When the police arrived, I had already dismembered my wife and hacked off my son’s legs. I sat amidst a pool of blood, casually carving up my wife. The gruesome murder of my wife shocked the entire nation. Everyone condemned me as a monster, yet I couldn’t be immediately sentenced to death. Because I had hidden my one-year-old grandson. No one knew if he was dead or alive. Under intense police interrogation, I demanded a nationwide live broadcast. “Dad… why? Why did you do this?” My son, Milo Hayes, dragged his severed legs, struggling to crawl towards me. Just then, I brought the axe down, severing my wife’s head. Blood splattered into his wide-open mouth, and he let out a horrifying shriek. Tonight was supposed to be my thirtieth wedding anniversary with my wife. Milo had meticulously decorated the mansion, even replacing the carpets with new ones. The decorative flowers on the walls hadn’t even wilted, but the pristine white carpet was already completely drenched in blood. At the peak of her happiness, I plunged a knife into her abdomen. Twenty consecutive stabs. Until her last breath, her beautiful eyes tragically questioned me, “Why?” When the police stormed into the mansion, I had already chopped my wife into unrecognizable pieces. Even my salt-and-pepper hair was dyed crimson, dripping with blood. A dozen guns were pointed at me. I calmly lowered the axe and obediently extended my hands, letting them cuff me. From the moment I committed the murders, I had no intention of hiding anything. The mansion’s front door was wide open, blood spilling onto the street. The area around the mansion was sparsely populated, but not entirely empty. I saw my neighbor dart past the entrance, but I didn’t stop them. BANG! The fluorescent lights flickered on, their harsh glare stinging my eyes. “Name.” “Victor Hayes.” “Why did you kill them?” “…” Detective Miller, the officer interrogating me, stared with undisguised disgust. “Please take our questions seriously. We have gathered overwhelming evidence for your murder charges. The case is closed. Your struggle is futile!” I remained silent, eyes closed, leaning back in the chair. It had been years since I felt this relaxed. The police’s intense questioning sounded like a lullaby to me; I was actually starting to feel drowsy. He asked several more questions, but I offered no reply. Not until he finally asked, “Where have you hidden your one-year-old grandson, Leo Hayes?” I opened my eyes and grinned maliciously. “Guess?” Detective Miller’s face darkened, absolutely furious. I had no doubt that if it weren’t for laws prohibiting torture, he would have lunged at me. “Victor, do you have any heart?! That’s your beloved grandson! You’ve raised him since birth! The child is so young, he knows nothing, he’s done nothing wrong!” See? I’ve committed murder, yet these cops can only cycle through their interrogation tactics, unable to inflict any real harm. I wasn’t in a hurry at all. I just watched the officers hustle in and out with stacks of files, knowing they’d never find my grandson. As a renowned philanthropist in the city, the news of me murdering my wife and mutilating my son instantly dominated the headlines. No one dared believe I could commit such a monstrous act. To outsiders, I was a devoted husband, a loving father. My social media was filled with snippets of my wife and child, and I frequently donated to charities supporting people with disabilities. But the truth was, I did it. I didn’t even spare a one-year-old child. Online communities started digging deep into my past, searching for any signs of cruelty. I feigned ignorance of all this, still refusing to answer the police’s questions. Just as our stalemate continued, a young, energetic officer burst into the room. “Detective Miller, urgent news!” Detective Miller took the paper. After a single glance, his expression turned grave, and he sharply met my gaze. “You’re not Victor Hayes. Who are you?!” I sneered. After interrogating me for so long, they finally figured it out.
“Who *are* you? Why do you look exactly like Victor Hayes? Where’s the real Victor Hayes?” I replied calmly, “The car accident three years ago. That’s when I became Victor Hayes.” “Three years ago?” Detective Miller flipped through his files. “April 21st, three years ago, Victor Hayes was involved in a car crash on Highway 301. The vehicle caught fire. His driver, Arthur, was pronounced dead. Victor Hayes was unharmed…” “You’re Arthur.” Detective Miller stated, certainty in his voice. I simply smiled, neither confirming nor denying. “We’ve checked. You had no deep-seated animosity towards the Hayes family. Quite the opposite, they treated you well. High wages, Victor himself would often share good liquor and cigars with you. Eleanor even tried to set you up with women, seeing you as a lonely single man.” “So what was your motive for murder? Was it simply pure envy of their wealth and happiness?” “You’ve successfully assumed Victor Hayes’s identity, living a lavish life without anyone suspecting. You’ve been living the high life. I don’t understand why you killed Eleanor. If it was just to tie up loose ends, you made no effort to clean the crime scene.” I replied, “Officer, you have a lot of questions. If you want the truth, I have a condition.” Detective Miller frowned. “Remember your current status. A criminal has no right to make demands.” “Then you’ll never know where the child is.” It had been a day since the child disappeared. A one-year-old has no chance of survival on their own, so the police had no choice but to compromise. “I want Milo to live stream himself kneeling before me.” It was a strange demand. Detective Miller went out to send someone to negotiate with Milo. He would agree. Because when I cut off his legs, I also crushed his manhood. That child was his only remaining heir, his only hope for a family. He had to compromise for him. Milo, still not out of danger, was wheeled into the police station. He started the live stream, then painfully crawled off his wheelchair, scuttling like a dog to my feet, kowtowing repeatedly. “Please, I beg you! All the mistakes are ours! If we ever offended you, just kill me! Please, don’t harm my son!” Seeing his pathetic, disgraced state, a smirk of satisfaction played on my lips. The live stream comments were filled with insults against me. Some even threatened to dox me and dig up my entire past. Milo’s eyes burned with hatred as he looked at me, his lips bitten raw. “I’ve kowtowed. Now will you tell me where my son is?” I looked down on him, sneering, “When did I ever promise I’d tell you just because you kowtowed?” “You! You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!” He lunged at me, his face contorted with rage through the iron bars, as if he wanted to tear my flesh with his teeth. I burst into laughter. Detective Miller couldn’t stand it. He tapped his baton against the bars, warning me. I stopped laughing and told Detective Miller, “Agree to one more thing, and I’ll tell you exactly where the child is.” Detective Miller’s face was grim. “Don’t waste our police resources and time. We don’t have time to play games with you. No matter how much you stall, you can’t change your death sentence!” I shrugged. “Fine by me. Then the child can join me in the grave.” “No, no, no! Detective Miller, agree to his terms! My son can’t be harmed!” Milo grabbed Detective Miller’s pant leg, snot and tears streaming down his face.
“I want you to investigate the truth behind the death of a little girl named Lily Arthur, who died on the train tracks ten years ago.” Detective Miller’s sharp eyes narrowed. “Arthur? What’s your connection to this girl?” “She was my daughter.” I closed my eyes, a vivid image of the little girl’s innocent smile appearing in my mind. Our conversation was still live-streamed. After hearing my daughter’s name, online users immediately started researching what happened back then. Lily’s death had even made the news. Reports stated that a six-year-old girl, unsupervised, wandered onto the train tracks and was crushed by a speeding train. Over a dozen trains. Her small body was pulverized into the damp earth, her blood painting the tracks with a thick layer of crimson rust. I still remember that day. Seeing Lily’s mutilated remains, my hair turned white overnight. I spent a week, from dawn till dusk, slowly searching for Lily along those tracks. A tiny finger, a fragment of liver… Each time I found a piece, I felt both a surge of joy and overwhelming sorrow. My Lily was the prettiest little girl; I couldn’t let her leave incomplete. But a large part of my Lily was still missing. My Lily was so obedient. After school, she’d dutifully wait by the school gates for her dad to pick her up. But that day, someone lured her away. Detective Miller, following my lead, reopened the investigation. The case had originally been classified as a tragic accident caused by a child’s mischievous play. He initially only gave the files a perfunctory glance, but unexpectedly, he discovered inconsistencies. The railway surveillance only showed snippets of Lily being run over by the train, but there was no footage of her arrival. He exerted considerable effort trying to locate the surveillance footage from the first train that hit Lily ten years ago, but too much time had passed. That specific train had even been decommissioned by higher-ups who deemed it ‘unlucky’ after the incident. But any intelligent person could connect the dots: Lily’s death had to be linked to the Hayes family. This provided a clear motive for my revenge against them. While the police were bogged down with endless applications and procedures just to get information, skilled hackers among the online community had already uncovered crucial clues. The hackers and the police approached the investigation from different angles. The hackers started by looking into Lily’s school, using big data to sift through surveillance footage from around the school ten years ago, pinpointing clips that showed Lily’s face. Finally, they found a blurry video. In it, three or four teenage boys were leading six-year-old Lily towards a secluded area. The hackers used advanced techniques to enhance the faces, and one of the boys bore a striking resemblance to Milo Hayes. Once the video was released, it ignited a firestorm online. [I *knew* Arthur had a grudge against the Hayes family! Otherwise, why would he be so brutal?] [Holy crap! So Milo led the little girl onto the tracks? He’s responsible for her death, indirectly, right?] [Then Arthur’s revenge against the Hayes family makes sense. But why kill the others? Milo was the one involved!] [But it’s been so long, and Milo wasn’t even an adult back then. He didn’t directly kill the little girl. The chances of him being sentenced are slim, right?] [I guess that’s why Arthur cut off his legs.] Milo, who had just returned to the hospital, was cuffed by police who had seen the video and ‘invited’ him back to the station.
“Milo, can you explain why you took Lily?” I stood outside the one-way glass, gazing at the pale Milo. The officers guarding me couldn’t help but cast pitying glances my way. Milo’s eyes darted nervously. “I-I was just playing a prank, that’s all! It was so long ago, and besides, I didn’t kill her…” BANG! The interrogating officer slammed his hand on the table, making Milo jump. “Was it *really* just a prank?” Milo tried to regain some composure. “Of course! I was just a kid back then, didn’t know any better. If I’d known this would happen, I’d never have done it, not even if you killed me!” The officer sneered, slamming several printed SnapChat group logs onto the table in front of him. “Then explain *this* group chat, will you?” Milo stiffly lowered his head. When he saw the chat logs, he started trembling uncontrollably. “N-no, this isn’t me! You’ve got it wrong… You’ve got it all wrong!” Never underestimate the power of internet sleuths. They will go to any length to uncover the truth. They dug up Milo’s entire life history, from childhood, even exposing his school bullying and academic fraud. Someone even hacked into Milo’s account and unearthed a SnapChat group he’d long since left, buried deep in his archives. A [CANNIBAL] group! I didn’t know what a [CANNIBAL] group meant. I turned my bewildered gaze to the officer beside me, my voice hoarse. “Officer, what… what does a [CANNIBAL] group mean?” The young officer kept his head down, avoiding my eyes. I gripped his arm tightly, my handcuffs rattling. With tears in my eyes, I asked him, word for agonizing word, “Tell me. What does that mean?” The officer’s voice was barely a whisper. “Some people have a condition called pica, where they crave non-food items like dirt or paint chips. And then there are others…” He paused, then continued, “…who crave human flesh.” Tears streamed down my face. A chilling answer began to form in my mind. “So, what does this have to do with my daughter’s death?” “You said your daughter’s body was missing a part. That part… was eaten by them.” The hackers… The group they found had remained active for ten years, never disbanding. It contained a chilling archive of cannibalistic videos. And ten years prior, a few young teenagers, driven by morbid curiosity, joined this ‘cannibal’ group.
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