Immensely successul, chiseled-jawed entreprenuer Toby Robinette spent six years as the Head of Chapter 913 of the Quanzi Young Leaders of Tomorrow Association. Carelessness made him the latest scapegoat of a deranged psychopath.

As he did before butchering all his unfortunate wretches, Karl Adler's ambivolence toward the fundamental question of what constituted humanity lingered in the voluminous lodge. Once again, he asked himself, "What it was he cared about?" Adler doubted he would find the answer inside the Vice Mayor. Perhaps that would make a good start point?

Robinette's hands were secured tight behind his acne-scarred back. The lack of circulation turned his fingers black. His scrawny knees bent at an odd angle toward the salt and pepper, crewcut, hair on his head. The other end of the rope dangled in a hangman's noose around his exposed neck.

Struggling created intense strangulation. Robinette's legs grew weary, numb, and painful. An uncontrollable, overwhelming urge to straighten them, resulted in self-asphyxiation.

Adler maintained his schedule. Like Big Ben in his London hometown, he ran right on time. First, he would flay Robinette from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet. Each body part in correct order. Adler would examine Robinette's long head last. Shock, and critical blood loss, would occur.

Tears streamed down Robinette's face. In anguish he screamed at the sight of the shiny blade in Adler's hand, "Why are you doing this to me?"

In the quiet confines of the serene cabin no one could hear him. Robinette's sounds of turmoil became animalistic.

To mock the terrified examinee, Adler roared back, "Because the observed pain, and suffering I inflict on you, are delightful!" A sinister smile creased his face.

Like one of his many boyhood villainous heroes Robert-Francois Damiens, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV said, Adler told Robinette, "This day will be hard!" Then, he repeated the words in French, "La journee sera rude!"

Damiens had been drawn and quartered alive after being burned by hot wax, boiling oil, molten lead, and sulpher. Adler longed to do the same to his trophies.

Adler tossed Robinette's skin aside. He penetrated Robinette's chest with a deep incision that raced from shoulder to shoulder, over his breasts, and from the tip of his sternum. Then, Adler cut down the length of Robinette's abdomen to his pubic area. The successful, brutal, mutilation of Toby Robinette completed, Adler thought himself to be absolutely inhuman. He thrived on the sensation.

Adler knew Robinette was just the latest key to his plans and no one could figure them out. No one. Not even the one police mastermind he loathed the most --- John Dutton.

Picking up a glossed 8 X 10 photograph from off the floor, Adler said, "Look what you made me do again, Dutton!"

Adler flashed the blade he'd dissected Robinette with and slit the picture in half. He curled up on the floor beside the pitiful shell remains of Toby Robinette and hugged the bloody corpse snug against his chest. An act Adler committed every time he killed.

Adler wailed loud, and moaned in the spaciousness of the voided cabin, "Please! Someone forgive me!"