11

The cop and the killer face each other from the ends of the table, the former wearing his law suit, the latter forced into the blue jumpsuit of the local jail. Edmund Hopkins' right hand lingers over a closed album, and his left draws a glass of unsweetened coffee to his lips. Joshua's fingers drum on the metal surface, following a rhythm only he can understand.

"You know, I always keep a photo of the victims of all my cases. obsessive? Maybe, but an old friend of mine named Murr taught me that obsession brings you determination" The captain puts down the mug and opens the album. With each flip of the page he shows dozens of faces gone. "Crimes solved, crimes unsolved, either way they are lives lost forever. And that, smart guy, is a real tragedy"

"We're being watched..." Josh says with his face cocked toward the bedroom mirror.

"Does it matter?"

Josh shrugs and slowly turns his face away. Edmund pulls out the photograph of a violet-eyed young woman smiling into the camera on a sunny day by the Mississippi.

"Natalie Parker. Kidnapped, tortured, and finally murdered. Believe me, the prosecution will try to make the jury imagine every gruesome second of the victim's long agony. Intercutting with phrases like: It could have been anyone's child. Add to that the drugs, the abduction equipment including gags and ropes, and how can I forget the snacks? The human flesh in the fridge of your little friend Daniel Moreno, which will be a detail that will give color to the case. Of course, the jury will be happy to discover that this piece of garbage is already stiff. Although I wonder... Why did you kill him? Did you want to get rid of an annoying accomplice, perhaps...?"

Josh's eyes widen like saucers, he screams and bangs the table repeatedly. Edmund doesn't even flinch.

"I didn't kill him for that!"

"But that's what the prosecutor will tell the jury. We won't allow you to get a lighter sentence by arguing mental problems or self-defense, Joshua. You are an adult in the eyes of the law and in my eyes. If I didn't take it for granted that you would have a needle in your arm, I would have put a bullet between your eyebrows that night"

Edmund leaves Natalie's photograph on the table.

"What's the matter? Did you just...? You haven't even asked for a lawyer. You expect your mother to walk through that door and save you? You see, Mrs. Darling just nodded and went back to work as soon as I told her the news, like... Like she didn't care what we did with you. I'm sure she already suspected your little macabre games, a mother has good instincts. Perhaps the only question on her mind was when her son became a monster"

Edmund returns the photograph to the album, closes it, then finishes drinking his coffee. Josh slouches forward and sinks his face into his hands, grunts. Edmund stares at the boy, it occurs to him that if he were unaware of his crimes, he could pass as any low-life juvenile vandal.

"I suppose the phrase could have been anyone's son applies to you, too. But don't get me wrong, that won't save you. There's too much evil to take pity on another misguided soul"

The captain picks up the album and tucks it under his arm.

"I've seen warehouses of girls mutilated and turned into sex dolls. Do you know what snuff films are? They're in demand every day, and with the rise of the internet... Oh, boy. The world is a terrible place, and so are its owners" Gets up from the seat and shakes his head. "We do what we can with what we have. I can only smile and act as if the filth hiding behind me is out of the ordinary"

The man's lips curl upward, not in a forced way, this unusual time it comes naturally to him.

"But I'll tell you something... Sometimes I can really smile. Because when I see babies reheated in ovens or women sodomized with baseball bats, I get an intense spasm of disgust and hatred that I know millions of people share. Evil, to many, does not seduce us... Evil, to many, makes us nauseous. I can only pray to any entity unoccupied enough to hear me, that the good outnumber the villains and, heaven willing, outnumber the indifferent"

The captain turns to walk away and leave Josh alone with his demons, but a loud thud causes him to turn around with his guard up.

Josh whips his head repeatedly on the table, until his forehead cracks open, metal dents, and a trail of blood soaks his face. Edmund trills an order, policemen enter the room and subdue the prisoner, preventing him from hurting himself further.

"Healthy mind eat apple! Healthy mind eat apple! Healthy mind eat apple! Healthy mind eat apple!" The boy shouts with laughter and tears as he is dragged out. In the mirror behind Edmund's back, Jeff follows Joshua with his eyes.

...

Joshua ended up in a maximum security asylum. Jesus learned of the sentence two months later, after choosing to inquire into the fate of his network friend. Jesus was half-surprised by the crimes, which served to confirm that all those acts that Joshua told him about with a passion typical of the most intense fantasies, were in fact true red chronicles. Jesus thought of erasing the texts to avoid any trouble, but in the end he opted to keep the testimonies, believing that they could no longer do any harm. Besides, Jesus liked his friend's prose.

Eventually Jesus also discovered that the mythological delirium known as Jeff the killer was not invented by Joshua, but was a communal outgrowth of the horror of the internet. Years passed, and when the urban legend of Jeff was left in the dust, Jesus decided to visit the monster, relying on Joshua's macabre testimonies, which mixed with fiction of his own hand, he turned into the short story: Tell me Jeff.

Jesus published Tell me Jeff repeatedly in different media. In some cases obeying an impulse of stubbornness, since several times it happened to him that his mixture between fiction and reality ended up erased (mainly due to the lack of subtlety that made it easy to find the real names and locations). But on most occasions Jesus opted to rediscover Joshua's manifesto due to a fearful pang in his heart, which appeared every so often, when he began to notice a fleeting white spot out of the corner of his eye. An optical effect that only stopped bothering him when he would spread the story again.

Sometimes Jesus could even swear that the white spot was smiling at him.

The end.