Human Rights Watch

The Lima Horror [A short Story of Starling intrigue]
By Dennis Siluk

The Lima Horror

Based on actual happenings, a startling story of intrigue, From Lima, Peru

Chapter One

Like twilight, creeping over the countryside, so the insidious truth was revealed—but should it have been? Some levelheaded person would say ‘No! Murder is Murder!’ Many said yes.

It is true, that I strangled my patient to death, a client I should say, and yet I hope to show by what I got to say, I am not—in the true sense—a murderer, because I murdered. You might even say I’m someone’s savior, or hero. I have been called a madman, more so, than my dear client, whom I strangled at the prison sanitarium. In due time, I’m sure some of my readers will put fact on top of reality and come to the conclusion I am not a murderer, or executioner, as some have called me. They will even ask themselves: that thing he killed was a horror to our city (Lima) thank god it is gone; yet, up to now, I have seen nothing but mislead statements to the contrary; the rights of the criminal upheld, and of course our great and faithful ‘Human Rights Watch,’ groups take sides with the Butcher the demon.

I am not a psychopath, rather I am a licensed psychologist, or was before this happened; I am not sure—but let others tell it how they feel, I will tell it how I think—he was known as the “Butcher of Lima,” for a good reason too, a man ghastly fitting the name, for the many citizens he butchered, dismembered their bodies; even the police were at their minds end, trying to find and capture this killer, find out whom he really was; once found, they remained in doubt, for he would not confess to it, it was my job to open Pandora’s box—and I did; that is why, the police and the good citizens of Lima know in their hearts the truth of the matter—which of course is more infinitely terrifying than my getting rid of the menace, that is, had he lived.

So in all honesty, I protest the verdict of my sentence of ten-years in prison, and denounce the crime of murder; the murder of the Butcher, that is, I deplore it on the grounds I did the city a civil-service, purge the city clean—of this atrocious beast; now they put me behind bars, it is a blunt message to criminals, they can strike at will, and let the reckoning go on. In a way I sold my soul and career for a bowl of soup. Had I not done what done, what block of untold terrors would be haunting the city today. We shall never know.

Chapter Two

I had known the ‘Butcher,’ for but a short time, he was about my age, taller and stronger. He had a most phenomenal mind, one that shifted back and forth, like a yo-yo, from a child to a scholar; it was at times fantastic and then morbid, but always cast in iron, and it astonished me, until the day, that most impossible day, I cracked the cast and he verbally told me, “I am the Butcher!”