Ficorpio
Chapter 1
A year ago, on a sudden impulse, I told my wife a story.
The subject was disturbing, and the details sounded far too real. It scared her half to death.
I regretted it afterward. I told her over and over that I had made the whole thing up, but her trust in me had already shattered. Whenever she looked at me, there was nothing but fear in her eyes.
That same night, she fled into the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police.
That was how I ended up behind bars.
What follows is my account of how it all happened.
1
My name is Henry Bennett. I’m forty-two years old, and because I’ve loved mysteries and detective stories since childhood, I eventually became a suspense novelist.
Claire and I have been married for years, and we’d always had a happy, easygoing relationship. She was also my most loyal—and always my first—reader.
Writing isn’t my only passion. For years, I’ve kept a collection of reptiles and amphibians. Turtles, frogs, lizards—I find those strange little creatures endlessly fascinating.
I even converted one room of our house into a dedicated reptile room. After a great deal of effort, I built a large ecological vivarium inside it, recreating the environment of a tropical rainforest as closely as possible. I wanted my pets to have a home that felt natural and comfortable.
I make my living as a writer now, but my bachelor’s degree was actually in bioengineering. At least it didn’t go entirely to waste.
When Claire and I first met, she had plenty to say about my unusual hobby. But she was an easygoing woman, and over time, affection for me softened her attitude toward my pets. Eventually, even she began to find them oddly adorable.
We never had children after we married. Instead, we raised our reptiles together, and we were perfectly happy that way. Whenever I was racing to finish a manuscript and working around the clock, Claire was usually the one who took care of them.
That night, it was already midnight by the time I finished working. Claire was still awake.
I went to the reptile room and found her watching one of the frogs.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I used to be terrified of cold-blooded animals.”
Then she glanced at me and casually asked, “Henry, is there any animal you’re afraid of?”
I considered the question for a moment. Then a peculiar idea slipped into my mind.
“Yes,” I said solemnly. “Sheep.”
Claire stared at me, baffled. “Why? Sheep are so gentle.”
“Because there’s something deeply unsettling about their eyes.” I kept my expression perfectly serious. “You’re not tired yet, are you? Let me tell you a story.”
Chapter 2
It was late, and the house was silent. The light in the reptile room was dim, and the lizards watched me through their narrow vertical pupils.
“Very mysterious,” Claire said with a smile. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“The main character in this story is named Henry Bennett.”
“Why are you using your own name?”
“It makes the story more immersive.”
2
—Story One—
My name is Henry Bennett.
Ever since I was a child, I’d loved mysteries and detective work. My dream was to attend the police academy and become a homicide detective.
Back then, I believed my future would unfold exactly as I’d planned.
Everything changed in the summer of 1997. I was seventeen, and my father took me to the site of the national college entrance examination.
Just before I entered the exam hall, my father called me back.
He stared at me for a long time. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. In the end, all he said was, “You’re going to do well. You’ll get into the police academy.”
At the time, I noticed nothing unusual about him. I assumed it was simply the kind of encouragement any father would give his son, so I nodded and went inside.
The exams went well. When I finished the final one, I hurried out of the building, eager to share my relief and excitement with him.
But my father was gone.
Whenever there was a major exam, my father waited outside for me.
He stood beside his bicycle, one hand on the handlebars, his eyes fixed anxiously on the entrance. Even when I came out after the exam and pushed through the crowd toward him, he was still searching the faces around him.
When I called out, his whole face lit up. He slapped the seat behind him.
“Finished, son? Come on. Let’s go home.”
I would hop onto the back of the bike, chattering all the way about how easy the questions had been. He would laugh and tell me not to get cocky, though his feet always pedaled harder, sending cool wind rushing past us.
My father carried me on that bicycle over hills and down slopes, along mountain roads and muddy paths. The wheels kept turning through the years. The shoulders in front of me gradually bent, but to me, they never stopped looking broad and strong.
Those small moments became habits, and because they were habits, I took them for granted. They felt as fixed as the laws of the world.
My father was the quiet, steady support at my back. Because of him, I could focus on nothing but moving forward.
And when that certainty broke, all I had left was panic.
Outside the exam site, I looked everywhere. I ran through the crowd, shouting for him, stopping passersby to describe an ordinary middle-aged man.
But he was too ordinary. No one had noticed him.
I searched without any real direction, unease tightening in my chest.
Nothing could have happened. Maybe he’d gone home early.
That was what I told myself as I headed back alone.
But when I got home, Ethan Bennett wasn’t there either.
My father had disappeared.
Chapter 3
Mom told me that on the night before my college entrance exams, Dad had been inexplicably on edge. They’d exchanged a few sharp words, and he might have stormed out in anger. Once he’d had a few days to cool off, she said, he would come home.
The explanation felt strange, but I had no choice except to accept it.
A man walking out on his family was hardly something to advertise. We told no one and searched for him quietly. But days passed without a single word.
The college entrance exams really did seem to mark a turning point in my life. By the time they were over, Ethan Bennett had vanished without a trace.
I couldn’t understand why Dad would abandon us. Looking back, I could think of no warning signs, nothing that made sense. For as long as I could remember, he’d been a steady, devoted family man: honest, dependable, and hardworking. Like many fathers of his generation, he rarely spoke about his feelings. He showed his love in simpler ways, silently caring for us and holding the family together.
I had never once doubted my father’s love.
And yet he was gone.
Then Mom said, “Do you think he went looking for your brother?”
I had an older brother, Daniel, five years my senior. He had been born with a serious visual impairment.
Daniel had left home years ago to find work. He never returned, and we never heard from him again. He, too, had vanished without a trace.
Could Dad have gone after him?
My instincts told me no.
A month later, one of our neighbors realized something was wrong and contacted the police. Trying to help, she gave them a description of my father, including his appearance, height, and weight.
When the police came to our house, their expressions were grim. They said almost nothing about searching for a missing person. Instead, they moved from room to room, collecting fingerprints.
They returned the next day.
And this time, they brought with them a devastating secret about my father.
In 1985, a Mass-Family Murder Case shocked a remote mountain county in a neighboring state. An entire household of five—the Holloway Family—was wiped out.
The crime scene lay far from civilization, and the family had lived in near-total isolation. There were no direct witnesses.
The police investigated the family’s connections but found nothing. The killer had not been an enemy or a rival. He appeared to have been a stranger passing through at random, which made the case even harder to solve.
The police lifted fingerprints from the victims and the murder weapon—prints believed to belong to the killer. By canvassing the area, they learned the suspect’s general appearance, but they still had no idea who he was. The case was shelved for twelve years.
Every murder must be solved. Until it is, we do not stop.