Eonopolis was a soulless city. A metropolis populated by millions upon millions of people, sprawling countless hundreds of miles of the planet Earth. To see the city from afar would give a person a feeling of false hope: they can imagine the joy it would give them to drive on a "sky highway" in a flying vehicle, the never ending possibilities to have fun, and certainly, a very diverse group of people.
But, Eonopolis was everything but that conjured image of naivete. A closer look would reveal that the city housed unoriginality and a stagnant monotony over the lives of it's people.
Every man looked similar to every other man, every woman looked similar to every other woman. Everyone owned the same appliances, and followed the same rules and customs passed on from generation to generation. It wasn't the law of the city to follow the traditions, but a strict social one. Those who practice the art of "difference" were cast away, shunned as outsiders to society.
Puzzle McIntire was never one to follow the traditions of his city, but in his case he was lucky: no one ever had the guts to shun such a beautiful human being.

To say that Puzzle McIntire was not envied by the male population of Eonopolis, would be a crime. Puzzle was detested by those of his fellow gender, he had everything they wanted, because he had the quality all women of Eonopolis looked for in a male companion: captivating good looks.
Women are very superficial creatures, and to say they look for any other qualities in a man would be giving them to much credit. Over the years women developed into the superficial scum they are today due to the fact that they are smart: they all realized that men serve no purpose, other than to have great sex.
And there was no man in Eonopolis that women wanted to have sex more with than Puzzle McIntire.

Sexual partners came and went like a gust of wind for Puzzle. Every night of the week he could have any woman he wanted at his apartment, it was like an honor for anyone to be in his presence.
He described his sex capades as nothing buy, "passionate flings". His stories of sex with some of the most wanted women in Eonopolis was a topic of high importance at the weekly get-togethers he had with his large, but usually envious, group of male friends.
"So who was it this week, Puzzle. That supermodel! God if you got her I will hate you forever," the voice of Dan Futterman rose up out of the groups non-important talk about the sporting events of the week.
Puzzle tilted his head slowly to get a good look at Dan, he eyed him up before answering the question.
"Well?" Dan persisted.
Puzzle turned red as he began his prepared speech that he knew he would have to give to the group, "Well, it's kind of confusing, but..." he paused, looked around the room for some nice face to stare at,"I have a woman now, I'm tied down. I can't be my normal playboy self.
Groans of disagreement rose from the group of men now huddled around Puzzle.
Dan was the first to counter Puzzle's confession,"You aren't the group manwhore anymore. Oh well, once a manwhore always a manwhore, right guys?" The group responded with nodded heads.
Puzzle excused himself from the table, and the get-together, claiming he had work to do at home. Everyone knew the truth, Puzzle was ashamed of his new self, and their looks of dissatisfaction only fueled his loss of self confidence.
He was definitely a new man, no longer a lazy playboy who lived off the money of his momentary sexual partners, but a man in love with one woman.

They met two weeks ago. Her name was Hazel, it accidentally slipped out when Puzzle described the color of his hair on their first date, "That's a beautiful color," she said,"Although I must admit I tend to favor the color hazel because it is my name." Puzzle was truly shocked, but not worried.
The name Hazel was not a turn off. For the first time in 20 years, Puzzle knew the name of one of his sexual partners, and he became happy but confused. He knew his life would change from that point on, for better or worse, he knew not, but things would definitely change regardless.

The night of their first date together ended with fantastic sex, the best Puzzle had ever experienced. Weird, Puzzle thought, considering that Hazel, although beautiful, was not the greatest looking girl he had seen. Maybe it was true what everyone said, love leads to better relationships, not lust. He was still touchy on the subject of love vs. lust, he still was unsure about Hazel's true feelings. Was she lusting after him? Or truly falling in love?
Hazel was halfway out of the door of Puzzle's apartment when Puzzle yelled, "Please stay the night!"
Slowly Hazel turned to face Puzzle. She noticed his deep blue eyes, still visible in the moonlit room. A questioned look overcame her precious face as she asked, "But I thought...you only like sex? Right? No long term commitments from you. At least that is the gossip around the city."
Puzzle shuddered at Hazel's question, but he quickly regained the strength he needed to walk towards the woman, their eyes locked, centimeters away from each other as Puzzle reached around her waist for a hug.
"This is much more..." Puzzle whispered in her ear,"much, much more."

Hazel had changed Puzzle into a man of loyalty and love for one woman, herself. Puzzle was now mentally, emotionally, and physically attached to Hazel, and Hazel to Puzzle.
Their first weekend apart from each other was a pain, but Puzzle hoped that his best friend, Crete, would cheer him up. The two friends had plans to visit the Eonopolis Fair together.
As the two strolled by odd booths and overprice vending stands, they talked about their lives since the last time they saw each other. Recently, they had become very distant with Puzzle being involved with Hazel during most of his free time.
"Well this girl, Hazel. I dunno buddy, I know women better than I know myself, and I think this Hazel chick only wants you for the sex. If you look like Frankenstein's shit she would have never even given you a second glance," replied Crete in his lispy voice to a comment Puzzle had made about how much he missed and loved his Hazel.
'Crete is probably right' thought Puzzle to himself as they continued their walk. Puzzle looked around at the throngs of girls watching him as he passed by, they gave him the admiration worthy of only a god.
The two men stopped to watch a man swing a jackhammer down at a target.
"You know Crete," Puzzle said as he stared in curiosity at the old man attempting to use the jackhammer,"I think you are right. I mean you do know women very well, you're a gay guy it's like a requirement." The two laughed. Puzzle continued,"All I have going for me are my looks. Without them, everyone would probably desert me. I admit, I sometimes wonder what live would be like without my looks. My wonderings pain me sometimes, because I know the truth, and the truth is my life would be meaningless. Nothing..."
The old man had no coordination, he gripped the jackhammer with all the strength his scrawny body could muster, but to no avail. But, the old man was not one to quit, and eventually he did have a good control on the hammer. He lifted it up slowly above his head, in preparation for the hammers fall on the target.
The hammer finally fell, but not on target. The force of it falling drew the old man to shift his aim and body direction, to a point where he faced Puzzle directly.
Crete yelled, blood was everywhere. The admiring throngs of girls gasped in a unified horror, their idol was gone, no longer important because of his lack beauty. And the old man lie crying, begging to everyone and Puzzle to forgive him.

The room was cold and dark during the day, colder and darker at night. Bare white walls engulfed the sterile-looking tile floors, soulless like the rest of Eonopolis and its people.
Assistants to the master of the room clamored in and out, in and out, their choreography seamlessly perfect. But in the air was an unusual feeling of hopelessness.
This was the operating room of Dr. Jeff Franken, Eonopolis's best plastic surgeon, and master of his room. The Doctor was ready for the upcoming emergency surgery he had to perform on the patient lying before him.
The patient was Puzzle McIntire, the surgery was for him.
"Doctor....." Puzzle mumbled from behind his bloodied and destroyed face. Dr. Franken came closer to listen to Puzzle's faint voice. He focused on the deep blue eyes, the only remaining symbol of hope on this once beautiful face. " I need you to make me ugly, like this, forever."
Dr. Franken was taken aback by Puzzle's weird demand of uglification. Most patients like him were eager to get their normal appearance back. But Puzzle was no normal patient, behind the facade of his peaceful eyes lied a curious mind. It wanted to know what life would be like for Puzzle without the one redeeming quality that attracted people to him, his looks. The accident brought up an opportunity to finally see what would happen.
Puzzle, noticing the dazed expression on Dr. Franken's face said,"Not a word of this will leak out Dr. Franken. I promise. I want this to happen, it's my choice. Remember, it's my choice. I want to be ugly."
Dr. Franken nodded, passively agreeing to his patients demands. He would make it look like an accident that occurred during the reconstructive surgery, that would be the best way to go at it he thought.
Alone, Dr. Franken performed the horrible destruction of Puzzle's face that would end, not only in the destruction of Puzzle's looks, but his whole life also.

Hazel's face turned a pale white as she first laid eyes on the new Puzzle.
His once pretty eyes, now cross-eyed, discolored bumps, scars and an unbalanced nose now found their home on Puzzle's ugly face.
She sat in the chair next to Puzzle's bed, clasping her hands over her mouth to hold back her tears of unhappiness. Being an intuitive woman, Hazel knew full well without even asking what Puzzle had done. But, she asked the necessary question anyways.
"What happened?"
"Do you love me?" Puzzle asked softly from his hospital bed.
"Of course. I will love you unconditionally forever," Hazel said, examining every new freakish feature on him as she spoke.
"Well if that is the case, I'll tell you the truth," Puzzle paused for breath,"I needed some way to see...to see if your love for me was true. I wanted to see if it was deeper than just lust or desire for some kind of physical...I ordered Doc to do this" Puzzle rambled on. It was obvious that the medication he was on was affecting his speech.
Hazel couldn't take it anymore, she ran out of the room desperately trying to hold back tears.
Later that night, Hazel returned to take Puzzle back home from the clinic where he had been recovering. As she laid him down on his bed, she could not help but stare at the disgusting creature who dared question her unconditional love for him.
She had spent so much of her love, energy, and life on this man, and during it all he always believed it to be fake. Hazel was a newly scorned woman.
A woman desperate to prove her love for a man that now questioned it.

Hazel left the city the day after Puzzle's return home. Her excuse was that she had to care for her mother in New Phoenix who had fallen ill. Puzzle did not believe the story for a second. Now he had the answer to his lifelong question: it was true, his looks were the only things that made people like him.

"I can't believe it," Puzzle said in the dark room over a glistening speaker, "You were right, Crete. So honest, and right!"
"With your new image, you will find a true girl. Trust me on this one also," Crete's girlish voice was only amplified over the speaker system.
Puzzle scoffed at Crete's comment,"This isn't your normal image change, this was a change from sexiest man in Eonopolis," Crete laughed, "to now ugliest son-of-a-bitch out here. I've tried to get girls, Crete. Last night I went out to a few bars, I sat in the corner drinking myself drunk."
Rejection was a new feeling for Puzzle. It made him feel lost, useless, things he had never been before. As he looked into a nearby mirror he saw why,"I'm so ugly. So ugly! My whole life was based on the way my eyes sparkled, and my killer jaw line, but now that's all gone and with it my livelihood."
His hand ran over his once gentle face as Crete blabbered in the background about some nonsense that Puzzle didn't care about. This was the new Puzzle McIntire, the envy of no one, the man to no woman.
He thirsted for revenge.

Panic gripped the city of Eonopolis . It's presence was felt everywhere: in the suspicious glares neighbors gave neighbors, in the instructions mothers gave their children to, "not run past the corner", and in the virtual standstill the city came to at night.
For in the night was when the serial killer struck.
Each crime brought on the same scene of a maimed victim, their limbs scattered throughout the area, and a blood written message scrawled on some nearby surface: "Love is the End of Self."
Time dragged on, as if attached by chain to a giant weight. A chain that would be broken on the night of September 9, 2088, with the capture of a man at the scene of a new crime.

Seeing a darkly dressed figure enter a private home through a window would have been ignored in the past, but in times of terror like these, everyone was on alert and ready to report such suspicious behavior.
And so the Eonopolis Municipal Police got the call that a darkly clad man of strong figure had entered the home of one Nina Fiatsso through her window.
Sirens wailed, piercing the cold night with people's wonder wherever it passed,"Did they finally find the killer?","What could they be going to see?"
Their All-Atmospheric Vehicles touched down on the cool pavement, lit only by streetlights. Within seconds, the police force was on the door of Nina Fiatsso's home.
"Open up and nothing will happen. Come out with your hands above your head," a belligerent police officer yelled from the doorway of the home, his patience finally running thin. Up went the officers hand, motioning for the door to be broken down and for the forceful capture of the suspect inside.
The door flew out of place, smacking the suspect unconscious.
"Holy fucking shit, Chief come look at this." said a low level officer upon seeing the limp body.
"Is it..." continued the officer.
"Puzzle McIntire," finished the Chief as he wiped the hot blood off of Puzzle's weak hands.

"The evidence is there, and the motive was strong. Mr. McIntire killed all of these 9 women out of rage. Rage because these women had rejected this man, this serial killer, for the first time in his life and he could not take it. The Prosecution rests your honor." and with that the bespectacled, scrawny prosecutor took his seat.
The City of Eonopolis vs. Puzzle McIntire had reached it's end, and now all that was needed was a verdict from the jury, it looked very bad for Puzzle. The defense case was weak compared to the strong case the prosecution had presented.
And being caught at the scene of the crime, did not help Puzzle at all.
Hours passed, and the jury finally returned with a verdict. Guilty of murder in all 9 cases.
The judge issued a harsh sentence for Puzzle: death by electrical chair.
Puzzle, an innocent man, would have been put to death had it not been for a stunning revelation brought forth by beautiful woman in the courtroom crowd.
The woman was Hazel.

"My love for you is true, Puzzle, my dear. As true as the blood that I saw before my eyes, the blood that flew from maimed bodies for you. I care not what you look like, only what your heart feels like. Love is the worst curse, under it's spell we can do anything, and under your spell of love, my dear, I killed. Not out of pleasure, but to prove something. My love," wailed Hazel from the back of courtroom.
The police, thinking Hazel to be some joke tried to quiet her down as they attempted to move Puzzle out of the courtroom.
Hazel cried louder, "Do not take him! He did nothing wrong! I have the pictures of every murdered victim, pictures only the true killer would have, something my love Puzzle is not. I also have items the victims owned. The alibi I created of my mother in New Phoenix being sick is a lie, she has been dead for years, and during that time I disappeared from public I was murdering." She took a few deep, quick breaths as she turned to her love, "Puzzle, remember how on the night of your arrest you received a call from Nina. And remember how she begged you to come to her place to keep her company, and how she told you to enter from the window because the door was broken. Well I forced Nina to make that last call of hers right before her death. And it was I who placed the call to the police from a nearby phone booth when I saw you enter her home through the window. Somebody take me, the true killer! Let Puzzle go!"
She was quickly hand cuffed and removed from the courtroom, never once looking away from Puzzle.
Her love was proven, and it was true, surely true.

Everyone knew Hazel was guilty: the pictures of the crime scene, the belongings of the victims, it all added up to a swift and fair guilty verdict.
Sentence: Death by electrical chair.

Her execution date was never met, she decided to take her life into her own cold, calculating hands while still in prison awaiting her date with death. Slowly prying the razors off of the a shaver she had stumbled upon, she created the weapon that would end her life.
Once the razors were out of place, she continued to fumble her fingers around them until she found an excellent way to hold them. After all, why die uncomfortable when taking your own life, she thought. Within minutes, the damage had been done, and her entire body was bleeding profusely due to the many cuts she had put all over her body.
When the guards came to check on her cell, it was too late, she had been dead for hours.
A nurse carrying her body noticed a strange pattern to the scars on Hazel's body, "This may sound weird to you all, but, I think these scars look identical to the one's of that guy Puzzle McIntire. Didn't this girl date him?" the naive nurse asked.
The scars were identical, exactly identical.


Death is not painful. You feel nothing. To live is to feel everything, and most times that can be a far greater punishment than death.
This is the punishment that Puzzle has to live with, all by himself, without his true love, or anyone for that matter.
Until death do him part to his suffering.

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