The thirteen truths are always the hardest to come up with. I don't really know why. I mean let's take a look at this – you have at least two if you tell me your name. Three, if you admit your age. Four, if you're comfortable admitting your gender. Five and six with height and weight. Seven, eight, and nine with hair color, eye color, and skin color. Ten with any body art, piercings, or lack thereof. And that's just off the top of my head. I've already given you a head start with this; all you have to do is take the idea and run with it.

But for some reason, no one stops to think about the simple things. They're really good at lying – they tell me their fantasies, their nonexistent fears, which secretary they wish they'd banged last night or how many drinks they couldn't actually handle or how much weight they can't really lift. But the truth? They always, always assume that I'm asking for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

And I'm not. And you'd think that they'd get it, since they only have five minutes to come up with sixty-seven lies and thirteen truths before I pull the trigger and put them out of their misery. I'm not asking for a theological discussion or an absolute conclusion to a baffling moral dispute. All I want is, at the very end, to see the real person behind the everyday front.

Because, see, sixty-seven lies is right at the limit of the human imagination. And I know you're all crowded around this serial killer's newest letter, tapping your badges and your guns and wondering how the hell I've gotten away with it all this time (ten years is pretty impressive, isn't it?), and at the same time thinking "I could do better than that. I lie to my wife every night when I get home. I tell the truth to the priest when I go to confession. I could come up with a hundred lies and a hundred truths, easily."

But you can't. Your brain is barely capable of sixty-six lies in rapid succession, on the spot, one after the other. If you're really good at mind games, you can push yourself to a sixty-seventh. And then you're spent! The next little byte of information that pops into your head is going to be the truth, and you won't be able to push it away. That's what I want to hear. I want to hear the first thing that comes to mind after you absolutely cannot lie anymore, and I want to hear twelve more things like it, because thirteen truths on top of sixty-seven lies makes for an even hundred, and anything after that is just superfluous. I'm usually pretty short on time, you know, and five minutes is just short enough to be terrifying, and simultaneously just long enough for the average person to either win the challenge and walk away or realize the limitations of their own mind and beg pitifully for their meaningless life.

Now you're wondering if I left out a sentence, aren't you? You want to know if I'm one of those killers who likes to hear people beg. But I'm not. I'm only experimenting, you see. All I'm doing is looking to see how many human beings on this earth actually think. Because really, not many of them do. They walk around brainlessly for the majority of their lives, sometimes believing that they've reached an epiphany, only to forget it thirty seconds later. They are zombified consumers, actively decaying from the moment they are born.

Oh, you think. Now you see my motivation. I'm one of those killers that lives under the assumption that they're above everyone else. I'm a pompous ass who is eventually going to slip up and make a mistake, and all you have to do is wait.

Tell that to the entire decade that I've evaded you, my darlings. I do not make mistakes, and I am no different than the people I challenge, except in the way I use the capacity of my brain. I used to be one of them, a faceless mass of pointless bodily functions, wandering aimlessly through the day. But I woke up. And those who have walked away from my challenge have done likewise – they have "woken up".

But now you have another question – how come no one has ever come forward with information about me, if there have been survivors?

Because they know no more about me than you do. And that is what this letter will change. It will 'even the playing field', so to speak. It will give you the chance you've been looking for – now you are in on my game.

4263 W Oak St.

You know the one.

.

A/N: Written for a prompt on deviantART, "67 lies and 13 truths". This literally took like thirty minutes to finish. And I PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE I'm working on Hasting Place! It's just kicking my ass at the moment. Seriously. Kicking. My. Ass. I could go into the psychology behind it, but that's probably only interesting to me, so I'll just shut up now.

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate feedback of any kind. :)

-Gears