Elijah Wren liked to take the teeth.
Not the whole mouth, no. That'd be barbaric. Sloppy. He was a refined kind of monster.
He kept them in glass jars, labeled and arranged by shape—incisors, canines, molars. He called it his "smile archive."
The police had no fucking clue what to call it.
The media dubbed him The Dentist.
I read the headlines with a calm detachment, sipping cheap coffee from a cracked mug in a laundromat that reeked of detergent and wet socks.
Another Collector. Another pretender.
Another name on his list.
⸻
"There are rules to this game," I thought, watching the spin cycle blur someone else's blood from my hoodie. "And assholes like him? They're breaking every single one."
I never took trophies.
I never dragged it out.
And I sure as hell never killed for attention.
This guy? Elijah fucking Wren? He wanted fame. Headlines. Legacy. Like he thought this was some twisted Olympics of murder.
"You picked the wrong fucking sport, pal."
⸻
Elijah lived alone in a downtown loft—lots of glass, chrome, and weird-ass sculptures that looked like they were screaming.
He didn't lock his door. That told me everything.
Amateur.
The loft was silent when I stepped in. Shadows hugged the corners like ghosts that never got their revenge. Elijah wasn't home. Yet.
I had time.
I moved quietly, surgical. Everything about me ghostlike—fingers gloved, blade tucked, calm as a surgeon preparing a corpse.
I found the jars.
Rows of teeth glinting under a dim tungsten lamp.
I felt sick.
"You collect smiles like they're fucking stamps?" I whispered to no one. "That's not art. That's not even madness. That's just… boring."
⸻
Elijah came home around 2 a.m.
High. Twitchy. Smiling too wide.
"Someone's been touching my collection," he muttered, flicking the lights on and stumbling into the room. "Tsk. That's rude."
He didn't see me until it was far too late.
⸻
"I know who you are," Elijah wheezed, tied to a chair now, nose broken and one eye swelling shut.
I knelt in front of him, calm as ever.
"No, you don't," I replied softly, tracing the handle of my knife. "You think you do, but what you know is headlines. I'm not a headline, Elijah. I'm the fucking footnote that buries you."
"You're The Paper Crane," Elijah hissed, blood pooling between his teeth. "You—"
I rammed the knife through his thigh, and Elijah screamed.
"Stop saying that name like it belongs to you."
I stood, paced once, then turned to face him again.
"You don't know me. But you're about to meet me. In full."
⸻
By morning, Elijah Wren's apartment was ablaze.
No body was found, only fragments of glass jars and melted plastic, and a single, folded paper crane floating down onto the fire escape.
The police assumed Elijah died in the fire.
They didn't look any further.
They never did.
⸻
I sat alone in a diner an hour later, the same cracked mug in my hand. Still stained. Still warm.
I stared out the window.
There were still more Collectors out there.
And I had just begun my own collection.
"I won't stop 'til they're all fucking gone."