One victim, a bodybuilder named Ashley, tried to fight. He tore his restraints. But his mouth was fused to the stomach of a woman in front of him. When he pulled back, he ripped her flesh. He collapsed in a spray of bile, and Martin calmly re-stapled him, humming a nursery rhyme.

Martin looks into the lens. He smiles—a shy, awkward smile.

Then she screamed. "You disgusting little freak!"

Martin turned his camcorder on her. "You go in the front, Mum."

The filming was erratic. He used a heavy VHS-C camcorder, his thumb constantly over the lens. He would whisper-mumble to the camera: "For Mr. Six. He will see. I am the true fan."

The climax came when Martin’s mother, suspicious of the smell, waddled down into the sub-level. She held a rolling pin. She saw the twelve-person centipede writhing on the floor, a chain of moaning, weeping flesh. For a moment, even she was silent.

Martin lived in his mother’s basement in East London. The walls were stained with damp, and the only light came from a flickering CRT television. He was a small, sweaty man with thick glasses and a breathing problem. His job was collecting tickets at a concrete parking garage, a world of grey echoes and exhaust fumes.

The tape cuts to static.

The Sequencer

The second was his neighbor, a noisy gossip who always complained about the smell from his basement. The third was a security guard who caught Martin sleeping on the job. Martin didn't choose randomly; he chose people who had humiliated him. Each kidnapping was a petty revenge, a stitch in his masterpiece.

The final scene is not the police arriving. It’s not a rescue. It’s Martin sitting alone in the dark, the camcorder’s red light blinking. He has sent the tape to an old P.O. Box address for Tom Six. The centipede behind him has stopped moving. Only the first one, his mother, is still breathing, making a wet, gurgling noise.