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If you're not reading this on AO3 it has been stolen.
Edward Alexander Pollock was not, by nature, a penitent man. He lied and lusted, sinned and stole, without reason or remorse. He was, in short, the perfect man to attract the attentions of a Trickster.
Edward Alexander Pollock had killed four women. He had left their bodies in unmarked graves on his property and delighted in the media outrage that had followed their disappearances. If left to his own devices, Pollock would go on to kill nine more women before his capture at the hands of a detective named Rosa Raven.
Pollock would not be left to his own devices.
The beginning of Pollock’s downfall was the day his first victim served him coffee, still dressed in the dirt and bloody rags he’d buried her in. Her face was flat, accusatory, and as Pollock watched it rotted away.
Pollock had called her Pretty Bird, like all his victims, but her real name had been Bella Butler. Pollock barely remembered her name. It hadn’t been important to him.
‘Sir?’ the girl said through withered lips.
Pollock blinked and the vision was gone, replaced by the pretty young barista who had taken his order. He snatched his coffee and swept out of the tiny store, leaving the puzzled barista blinking in his wake.
Pollock’s heart thumped against his chest, the sound echoing in his ears for hours after the incident.
His cappuccino had far too many sugars in it.
The next time it happened was almost a week later. Pollock was leaving work when his secretary morphed into Susan Stuart, the teenager he had killed almost a month previously. She was barely decomposed at all, torn white blouse splashed with bright red, long hair tangled and still clutching the tiny, golden cross she had held while she died, praying to her angels for help that never came.
Susan had sung such a pretty song for him.
But she wasn’t singing now.
Once again, the vision was gone as soon as he blinked, the temporary break in eye contact releasing the spell. Pollock’s secretary was staring at him in concern when he came back to himself, but he could barely concentrate on the conversation he was supposed to be having over the sound of his heart drumming inside him like it wanted to escape.
Pollock pressed a hand to his chest and he could feel the beating, could feel each thump like a punch, and he raced to the bathroom to violently lose his lunch.
When Pollock glanced at himself in the mirror on his way out, his four victims were standing behind him. He held in his scream and slammed the door behind him.
Not real, not real, Pollock chanted in his mind.
But his heart was a jackhammer and his chest was starting to purple from the inside out.
After two weeks Pollock went to a doctor. The bruising on his torso was quite spectacular by now, but when he unbuttoned his shirt there was nothing but unblemished skin.
When the cold stethoscope pressed against Pollock the noise and the harsh, rhythmic impacts stopped; the doctor sent him away with reassurances that everything was fine, everything was normal, but maybe he should cut back on stress or stop watching horror movies before bed.
Pollock made the mistake of looking Robin the receptionist in the eye as he handed over his credit card and the thunder roared back to life as he stared into the white, filmy eyes of Laura Lee, face half eaten and splattered with mud and worse things.
He didn’t hear her offer him one of the lollipops in a plastic bowl on the counter, didn’t see her smiling blue eyes turn gold and sharp as Pollock hurried out.
The hallucinations became constant. For the third week of his ordeal, every female face Pollock looked at was one of his four victims, every one making his heart beat louder, harder until he was sure he was going to explode, until he wanted to scream at everyone around him that they must be deaf, because how could they not hear his beating heart?
In the fourth week he cracked and tried to stab his secretary in the eye with a fountain pen, sure that she was Dora Driscoll, come to punish him for what he had done. Pollock’s arm went wide and he overbalanced, falling, screaming to the floor. He clutched his chest as the secretary, Maisie Moss, called security, sobbing.
Pollock was escorted out of his office, babbling softly to himself. He never returned.
Pollock’s heart was like a thunderstorm and his victims stood at the foot of his bed, silent, watching. No one came into this room other than the orderly three times a day and the doctor twice. His wrists were cuffed to the bed to stop Pollock’s near-mindless clawing at his ears and chest, and they were rubbed red and raw. Pollock had started speaking to the ghosts, calling them by name, begging them to leave him alone, to cease to beating of their hideous hearts, and eventually a young nurse overheard him, put the pieces together.
Bella Butler.
Laura Lee.
Dora Driscoll.
Susan Stuart.
The bodies were recovered within the week, a judge granting a hasty order for the excavation of the acreage belonging to one Edward Alexander Pollack, suspected serial killer. Pollock was never aware enough to realise he’d been caught, lost forever in the roar of sound and the stares of four dead girls. He lived another twenty years in his personal oubliette, open eyes never seeing the grey walls of the cell he lay in, before his heart, imaginary though the stress upon it may have been, gave out.
If you're not reading this on AO3 it has been stolen.