended he was bleeding too much to be saved. He was dead the moment the first two knives stabbed him. Wach saw himself enter the room after the death screams stopped, and then he knew that it must have been he who was responsible for this brutal and bloody murder. He must have set up the trap that killed Joe.

Then he saw a flicker of movement in the bottom left corner of the screen. There was a person hiding from both him and Joe, and they must be the murderer that Wach was looking for. That meant that he couldn’t be the mysterious killer. He stared at the figure long enough and quickly deduced that it was Sega hiding away, and that guy had just as much motive as he did to kill Joe. The two of them had despised each other for as long as he could remember, and it had been Joe that had first accused Sega of being the murderer. He had finally got his revenge for everything that Joe had said, however. Now all he had to do was find him.

-

He was stumbling down the corridor, away from Wach and away from the body of his now dead enemy. He could be the next target. He wasn’t sure whether GIR or Assy were still alive at this point. What if Wach had already killed them and he was the last Wikian still alive? What if Wach had been saving his death for last? His crimes were certainly worse than all the others. He had murdered a child, and now he was finally going to pay for what he had done. The past was coming to haunt him again. He saw their faces in front of him. The look of shock that had been on Mocker’s face when the bullet hit him, his mother trying to hold back tears as she talked about her dead son. They were all there in front of him. Everyone that he had wronged, calling for him to join them in hell. Joe stood in the corner, his clothes soaked with blood, then there was Flats, his body covered in deep gashes and his clothes torn to shreds. He collapsed then, rolling into a ball on the floor.

-

The chair was gone now. Joe’s body lay exposed on the stage, lying now in his own red juices. Footprints made their way off the stage to the right, marked by the dead man’s blood. Someone had come to remove the chair now, although Wach was unsure what purpose they could have with it. Why would Sega take the chair now? What good did the dead man’s throne serve to him? Did that chair still have a part to play in his planned murders, or was this a way to further humiliate Joe upon his death? He had to find him.

-

His mouth was frothing now, the itch on his neck almost unbearable. His head ached as his life drained from him, the disease finally taking its full effect on his body. He could feel the aggressiveness go from him, and now the people that had appeared to him were crowding round, clawing at him as he rocked on the floor of the corridor. They touched his face and his clothes. They pulled him closer towards them. His disease took him over. His brain started to be eaten away, and Sega went mad from the virus.