Part 5: Lucifer's Challenge

The door clicked open, I was a free man. But the image of the mutilated and bloody body of Senior Sergeant Lincoln is a terrible burden I'll have to bear with to my death. I walked out of the interrogation room with my head spinning, and there, waiting for me was my tormentor, the vile creature I had come to know as Lucifer.
"Welcome back, Grim" he said to me.
"No... no. I'm not going to play your games any more. I'm not going to play, I'm not going to take anyone else's life unless that life is your own. You're a monster, and I want nothing to do with you."
"Aha, here comes the hypocrite. You think you're better than me. By doing what you did, you've reached my standards."
"No, I only do what's necessary."
"And you don't think I only do what's necessary? I only do what I must because it's my purpose to teach these people a lesson. I do what I do because otherwise my messages and my outcries will fall on deaf ears."
"No, you kill for pleasure, and make excuses as to why you stand on your high pedestal. You're nothing but a criminal and you deserve to rot in jail."
At this, he let out a cold, dry laugh. "Oh, you're so quaint, with your morals and your ideologies. You lack the depth to truly understand the notions with which you speak."

We walked up the stairs. "Look," Lucifer said to me, "here are your options; you can join me in purging this city of the wicked, expose them for what they truly are, or you can walk away, knowing that one day you'll get a visit from another sucked into my plot, and you'll fall victim and become another fatal statistic for the Grim."
"I think... that your conscience is misguided. You tell yourself that you're cleansing this city of the wicked, yet here you stand bargaining with me? How can you have any validation for what you do? How can you live knowing that because of you, innocent men and women are dead?"
"Go, just... go" Lucifer lacked the conviction of a passionate mastermind. He knew that he had made his one fatal mistake.
I walked out through the ground floor offices, lathered in another man's blood, my own case file tucked under my arm. Shots fired.
"No more! No more!!!" I turned to see Lucifer brandishing his gun, targeting my back, eyes wild with rage. I did what any logical man would do; I ran. I left the building as the police officers tackled him to the ground and cuffed him up tight.

And so the officers took Lucifer down to the cells. It didn't take them long to find the body of Michael Lincoln, and fill in the blanks. Sure, I was soaked in blood, but Lucifer was fairly covered in the stuff too. A month after he was sent to jail, I visited him. I was greeted with the contempt of a shattered man. Chuck was dead, and all that was left was the outer shell that was Lucifer. I sat opposite him, a thick sheet of glass separating us. I picked up the phone.
"Hey" I said, sensing the tension from the moment I entered the room.
"Break me" he said.
"But... you are already a broken man."
"No, I mean, really... I want to feel the lowest of the lows. You've given me spectacular highs, but now... I'm nothing, and I could be so much less. Fucking kill me already."
I had prepared myself for this, and so I pulled from off the floor, my case file, and I opened it up, intending to show Lucifer the extent of the damage he'd done.

I showed him the photographs, I read him the extensive details, the whole history in one sitting. And he sat there and listened, and he silently wept. Here sat before me, a criminal genius, spawned from the pressures of his "normal" life, a killer, a mastermind like I'd never seen before, and here he was, knees tucked beneath his chin, his soul overflowing with regret. He had almost reverted to an infantile mentality, saying such things to me as "I don't deserve to walk the face of the Earth" and "I've gone too far, haven't I?". I could see it in his eyes, death would be a blessing for this man.

And here I was, entitled the Grim Reaper by the great man himself. His remorse was being crushed by the retelling of his crimes. And while he didn't die there and then, he only spent two more weeks in jail before the haunting of his crimes lead to his death. Well at least he was right about one thing, I had a taste for death, and his death was so sweet, I didn't stop to think of what monster he had turned me into. Sure, I can walk away from it all, but there's always those moments inside of me, the beast within. I'm just as damaged as he was, never whole again.