Fire. A force that no one will ever truly master. An untamed nightmare for all living beings.

It devours everything in its path without a second thought — causing pain, destroying beauty, or obliterating something essential. Fire doesn’t care. It knows nothing of regret or justice, spares no one, and never hesitates. It simply fulfills its purpose: to annihilate. And it couldn’t care less what others think or say — whether they’re grateful or writhing in anguish over their losses, unable even to scream, or entirely numb to feeling anything at all. Fire doesn’t discriminate. Whether reducing insignificant scraps to ashes or consuming something that requires focus and patience to obliterate, it only bows to one master: time.

Time determines everything — how many souls fire will claim, how many hectares of forest it will scorch, how many memories it will turn to soot before the rescuers arrive to extinguish the raging spirit of one of nature’s most terrifying forces. Time never takes sides. One moment, it may favor you, letting you snuff out a tiny spark before it razes everything to the ground. But the next, it will betray you, empowering that same spark to sear you alive, trapping you in its fiery embrace with no escape. While you choke on smoke, firefighters struggle to cut through traffic that couldn’t have come at a worse time. Time is the only true king ruling this world.

Fire can be fought. Its birth can be prevented. But time bends to no one. It cannot be stopped or hurried, manipulated, or made to flow under our watchful eye. It just moves forward, irretrievable and unyielding.

I am like fire in a way. I do my job, burning away the filth of this planet, incinerating monsters who should never have existed. Creatures you’d have to scour the earth to find — the cruelest, wildest, and most brutal beasts ever created by nature: humans. Not ordinary humans, of course. Not at all. Invisible people you might overlook your entire life: a chatty taxi driver who takes you to work in the morning, a friendly nurse at the clinic down the street, a loving grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, or even the kind reflection in your bathroom mirror.

At first glance, they seem like regular people, no different from anyone else. But after ten years as a Tracker, I can point out a potential serial killer with a single glance into their eyes. Those eyes could express any emotion, wear any look, but there was always something — a hint of madness. Barely perceptible, but unmistakable. It was there in every monster I’ve dealt with, from my first to my second-to-last.

“Why second-to-last?” you ask.

Because now, standing in the middle of a burning house, I’m staring into the puppy-like blue eyes of a little boy with tousled hair. And I can’t see that madness in him. I know he’s the one I’ve been hunting, my final monster. But I don’t see it. I can’t find the bloodthirsty killer, the genius strategist, the manipulative psychopath, or the ruthless cannibal I’d read about and watched for the past month.

Instead, I see something else. I see all of it — at once.

Yes, I’ve dealt with scum before who had one or more of these traits. But even then, something always clashed within their psychological profile. There was always a dissonance. But now, I see these characteristics intertwined, seamless and harmonious. Yet somehow, it doesn’t fit. It breaks my understanding because standing before me isn’t a fully formed person but a child.

We’re used to children being helpless, kind, and curious — sensitive to others, endearingly clumsy, and innocent. But this psychological portrait doesn’t align when I look at this boy. Neither a monster nor a child stands before me — a true predator does.

For the first time in my career, I felt like a victim — of the situation and of the monster I was hunting. For the first time, time turned its back on me. For the first time, I was genuinely afraid.

For the first time, my soul wavered. My conscience struggled, as two conflicting emotions warred within me, robbing me of my precious time with every passing second.

I start gasping for air, choking on the acrid smoke filling my lungs, tears stinging my eyes.

“It’s just a child... I can’t do it. I just can’t,” one thought screams. But it’s drowned out by another—a deafening sense of duty to society and the unwavering instinct to follow the script. Now, without hesitation, I should plunge the knife where a normal person’s heart would be —where monsters keep only a cold shard of ice — or pull the trigger and let the bullet do the work for me. It would slide effortlessly through a brain that always thought differently, never like that of a normal human.

But never before have I encountered such a unique case. For the first time, I — someone who always chose ‘fight’ — stood frozen, like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck.

***

The L96A1 rifle. It has never failed me. It was with this rifle that I killed my first monster — a pedophile-murderer — a 45-year-old man who worked tirelessly at two jobs to afford spoiling his two beautiful children and his stunning wife. He would take them on lavish vacations, buy them whatever they desired, take them to fancy restaurants, and so on endlessly. Or so it appeared. More accurately, he pretended to work. In reality, this scumbag was earning a massive amount of cash in dollars for ‘harvesting’ the internal organs of children.

First, he stalked them at playgrounds, then snatched them into his car, plunging their innocent souls into a deep sleep with a chloroform-soaked cloth. He’d take them to abandoned, hidden places, where he indulged his animalistic instincts — there’s no other way to describe it. He unleashed his monstrous nature to the fullest extent, oh God. He beat them, cut them, crushed their spirits, and desecrated their pure bodies and souls. When he had ‘played’ enough, he discarded the lifeless, battered bodies like trash. He would then calmly walk to his car, retrieve a large cleaver and black plastic bags, and return to the scene, knowing there was no escape for his victims.

Oh, how they screamed, cried, and begged. They begged him to stop, promised to never tell anyone, and tried to obey his every command in the desperate hope he might let them go. But this only fueled the monster’s sick desires. I’d like to say it awakened the ‘monster inside him,’ but back then, I wasn’t sure if the monster was inside. It seemed more like he was the monster, with his human nature a mask he wore only when he stepped into society.

Cycle after cycle, scenario after scenario, I observed his actions for six months through the scope of my rifle. Each time I heard the screams and prayers of his victims, my heart bled. But I couldn’t just shoot him — I needed him to make one mistake, to leave one witness who could call the police for me after it was done. I needed his case to be closed, with both the killer’s body and his victims found. It’s my principle to ensure the police don’t have to struggle for long — unlike some of my colleagues, whether they were Trackers or members of the B.E.O.M.

I have always respected law enforcement because I once served in that field myself and know how challenging it can be to untangle the mess created by ‘self-righteous’ idiots from similar organizations. I only joined their ranks because a) I was forced out of my previous job, practically thrown out, even though I couldn’t give up on it — the adrenaline and the thrill of danger and risk had become part of me. And b) my sense of duty to society never faded.

I simply cannot allow monsters to overrun the city where I grew up, a city that means so much to me. I couldn’t stand by as, with each passing moment, more people turned into beasts. I can’t leave it all to fate, and that’s why I continued down this ‘shadowy path,’ as our elder brothers call it. It’s an ungrateful and dirty road on one hand, but on the other, it’s a righteous and necessary one.

Being a Tracker is tough: you carry the burden of months, even years, of observation without intervention, devise a clean and precise plan for the kill on your own, and then the hardest part — putting it into action, cleansing the filth from our planet.

That first monster taught me just how difficult the path ahead would be. But no one said it would be easy, and I’m not the type to give up. Yet now, looking at this child... I start to doubt whether I truly understand monsters. And whether the ones I encountered before were really monsters at all.

Why is it so hard to move? This isn’t just ordinary paralysis... His eyes pull me in, luring me to dive into their depths and never surface again.

***

It was because of this rifle that I began to keep an eye on Patient №1095. I saw and heard things I never thought I would: with every new girl on the farm — girls who came for the promised money in exchange for working the fields and taking care of livestock — their desires grew more deranged, and their hunger became insatiable. Within a week, the girl would find herself in the freezer, neatly divided into equal portions of meat.

There were no screams, no prayers, no pleas. They did everything quietly, ensuring the victim never even suspected the web of the spider she had walked into. Before taking the girl in, they would ‘evaluate’ her — checking her stamina and endurance — while casually chatting about her family, health, and financial situation, under the guise of neighborly concern. If nothing seemed suspicious, they hired her. Hired her for a job she would never leave alive.

And all of this was orchestrated by that boy. If he saw or sensed the slightest reason that someone might come looking for the girl, or if she seemed "unfit for consumption," he would hide behind his stepfather. When an unsuspecting girl would start cooing over the boy, he’d simply shake his head and say, “I don’t want her.” At that, either the stepfather or stepmother would quietly lead the girl away, likely saying something like, “We’ll call you later,” and the failed hunt would end before it even began.

But when the girl fit their twisted criteria, the boy would grab one of his family members and simply say he was hungry. That meant the prey was chosen, and she would never be seen again — not alive, at least. The boy made his choices carefully: girls no one would look for, or at least not immediately. By the time someone started wondering why their daughter wasn’t answering her phone, she’d already been butchered or even eaten. They didn’t hunt often, ensuring that no suspicion would fall on their modest home.

Some people knew more than they should have, but none dared risk their own lives to stop what was happening. Self-preservation trumps altruism. Call it selfishness if you will; I call it rationality — a natural survival instinct. Many of us avoid killing, not out of compassion, but because it scars us in ways we fear. Humans act in their own interest, always.

But then there’s someone like me — someone who doesn’t care, whose instincts have dulled to the point of recklessness, someone akin to a child diving headfirst into trouble, seeking adventure. That’s me.

One day, as I was once again observing this family, something happened that I did not expect. Yes, I had suspected for some time that someone in that house might sense something was amiss, but…I was lying on a small hill rich with vegetation, hidden under a camouflage net, watching the kitchen window through my rifle’s scope. A sudden distraction: a bug landed squarely on my nose, and I had to swat it away. When I returned to my scope, I was shaken to the core.

The boy was staring straight at me. It wasn’t just a look; it felt as if he were staring into my soul. He stood there, pressed against the window I had been watching, his gaze piercing through me. His expression was void of emotion, but his eyes shimmered faintly in the sunlight. It wasn’t a squint, despite the distance — 250 meters, to be exact. I was camouflaged so well that even from a meter away, it would have been hard to spot me.

It sent chills down my spine. I pulled back and glanced at the window with my bare eyes to confirm what I saw. From this distance, it was impossible to make out anything in that window. I returned to the scope. The boy was gone. The kitchen was empty.

That same day, my application was accepted. The moment I found this family and began my hunt, I applied for the very job they advertised online, hoping that one day they’d notice my message and invite me into their home. They couldn’t know, of course, that I wasn’t there for the money. My plan, however, didn’t quite go as intended.

Yes, I was lucky they saw my résumé so late — by then, I had already studied their schedule, habits, traditions, and all the details I needed. But the boy had seen me, and who knows what that might mean for me. All I could do now was show up and pretend I had no idea where their bathroom was or what my job entailed.

And that’s exactly what I did.

***

I never would have thought that a simple child's request for food, voiced out loud, could provoke such a wide range of completely different emotions in me: joy because I had passed the selection, bordering on fear because I was so close to monsters with no way to protect myself, a kind of euphoria that made a whole swarm of ants run across my body, which was about to turn into a panic attack at any moment. The whole time they were questioning me about everything imaginable, my main target never took his eyes off me, and I didn’t back down, unashamedly staring into his blue, almost grey eyes, like those of a blind person, large and intense. But it’s hard to win a game when someone is looking at you like that. It's hard to look into the eyes of someone who can kill a man twice your size without hesitation, who is so used to seeing blood, suffering, and human screams, eyes that have seen so much in their existence, it’s hard to look into those dim, lifeless eyes. So he looked away first.

But with his words: “Mom, I’m really hungry, I want to eat, Mom, I want to eat...”, he made it clear to me that he had accepted the challenge and that he was waiting for this meeting just as much as I was. Well, let the game begin. Let the hunt begin.

The job was simple: feed the animals on schedule, watch over the cows in the pasture, and clean up after them. But there was one thing that complicated my stay there: the food. They tried to feed me human flesh... they brought me porridge with meat that didn’t look any different from regular beef, except for the hair or nails sticking out, or a soup with something that resembled brains floating at the bottom. Maybe they were testing my resilience? Since it would be stupid to make it obvious. I didn’t see any of the servants around me flinch or refuse the food, on the contrary – they ate it up greedily. Then I realized: it wasn’t my parents preparing it this time, but my prey. I noticed it when I walked past that same kitchen window, where not long ago my monster had been watching me in response. I saw him standing on a stool over a pot from which steam was rising, stirring the brew. His face showed how much he was enjoying the smell, which I still hadn’t gotten used to. It was sweet with a hint of iron and something vomit-like. It got so ingrained in my memory that I could never mistake it for anything else. That’s how a corpse smells.

So it wasn’t them, but him testing my endurance. But if he thought I would be scared, then he was a very naive little boy. I still had some food supplies I had kept for times when I was being tracked, so food wasn’t really a problem for me anymore. I just had to stretch and conserve it, since not eating at all wasn’t an option: how could I exterminate everything here if I was more like a squeezed lemon? Or maybe that’s exactly what he’s aiming for?

A week... it took him a week to make me doubt I could do what I had planned... He was constantly sneaking up on me, and whenever he said or did something, my heart would stop. Even understanding what was really going on, and fully knowing what this monster was capable of, didn’t help me control my mind. He was always sniffing around me as if studying my scent, in case I ran, so he could track me down or recognize me in a crowd. He would lick his lips and try to lick me, which, by the way, he succeeded at whenever I dropped my guard. I became overly anxious: for the first time, in order to kill my monster, I had to infiltrate his life, blend into their society, stay so close for such a long period, and interact with them. I always kept a hidden knife with me just in case, but honestly, I’m starting to doubt it will help me...

From the beginning, they put me in the guest house near the main one, but I never spent the night there, and I rarely got the chance to sleep at all. I was lucky that my body had long since adapted to such a lifestyle.

One day, all of it ended. They stopped terrorizing me. Stopped trying to scare me. Stopped checking if I would run. They let me relax a bit, but it only caused more panic, something inside me hinted that this felt like the calm before something very, very bad, something screamed “RUN”, but I didn’t listen because I couldn’t give up, I couldn’t accept that some boy was too much for me. Another week went by. As far as I remember, none of the girls who came here had lasted so long. Had something changed in them? Or was I different for them?

Yesterday, there was some misunderstanding. At first, I thought they were fighting among themselves, but after listening carefully, I realized they were arguing with the boy. They were really upset about something, something wasn’t sitting right with them. It was already evening, it had long gotten dark, so I decided to go to the window and eavesdrop on why they were arguing. But either the glass was too thick or they were speaking too quietly, I could only catch a word here and there:

“I want a leg... slender... please,” said the stepmother.

“And I... The head. Eyes and brains,” the stepfather begged.

But the response was silence, and this silence was deafening. The situation felt wrong. Yes, it was clear they were already dividing me between them, but...

“No,” his voice was so calm and balanced... too calm for a child his age. It seemed like he didn’t know what emotions were and only pretended to have them when around people, like when he was looking at the girls who came to work, or even when he was with me, he could chuckle or whimper from something, pretend to be interested, but only pretend. Pretend to be innocent.

And after his refusal, an Armageddon began, I can’t call it anything else. I couldn’t help but watch this wild show, which only I had tickets to...

The boy, just a bit taller than my knees, chopped up two or three healthy people taller than me with a butcher’s knife. He just gutted them... with such ease, as if he wasn’t cutting human skin, as if he wasn’t smashing strong bones, but simply shredding cotton or foam. Blood splattered everywhere, including the window through which I saw the beginning of this mess, so I couldn’t fully see what was happening next, but I could still hear. They didn’t even scream, they just didn’t have time, he was so fast. It felt like it was easier for him than cutting fish... I could still hear him chopping them, breaking them, crushing them, but what pierced my ears the most was...

“She’ll be mine only),” his voice twisted... this wasn’t a child speaking, hell, not even a human!

Something else. A deep, gurgling voice that pierced to the bone, it was the one that snapped me out of my stupor. It was then I decided it was time to act.

Everything felt like a fog, like I was doing all this on autopilot. A lighter, a canister of gasoline, a loaded gun, and a knife. I poured gasoline around the house. A spark. Fire that turned into a blaze. A thought. A nagging thought...“I won’t be able to keep it inside, it might get out, I need to kill it to be sure it will never leave the boundaries of this house.” I entered the house, still not fully on fire, and froze...It was clearly waiting for me, standing in the middle of the main room, covered in blood, which was everywhere...pieces of flesh, now hard to tell whose they were, scattered, stuck to the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. It licked itself.

“Hello)” it bubbled with mockery, pretending to be the helpless child: “I thought you forgot about me...”

“Don’t worry, as you can see, now we’re together.”

“I'm not worried. Why should I worry when I know the ending?” it was getting closer and closer, and the fire around was growing stronger and stronger.

Strange shadows danced around... probably, it’s just my imagination. It’s the soot that’s messing with me. My hands are shaking. And its eyes... they always seemed blue to me. It's just the lighting or... why are they black? Even the sclera...

“What are you...?”

“What difference does it make?” it shrugged its shoulders and finally turned away from its eerie gaze.

And that was my chance. Finally, my ‘strike’ instinct kicked in. I lunged forward. The swing of the sharpened knife above its head and...a sharp pain in my stomach...

“If you’re going to die anyway)” it laughed, stabbing me with its cleaver and throwing me aside with inhuman strength so that I crashed into the wall.

Everything doubled before my eyes when I finally managed to get up. My eyes were watering, but not from the pain, but because I was literally suffocating from the smoke, the fire was consuming everything, trapping us both inside.

“Don’t forget...we die together, whatever you are...”

“Why are you so sure about that?)” it crouched, and its body began to deform: its neck and limbs stretched, its teeth sharpened, its grin widened, claws appeared...

“Do we truly know what monsters are...?” was the last thought of the woman sitting on the floor of a house engulfed in flames, a huge knife in her stomach, before something truly terrifying sank its teeth into her throat. Before it tore her body to pieces.

***

When the firefighters arrived, there was nothing left to extinguish. Only ashes on the blackened earth suggested that something had burned here. One of the firefighters took off his mask and looked into the hilly forest.

“What's out there, John?”

“Nothing, probably just my imagination...”

But all day, he couldn't shake the surreal image of what he’d seen at the forest’s edge: a small boy, about seven years old, stood watching the procession with large, unblinking blue eyes. In a fraction of a second, he stood on a bridge, contorting into some terrifying, pale figure. So much so that an ordinary person’s bones would have snapped — he twisted his torso 180 degrees and began crawling backward into the forest, still staring the firefighter straight in the eyes.

***

If one evening, while walking home, passing dark alleys, or strolling through the city at night, you notice a lone boy around seven or eight years old with unusually blue eyes, light brown hair, dressed in rags, asking you to take him home or simply help him, and you notice something strange in his behavior, or your intuition suddenly screams at you “Run”, then run. Don’t look back, don’t think about what others might think, just run. It might save your life. It turns out that there is something scarier than monsters in our world — predators — true evil that knows no mercy, has no moral principles, no conscience. It is like fire. And it. Wants. To. Feed.