The Light Through the Tear

     You can hide from authority. People do it all the time. Papers disappear, names change, stories get rewritten until even the past starts to feel negotiable. You learn the angles, the timing, the careful distance between who you were and who you pretend to be now. You become practiced—convincing, even.

But hiding from yourself is a different craft entirely.

That’s where the cracks begin.

It starts small. A hesitation. A glance held too long in the mirror. A question your partner asks—innocent, undeserving—and you answer too quickly, too sharply. She doesn’t know you. Not really. And the worst part is, she trusts the version you’ve given her. She lives beside a carefully edited man, and she doesn’t deserve the omissions.

The tear in your fabric widens.

And then—of all people—he appears.

A name from years ago. A schoolyard echo. Someone who knew you before the edits, before the performance. He reaches out, casual, friendly… but you know better. He’s a retired cop now. That changes everything. Or maybe it confirms everything you already fear.

What does he want?

Reunion. Drinks. Laughter. Old stories dragged back into the light. You can already see it: the dim room, glasses clinking, nostalgia thick in the air. You’ll loosen up. You always do when the past starts calling your name. Melancholy will creep in, soften your guard.

And he’ll be there.

Listening.

Not just hearing—listening. Watching the pauses, the slips, the things you don’t say. You imagine a recorder in his pocket, or maybe it’s worse—maybe he doesn’t need one. Maybe your words will be enough.

You start rehearsing conversations that haven’t happened yet. Defences against questions that haven’t been asked.

This is where the nightmares begin.

They don’t announce themselves. They bleed into sleep, into the fragile space where control slips. Images come slowly at first, then linger. They don’t rush. They linger. Like they want you to see every detail, every consequence, every truth you’ve buried.

You wake drenched, breath sharp, heart hammering against your ribs like it’s trying to escape you.

And it doesn’t stop there.

The fear follows you into the day, wraps around you like something alive. Anxiety hums beneath everything—every conversation, every silence. Paranoia becomes your constant companion. Faces in crowds linger too long. Voices sound like they’re talking about you, even when they aren’t.

You wear it all like a coat—a coat of a thousand colours, stitched together from dread, memory, and the quiet certainty that something is coming.

You lie still sometimes, completely still, as if movement might trigger something irreversible. Frozen. Waiting. Watching the images pass behind your eyes like a slow-motion film you never agreed to watch.

And then—

Morning.

Light spills in. Real light. Honest light. It touches familiar things: the room, the street, the ordinary world that continues without accusation. For a moment, you breathe. For a moment, you believe in the possibility of distance from it all.

Daylight is merciful.

But it is temporary.

Because you already know what waits.

Darkness doesn’t forget. It doesn’t forgive. It follows. Patient. Relentless. It doesn’t need to chase you—it knows you’ll come back to it, every single night.

And beneath it all, there’s a truth you can’t outrun:

This isn’t something being done to you.

This is something you built.

Carefully. Quietly. Piece by piece.

A private hell.

And now you live in it.

How bloody smart of you.

The Making of a Murderer

     Dr Jimmy wasn’t leaving the house the same way he’d entered it.

The broken window pane—jagged, whispering with the risk of noise, blood, and exposure—was no longer an option. Entry had required urgency. Exit demanded control. And control, above all else, was what defined him.

Luck, or perhaps something darker that followed him like a shadow, had intervened. A key left casually in the back door. Carelessness. Trust. The small, human oversights that made everything possible.

He moved without hesitation.

Down the pebbled driveway he went, each step measured despite the uneven crunch beneath his shoes. The night wrapped around him—thick, damp, and indifferent. A darkened alleyway stretched alongside the property, a narrow artery leading him away from what he had done, away from what he had become. He slipped into it like something returning to its natural habitat.

Waiting at the end: his car. Silent. Obedient.

The hammer—still wet, still speaking its unspeakable truth—was tucked beneath his coat. Hidden. Controlled. Just another object again.

It was only once he was seated, door closed, engine humming low, that he saw himself.

The rear-view mirror caught him in the fractured glow of a streetlight.

And there he was.

Not the clean-cut medical student. Not the polite, well-liked young man of exemplary character. Not the one who smiled easily, who listened, who blended seamlessly into lecture halls and quiet conversations.

No—this face was something else entirely.

Red.

Completely red.

Blood masked every feature, soaked into the lines of his skin, clung to his hands as though it belonged there. For a moment—just a flicker—he stared. Not in horror. Not in disbelief.

But in recognition.

A problem had existed.

And now, it didn’t.

His breathing slowed. His mind, sharp as ever, began its quiet calculations. There would be noise soon. Panic. Sirens. Questions. The town would reel under the weight of what had been done.

But who would suspect him?

He almost smiled.

He was the last person anyone would imagine. That was the beauty of it. Reputation wasn’t just a shield—it was a weapon. Carefully built. Patiently maintained. And now, it served its purpose.

No clues.

No mistakes.

Nothing left behind but confusion and fear.

He pulled away from the curb, the car gliding into the sleeping streets as though nothing had happened at all.

Yet what fascinated him most wasn’t the act itself.

It was what came next.

The investigation.

The theatre of it.

The interviews. The suspects. The shifting suspicions. He could already see it unfolding—detectives circling the truth without ever quite touching it. Ordinary people placed under extraordinary pressure, their lives dissected, their words analysed, their faces watched for cracks.

And he would be there.

Not hidden in the shadows—but standing near the centre of it all.

Listening. Watching.

Learning.

It had happened so close to home, after all. Close enough to observe without ever being seen. Close enough to feel the pulse of the investigation as it tightened and twisted.

Close enough to enjoy it.

Because this wasn’t just an ending.

It was a beginning.

Not driven by madness, not by impulse—but by something colder. Something patient. Something that understood the value of restraint as much as release.

This was the moment a line had been crossed—quietly, cleanly, without hesitation.

This was the making of a murderer.

The Anatomy of Division

     “Define a pathological liar for me, Mr Big Cop.”   Why the constant lies? Do they know they're lying? Explain me, explain me like I'm five years old. How does a white lie, become someone who tells frequent lies... How do they become a pathological  liar?

That’s how it begins Tiny Fair  —not with a question, but with a seed. The initial lie. A seed planted quietly, deliberately, in soil already softened by trust. A pathological liar doesn’t just lie. That’s too simple, too blunt an instrument. No—he curates reality. He edits it, trims it, feeds it back to you in fragments until you begin to doubt your own memory, your own instincts, your own people.

I remember when he told me everyone I knew was a liar.

Not casually. Not as an aside. He explained it—carefully, almost clinically. He described how they lied, the little tells, the imagined betrayals, the hidden motives. But he never answered the most important question: why.

At the time, I didn’t understand. I thought it was insight. Experience. Authority speaking.

Now I see it for what it was: architecture.

Divide them.

Isolate them.

Make sure no two voices align long enough to compare truth.

Because comparison is fatal to a man like that.

If we had spoken—really spoken—notes would have been compared. Stories would have overlapped. Cracks would have formed. And behind those cracks, the rot.

So he lied to each of us individually. Tailored lies. Personal lies. Lies that ensured silence between us.

And in that silence, he became the only voice.

The only authority.

The only truth.

But what does it cost to live like that?

What does it feel like to exist in a world of your own fabrication?

To wake up every day and scan the horizon—not for opportunity, not for connection—but for threat.

Flashing blue lights.

A knock at the door.

A hand on your shoulder while you’re collecting your takeaway, heart stopping mid-beat, breath catching in your throat.

Always en garde.

Always listening.

Always calculating.

There’s no rest in that life. No stillness. No quiet moment where the mind unclenches. Just a constant hum of vigilance, like a wire pulled too tight, ready to snap.

You don’t live—you hover.

Between exposure and escape.

Between control and collapse.

And then the question lingers, heavy and unsettling:

When it finally ends—when the mask slips, when the truth surfaces, when the world sees what he is—what does he feel?

Fear?

Shame?

Or something far stranger…

Relief?

Because imagine it—the running stops. The watching stops. The endless calculations fall silent. No more lies to maintain, no more threads to keep from tangling.

Just… exposure.

Your face on every front page.

Serial killer arrested.

A label, final and immovable. A truth no longer negotiable.

Would that feel like annihilation?

Or freedom?

But men like that rarely leave it to chance.

No. He won’t let it get that far.

Because control is everything. Even at the end.

Especially at the end.

There will be a plan—there’s always a plan. An exit mapped out long before the walls begin to close in. And it won’t be surrender.

It will be disappearance.

Permanent, deliberate, final.

An escape that ensures no interrogation, no courtroom, no unraveling under fluorescent lights.

No one gets the full story.

No one gets closure.

And so the last question drifts, almost poetic in its darkness:

If there is a reckoning—if there is a descent—where does he land?

Which circle claims him?

The deceivers?

The betrayers?

Or somewhere deeper still, where truth is stripped bare and there’s no one left to lie to… not even yourself.

Because in the end, that’s the only audience that ever really mattered.

Not a Man Anymore

      The streets at 4 a.m. have a way of stripping things back to their barest truth. No crowds, no noise—just the quiet hum of streetlights and the soft hiss of rain settling into the pavement. It’s the hour where everything feels suspended, as if the world itself is holding its breath.

He walked through it like a ghost.

The rain had soaked through his clothes, but he barely noticed. Each step felt automatic, mechanical, like something wound up and set loose. The orange glow of the streetlights stretched his shadow long and thin ahead of him, a distorted version of himself leading the way home. Or perhaps away from it. Even he didn’t quite know anymore.

What did he feel?

Not what you’d expect.

There was no triumph. No satisfaction. Those ideas belonged to stories, to headlines, to the way people try to make sense of something senseless. The reality was quieter. Emptier. A kind of dull, echoing absence where something human should have been.

Because the moment itself—the act he could never name out loud—was never really the point.

It was the build-up.

The prowling.

The watching.

The slow tightening inside his chest, like a storm gathering pressure.

And then… release.

But release never lasted, although he would relish the news headlines, smiling,  congratulating himself on not getting caught.

By the time he found himself back on those rain-slick streets, it was already fading. What replaced it wasn’t guilt, not in the way most people understand it. It was something colder. A creeping awareness that nothing had changed. That whatever he thought he was feeding, silencing, or satisfying was still there—unchanged, unmoved, waiting.

He passed a row of darkened houses, each one sealed shut against the night. Behind those walls: warmth, sleep, ordinary lives untouched by him. The thought irritated him more than it should have. Not envy. Not quite. Something closer to resentment, like a wound that never healed properly.

Old habits drifted through his mind. Excuses. Methods. Ways in. A knock on the door. A voice softened just enough. A lie polished to sound like truth. He turned them over lazily, not because he needed them now, but because they were part of him—reflexes, almost.

But even those thoughts felt… thinner tonight.

He stopped under a flickering streetlamp, watching the rain fall through the light in slow, golden streaks. For a moment, there was something close to clarity.

He wasn’t becoming anything.

He already was.

Not because of one night, or many. Not because of drink, or anger, or the past he clung to like a justification. Those were excuses he wore like a coat—something to pull tight when the cold crept in.

The truth was simpler. Harder.

He had crossed something a long time ago, and there was no crossing back.

A figure moved in the distance—another early riser, or a late wanderer. He watched them for a moment, head slightly tilted, curiosity flickering… then fading just as quickly. Not tonight.

Tonight, there was only the walk.

Only the quiet.

Only the long walk home that never really felt like one.

And as he moved on, swallowed again by the dim glow of the streetlights and the endless rain, one thing followed him more persistently than any fear of being caught:

Not remorse.

Not relief.

Just the hollow certainty that whatever drove him would be waiting again— patient, unchanged (...)

The next time the streets fell silent. The next time, he was going to pay the old couple in the house on the corner of the road a visit. Their happy, warm loving home was soon to become a blood bath.

The Theatre of Ramona

 

     I’ve been inside your mind at least four times.

Long enough to know the layout. Long enough to recognize the creak in the floorboards before you hear it yourself.

Who is that by the door?

That’s Ramona.

It’s her party—though no one remembers when it started. The music loops without rhythm, laughter echoes from rooms that are now empty, and the air smells faintly of something sweet that’s turned. She puts on a very strange show, Ramona. Always has.

Her makeup is perfect at first—painted confidence, sharp edges, a face that dares you to look closer. But time is cruel in this theatre. It fades. It always fades. And when it does, she slips away to the mirror, pressing trembling fingers to her cheeks as if she can hold herself together by force.

She notices it before anyone else does.

Her friends are long gone.

That’s when she turns to you.

She won’t say it directly—not at first. She’ll laugh, pour another glass, adjust the lighting, restart the music. But her eyes will follow you. Always. Measuring the distance between you and the door like it’s a wound opening.

She will want to keep you from leaving.

And when she can’t pretend anymore, she will cry. Not loudly—no, Ramona doesn’t break like that. Her voice cracks in quiet places. She will ask what went wrong, over and over, as if the answer might change if she phrases it differently.

I know her.

I was her perfect he-whore—her reflection, her distraction, her proof that someone would stay, even if it was only for a while. Long enough to make the illusion believable.

And then there’s Loretta.

Sweet Loretta.

She exists in a different wing of the same theatre. Softer lighting. Cleaner air. She kept herself untouched by the chaos, or at least she tells herself she did. No drugs, no reckless nights—just the sparkle of Moët and the careful preservation of innocence like it’s something you can bottle and save for later.

She watches the show, but she doesn’t join it.

Not really.

But there is something else in this theatre.

Something that doesn’t belong to either of them.

In the dark wings, beyond the reach of stage light, there is a figure who never applauds, never speaks—only watches.

Doctor Jimmy.

Not a man in the way the others are. More like a presence. A phantom stitched into the velvet curtains and the shadows behind them. He waits there, patient, as if time has no meaning to him at all.

His eyes don’t wander.

They lock.

Always on the same thing—the quiet glow of people who still believe they are safe. The innocent aura of happiness shared between two bodies standing too close together, laughing too easily, unaware of the cracks beneath their feet.

A false sense of security.

That’s what draws him.

Not noise. Not chaos.

Calm.

He studies it like a weakness.

Slowly, almost ceremonially, he opens a bottle of gin. The sound is small—barely a click—but it echoes in the dark like a signal. His hands are steady, practiced. But tonight, something is different.

He feels it again.

That strange pull beneath the skin. That crawling awareness that something inside him is waking up.

He looks down.

And for a moment—just a flicker—there it is.

Blood.

Not fresh. Not flowing. Just the suggestion of it, blooming across his hands like memory refusing to fade. He turns them slightly in the dim light, as if expecting it to drip, to speak, to accuse.

A private haunting.

A whisper of Lady Macbeth—that same futile attempt to cleanse what cannot be undone.

But Doctor Jimmy doesn’t scrub.

He doesn’t panic.

He simply watches… and waits.

Because in this theatre, everyone is performing something.

Ramona performs desperation.

Loretta performs purity.

You perform detachment.

And Doctor Jimmy?

He performs nothing at all.

That’s what makes him dangerous.

Don’t ever lose control in this place. That’s the rule no one tells you until it’s too late. The acts are forbidden for a reason. The show is black—dark in a way that seeps into you, stains you, makes it hard to tell where you end and it begins.

Ramona will hold you when you try to leave. Desperate. Fingers digging into your sleeves, your wrists, your resolve. She’ll beg without words, her whole body leaning into yours like gravity has shifted.

And then—

when you finally reach the door,

when your hand is on the handle,

when the outside air almost touches your face—

she’ll say it.

“Thank God. I thought you were never going to go.”

That’s Ramona.

Needing you and resenting you for staying.

And Loretta?

With her, you were always one step ahead. You never belonged to her world, not fully. You played the part—lightly, carelessly. For fun. You counted your lovers like numbers on a scoreboard, each one meaning less than the last.

Hundreds.

Then fewer.

Then none.

Because that’s how it ends in this theatre.

Not with a grand finale, not with applause—just an empty room, the echo of who you thought you were, and the slow realization that somewhere along the way, something in the dark had been watching you too.

Learning you.

Waiting.

I’ve been inside your mind at least four times.

And every time, the show is the same.

Only now…

you’re not sure who’s in the audience anymore.

Inside The Unquiet Mind

     Frenchy, explaining things in a way ordinary people may understand, in a manner that the FBI won't come breaking through the door, who is he? 

Who is Dr Jimmy?

Who is he?

Tiny Fair (...) There is no neat doorway into a mind like his. No threshold you can step across and say this is where it began. It is more like a corridor with flickering lights—some doors locked, some swinging open at the wrong moments, all of them echoing. 

He was not born monstrous. That would be too simple, too comforting. Monsters that arrive fully formed let the rest of us feel safe.

He was shaped.

A boy praised too loudly and held too tightly. Told he was special, exceptional—the golden boy—yet never truly seen. His mother hovered, suffocating in her attention, correcting, demanding, loving in a way that felt like control. His father, distant, dismissive, present only in fragments—an outline of authority without warmth. Between them, something fractured early.

Love became confusion. Approval became oxygen. And rage… rage became the only thing that felt entirely his.

As a child, he saw things children should never see. Violence not as a concept, but as a living, breathing force. Raised voices, breaking objects, perhaps worse—moments that carved themselves into him like scratches on glass. No one explained. No one softened it. The world revealed itself as cruel and unpredictable, and he learned one quiet truth:

Control is safety.

But control never came easily.

Inside him, something stirred—an animalistic pulse just beneath the surface. Not constant, not always visible, but there. Waiting. A tightening in the chest, a buzzing behind the eyes, a heat that rose too quickly and left destruction behind it.

He grew into himself the way storms gather—gradually, then all at once.

On the outside, he could still wear the mask. Charming when needed. Calm enough. A man who could pass through a room without drawing suspicion. But inside, resentment fermented. Not just anger—something colder, sharper.

A fixation.

Women, especially, became symbols in his mind. Not individuals, not human in the full sense, but representations of something he could not name without unraveling himself. Control, rejection, expectation—threads tied back to his earliest wounds. The overbearing presence. The unreachable approval. The suffocation disguised as care.

And somewhere deep inside, a quiet hatred of happiness itself.

The image of a perfect family—laughter, warmth, ease—felt like a lie. Or worse, an accusation. Proof of something he had been denied, or perhaps something he believed never truly existed. He did not want it. He wanted to dismantle it.

Because if it wasn’t real, then he wasn’t missing anything.

He kept objects. Not trophies in the theatrical sense—but tools. Hidden things. Practical things. A hammer from his father’s garage, heavy with memory. Cold metal, simple purpose. It carried weight—not just physical, but symbolic. A connection to the man who had been absent, now repurposed into something far more present.

He did not think in terms of plans the way others might imagine. There was no grand design, no elegant pattern he could articulate. Even he might struggle to explain why one moment tipped into another. Why a passing irritation could ignite into something irreversible.

His “method” was not methodical.

It was instinct.

A build-up. A trigger. A release.

And afterward, silence.

Not peace—never peace—but a temporary quieting of the storm. As though something inside him had exhaled. Only briefly. Because it always returned, coiling again, tightening, demanding.

He does not fully understand himself. That is perhaps the most unsettling truth. There is no clean narrative he could offer, no tidy confession that would make sense of it all. Only fragments:

A child praised too much and loved too poorly.

A boy who saw too much and was told too little.

A man who cannot separate control from violence.

And beneath it all, a question he would never ask out loud:

Was I made this way… or did I choose it?

The corridor remains. The lights still flicker. And somewhere in the distance, another door is opening.