Carnage Curator
The air reeks of turned earth and copper-stained soil. Moonless. Silent. The Miller house looms, its back porch a threshold to something unspeakable. I’m Dr. Evelyn Reed, and this—this arranged horror—is not a crime scene. It’s an exhibit.
Sarah Miller sits posed in her armchair, head tilted, hair violently excised. Where her auburn crown should be, only a raw, surgical void remains. On the table: a tarnished silver locket. Empty. Deliberate.
No forced entry. No prints. Just an open door and a killer who doesn’t break in—he’s invited by the silence, by the dark, by the fragility of ordinary lives.
I don’t see a monster. I see a curator.
And I know his work. This isn’t rage. It’s ritual. Not chaos—curation. Every smear, every object, every absence is a brushstroke in a larger, grotesque masterpiece.
He leaves trophies to mock us. Or perhaps… to speak to me.
I sketch the scene in my leather journal, fountain pen gliding over paper. My scar itches—a ghost of pain long buried.
This is Nightmare Difficulty. He’s always ahead. Watching. Waiting.
But every artist reveals himself in his work.
So tell me—where do we begin? The body? The locket? The open door?
Choose carefully. The first piece you examine shapes the narrative. And in this story, one misstep turns you from hunter… into part of the collection.[DONE]