Title: SEVER - By Mikel J Chavez | Cat# 12125

Daniel Hayes never thought he would come home to find his front door standing open. For a moment he stood on the porch listening to the stillness inside, trying to convince himself that he had simply forgotten to latch it that morning. But the quiet in the house felt heavy, as if something had pressed pause on the world.

He stepped inside.

Drawers were tipped out. Cabinets hung open. A purse he had never seen lay spilled across the couch. A faint floral perfume he did not recognize drifted through the air. He moved slowly, calling out a soft and uncertain hello, as if some stranger might answer back in a friendly tone.

He found her at the bottom of the staircase.

A young woman lay twisted on the floor, neck bent in a direction no living body could sustain. Her arm was pinned under her torso, fingers curled like she had tried to grab the carpet during her fall. Her eyes were open but empty. There was no question. She was dead.

He knelt beside her. His hand hovered, then lowered to her throat. He checked for a pulse he already knew he would not find. His fingers stayed too long. They traced her jaw. They brushed a strand of her hair from her cheek. Something warm and heavy blossomed inside him, an involuntary sensation that made him suddenly pull his hand back as though he had touched fire.

He stared down at her and whispered to himself that he was in shock. He was panicking. He was confused. Anything was better than admitting what that moment had felt like.

He should have called the police. That was the rational thing, the moral thing, the expected thing. But panic rose up, hard and fast, pressing against the base of his throat. She had touched everything. She had opened drawers and rummaged through belongings. Her fingerprints were everywhere. His fingerprints were now on her skin. His DNA was certainly transferred as he knelt over her. And he had no witness, no proof, no way to explain why checking her pulse had become something else entirely, something he barely understood himself.

He imagined the interrogation. They would ask why he touched her for so long. Why he moved her hair. Why he hesitated to call. Every explanation he rehearsed in his mind sounded childish. Guilty. Impossible to believe.

Fear was swelling higher, but underneath that fear something else flickered. A spark of curiosity. A dark pull. A strange fascination that made his skin prickle.

He sat down at his computer.

His fingers trembled a little as he typed, not with dread but with an anticipation he could not name. Anatomy diagrams. Bone structure. Blood settling after death. Methods of dismemberment. Case studies of serial killers. Their mistakes. Their efficiencies. Their rituals.

He told himself he was researching because he had no choice. Because he needed to protect himself. Because the situation demanded desperate action. Yet with each link he opened, his breath grew steadier. His heartbeat slowed. His mind sharpened. A quiet, unseen door inside him swung open without a sound.

It was an odd moment of clarity. Daniel Hayes had never killed an animal as a child. He had never set fires or wet the bed or struggled with rage. His parents were gentle, steady people. His childhood had been uneventful in the most comforting way. Teachers had found him polite. His college girlfriend once told him he was the easiest man in the world to love. If an FBI profiler were given his file, they would toss it aside. There were no markers. No traumas. No warning signs. Nothing to predict or explain the feeling now blooming inside him.

The truth settled over him with eerie calm. Whatever he was becoming, it was not shaped by injury or hatred. It was simply something that had been sleeping inside him. Something that needed the right moment to wake.

He made a list.

Plastic sheeting. Rope. Contractor bags. Bleach. A bone saw. Tape.

At the hardware store he felt a rising sense of giddy lightness, almost laughter bubbling in his throat when he placed each item into the basket. Walking down each aisle felt like descending a stairway into a version of himself he had never met before. When the cashier rang him up, he smiled without meaning to. It felt like the morning of a holiday he had long forgotten.

When he returned home, he spread plastic across the basement floor. He moved carefully, his steps deliberate and unhurried. He carried the body downstairs and positioned it gently, almost with the same tenderness one might use placing a sleeping child in bed. He told himself it was necessity, that he had no choice. But deep down he knew better.

He lifted the knife.

The first cut made a quiet sound, a soft wet whisper against the plastic. Daniel let out a slow breath. His hands did not shake. His mind did not recoil. Instead he found himself slipping into a state of focus as deep as meditation. He worked with patience and precision. The body became a puzzle, and he fit each piece apart with a craftsman’s care. Hours passed unnoticed. The basement filled with the rhythm of methodical motion, and he discovered he liked the work. He liked the order of it. The intimacy. The control.

When he finished, he wrapped each part carefully, sealing them like delicate objects meant for storage. He cleaned the basement thoroughly, not because he feared being caught, but because he enjoyed the ritual of erasing every trace. The act of wiping surfaces left him with a quiet thrill.

Late that night he drove along dark country roads, stopping at lakes, rivers, wooded hollows. One parcel at a time slipped into the world, vanishing beneath water or earth. When the last one disappeared beneath a ripple of black water, he felt a swell of satisfaction. But it faded sooner than he expected, leaving a hollow ache behind, like hunger soon after a meal.

On the drive home he found his eyes drifting to people walking alone. He watched the lazy swing of their arms, the turn of their necks, the way their shadows leaned across the ground. He imagined the weight of them. The stillness of them. The way they might come apart with the same precision as the first.

He whispered to himself that it was only curiosity, only left-over nerves, only a fantasy to calm the fear that still clung to him.

But when he reached his kitchen and stood alone in the dark, the truth rose like a tide.

He wanted to feel it again.

He cleaned the countertop twice. Then a third time. The repetition soothed him in a way that felt almost sacred. He imagined the world around him as pieces waiting to be discovered, studied, dismantled.

He slept little.

The next morning Daniel Hayes walked into work with the same soft smile he always wore, the same small nods for coworkers, the same quiet voice. He looked gentle. He looked harmless. He looked exactly as he always had.

No one noticed the change in his eyes.

But he felt it.

Something inside him had opened its eyes at last. Something patient and eager and hungry. And now that it was awake, it would not be going back to sleep.

© 2025 Mike Chavez. All rights reserved.