A creative writing professor once told me that the difference between a decent writer and a great writer is that a decent writer tells the audience a story while a great writer speaks to an audience with a story. So, I’m going to speak to you. Hello you quiet observers, my name is Cicero, and I’m a devil wearing the skin of Dandy Casanova. I’m a murderer, a terrorist, an idealist, a genius and a million other labels that you mannequins use to describe things you can’t comprehend. You watch and you judge but you could never compare.

There was one other memorable thing that professor told me. In a truly terrifying horror story the monsters are forever shrouded by mystery. They are complete enigmas, never showing too much, and staying hidden in the dark. That is bullshit and I told the teacher as much before his flayed skin became my new nighty. LOL I’m kidding, that’s not what I did with his skin, that’d be gross.

That man tried to teach ME about monsters and yet he knew nothing of the sort. Let me tell you a trade secret. Do you want to know why horror writers never say too much about their fiends? It’s because they have no imagination. A horror writer’s greatest fear is not being scary. It’s funny isn’t it? So, they let the audience do the work for them, making readers or watchers or whatever fill in the gaps with their own fears. Well let me tell you, I’m no such monster. I will tell you everything, every little detail about this devil. Do you want to know why little mannequins? It’s because I will create new fears. Fears that put your nightmares to shame. I’m not scared of the light as those other lesser demons are. The light just shows you what you should be TRULY afraid of.

I can tell you every path in my mind, every one of my weaknesses and it will do nothing to help. You can’t catch me, nor hope to understand me.

My name is Dandy Casanova and since I was a child I could see ghostly white hands pushing on the wooden joints of the dolls around me. The guiding hands I see are so obvious. They show me everything the mannequins will do. The dolls pose and smile like humans but they just follow the orders of the guiding hands. This makes life quite tedious when you can see everything that will happen as simply as if it was a prophecy written in the air. Imagine living inside a book that you’ve read hundreds of times. You know every twist and every turn and every outcome. That is my life, surrounded by mindless little playthings. The dolls are disgusting, blasphemous, and predictable and that’s all I had to entertain myself with. Then I met him, the person that changed my life, Samuel Sinclair. I crawled to him, broken, bloody and battered, a mess of messes with death at my heels mere seconds away. That was when he asked me the question.

“Would you like to live? Choose. Your life or theirs?”

I saw no ghostly hands on this man, nor wooden joints infested with the stench of a doll. He was clean and real. He was the closest thing to true life I’d ever seen. So, I chose life, in the hope that there may be more like him out there. After I laid there, covered in the blood of a dozen dead beats, I had a twinkle of hope in my heart. A hope that was promptly decimated, squished into submission. There was no one worth living for, no community of actual people, just more maggot covered dolls. All I wanted was to go back and take back my decision. To do this I created the perfect scenario along with it the perfect villain. I donned Cicero just to catch Sinclair’s ire. I found a girl that Sinclair had been searching for, got Avaes on my tail, and weaved quite a fun narrative. Then at the climax of it all a scenario where Sinclair had to shoot me and take back everything that had happened the last few years. I placed myself in a game. A choice between me or his daughter Holly, with one bullet as the deciding factor. That was when I remembered the reason I’d been so intrigued by him in the first place. He was no doll, and I could not predict him. He did the one thing that I could’ve never guessed and the one thing no one had ever done in the past. He chose to save me. He picked me. I couldn’t believe it, for it made no sense. Why kill your daughter to save me, a killer, a psychopath, a nothing? My mind was a jumble but then as if the cosmos was shoving it in my face it happened again. Sinclair killed thousands to save me again. He blew up a train and airport full just to save me. How can one life be worth so much to a person, a person that you don’t even know.

I get it now Sinclair, you don’t need to do anymore. You may curse me or torture me or kill me, but my life is yours now. I won’t throw away the feeling that you’ve given me. That feeling I’ve never felt before. The feeling of being wanted.

So now listen to me mannequins. Just try and stop me. Just try and stop Sinclair. I shall be your undoing no matter what. I shall be your new fear, the demon lurking behind the silver jackal that haunts your thoughts, the devil that twists your nightmares. You fear me not for my mystery but for my determination. My determination that allows me to snuff the life out of every mannequin on the planet. You can’t stop me. I see everything you do and everything you will do. I see the strings and all you see is terror. When you’ve lost all control, all hope, all happiness and all reason to exist, that is when you will know that you haven’t grown at all. You are still the terrified child hiding beneath sheets, hiding from what you can’t see.

I AM WHAT THE LIGHT SHOWS. I AM WHAT YOU FEARED AS A CHILD! I AM THE MONSTER!

--- A letter found by the police department----