Liu woke up to the sound of gunshots coming from
inside his house. There were panicked screams. Sounds of a violent struggle. He sat bolt upright,
terrified and drenched in sweat, as he heard footsteps getting closer to his room. It’d already
been the worst year of his life, but things were about to take another turn straight into Hell. And
this time, Liu would bring a demon back with him. A figure trudged down the hallway towards
Liu’s bedroom door, having already taken two lives that night. He gripped a kitchen
knife in his scarred, twitching hand, still dripping with the blood of its
recent prey. He chuckled softly to himself, amused at the carnage of it all. Now, he
was going to add one more body to the pile. Liu’s body. Back in his bedroom, Liu could feel his heart
rise into his throat. The door creaked open, and he saw the figure looming in the shadows. “Jeff?” Liu asked, seeing the figure
slowly come into focus. “Is that you?” The figure chuckled again, and raised
his index finger up to its lipless mouth. “Shhhh,” he said. “Go to sleep.” Before Liu could get another word in, the figure
- presumably his brother, Jeff - charged at him, brandishing the blade. He couldn’t help but
notice that his brother’s white hoodie was already splattered with blood, and that he’d
cut a wide, Joker-like grin into his own face. The awful sight of his brother’s ruined
face caused him to let his guard down, just for a moment. Big mistake. Jeff, who’d seemingly gone utterly insane, had no intention of cutting him any slack.
In fact, his only intention was to cut him. Jeff stabbed Liu in the belly, causing a
shockwave of pain to rock through his body. Worse than the pain was the sense of betrayal
- his own brother, who he’d sacrificed so much for - was genuinely trying to kill him. Liu cried
out in pain, tears cascading down his cheeks. Jeff stabbed him again, and whispered, “I
said, go to sleep! Just like mom and dad!” In that moment, Liu connected all the
dots: The gunshots he’d heard earlier, they were the blasts of his father’s shotgun, fired off in an unsuccessful attempt to save him
and his wife from their youngest son’s wrath. Jeff’s mother had been the one that first
discovered him in the bathroom, mutilating his face into the nightmare we all know and fear
today. Where she saw fear and disgust, Jeff had seen beauty and potential. His mother would
be punished dearly for not seeing what he saw. She ran back into her bedroom and implored her
husband to grab the gun, knowing on some primal level that her son was already gone. But
they were too slow. By the time two shells were loaded into the gun, Jeff was already
running across the room, knife at the ready. His father unloaded both barrels, but Jeff, now imbued with killer instinct,
was able to dodge the buckshot. A few minutes later, when Jeff left
the room, both of his parents were dead and gutted on the bed. Liu would be
next, unless he got extremely lucky. Or, depending on your perspective, extremely unlucky. He could feel himself getting light-headed
from the pain as Jeff twisted the knife in his guts, cackling like a madman while
he did it. Liu tried to hit his brother, and throw him off, but Jeff was too
strong. He seemed to just ignore the pain, as he prepared to plunge the
knife into Liu once more. Liu reached out onto his bedside table and grabbed
the first thing his desperate hand could get a hold of: Not a weapon, but a rosary. In sheer
panic, he wrapped the rosary around Jeff’s neck, and began to pull it tight, until he could
begin to see his brother strain and wheeze. His grip on the blade was getting looser.
His pale face was slowly becoming a ruddy purple from the oxygen deprivation.
All the while, Jeff slashed at Liu, leaving a crisscross of deep
cuts on his face and torso. With the last of his strength, Liu reeled back, and delivered a powerful kick to Jeff’s
gut, knocking his brother off of his body. Outside, police cars were converging in
the suburb. Jeff and Liu’s neighborhood was a quiet place, so gunshots and screams
in the middle of the night were certain to catch people’s attention. Incidentally,
they’d arrived just in time to save Liu’s life - but as everyone would later learn,
this isn’t necessarily a good thing. When Jeff saw the red and blue flashing lights, he decided to cut his losses and split,
leaving Liu to bleed to death on the bed. Thoughts of sadness and betrayal swam
through Liu’s head as he lost consciousness, expecting to never wake back up again.
His entire family was already dead or murderously insane - the only question now was
which one of these Liu himself would become. How had he gotten here? Life seemed so normal a few months back, when they
were moving into the neighborhood. It was him, Jeff, and their parents. Liu and his parents
had never really seen eye to eye - Jeff was always the golden child, they wrote Liu
off early as a future burnout. But he and his brother were thick as thieves.
Liu was incredibly protective of Jeff, and would happily put everything on
the line to keep him out of trouble. He just didn’t expect that
he’d need to do it so quickly. The incident at the bus stop changed everything.
He and Jeff were just standing there, minding their own business, when Randy,
Keith, and Troy - a local gang of teenage thugs - rolled onto the scene. What
started as a hostile conversation quickly turned into a straight-up shakedown,
as the three bullies all pulled blades, and threatened Jeff and Liu to hand over
any money or valuables they had on them. That’s when Jeff had his first little snap.
Just recalling it terrified Liu. It was the first time his sweet little baby brother didn’t
seem himself, like a switch had been flipped in his brain. He gave Randy a brutal punch in the
nose, before grabbing and snapping his wrist. Jeff then effortlessly disarmed him, and
used his knife to stab Keith in the arm. It was almost like some outside force had
taken over him. Liu had known right then, on some level, that things would never be
the same again. But there would still be a lot of pain in store for Liu before
Jeff the Killer would truly be born. Randy and Keith needed to go
to the hospital. As a result, the authorities soon came knocking on Jeff’s
door. However, Liu had no intention of letting Jeff go to Juvie for this. His brother may
have been frightening in his brutality, but he was still acting in self-defense.
The bullies had threatened them first! Liu did the only thing he could to protect
his brother from his own impulsive actions: He confessed to Jeff’s crimes, and accepted the
charges. Because his parents had always thought so little of him in the first place, they were happy
to believe that he was behind the assault, and let him take the fall for it. Liu was sentenced
to a year in a brutal correctional facility for his trouble, but at least he’d done what he
believed was right, and kept his brother safe. His time inside wasn’t kind to him. Liu may have
been innocent, but many of the teens around him were hardcore criminals in the making. He was
dealt regular beatings by the other inmates, and the sadistic guards. Night
after night alone in his cell, separated from anybody who cared about
him, was beginning to take its toll. Everyone thought he was a monster, and
sometimes, a tiny voice inside him would whisper, “If they already think you’re a
monster, why not start playing the part?” In these moments, he’d always fantasize
about committing violence - about getting back at the people who hurt him, who put
him here - but he’d always suppress the urge. He had to be good. If he became a
monster, what would Jeff think of him? Little did he know, Jeff was becoming a monster
in his own right. He’d been grappling with his own urges to kill, and when Keith, Randy,
and Troy showed up for revenge at a birthday party Jeff was attending, the floodgates finally
opened. They’d arrived at the party with guns, fully intent on killing Jeff, but things ended
up very differently for the would-be murderers. Giving in to his darkest urges, Jeff
slaughtered each and every one of the bullies with increasing ferocity. His mind
snapped, he became an entirely different person, with only one directive in mind: Kill.
However, as almost everyone knows by now, Jeff didn’t come out of the conflict unscathed.
Due to a mix of fire and chemical burns, he was left horrifically disfigured
and barely clinging on to life. When Liu heard the news in Juvie, he was
horrified. He regretted every decision he ever made - if he hadn’t taken the fall for Jeff,
he wouldn’t have been left in harm’s way. But there was one silver lining: Before his death,
Randy confessed to attacking Jeff and Liu first in front of several reliable witnesses. Their
testimony was at least enough to exonerate Liu, allowing him to return home to
his family and support Jeff. When the wrappings around
Jeff’s face were taken off, and his new disfigurements were revealed for the
first time, Liu was the first to comfort him, telling him it didn’t look too bad. And he
got almost slashed to ribbons for his trouble. When Liu woke up in the hospital, he practically
looked like Frankenstein’s monster, covered in stitches all over his face, arms, and torso where
Jeff had been cutting into him. Something felt different - not just physically, but mentally.
He felt almost as though there was a different person trapped in his brain with him, watching
him, trying to take control of his actions. There was a single nurse in the room, attending
to his injuries. He asked her what had happened, and she replied that he’d been in a coma for a
few weeks now. His brother had murdered his entire family, and since then, he’d been on a nocturnal
killing spree across the country. He’d been behind a number of murders and disappearances, and
has consistently managed to evade capture. “You’re very lucky to be alive, young man.
I’ve seen the police sketches,” the nurse said. “The little freak looks like a demon. I’d
hate to run into him in a dark alley…” Demon? Something about that word, and the
tone she took, really got under his skin. He may have been a murderous psychopath,
but Jeff was still Liu’s brother, and he didn’t want anyone badmouthing him
after what he’d been through. Liu suddenly felt this burning rage inside of him, and a
little voice inside his head spoke up again. “Kill her. Kill her now. She deserves to die.” That’s when Liu noticed a pair of surgical
scissors on a table next to his bed. With a sudden surge of almost supernatural strength,
he reached over and grabbed the scissors. As the nurse approached to restrain him, he
stabbed her through the eye with the scissors, piercing her brain and killing her instantly.
He had finally given in to his darkest urge. And it felt...good. Fantastic, even.
He hadn’t felt so alive in years. He climbed out of bed, feeling like a new
person. The voice inside his head told him he needed to run now. If they caught him,
there would be no more victims. There would be no more fun. And most importantly of all,
if he got caught, he’d never see Jeff again. The now-Homicidal Liu climbed out of the window of
his hospital room and slinked off into the dark, that little voice inside his head encouraging
him all the way. He needed to kill again, and he needed to find Jeff. Perhaps he’d kill
him. Perhaps they’d kill together. He wasn’t sure. But one thing was for certain,
he thought with a twisted smile: When he ran into Jeff again, they’d
have plenty more in common... Now go check out “Monster Stalks Your
Nightmares - Jeff The Killer EXPLAINED” and “Scary Urban Legends That Will Freak
You Out” for more terrifying nightmare fuel!
