Filth

The gray bars of the cage he was in slid open and two men in blue stood on the threshold, one with a shiny badge and the other with a black stick poking through his belt. Frank looked up - as he had been staring at the bloodstains on his knees - and stood up to allow himself to be handcuffed and led out of his cell like an animal led to slaughter. As they went down the gray hallway, the fluorescents shone on Frank’s normally olive skin, heightening the twisting blue paths of his veins and the dark bags under his eyes.

They finally arrived a white door at the end of the hallway. The two blue men shoved Frank into the room and instructed him to sit, be quiet, and wait. It looked just like it did on TV. One table, two chairs, one large glass pane on the wall. Frank sat in the chair that he knew was his and set his bound hands on the table, noticing for the first time the blood caked under his short fingernails. The discovery did not bother him.

The man who entered the room moments later was all straight lines. His hair was cut in an unfashionable flat top that did nothing to help the square shape of his face, and his square face did nothing but accentuate his square shoulders and stout torso. His black suit was creased and ironed in all the right places, his thick black tie held in place by a silver tie clip. He had a stack of Polaroids in one manicured hand and manila folder in the other.

Frank didn’t acknowledge his presence, just kept staring down at his dirty, bloody hands remembering what they had done. The square shaped man sat down across from Frank and laid out the pictures in a row of five, all straight and neat. The folder was set down in the same fashion on the right side of the square man, and as he folded his clean fingers together he finally spoke.

“Frank Anthony Iero?” His voice was dry and droning, like a college professor’s.

Frank tilted his head up and made eye contact, nodding, his face expressionless.

“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Iero?”

Frank nodded again, thinking of the filth that had covered the last piece of scum he had dealt with.

“So we can both agree that this is why?” Before Frank could blink, the square man held up the first Polaroid in the line, held it up with his manicured, clean fingers right in Frank’s line of vision. The white border framed the blank, staring face of a white corpse. An open gash marred the pale skin on the forehead, and dried trails of blood snaked across the eyes and the cheekbones and the nose.

Frank nodded. He knew that face well - he had only seen it once, but he had hated its every angle and curve.

“Can you tell me this young woman’s name, Mr. Iero?”

Frank tried to speak and found he couldn‘t - his throat had locked up from disuse. After a heaving, hacking cough, he finally spoke.

“No. I didn’t stop to ask her.” And then, suddenly, he smiled. His smile was grotesque - his dried lips split and bled and his crooked teeth looked like the broken stakes of a picket fence.

There was a heavy silence as the square man fought to keep composure. “Did you kill her? Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me why?” In the two way mirror behind the man’s head, videotape whirred and recorded every word Frank spoke as two men and one woman in blue snapped their guns out of the holsters, ready to move at any moment.

Frank spoke matter of factly, as if it should have been obvious. “One whore at a time, one slice at a time. Slowly, slowly, I set things right.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” The square man was scared now, there was no way around it.

Frank suddenly leaned forward, leering, and his handcuffed wrists clinked against the table. The square man jumped back, acting on frightened instinct. Frank ignored him, however, instead reaching over and taking each of the Polaroids into his dirty hands, flipping through them with the air of a man looking over a treasured family photo album.

“Is this the rest of my work? My other… accomplishments, detective? Did you take these pictures yourself? Were you there, at the scene, with their decomposing bodies and crying mothers? Did you see the blood? Did you smell the blood? Did you notice, detective - like I have - that the blood of whores smells different than the blood of an innocent child? Of an innocent woman? Of an innocent man? Did you smell the filth?” Frank suddenly bowed his head down, as if something heavy had been placed on the back of his neck. When he next spoke, his voice sounded weighted with terrible regret.

“I really tried to help them. I really did - I wanted to cleanse them of the filth of their ways by killing them… but the kind of filth they held was ingrained into their skin, held somewhere else, somewhere far more difficult to reach…”

Frank snapped his head up and leaned in even closer, grinning like a jackal.

His set his voice down low to a quiet, harsh whisper - so low, even the people listening through high tech microphones in the next room had to strain to hear it.

“I think the filth is in their souls.”

The five Polariods dropped from Frank’s murderous, dirty hands to the impeccable white floor at the terrified detective‘s feet, each white frame bordering the face of a young girl, rivulets of blood and silent, frozen screams of terror marring the cold, pale beauty of their deaths.