For Psy

## ***CHAPTER ONE***

I pulled up to the driveway of my house in my old Impala. I exited the car and grabbed my duffel bag and suitcase and smelled the cool night air. Ahh, Miami, not really the drug haven as it was portrayed in 1980s television, but it's still not the best place to be if you don't know how to defend yourself, especially in this neighborhood. Finished with another day of work, I sat on the couch in the cramped living room and opened the suitcase, revealing the two .44 magnums and the fully-automatic assault rifle, and began cleaning them. I always take care to clean my guns, once a day, or more if I use them frequently enough. Not just *anyone* can get guns like these, you know, even in this city.

My name is Tenor Henneson. I'm 20 years old, born in Tajikistan to English parents, Thomas and Sophia. I've had a hard life, had all kinds of crap happen to me. At an early age, I got pretty good at knives and guns, and swords, too. I used to have a heck of a knife collection, I sold them to buy only a few that I actually needed. I got my first rifle at age 13, trained myself, became an excellent shot. Same with handguns. We traveled to America a few years after that, settling in a small town in Georgia. Then, two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, my parents were killed in a hit and run by some maniac driver. We were crossing the street one night, me, my mom, and my dad, and then came this car screeching around the corner. My dad pushed me out of the way in half a second, and then I heard screaming and a sick, loud yet somehow distant-sounding thudding sound, and then I turned around and the car had sped off, leaving the crumpled bodies of my parents lying in the street in their own blood. I caught the last two letters of the car's plate, though. I rushed to my parents' side. My dad was stone dead, broken legs and rib cage. Same for my mom. I held my mother's cold, bloody hand and cried hard for the first time in I can't remember when. I then made a vow to catch the jerk who did this and kill him.

I saw the car he drove, that narrowed down my suspects nicely. And I knew the last two letters of the license plate, that helped: T and H. I found the car sitting in a grocery store parking lot, and waited for the owner to come back. I saw him get into his car and drive off, and I followed him. I waited until he pulled into his driveway and open the trunk to get groceries then I made my move. I slammed his head hard into the trunk of the car, hitting the license plate. He stood up again to face me. "You thought that was funny, you freaking git?" I said as I pulled out my handgun and blew his knees out. "Can't use those anymore, can you? You didn't give a crap when you ran over my parents' legs, did you?" Blood flowed out of his wounds as he collapsed onto the driveway. The sight of his blood invigorated me, made me want to shoot him even more. He was crying and pleading, saying he was drunk that night, he never meant to hurt anyone, that he didn't even know he was speeding. I didn't believe a word he said, and I still don't. I shot him again in the chest, several times, shattering his ribs. It was fun, such an adrenaline rush, much more so than when I would go hunting in the forests of Tajikistan or even here in Georgia. This was different, a higher level. I can't even explain the elation I felt when I shot the side of his head and throat and saw the life leave his body. Then I saw it. On his forehead was a bloody imprint of the license plate of the car, a TH embedded in his skull. Huh, my initials. I then got in my car and drove off, feeling the best that I've felt in a long time.

## ***CHAPTER TWO***

I knew that I had to get out of that town. There weren't any witnesses, but I was sure that the police would hunt me down anyway. I made sure not to leave any forensic evidence behind, but I still had a sneaking suspicion that there would be something, *something* that would get me busted. So yeah, to heck with this town. I decided to take I-16 all the way to Savannah, one of the busiest port cities in the South. Surely there I could find some place to hide and make a living. I found this cargo ship called the *Psycho* that traveled to London and Cape Town and India and Hong Kong and LA. I don't know why it was here, but there it was, and the captain was all too happy to have me work for him as a deckhand. It was nice traveling all around the world. I kept in touch with news back home whenever I stopped at a large port, and I would chuckle when there would be news about a break in the case with the "Mysterious TH Maniac" or something stupid like that. I got to know the captain (by the name of Roth) quite well, and especially his wondrously beautiful daughter Felicity. She was a nice girl, extremely attractive, very fit, too. She had amazing brown hair that went halfway down her back, large brown eyes that are just so enchanting, such a wonderful smile, perfect teeth, a very fine figure. And her insides were even more beautiful than her outsides. She was so innocent and kind and nice and caring and loving. I spent a lot of time with her, talking. She was about two and a half, no maybe two and a quarter years younger than me. She thought I was strange at first, but then after we got to talking I think we really hit it off as friends. There was this other guy, the first mate, who was close to her too. His name was Jack. He was a bit bigger than I was, but he looked to be about my age. If you ask me, he had the personality of a turnip, but Felicity really seemed to take a liking to him. It appeared that he was really fond of her, as well......

Working as a deckhand on the *Psycho* was hard, but it was invigorating for me. I built up my muscles by moving heavy crates and other things. I loved working on the ship. In my spare time I was thinking of ways to get Felicity to like me more. I didn't tell anybody my real name, of course, ,since I was still paranoid about being caught, so I used the name Caiden Tennyson. My mom was going to name me Caiden at some point before finally changing it to Tenor, thank God she did. Felicity liked that name, though, and that was good enough for me. I kinda built a reputation for myself among the crew. I wasn't very talkative, so they called me Quiet Caid. God I hated that nickname, but they left me alone, since I was rather intimidating to the other deckhands. I got to know a couple of them, somewhat, not that much, forgot their names already; the rest left me alone and I left them alone. I would be around them a lot only when I had to, working on the decks and sleeping in the shared quarters. I pretty much hated the whole lot of them.

There was one guy who would always be with Felicity. I soon learned that he was the first mate of the ship, a burly man by the name of John Chilcott. He looked intimidating, but I heard that he was a real ladies' man. He would often boast about his exploits when he was on another ship that transported spices and sugarcane from Brazil to India, and apparently he got to know quite a number of girls that way. He would always try to talk to her, and he'd reach around her a lot. She seemed uncomfortable with it at first, but I noticed she seemed to like him more as the days and weeks and months went on. He treated her roughly, too, I hate that. After a while, Felicity started to pay attention to this guy and ignore me. I asked Felicity why she appeared to be tired of me (she would hurriedly tell me she doesn't have time to talk to me and I would catch her talking to John a couple minutes later), and she said she wasn't tired of me, that she still liked talking to me. I knew that was a lie, and I wanted to confront her about that, and ask her how she truly feels about me. I wanted to tell her about my feelings for her.

I walked to her quarters one night; I had rehearsed everything I was going to say to her in my head at least a dozen times. I stopped as I was about to knock, I heard her voice and someone else's voice in her room. I cracked open the door as quietly as I could and peeked inside. Felicity was sitting on the foot of the bed, talking to John about marrying sometime in the future. They started kissing, hard. I felt like I had just died right at that moment. I was so overwhelmed with rage that I could only think about how she lied to me, and how I hated her, and how I hated John. I closed the door quietly and grabbed a crowbar from one of the storage rooms. I came back and sneaked inside Felicity's room and tiptoed behind John. He stood up and took off his shirt, and then I slammed the end of my crowbar right into his head, knocking him down and smashing his skull open. I continued hitting with it until he became unrecognizable. Felicity stood there in shock, then she tried to run to the door. I hit her side with the crowbar, knocking her down. "Why did you lie to me??" I demanded. "Why did you pretend to like me? Why did you not tell me about this??" She cried and wouldn't answer anything, she just begged for me to stop. I stopped, after I separated her head from her body. I took out my little brand that I had been working on and heated it up with a cigarette lighter and scorched a TH onto the wall of the room, then sneaked off. Lucky for me, we were in port that night, in LA. I sneaked off the ship and disappeared into the night.

A day later, I saw in the news that the "Mysterious TH Maniac" had struck again, and of course that was when Captain Roth had discovered that I had used a bogus name.