You Ask Why I Am This Way

As far back as I can remember, I have always been this way. From the first time I had a baby chick in my hand and put it in the stove and turned to the highest setting and I just sat there, staring at the door, hearing the chick screech in agony and I clapped my hands, as if in joy, but I wasn’t smiling. I was thinking what I could do that’s bigger and better than this. Fifteen minutes later, I opened the oven door and the chick had disintegrated; feathers and all. I was five years old at the time.

There was the time I took Rex, our German Shepard and laced his food with poison. He started whining and yelping and making a general nuisance of himself. I took him out of the house and behind the barn and started stabbing him with a pitchfork to shut him up. The more he yelped, the harder and deeper I stabbed him with that pitchfork until he finally shut up. What a whiney crybaby. I can’t stand whiners. They make my skin crawl.

Now, with Rex, I had to bury the body and clean the mess up so’s that neither of my parents would know what I did. And when they asked when last I saw him, I told them I’d seen him taking off up the dirt road hours before they came home. Nothing more was asked, and we never did get another dog.

When I hit thirteen that was when I went on the run and have been until I was caught.

In the middle of the night, I had this thought, what if I could make that saying true, you know—the one about heads will roll?

I took my Daddy’s axe from the shed some time after midnight and went to my parent’s bedroom and I stood over them breathing hard. No, I wasn’t scared or nervous, I was grateful. Calm. They wouldn’t be a pain in my ass any longer telling me what I could or couldn’t do.

I raised that axe over my head and brought it down with everything I could, and the blade did a “thump” kind of sound as it went clean through my dad’s neck. His eyes opened at the same time from shock or an involuntary reaction but either way, I brought the axe up again just as My mother woke up and she started to scream but I brought that axe down and split her skull almost in half. I actually laughed, well kind of laughed.

Maybe more like a demented giggle. But I brought that axe down a second time and hit the same place and cleaved it, so her face split in two, where they were hanging off to the sides.

It was then I knew I had to get rid of people that would piss me off. And we all know a lot of people pissed me off over the years, don’t we? What did they say the final count was? Oh, yeah, I remember. 236. Hell, eleven while I sat in prison. Got to the point they kept me in isolation. Funny part about that, they only gave me a life sentence. My whole life has been a sentence. But I guess that last dude I did was too much for the state to handle any longer.

__________

So, Padre, you can take all that glory halleluiah crap and shove it. I really don’t give a damn what you try to preach to me. If they let me out right now, I’d go out there and do it again, because I’m not sorry for one thing I did. I get my kicks from—hurting and killing people. That was my calling as far as I’m concerned.

But you, you get to be the lucky one this time. I can’t touch you. I can’t reach out and tear out your lungs and crush your ribcage or stomp on your now bleeding heart for me. You preach and preach about redemption and how I should atone for my mistakes. If I hadn’t been born, there would have been no mistakes.

There, I’ve had my say. And you’ve had yours, so I guess that makes us even. They’ll be coming for me soon. And when it’s over, everybody can get a good night’s sleep because I’ll be dead as dead can be.

But I’ll tell you what—what would be funny, is I come back from the dead and keep going. They can’t kill me again because I’d already be dead.

Now that one, makes me smile.