He would flinch when someone tried to give him a high five (the program he was in advocated for positive reinforcement, including positive physical interactions), but he couldn't remember the reason he was afraid.

He would be filled with rage every time he saw a skinny blonde girl, but he didn't remember the drug addict mom that gave him that hatred. He didn't remember the dozens of other blonde girls that he had killed, all as a result of his warped childhood, an unholy combination of innate mental illness and abuse.

He still had the violence. The rage. The trauma. He just couldn't remember the source. He would wake up from nightmares sweating and afraid, but couldn't picture the face that was haunting his dreams.

He would be escorted from place to place, but he didn't mind. It was all he'd ever known. The only thing he couldn't understand was why so many were afraid of him, why so many people called him names.

He saw a therapist for his anger. The therapist would nod and hem and haw, but when the thirty minutes were up he was still angry and the therapist was fifty dollars richer.

Sometimes he'd explode and punch walls or break his knuckles against the metal paper towel dispenser in the bathroom. But he never hurt anyone.

When he was seven he saw his mother stab a man in a parking lot. The man was her dealer and demanded a higher price. She got pissed. She took his entire stash and blew through it in four days. The man was never shown on the news. It taught the young boy that murder was simply a part of life. It also taught him never to get between Momma and her drugs.

When he was twelve his mother flew into a psychotic rage and pushed him down the steps. He broke his ankle and couldn't move for two days. He laid there at the bottom of the steps and learned to shut off the pain. He still walks with a limp, but he no longer remembers why.

He had only ever known violence. So why was it surprising that he grew up to become violent? And yet, even without his memories, the feelings were still there. The fear. The anger. Now that he knew more than just violence, it was too late: his habits had already been learned, his childhood had already been lived and then forgotten. To truly fix him, they'd have to start from conception. Seize him from the womb and set him loose in a world that taught him love and compassion instead of vitriol and violence.

Erasing the memories wouldn't erase the experiences. They still happened, and he still feels its aftereffects. Only now, he has no rationale for the way that he feels. And no one can give him any answers.

One day, this lack of a reason will cause him to snap. He will kill again.

Until then, he will keep flinching every time someone tries to give him a high five. And he will keep wondering why he is so afraid.

Peter Guthrie, sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences for the gruesome rapes and murders of 25 women (and men) across 15 states, was to be the guinea pig for the Psychopath Rehabilitation Project (PRP).

Dr. Lydia Rothby had dedicated 20 years to PRP and the development of the miracle cure: the only procedure of its kind to offer the possibility of successfully treating psychopathy such that patients would be able to re-enter society as nonthreatening, functional citizens.

For decades, research had indicated there was no cure for psychopathy. There was no pill or vaccine, no talk therapy or surgical procedure that could instill empathy, a caring mind and impulse control in a psychopath. Dr. Lydia Rothby and her team worked tirelessly to disprove the prevailing assumptions. Today, they would test their first human patient.

“Peter, do you understand the process?”

“You do know I’m not an idiot, correct, doctor?”

“Answer the doctor or you can just spend the rest of your first life sentence in solitary,” Warden Jesse Fields, a major opponent of the procedure, spat.

Peter rolled his eyes from the chair in which he was strapped and said, “Yes, doctor. When you’re finished with your little experiment, I won’t remember anything that has ever happened to me, or ostensibly, anything I have ever done. Your miracle pill, amnesiadethylamide, will affect only the hippocampus, neocortex and amygdyla; it will not affect my frontal or temporal lobes, so speech should remain intact. The laser surgery will reinforce the connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the amygdala which will, if your hypothesis is correct, cause me to become less me and more everyone else.” He paused. “Pity, that.”

“I’d like to go on record saying I am categorically against this course of action,” said Warden Fields. “Peter Guthrie is an unrepentant murdering rapist with not a hint of remorse in his body. There is no pill or surgery that can unmake the man. The only good that can come of this is if he dies in the middle of the operation.”

“Not helpful, Warden Fields,” said Dr. Rothby. “You’ve had your say. You can leave now. My team and I can take it from here.”

Warden Fields, checked the restraints, shook his head and left the room.

Post-surgery, a sedated Peter Guthrie was removed from the prison and taken to a remote location where Dr. Rothby and her team could reintroduce him to his new life in a controlled environment that was more a home than a prison and therefore less likely to accidentally activate an unwanted (by the team) memory.

Within a year, Peter Guthrie had demonstrated to all, including the families of victims, that he was not who he had been. He spontaneously showed kindness to animals and people, alike, engaged with the other members of the household (the PRP team and volunteers), learned a trade (plumbing) and was deemed ready to live on his own once he got a job and found a place to live.

He was still monitored and had to check in with a parole officer, although he did not have a memory of what he had done, he was told that his crimes required that he be tracked and supervised for at least another five years.

In the sixth year, he disappeared.

In the ninth, a victim with his signature – PG carved onto every inch of skin of the victim – was found in a shallow grave in the woods a mile from the PRP facility where he’d been “rehabilitated.” It was Warden Fields.

In the tenth year, he sent a letter to Dr. Rothby at the undisclosed location she’d been moved following the discovery Warden Fields:

Dear Dr. Rothby:

I’m so glad I found you so that I could offer my most sincere thanks. I owe you a debt of gratitude for giving me a second chance. I will be far superior to my former self.

I will never forget you and what you did for me.

Yours,

Peter Guthrie

This is the first time I get to experience walking on the streets after spending 15 years on a mental institution which since I couldn't remember who the hell I am, I considered it as a home, whether safe or not, for the first five years. All the people I knew back there seemed like a family member to me, they fed me and they watched over me, despite the fact they were forced to force me, sometimes because of laws of science and sometimes common sense. I accepted them for who they were even though they never looked at me in the eye or befriended me or engage in any interaction with me in any way that is known as friendly. They feared me and they liked to show it.The reason was something that I found out later. I was brought there as a very dangerous criminal who as they implied had killed several human beings. They didn't seem to understand that I see the manager as my mom and the janitor as my dad. I had to hear those adjectives and I was obliged to accept it as something I'm identified with, like a name, or genetic disease or the location your mom gives birth to you. I had no absolute memory of committing a crime, but they sure did, and it gave them this right to treat me like a dangerous animal who needs to get drugged in order to not bite. I used to watch those so called dangerous animals on TV whenever I got the chance; I just couldn't find a lion or bear dangerous. They were as they were, just like people who lived back where I did except fot the fact that those animals just seemed alive and being passionate about being able to live under the sun. I didn't feel alive for a very long time when I was there and I most certainly wasn't passionate about almost anything other than food, which made me think that It's far from fair how they keep comparing me to them. They always kept asking me to do things that I didn't want to do, and they were violent about it. It was so hard for me for a while to accept that they could never have love for me inside their hearts, like how I felt about them. So I became obsessed with my food, what it is or why should I eat it. I stopped touching the meats on the plates and started giving it to random stray cats who jumped through the walls of the institution. I kept doing this over and over, every meal, everyday for 11 years till they were somehow convinced that I'm sane and less dangerous enough to freely hover around people, as my manager mom said. When I was leaving, no one said me goodbye. I wrote each of them a letter, put it on the manager's desk when she was in the bathroom and just left. They've told me go be free among other human beings that apparently I used to kill, and that's what I'm doing, just passing through them like a hungry stray cat who couldn't even meow for the food, I've fed some of them before so I was already familiar with the feeling when I was experiencing it. Yeah, it's my first day as a free woman or I dare say this is the first time I'm going to remember as breathing around other people that I've stolen some lives among them. I don't know how to sound like to them, I wasn't sure if they speak the same language we did back when I wasn't free or whether they approve of what I'm wearing. I feared they could read my adjectives through my eyes or the way I walk. I've always wanted to be in the wild, only to know I've always been in the wild. All I knew was that I should sniff my way back where I was, so that I could jump through the walls of the institution, back to my home.

There he sat. Babbling on about the jail bars. If only he knew what the rest of the world just so happenned to. That men of tall egos and short legs, who had nothing to do with him in life, were bickering like children over his fate. Not that his fate mattered anymore, now that his life had restarted. I stroked his head. He knew not who I was, nor who he was, merely that he was alive. I cry for him each night and day, praying they will allow him to die. It is more humane to let a man die, and remember his long life, rather than take away everything he knew and loved, and make him live life again.

I, no we the mothers and fathers who lost our way our light that was supposed to shine for us the parents, taken by YOU. Your memory although wiped does not take away the hurt and anger we shall always feel, you do not deserve to be set free nor given a free pass with death row. YOU deserve the pain our children felt for the rest of your longing days in a prison, OUR prison. See if we let you stay in an everyday prison what will you learn, no YOU will be in our cage. Although YOU may not remeber anything you will always be an evil being within that will sooner or later attack another child. The age shall not matter to YOU seeing as how OUR kids ranged from 4-15 years old. My daughter was only 5 and you took that joy with that grin on your face. So, yes, YOU will always be a monster and yes, YOU will always want to kill so no, YOU won't ever be let off.