The process of getting a ticket and boarding a train as a five-year-old was a pain in the ass, requiring the use of my coercion, and even as I sat down and had my ticket punched by the conductor, I could feel the uncomfortable stare of curious eyes on me at all times.
Even so, because it was an evening train, and the trip would only take 2 hours and 6 minutes, I did my best to ignore the prying eyes, which were concerned about the fact that I was alone.
Regardless of all that bullshit, I had a task to complete, and for me, that was more than enough to focus on other things. Crossing my arms and closing my eyes, I entered my Imagination library and casually strolled over to the section about Serial Killers.
Upon reaching the section of my library housing 12 different rows with hundreds and hundreds of books about the topic, I ran my hand along the book spines, tapping them lightly until I found a decently sized tome with the name Doctor Death printed in skeletal font.
It had been quite a long time since I did any research on this man in particular, as he was one of the first serial killers I learned about. Still, over the years, I watched several newer documentaries on his killings to refresh my information.
However, the most recent update was only in 2023, about five years before Arkadia’s descent, so it had been nearly twenty years since I last thought about this particular killer.
Fortunately, I had a perfect memory and the aid of my Imagination Library to refresh my mind about the man who once was touted as the Angel of Death.
Taking the time to go to one of the tables, I cracked the tome open and began reading the first page with creased eyebrows.
"Born on 14 January 1946…..that’s right…it was the reason I first learned about him; we share a birthday…" reading the opening paragraph, a wave of memories rushed into my head.
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Born 14 January 1946, Harlow Sheffield was the second of three children, and from an early age, not much seemed off about him. He was good at sports, mid-tier in studies, and was fairly average as a child, but there was one big factor at play that would eventually change his personality entirely.
His mother was the kind of person to push her children to be the best they could, constantly harassing them about school or studies; at least, that’s what she believed when, in reality, all she was doing was loading her kids up with so much stress that it wouldn’t be surprising if they eventually snapped under the constant pressure she applied to their minds.
For the most part, Harlow had a normal childhood, was active in sports, and didn’t idle around too much, but most of those people who knew him could confirm that once he got on the Rugby field, he seemed to change.
From his usual docile and pleasant nature to a fierce and aggressive competitor, the change was so drastic that it should have raised red flags for everyone around him; however, given the period he grew up in, he was observed as just someone good at sports, kind of like a tonal shift which would occur in most athletes.
Personality shifts aside, young Harlow was surprisingly close with his mother, and unlike his siblings, he didn’t seem to be too affected by her constant rantings about good studies and becoming something in the future.
Suppose that was all there was to the story. In that case, I doubt Harlow would have ever turned into a killer. No, he probably would have ended up in some dead-end job, living out his life in a mundane manner, but as with every Serial Killer, there was a catalyst that changed him forever.
In the case of Harlow Sheffield, it was his mother’s Lung Cancer diagnosis and the constant pain she suffered due to her illness. In the later stages of her illness, she was administered constant doses of morphine through an at-home doctor, and it was these very incidents, to which Harlow would observe and witness each time, that the man’s mind began changing.
Eventually, when Harlow was 17, his mother finally succumbed to her illness, and that was the trigger that would inevitably send Harlow down the destructive path he took.
It was as if something clicked for the young man, and he would go on to study medicine and graduate medical school in 1970.
For the next several years, he would bounce around different facilities and even had a small incident where he was caught forging prescriptions for personal use and was fined 600 British Pounds before being sent off to a drug rehab center.
After that, he struggled to land a job until eventually settling down as a General Practice Physician in a small town of roughly 60,000 people named Hyde in Greater Manchester around 1977.
While it was basically unknown if he had started that early with his killings or not, and there is no solid evidence of such, the earliest records show his Serial Murders began around 1975 and continued onward, but it wouldn’t be until he separated from the clinic he worked at and started his own in 1993 that things would begin spiraling out of control.
Sophisticated and egotistical, Harlow would come up with multiple schemes, many of which involved tricking his victims into signing over everything they owned to him in their Wills before he killed them. From there, he would rake in the profits and go on killing.
Now, the biggest issue he would inevitably face was procuring his tool of murder, morphine, which, even in the Origin Timeline, was considered a controlled and heavily regulated medication.
Just because he was a doctor and could write prescriptions didn’t mean that he had unlimited access to the extremely powerful narcotic; no, he needed to come up with a means to acquire the said drug, and when he did, that was where the true unraveling began.