“Oh,” Nicholas said flatly as he rubbed his shoulder.
The man noticed. “I tweezed the bullet out. The wound healed itself." He held up a pair of gory tweezers.
"Well, I don't know if I should thank you, or-"
"Just don’t talk, all right?”
Nicholas sat in silence, trying to answer all the questions occurring to him. He sighed.
The man looked down at the floor.
“My name-“
“I know who you are,” the man said.
“But I don’t know you.”
“Peter. Peter Kilmacko. The papers call me the North Coast Ripper."
“Are you planning on killing me?” Nicholas asked. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Peter held his head in his hands. “Shut up,” he said. ”Just shut up.”
Santa realized that Peter wasn’t talking to him. After a long moment, “How many people have you killed?"
"The police have found three of them. Well, two and two quarters." Peter cracked a smile. The corners of his mouth twitched as he fought to keep back a smile. He failed, surrendering to an uncontrollable giggle fit. His teeth were brown—abscessed--and a number were missing.
"The things," he covered his mouth, at least. "The things I did with the first one's head-"
"Was she pretty?" Santa asked.
"What?"
"Was she pretty, Peter? Did you want to keep her all to yourself?"
"What are you, a psychiatrist?"
"No." He smirked. "I'm Santa Claus."
“I’m sick of psychiatrists,” Peter said. “They use all these weird terms like schizophrenic and schizoaffective. I hear voices--that’s all. They’re the ones who tell me to kill. That doesn’t mean I’m crazy, does it?”
Nicholas could not find appropriate words.
“
And for your information, the first one was a man, not a woman.”
“That doesn’t make much difference to me,” Nicholas said.
“It’s a huge difference,” Peter said. “I can do things with women that I won’t do with men. Like eating their--you know--their female parts." Peter looked at him, his eyes wide like a mystic in the throes of a holy vision. “I knew you’d be here tonight,” Peter said. “I saw you, last year, making a delivery to Therese Barth’s apartment.”
Santa grimaced at the mention of Therese’s name.
Peter grinned at his reaction. “Oh, yeah, I know about her, I’ve been in her apartment, in her bed when she wasn’t there, standing in the dark right beside her like you were, close enough to smell whatever she puts on her skin, in her hair. Her family’s given her up for dead, and I’m practically her best friend. You know how hard it was to restrain myself, not to do anything to her? Pretty hard, but I knew you’d be back.”
Peter suddenly sprang to his feet. He knocked Nicholas to the floor and pressed the rifle against his throat. Nicholas struggled for air, at the same time searching, searching- He breathed deep, and rammed his thick palm into Peter’s chest. Peter fell backwards, a look of surprise on his sorry face.
Nicholas clutched his throat and coughed.
Peter opened his mouth, and after several attempts to speak, said, “You…you hit me.”
He began to cry. “Every Christmas,” Peter continued, his voice breaking, “my father refused to go to bed, and when I cried he would laugh and laugh, and you never came. After my mother died, my father nicknamed his--you know--he nicknamed it Santa Claus. I never looked at Santa coming down the chimney the same way again. Why didn’t you stop him? I was always good, all year round. You got that list. Didn’t you check it twice?”