The First Cut A Samantha Leary Short Story

This story contains themes suitable for adults. Please proceed only if you are 18+

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By J.E. Nickerson

Chapter 1

The smell of burnt flesh hung in the small room, acrid and intimate.

Heat pressed close, clinging to the fabric of the full-body suit he wore—hood sealed, gloves tight to his wrists, every inch of him covered to keep the blood where it belonged. Nothing left behind. Nothing to betray him.

His hands were steady as he shaved the man’s head, the clippers buzzing like a distant warning. Each pass revealed a scalp lined with fear and disbelief. The man’s eyes darted, searching for mercy where none existed.

A small flame from a cigarette lighter flickered, casting shadows that danced across the charred marks he had left moments before. The smoke clung to the air, a faint echo of dim rooms and hidden corners from long ago—memories he carried like scars, silent and suffocating.

“Why… why are you doing this?” the man croaked, voice trembling, trying and failing to sound brave.

He didn’t answer at first.

Ritual required order.

Order required control.

He moved with that same practiced precision, each motion deliberate. Finally, he spoke, low, calm, sharp enough to cut through the man’s denial:

“Because of what you did to the kids.”

The man shook his head, disbelief and panic clawing across his face. “I… I didn’t—”

He leaned closer, the hood of the suit whispering as he bent in. His voice remained steady, detached.“Henry. Jason. Paul. Eric.” He said each name slowly, letting them hang in the air, as if summoning them into the room, honoring them like some dark roll call only he understood.

Each name landed like a hammer.

Each name stripped away another excuse.

Another lie.

The man’s breath caught. Body sagging against the restraints. In the face of the truth, denial collapsed.

His anger collapsed next.

Then came the screaming—fear, pain, desperation. A furious, useless attempt at reclaiming control. But the sedative still dulled the man’s limbs, slowing everything but the panic in his eyes. 

He could see the recognition in the man’s eyes. The truth that refused to be buried. 

“You gave them haircuts before you used them,” he said, voice cold and even. “You were supposed to protect them. Be a father figure.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and deliberate. The father’s face went pale, his throat tight, but no sound came.

He turned to the table beside Him, eyes fixed on the knife lying there like an offering. Moonlight caught the cold steel, turning it into something almost sacred. Reverently, he lifted it, feeling its weight, imagining the balance it brought.

Step by step, he approached the man, each movement measured, deliberate. The room seemed to hold its breath. The father didn’t see it coming—didn’t even know to scream yet. Then, with a precision that was almost loving, the blade cut through fabric first, then skin, and the sound of tearing cloth was quickly drowned out by the raw, ragged cry that followed.

The knife moved with clinical ease.

Cuts carved into flesh: precise. Deliberate and smooth. Punishing. Until the letter was formed. 

The father’s screams ricocheted off the concrete walls—hollow, unprotected. An offering. An admission of guilt, long overdue in the eyes of the man with the knife.

The metallic tang of blood mingled with the smoke from the burned patches of skin. The room pulsed with a sickening rhythm—pain, breath, pain again.

Between the screams, something colder settled in the air.

Necessity.

This was retribution.

Balance.

A correction no one else would make.

Someone had to stop the monsters who hurt children.

Someone had to stand where no one had stood for him. The burns mirrored those on the boys’ arms. The haircut. Every mark, every crime—repaid to the father who had inflicted them.

The final slice was smooth, efficient, practiced. A straight cut across the throat that ended the screams in a single wet choke. Silence followed, heavy and complete.

He wrapped the body in the sheet he had brought—folded corners, precise positioning, each movement part of a ritual that had long since become second nature. Nothing rushed. Nothing sloppy. Every detail mattered.

Outside, the night waited—dark, damp, patient.

The alley accepted the body without protest, the shape settling into shadow like it had always belonged there. A grim offering to a world too indifferent to notice.

The children were safe from the monster now.

Their cries had been heard.

He had listened.

He had protected them in the only way he knew how.

He paused, breath steady behind the sealed hood, watching the quiet street for a full beat. Everything was as it should be. Every mark. Every placement. Every motion—part of the balance he carved one stroke at a time.

Then he stepped back into the darkness.

The city swallowed him whole.

His work was done. Enough. For now…

Chapter 2

The morning smelled like wet asphalt and burnt coffee. A boy tugged at his sister’s sleeve, the two walking slowly down the alley behind the restaurant exploring the area. The sun had just begun to claw its way past the horizon, but the shadows still lingered in the corners.

“What’s that?” The girl whispered, pointing toward a lump wrapped in a sheet near the chain-link fence.

The boy squinted. At first, it looked like a pile of garbage. A bag someone had left out overnight. He moved closer. The outline of a man’s head coming into focus. 

He froze. “It… it looks like…”

The girl’s small hand grabbed his arm, clutching tightly. Fear prickled their skin, sharp and sudden, making their stomachs churn. They’d seen movies—things kids were never supposed to see—but nothing prepared them for this.

The body lay there, face obscured, head oddly smooth where hair had been shaved. Their eyes caught the “D” carved across the back. It glinted faintly in the early light, cruel and deliberate. The dark red blood dried and raw. 

The boy swallowed. “Someone… someone’s hurt him.” He nudged the sheet with his foot. The body didn’t move. Heat rose up the boy’s chest, freezing at the same time. “I… I think he’s dead.”

The girl’s voice trembled. “We should… tell someone.” She shrank back, curling into herself. The distant wail of sirens barely pierced the heavy quiet around them.

The boy grabbed his sister’s hand. Running hard. Small legs pumping, hearts hammering. Behind them, the alley waited, silent, hollow, keeping its secret.

Entering the restaurant they searched  for someone they could talk to. Behind the desk a woman who looked old enough to be a mother bent down as they approached. Her name tag said Margaret.

“There’s a man…in the alley.” The boy panted. “Someone’s hurt him.”

The little girl nodded, eyes wide. 

The woman huffed in annoyance but something in the boy’s tone told her this was important.

“Veronica can you watch the desk for me?” She called to a woman dressed in the same restaurant uniform all the employees wore. 

The young slender woman nodded and took her station behind the desk. 

Margaret followed the kids to the alley. 

“If this is a joke I swear to God—” Margaret’s voice caught as she saw the man wrapped the sheet. Blood staining the sheet. 

“Oh my God.” A shutter ran through her as she pulled the kids away from the body. Barely able to process what she was seeing she fumbled for her phone in her pocket and dialed the police. “H-hello. There’s a body in the alley behind McGruger’s I-I. Come quick. I think he’s dead.”

Margaret felt the children press closer as she stared at the body, unable to look away. Horror seemed to seep from the alley, pressing down on them all.

Chapter 3

The crime scene was quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that settled under Samantha’s skin and stayed there. In the distance traffic hummed, the sound vibrating faintly at the base of her skull. Yellow tape snapped in the breeze, the only thing willing to move. She and Greg stepped beneath it, and the day seemed to press down, aware of what had happened here.

The body dominated the small alley, pulling the air tight around it.

Samantha stepped closer, feeling the atmosphere change—thick, weighted, charged with the residue of intention. The alley’s cold draft whispered through the broken frame of a window, but nothing inside moved. The stillness belonged to the dead.

The man lay on his chest, sheet pulled down to the small of his back. Bruising marked the ribs. Burn scars marred the forearms. But it was the carving that held her gaze.

A single, deliberate D etched into the flesh of his back.

Cut cleanly.

Deep enough to bleed freely, but not enough to kill.

Samantha crouched, concrete cold through her knees. She traced the edges with her eyes, noting the precision, the steady angle, the careful control it took to make such a mark. Every line spoke of intention, planning, patience. The dried blood told her he had been alive when the cutting began.

Greg mirrored her posture across the body, silent and steady. Neither spoke. There was nothing to say yet. The carving didn’t just mark the man—it marked the killer. Samantha felt the weight of that decision in every detail.

She followed the path of the blade with her eyes—controlled, steady, almost gentle. Not rage. Not frenzy. Something worse.

“Placement is intentional,” she murmured. “Someone wanted him found like this. I’ve never seen this level of brutality.”

Greg’s jaw tightened. “Probably a man. Most women aren’t…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Men tend to pick more public methods of killing.”

The words hung in the air for several seconds.

“You think the ‘D’ is a message?” Greg’s eyes studied the body—its posture, the placement behind a restaurant. Isolated enough that the killer wouldn’t be noticed, but public enough that it would eventually be found.

“He marked him,” she said softly. “He chose this… and made sure it was seen.” 

Stepping closer, she saw the deep gash along his neck. “It takes a lot of rage to do this… whomever did it,” her eyes met Greg’s, “I don’t think they’ll stop.”

Her fingers didn’t touch the skin. She didn’t need to. The killer’s certainty hung in the alley, saturating every inch of the scene. Hands were set neatly, legs straightened, clothing arranged with quiet care—a ritual only one person could understand. The mark was intentionally displayed, a signature meant to draw attention to something greater.

Greg reached into his bag and pulled out the portable fingerprint scanner. The device hummed quietly, alive with the promise of answers. He rolled the man’s fingers across the glass pad, slow, deliberate, methodical. Samantha watched him work, her phone in her hand documenting everything, noting the shadows, the cold light, the way the air seemed to thrum.

The scanner chirped. A thin bar crawled across the display.

“Got a match,” Greg said softly.

Samantha leaned in, eyes on the screen.

Name: Elliot Ray Barnes

DOB: 07/14/1984

Status: Verified. No active warrants

Record: Clean. No prior arrests

Last known address: 454 Cedar Hill lane.

Samantha breathed out heavily. Nothing else. No flags. No story. Just a name to follow.

Greg slid the scanner back into his bag. “We start here,” he said. “See who knew him. Someone has to be missing him.”

Samantha’s gaze lingered on the carving, the bruises, the deliberate arrangement of the body. A name wasn’t the end—it was the first step. A thread pulled from the darkness. Deep inside, something knew their descent had only just begun.

Greg’s eyes met hers, grim and unblinking. They’d seen shootings, stabbings, the usual spate of violence in Pleasant Falls—but nothing like this. No one had ever been carved up, arranged like a message. The brutality, the precision… it wasn’t just a crime. It was a warning. And both of them felt it: the darkness here was heavier, more deliberate, more alive than anything they’d faced before.

The alley held its breath around them. Streetlights hummed. The yellow tape twitched. And somewhere beyond the bricks and the shadows, the story waited.

Step into the shadows…

This case is not what it seems. And Samantha has only seen the beginning. The story starts in The First Cut and unravels in Abandoned: A Samantha Leary Psychological Thriller. Available on Amazon.

Samantha Leary Psychological Thrillers 

The moment doesn’t end here. It never does.

For Samantha, this is where it begins—where instinct starts to press against the surface, where something unresolved refuses to stay buried.

If you felt that shift—the quiet sense that something isn’t right—you’re already inside her world.

The story continues in the Samantha Leary series, beginning with the prequel.

Step into the series on Amazon