Confessional
My name is Frederick T. Torello. I’ve killed twenty-six people in my twenty-five years of life. I’m being told to write all of this down by the police because I might get a better deal if I confess. They think it’ll be beneficial to the investigation and all that. I think it’s a waste of time.
I come from a family of Supers. We also happen to be farmers. The Torellos are known for our cattle and our potatoes. You’ve probably seen a bag of our Yukon Golds in the grocery store.
My four brothers and I grew up in the middle of Idaho with our parents. My mother could tell when someone was lying. I think that was her Super Power. My father was ten times stronger than the average man, which was strange considering his weak stature. That was definitely his Power. Together, they made the ultimate killing machine.
My Powers were tested when I was young, as all Supers are supposed to go through testing. Super strength and Invulnerability is what’s written on my ID. They couldn’t have known I would develop a Killer Instinct, they didn’t know I could use any weapon with ease, they had no idea the damage I could inflict…it was all too easy.
I started with the killing of sick cattle. It was nothing to write home about, I just did what my father told me to. “The sick ones will get the others sick, just shoot ‘em in the head,” he had told me. I didn’t even flinch when their blood splattered on me.
I killed my mother when I was fifteen. She found out that I was killing rats for fun. When I told her the cats did it for fun too, she got upset. Once I killed her, I buried her with the dead cattle and left. Simple as that.
My big brother Connor was next, since he tried to follow me. He hadn’t gotten the good powers, so his death was swift. I left him where he laid as I made my way to Ohio. There was a sanctuary for Supers, somewhere I could be safe.
For a while, I got lots of stares and lots of questions. A fifteen year old boy wandering around the forests and the highways of various states wasn’t completely normal, after all. I had a nice elderly couple take me in in Wyoming for a few months. They lived out in the middle of nowhere with their various farm animals and pets, so I helped out on their farm in exchange for a place to stay. I think they wanted me to get the farm ready for when they died and passed it on to their children, but I’m not sure. All I know is that when they died, I took off. I didn’t kill them, though. They both died in their sleep.
My next few kills were here and there as I made my way through Wyoming and Nebraska, only to have somewhere to rest or stay for a while. No one was as kind as those old farmers, but I made due. I think all together, by the time I made it through Nebraska, I killed eight people. I can provide names, if needed.
Once I made it to Illinois, I decided to stay in Chicago for a bit. A family took me in, the Byrds. The parents, Ronald and Corinne, were only looking to have someone to keep their children company, I soon found out. They actually owned the sanctuary in Ohio, but because I couldn’t afford to travel much further (not a lot of people gave a dirty fifteen year old odd jobs), I stayed with them. They had never heard my name, so I was safe.
Wolf and Ariel Byrd, their twins, were only a year younger than me. I hated Ariel. Wolf was…something else. I found myself getting jealous of the bond they shared, but didn’t want to ruin having such a nice place to lay my head down at the end of the day. I pushed through the jealousy and stayed with them until I was seventeen.
They were Supers, all four of them, but Ariel had something wrong with her. She heard voices that were not just her powers, voices that made her do terrible things. We would argue and even fight. It didn’t matter that I was super strong. She could paralyze me with fear with a snap of her fingers. She could lift me up into the sky and tear me limb from limb with only her mind if she wanted. Ariel Byrd was a powerful Super.
I killed her after she killed her parents. “The voices won’t stop!” she kept screaming as she completely destroyed the mansion they lived in. It was all I could do to stop her from killing Wolf too. Over the two years of living with them, I took a liking to Wolf. Ariel hit him with such a powerful psionic blast that I thought he was going to explode. I honestly think his powers saved him; the twins had similar powers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a failsafe in his DNA to keep the two of them from killing each other.
She was weak when I killed her. Her death was the first one that I took my time with. Wolf was passed out in the other room, face bloodied with a cursed scar from his sister’s powerful explosion of the mind. Their parents were scattered around the room; her explosive mind powers completely destroyed their bodies. This family didn’t give me a lot but they gave me hope that I could get to that sanctuary. Ariel ruined her own life just as much as she ruined mine. Killing her slowly was the highlight of my seventeenth year. Her screams were deafening but so, so beautiful.
After that, I took their family car and drove Wolf and I to Ohio, to the Byrd Sanctuary for Super Humans. Halfway through Indiana, Wolf woke up. We said nothing the rest of the way there.
The Sanctuary is where I was when the police found me. Thirteen of my twenty-six kills took place in that forest. I can again provide names, if needed. It was so easy to hide the bodies in the surrounding forest, and no one asked questions. If they did, I would just tell them that the person in question left. Since I was Wolf’s right hand man, no one pressed further.
At this point in my life, I can’t stop killing. The hunger fuels my everyday actions. I watch my peers pass by my cabin and wonder if their powers could prevent me from killing them. Supers are few and far between, and even fewer have powers like immortality. It could be so easy to massacre the entire population of the sanctuary, but I never brought myself to do it because of Wolf. I stuck to occasional killings.
The only reason I was caught is because of Erin Evans. She was my next kill, but she fell in love with me. I couldn’t let her go on thinking I was the sweet guy I was pretending to be, so I told her. Maybe I had a soft spot for her? I can’t say for sure. Either way, she left the Sanctuary and told the police everything I told her. She betrayed me and my trust…honestly I knew it would all end one day.
Do I feel any remorse or guilt about any of my killings? Not a one. I would do it all over again if I could, just to feel the thrill of the first kill once more. I deserve whatever this confession will bring me.
“I’m done,” Freddie said, sitting back in his chair. The detectives sitting in the room with him took the loose leaf he had been scribbling in and put it into a Manila folder. One detective, a stern-looking woman, handed the folder over to her partner, who looked as if he had eaten something rotten.
“Can’t wait to read this,” he murmured to his partner.
“Go have Johnson type this up into Torello’s file,” she said, not moving from her chair. Freddie’s eye’s were locked on hers.
“Sure thing, Moesby.” Detective Moesby waited for the door to shut behind her partner before speaking.
“So,” she sighed, leaning back in her chair. “That’s everything?”
“Yes,” Freddie said. He lifted his handcuffed hands to fix his glasses.
“And you know if you’re lying, you’ll get a worse sentence?”
“Of course.”
“I just want to know one thing,” Detective Moesby sighed, leaning forward in her chair again. “Why’d you do all this? Supers already get a bad wrap.”
Freddie shrugged, a smirk on his freckled face. “I can’t stop myself.”
“You get a sick thrill out of this shit?”
“Not really, no.” A pause. “Do you smoke, Detective?” Moesby nodded. “Do you remember your first one?”
“Like yesterday. I wish I never started,” she added, a bit of sheepishness seeping out of her stern persona.
“Every time you try to quit, the cravings get worse and worse until you have just one more.” The detective nodded again, and Freddie’s face split into a smile. “That’s what’s killing is like. It’s a craving I can’t fill any other way.”
Detective Moesby shuffled around the paperwork in front of her, avoiding the villain’s piercing gaze. “I see here you’ve got super strength. I know these handcuffs won’t hold you…”
“…That’s why they put the shock collar on, I’ve been told,” Freddie quipped.
Detective Moesby nodded. “An alarm will sound if you try to break out of here, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Alright.” The Detective stood up, smoothing out her skirt. “I’m going to grab what I need to send you off, so don’t do anything stupid.”
“Yes ma’am,” Freddie said sweetly, causing Moesby to cringe.
She walked out of the interrogation room and started down the main hall. I wonder if Reggie gave that confession to Johnson yet…I’m trying to get this freak out of here ASAP.
Suddenly, as if on cue, a loud thumping came from the interrogation room hall and piercing alarms sounded around her. “Shit.” Moesby ran as fast as she could down the interrogation hall, knowing that if he really was trying to escape, it would be her ass on the line.
Turning the corner sharply, she looked into Freddie’s interrogation room to see absolute destruction. The wall was seemingly busted out, the brick and drywall covering the cracked floor. The table was completely crushed, along with the shock collar and cuffs they had put on him. While the detective’s chairs were solidly smacked into the wall, Freddie’s chair was untouched, as if he had just stood up to take a walk around the room. The detective was flabbergasted.
Detective Reggie whipped around the corner and physically gasped at the sight. “What the hell happened, Rachel?”
“I…I left for a minute. It was only a minute,” she insisted, unable to look away from the wreckage.
Her partner ran a hand over his face, completely overwhelmed. “He busted the wall out and jumped from this high up?”
“Looks like it, Reg,” Moesby deadpanned, unable to hold back her sarcasm.
“What are we going to do? What are we going to tell the Chief?”
“I don’t know, but we gotta go out there and find him again,” Moesby said, throwing her hands up in defeat. “All this time tracking him wasted. Goddammit.”
Erin Evans stood at her floor length mirror, braiding her hair up for bed. She tied it off with a hair tie and turned to walk to her dresser. It was time to pick out her clothes for tomorrow.
As she compared blouses, there seemed to be a strange noise outside. Ignoring it, she contemplated black versus blue. She picked the black blouse just as the strange sound scraped by her window again.
Erin looked at her window to see that it was open. “Oh,” she hummed, walking over to close it. Just as she latched it shut, she heard the floors creak behind her and spun around, hand outstretched to attack the intruder.
“Come on, Erin,” Freddie Torello said through choked gasps. “You know I like this kind of thing.”
Erin jumped back in fear, letting her grip go on the intruder’s neck. Freddie crumpled to the floor, holding his throat and gasping for air. She backed away until her back was against the wall. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in jail!”
“I broke out to see you,” Freddie said, fake hurt in his voice. “Don’t you think that’s romantic?”
“Fuck you,” Erin spat. While Freddie laughed, she pressed into the wall, unable to do anything but cower. “You killed all those people at the Sanctuary and you break out to come see me?!”
“Of course!” Freddie stood up. “I have to tie up some loose ends, you know.”
Erin looked at him, terror in her eyes. “What do you mean?” She asked, but she already knew.
Freddie’s sick smile spread across his face. “You betrayed my trust, Erin. You’ve got to die for it.”
With that, he lunged at her, a knife slipping out of his sleeve and into his hand. She screamed, leaping out of the way in the nick of time and holding out her hands again. Her telekinesis summoned her vanity and all the belongings sitting on it. Freddie saw himself coming towards him and narrowly missed the mirror, bending backwards to miss the makeup brushes coming at him as well.
Erin ran towards her bedroom door, but Freddie’s knife slammed into it, missing her head by an inch. She spun to look at him and was slammed into the door, his strong hands crumpling her throat like paper.
“I could’ve loved you,” she gasped painfully, nails digging into his arms.
“Maybe,” Freddie said, his own throat tightening. She wasn’t choking him physically, he realized. His lips curled into a smile. “We’re way past that now.” The sentence was strained as Erin’s telekinetic powers crushed his airways. The two of them crumpled to the ground, neither losing their grip.
It felt like an eternity. Erin couldn’t help but wonder if she could’ve kept Freddie’s secret. Maybe if I kept quiet, I’d still be alive…
A streak of anger washed over her as she realized what she was telling herself. Why would I keep quiet? He’s a monster! With one arm, she shoved the villain off of her, her other hand reaching for the knife embedded in her door. It whipped out of the wood and into her hand, and she swiftly chucked it at Freddie. It caught his shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.
Before she fully knew what was happening, she was above him, still struggling for air but using all her power to hold him down. He was laughing now. “You can’t kill me, Erin!” He shouted at her. “You don’t know how! You’re a goody-goody, a suck up to Wolf and all the others holding me back. You’re nothing, nothing!”
Erin shook her head as she closed one of her hands to hold his mouth shut. “You aren’t going to kill me,” she told him, voice weak. “You aren’t going to kill anyone else.” She violently pulled the knife out of his shoulder and blood began to ooze out of the wound. Freddie struggled on the floor, but Erin held fast. “I knew you were trouble, but I didn’t know you were going to make me kill you.” And with that, she took her right arm and pulled it to her side, snapping Freddie’s neck without touching him. He fell limp, eyes wild but lifeless.
Erin backed away from him, looking around at her destroyed room. Her cellphone was on top of her pillow where she left it, so she scrambled over the vanity to grab it. Her shaky hands dialed, and she waited for an answer.
“Detective Rachel Moesby.”
“Why is Freddie Torello dead on my floor right now?” Erin heard nothing but stunned silence. “I thought you guys knew how to keep him contained?”
“Shit…” The detective sounded apologetic. “He, uh, bested us…”
“I almost died because you detectives don’t know how to handle Supers!” Erin shouted into the phone. “I knew I should’ve gone a different route with this…we could’ve kept him contained at the damn Sanctuary much longer and way more efficently than you damn cops.” Erin took a moment to breathe, glancing over at the motionless body of Freddie Torello. She felt nothing but a sharp annoyance. “Can you just come get his corpse off my bedroom floor so I can go to sleep please?”
Hello everyone! Sorry for the extra late post, my bad! I honestly thought I’d be done by Monday but I got a little inspired. Freddie Torello has been a character of mine since high school, and I always knew how his story was going to end. Erin Evans has also been one of my favorite OCs to write about, along with the Byrd Family.
All of these characters have very intricate stories and backgrounds I haven’t been able to write into a cohesive story, well, ever. I would love to fully dedicate my writing time to these OCs but unfortunately, my executive dysfunction always pulls me away from solidifying their intertwined stories.
Freddie Torello, however, has been the easiest Super to write about. Something about his killing mind intrigues me as if it’s the first time I’m writing about him every time I do so. This by no means a final draft, but I’ve been working on this particular portion of his story for a few months now. I thought I’d share it this week, since it’s a little thriller-influenced!
My dream is to write this Superhuman story and get it published one day, but for now, I figure writing bits and pieces will help me figure out exactly how I want this future novel to flow!
Thank you for reading, y’all! If you enjoyed this short story, let me know! Follow me on Twitter for daily laughs and various life complaints, as well as blog updates (just in case I’m ever late on a post again!). See ya next week! Hopefully on time ;P
