4338.208 · July 27, 2018 AD
Inventory of the Taken
The moment you start hiding evidence of the things you've done is the moment you admit you already know what they are. Luke returns home with Karen and Chris's belongings—keys, wallets, the portable fragments of lives he's just shattered. He adds them to the collection growing beneath his wardrobe floor. Jamie's wallet. Paul's keys. Glenda's purse. Kain's cards. The word that surfaces is mementos. The parallel that follows makes his stomach lurch.
The floor safe beneath his shoes holds more than personal effects. It holds evidence of every life Luke has rearranged without permission—each set of keys a person transported, each wallet an identity interrupted.
Karen's keys go in first. Then Chris's. They join the growing collection: Jamie, Paul, Glenda, Kain. The sight of them assembled triggers something complicated—pride and revulsion tangling like snakes he can't separate.
Mementos, the word slips out. Holiday souvenirs. Pressed flowers. Ticket stubs from meaningful events.
Then: Serial killers keep trophies.
The thought arrives without warning. Luke spits his denial at the safe, at the keys and wallets staring back with the silence of objects that have witnessed too much. I'm not a fucking serial killer.
But the justification stretches thin. The line between recruitment and abduction has blurred into something he can't examine too closely without feeling sick.
The lid closes. The carpet smooths back into place. The question remains.
