Haunting II:
For the true crime book I am writing, I am putting the murderer’s voice in first person. I would love your thoughts. The language in this is VERY strong, and there is a def Pyramus and Thisbe vibe, but I like how it has come about. Please , if you like it, read the first part which I have also posted it you have time. I am hoping to finish the whole thing within the year
Chapter 3 X
So, I guess I am X then. That’s kind of a mundane name for the star of this work. I mean, if I hadn’t killed the little bitch nobody would be reading this, so you tell me who the most important person is.
Also, I am not going to pull any punches, I warn you right now. It would be just like you candy ass people to say you get triggered by reading about things I have done and the joy with which I did them. Some of you may suffer one of your modern made up mental issues , and I hope you do. Serves you right for reading about a rape and murder to begin with you dumb fuck.
I am dead. I suppose that I should tell you that straight up for several reasons. Number one, when you read me , you are obviously listening to Marc’s interpretation of who I was based on a plethora of research. But , it isn’t actually me.
Another reason I mention it is that some of you may rest easier knowing that I am dead and knowing that nobody really knows where the hell I am . I may have long ago rotted beneath some shitty unmarked headstone in a decrepit, forgotten old cemetery that is now surrounded by suburban palaces I could have only dreamed of when I was alive back in the early 1900s.
Or, you might have inadvertently picked some of me up with your swiffer as you dusted off your bookshelves, blissfully unaware that the remnants of a rapist and a murderer were mixed in with the cat dander and the spring pollen.
In any event, I am gone, but I am an archetype as much as I am a corpse. When I get around to telling you what happened, some of you will revile me and shudder to think that I seem awfully pleased with what I did (I am). You will be aghast that anyone so cold as I am ever existed, and delude yourself into thinking that the essence of what made me me died when I did. But that’s the problem with you straight arrow idiots- you placate yourselves by thinking I was unique despite pervasive evidence that there are others like me all around you. I am gonna tell you everything, and some of you will be nauseated, sickened, saddened ,and shocked. You will feel that a great evil died when I did, and ironically that’s the exact attitude that allows people like me to flourish.
I don’t give a fuck about you, and I don’t give a fuck about the people I laid waste to. And, I am not alone. People like me could be standing right next to you, thinking about snapping your stupid neck for no other reason than we don’t like your face, or that we think it would be funny to watch your kids react after we jabbed a knife through your carotid as your car idled at the McDonald’s drive through.
We smile and say hello as we think about raping the daughter standing right next to you. Such thoughts have no impact on us other than to maybe make us sorry that we cannot do it at the moment. After all, we are interested in survival, and we find the confines of a prison cell to be very detrimental to our version of the good life. We need to be free because unlike you , we ARE free. If we want something, we have the balls to go and get it rather than to concern ourselves with morality, religion, or decency. What we want IS decent to us, and, in case you missed if the first time, we don’t give a fuck about what you or what your shitty society have to say about it. Yet, there are more of you than there are of us, so we play the part of the harmless nurse, the caring doctor, the involved teacher, the devoted attorney, what have you in order to bide our time and have our fun. And you and those like you sit there and fool yourself into thinking you are safe from us.
Finally, it is important for you to know that I am dead because some of you will read this and wish to God that you could have vengeance on me because I am not sad about hurting, raping, and killing the 14 year old girl. Oh, if I was ever apprehended for it ( not saying whether I was or wasn’t), I could LOOK like I was sad about it. I could tell sob stories about my past and put on a hell of a show, but the only thing I would actually be sad about in reality is that I can’t live on forever in those moments when another human being was my plaything and I was their God, and the only thing that pleased their God was their pain, their torture, and the fact that their complete submission to me in the moments before I swept them off the planet were the worst of their lives.
Even now, some of you are playing mental movies where you stumbled upon me in the middle of my fun, pulled me off of Eva, and made me pay. You envision yourself as some kind of knight in shining armor who rides in and rights a tremendous wrong. Well let me disabuse you of that stupid fucking notion right now. When I did the things I did, I KNEW it was all or nothing, and I didn’t care. I was gonna have mine or die trying, and I was serious. Anyone or anything that got in my way was going to have to die or I was going to have to die. I was fine with that, hell it even added to the excitement. But most people AREN’T like that. They like to THINK of themselves in one way, but when real danger or real confrontation rears its ugly head, they discover that they are a coward. Why get involved? Why not just walk on by, pretend you didn’t see it , then go through the mental gymnastics of making yourself not seem like the pussy that you are — to yourself? Because, if you did get involved with someone like me, you are in a fight to the death, and I will do whatever I have to to win. To you, the thought of killing another person is the ultimate moral abomination. To me, it is as inconsequential as tying my shoes or buttoning my shirt. I want what I want , and that’s pretty much the end of the story. What happens to others as a result of that isn’t my problem, and I sleep just fine.
I remember that waste of fucking space that I killed first, way before I did what I did that is going to constitute the story of this book.
I was a school boy, and so was he. I was around fourteen and I don’t remember what grade I was in because it was stupid to go to school and it had nothing to offer me. I flunked over and over, and really the only reason I even bothered was so I could annoy that dumb cunt of a teacher who was too dense to know that I didn’t give a fuck and saw it as her obligation to try to save me. Of course, I didn’t want her to know I was intentionally trying to annoy her, but she was so goddamned stupid I could virtually do anything and her “good heartedness” made her forgive me. It was cold as fuck or hot as fuck most of the time, as it wasn’t yet 1900 and the cramped little school house was a prisoner to whatever the weather served up. On top of that, there were about 20 of us sitting there, so BO and body heat added to the conditions either way. In short, the environment sucked and the lessons were pointless. But, I learned all right. I learned that I could make others miserable pretty easily, because either they had some weird belief that my behavior was outside of my control or they didn’t want trouble. The teacher, Ms. Stewart, was in the former camp and a girl named Angela was in the second.
Ms. Stewart was exactly the kind of good-hearted soul that it is such a pleasure to twist. She had this belief, I slowly discovered, that my shittiness was due to some fault of her own. Therefore, I could insult her to her face and she would go home and wonder what she had done to bring my wrath upon her. Either that, or she would dismiss it away as some sort of genetic or parental inadequacy. She was completely dedicated to her job and would get wildly enthusiastic, inevitably soliciting comments from the class. It was an invitation to attack. “Ms Stewart,” I would ask, allowing the muscles in my face to craft it into the picture of innocence “Why don’t any men like you enough to marry you?”. Ms. Stewart would stammer and despite all of her professionalism and goodness, there was always something in her body language that let me know I had hit her hard and that she would cry as she sat in her shitty little house later and contemplated her dying ovaries and her graying hair. Or , I would say something like “Ms. Stewart, have you noticed that the floorboards creak a lot more now when you walk? Either something is wrong with the floorboards or maybe…” and I would trail off. I loved the weight innuendos. I found really insightful ways to work those in because I know it hurt her really badly. We ate lunch at our desks, and I slowly began noticing that her lunch portions dwindled down to next to nothing. Still, as she prepared to eat, she couldn’t seem to help looking at me. I would raise an eyebrow or almost imperceptibly shake my head. Weight fell off of her. I continued my badgering. Her health declined and her spirit diminished, and I loved it. Once or twice, my savagely camouflaged comments broke her down in class. On those occasions, I apologized profusely and she forgave me. She forgave me! Idiot
Angela was another idiot. But, she was a delightfully beautiful idiot. She was happy, energetic, smart, creative, caring, and genuine. Naturally, I hated her fucking guts. Back then, ninety nine percent of the girls dressed in such hideously plain clothing that not even your imagination could penetrate them, but Angela could have worn a potato sack and it wouldn’t have hid the early breasts, shapely hips, and amazing ass that she had long before the rest of the girls had even reached the starting line. Every chance I got, I grabbed her tits or her ass. If Ms. Stewart asked me to pass out books, I would find some way to brush my hand against her chest. As we were lining up to walk outside, I would get behind her on purpose and palm her butt with two hands. I liked it , sure. What was NOT to like. But what I liked even more was how much she hated it and that she was too nice to tell on me or even to tell me to stop. Unbelievable. Here I was, completely in the wrong, and this idiot was just going to let me keep doing it. Once, after I had gotten bored of screwing with Ms. Stewart, I concocted some dumb reason to get up. As I neared Angela’s desk, I fake tripped and landed face first between her tits as she just sat there stunned. I didn’t move my head off of her in any fucking hurry either, let me tell you. Aghast, she managed a “Hey !” to which I whispered “Thanks for breaking my fall with those big old things”. She bowed her head and started to cry and, without even asking (which was probably the most rebellious thing she had ever done), she got up and walked out of the schoolhouse toward the outbuilding. As she did so I exclaimed, loud enough for her to hear “ I think she has her period”. The class was enveloped in a shocked silence, but I wasn’t done. I turned to look at Ms Stewart and said, “Ms. Stewart, do you still get your period?” . Ms. Stewart Who was probably 28, opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish that has just been ripped out of the bowl. She staggered backwards as if I had physically hit her and whipped around to the chalkboard to hide her filling eyes. “Oh, I am sorry ma’am,” I said mimicking the way the genuinely sorry sound. Without facing the class she said “It’s okay, you just…” and trailed off.
“ ‘What do you know” I thought to myself “two for one’ “.
It almost seemed for a second there in that classroom that Ms. Stewart’s “ ‘ You just’ “ , was going to be followed by some sort of pussy assed condemnation, but she was nothing if not predictable. She choked back her anger, or what passed for anger with her, and probably went home and mentally bludgeoned herself for putting the blame where it actually belonged. What a sap.
Angela, however, proved a bit more of a surprise. Behind those gorgeous blue eyes, that tumbling sandy blonde hair , and those big chest mounted cantaloupes was a merely half dead brain whereas I thought her cranium was as empty as drunk’s pockets on payday.
One day, as I was walking along one of the shitty paths that lead to the ramshackle dump that I called home, I heard some rustling in the bushes ahead of me. I was shocked to see that it was little Miss Priss Angela, and she stood square in my path, hands on hips.
“Well hello there baby,” I exclaimed “ By my figurin’ Auntie Red is visiting that crotch of yours again, but I have something you can suck on!”
I was pleased that I came up with this so fast and I grabbed my dick to make sure she got the reference.
She didn’t say anything and her face didn’t even move. It was a damn good insult and she had the nerve to just take it. I was loading up to have another jab at her and figured I may as well indulge my hands a bit when I heard more noise from the woods directly adjacent to her. Out strode this pimple faced fuck of a kid with a putrid dog on rope leash; they stood right next to her looking at me.
I read him in an instant. He was there to protect her, but he didn’t really have a heart for it. He had spectacles so thick it seemed like he could see into the future and one of those retard haircuts that occur when mom puts a bowl over your head and attacks your follicles like they were crabgrass choking out a tomato plant. He wore overalls that sagged in the middle because in order to get over his shoulders they had to be elongated to slide over the paunch of his belly which would be epic in a few short years. He exuded pussiness, and that aura was only enhanced by the mutt that stood to his left. It was an ugly, stupid dog that must have found a kindred spirit in his ugly, stupid owner and thus loved him. It was not a dog to fear, in fact it looked like it was more scared than his owner, Harvey, was. I hated it on sight.
“ You need to stop being mean to my sister,” exclaimed the fat kid, trying for all the world to make it seem like he believed he could do a fucking thing about it if I didn’t.
“ And what if don’t fat boy?” I retorted
Now, what he should have done the second I insulted him was find a stick and real quick like smack me over the skull with it. But, what did he do? He fucking answered me.
“Then Old Dusty and I are gonna teach you a lesson you won’t forget” said Tubs, jerking the dog’s rope. Ohhh the irony of what he just said !
“First of all, I don’t see how a gremlin like you is related to that hot little broad who is gonna suck me off soon,” I countered. I was really on fire off the top of my head. “But, even if you are related, I would grind that ugly dog’s head into powder and then make you lick it up because I already fucked your nose up so badly you can’t snort it” .
“ I promise you that you will be very sorry if you don’t leave my sister alone” he said, voice quavering.
“ And I promise you that I am gonna break your nose”, and I started to close the distance between me and him.
There were probably thirty or so yards between us and I was so pissed I didn’t even consider why they weren’t running. Not my problem, and I guessed after I got done kicking the shit out of the fat kid and dropping a rock on that stupid dog, I would get to feel up my girl and maybe even get a little extra this time.
When I was fifteen yards away I saw Angela’s face, and she was smiling. SMILING! Maybe I would start with her and whip chubby and shit dog after he got to watch me explore his sister.
I smiled back at Angela, and put my hands up like they were docking stations and her tits were a couple of boats coming in. Tit time!
“YOU TOUCH HER, AND I SWEAR YOU ARE DEAD”.
The voice came from behind me. FUCK. They had duped my stupid ass. There was pain coming, and soon, and bad.
Slowly, I turned around. Before I could register what I saw, my brain got a blissful reprieve when Angela screamed “ GOD JESSE! YOU ALMOST LET HIM GET ME!”.
“ I know what I am doin’ Ang” said…..Jesse.
Jesse.
I was going to take an ass whipping alright, and it was gonna be from her brother… just not from the fat one. Jesse stood about 6 foot, but every damned inch of him screamed power. His shins and calves seemed ready to burst from his work boots, and the normally baggy overall legs which make most of the world look like clowns when they wear them could barely contain his thighs. His barrel chest made the overalls strain and his arms were just massive. A shock of wild red hair stood above his freckled face and fire blue eyes, creating the idea that his scalp was forcibly pushing the hair out. But the most terrifying part of him, and I had no delusions that I could compete with him at all, were the farm work gnarled hands. They were lined with thick blue veins which traveled over massive bones that had been broken and left to set on their own numerous times. The fingers seemed as thick as big carrots, and I just knew that very soon he would be bouncing those closed fingers off my face.
Jesse, now in control, walked up to me. That asshole dog, now sensing that they were safe , fired out in front of the shitty kid yapping at me like no tomorrow. I hadn’t noticed before, but it was all white- snow white, except for a completely black right front paw. How I would love to see how its bright red blood would look on the white fur as I slowly drained the life of that wretched dog.
Angela, Tubbo, and that stupid dog were now behind me, and I was tensing when Jesse said “ You been giving our little sister a really hard time. She cries a lot, I don’t know that she can cry harder! “
I was silent. I am crazy, but not stupid.
“Well, I tell ya how it’s gonna be,” said Jesse, and for just a second there was a recognition between us. Jesse had some of me in him. Jesse , like me, knew how cruelty, so odious to some, is so intoxicating to us. We aren’t going anywhere when we die. We aren’t here for long. It’s stupid to waste the time we have not doing what we want. And, if what we want involves something happening to you that you don’t want, that’s just too fucking bad. We always figure it is us or you, and that’s why you are our bitches. You aren’t ready for the fight that is always there. You’re losers.
Jesse didn’t disappoint.
“C’mere Harvey,” Jesse demanded.
“The fat kid rustled and then slowly walked around from behind me, now pulling Old Dusty who had fallen back since there was now an outside chance that he might have to be brave.
“What we have here is a purnity” said Jesse the dumbfuck, hissing the words just inches from my face, his face contorted with a predatory scowl, but softening as he looked at his sister to see if he got the word right.
“No silly, OP -PER-TUNE- IT-TEE,” giggled Angela, relishing this more than I would have ever imagined. I misjudged her.
“Right. PURNITY. This here is a good PURNITY,” said Jesse “Cuz you see, Harvey there needs to step it up. He needs to be more of a man — help protect his little sister.”
I was thinking “Can we just get to the part where I get my ass kicked and skip the preamble? I really don’t give a fuck about Harvey being a vagina.”
“So, he is gonna fight you” said Jesse
Harvey, who had been trying to look hard, dropped his gaze as I whipped my head around.
“Come on Harvey” he said , and Harvey, sheep that he was, did exactly like his brother instructed , pulling along his less than worthless candy assed marshmallow dog. God, I hated it. It was the fake aggression that got me. If you are a wimp, own it.
I stared , hard, at Harvey, and he shifted nervously, feeling the impact of a punch never thrown on a person’s whose balls never dropped. The pain was inside, it is a pain that destroys yet leaves no visible mark. It is the pain of cowardice, and it bruises the soul if not the skin.
What I hadn’t fully recognized until that instant was that Jesse was even more like me than I had realized. This was HIS “two for one”. First: He loved to torment Harvey. It was ecstasy for him. Now, he could manipulate Harvey and crush him. Jesse alway had to remind Harvey who was alpha, even though Harvey didn’t hesitate to succumb at any moment requiring fortitude ( just like his albino dog). Harvey’s submission wasn’t the point though, rubbing his face in the FACT that he submitted was Jesse’s anguish aphrodisiac. Second: Jesse loved pain. He loved causing mental pain, as with Harvey, and he loved causing physical pain too. So while he was mentally tormenting Harvey, he was also mentally tormenting me by making me wait on my beating.
The only logical move was to strike first and just get it over with.
“Well,” I said to Jesse, beginning to pace back and forth, shrugging my shoulders in feigned fear.Here , once again, I need to explain the difference between you and us. You feel fear and it freezes you. We feel fear and it energizes us. I accepted that I was going to get hurt very badly. Fair enough. My fear was that someone else needed to hurt because of that, and that I wouldn’t be able to find the surrogate.
“S’ppose I was to get the better of Harvey? What’s to say you won’t jump in?”
“Nothing,” said Jesse.
As I was talking, I kept getting just a little bit closer to them, meandering across the eight foot wide pathway and then back again. My hands were behind my back because if I wanted someone to hurt, I had to appear as though that was my last thought. I had to look submissive to be aggressive
I looked at Angela, and I saw her glee. It wasn’t our kind of glee though. She was just pissed, and the person who caused it needed to suffer some so it didn’t happen again. For us, the fact that it ever happened in the first place made its resolution a matter of life or death.
“S’ppose I just run out of here?”
“If you run” said Jesse “ I will catch you, and then….I will go first”.
“Wait,” I thought you said I was fighting Harvey” I said. Closer….closer.
“ I said that you would fight Harvey but” — he rolled his eyes indicating Harvey’s inability to impart it to me “ you will learn a lesson”.
“ I guess…” I paused. Harvey, emboldened by his brother’s presence , was standing up straight on Jesse’s left, his useless canine behind him like an anchor “School’s in!”
And with that last consonant expelled like a hate laser, I bashed my forehead into the bridge of Harvey’s nose, and it felt like head butting a fuckin’ twinkie.
“ I told you I was gonna break your nose today !!!!” I roared in triumph.
Angela shrieked “Jesse, JESSE!!!”
Harvey, who was eating my fists that rained down on his mangled face, had his inadequacy reinforced again. Two for one
And didn’t there seem to be an extra couple seconds before Jesse’s titanium arms locked around my waist and hoisted me skyward before driving me back into the earth? A few extra punches landed before Jesse could firmly become Angela AND Harvey’s savior?
I landed on the back of my head. Had there been a rock there- I would have been dead before I died. Had I landed a millimeter either way, I was a quadripeligic in a time that you wished you were dead if you were one.
I landed hard but safely on one of the tiny pieces of my head that were relatively ok to land on.
And that was bad but then the punches started.
Jesse’s huge hands pistoned into me everywhere. The wind was knocked out of me . I managed to roll to my stomach and pull my knees up, arms over head, but he just pounded my back and kidneys. When I reached back to protect my kidneys he got me with a solid right to the right side of my face. I felt two teeth fly out and then the world went black.
When I came around, I could hear Harvey crying and screaming. Angela was comforting him the best she could, but I had really done a number on that nose of his. Awesome.
But, I had my own problems. I was lying face down on the ground, and I really can’t explain the pain in my jaw . I felt like someone was trying to pry my jaw bone off of my face. I could already see the massive bulge on my face from where Jesse’s hand had landed on my right cheek.
There was a hum in my ears, and a haze in my mind, but even so I knew with certainty that this wasn’t over yet.
From above me, Jesse’s hand reached down and used my hair and scalp to pull my head up so that I was now looking at Angela, Harvey, and that dog (now barking its fool head off) .
“Oooooh Jesse,” said Angela “He doesn’t look so good!”
“Well he is gonna look worse in a second,” cried Jesse, who reached back and withdrew a silver lock back knife from his pocket. I could see the initials J.R.B engraved in the handle when he held it in front of my face. The blade was only four inches long or so, but it looked sharp enough to slit paper. “This really could be it” I thought to myself.
“Jesse,” exclaimed Angela “ what are you doing? I think he has learned his lesson. You can’t kill people!”
But Jesse could kill people. I really believe most anyone could given the right provocation, but Jesse didn’t need any provocation.
“Now,” he said, bringing the knife slowly to my throat. “You cheap shotted my brother…” he twitched his head to indicate Harvey- as if he had another brother around somewhere “ and you have bothered my sister. If I see or hear of you saying anything to her again, you will die. Is that clear?”
“Yes” I said. Now was NOT the time to play around with words or to argue. With just a little more pressure, that knife would eat into the flesh of my neck.
“Good, because I am not kiddin’” he said. “ Once more, and you are dead, or I am not Jesse Robert Barnett.
“Come here Angela” he said, and Angela quickly got up from Harvey and was at his side.
“Spit on his face” he commanded her.
“Jesse! Really?”
“Yes Goddammit spit in his damned face”.
She did. And he moved the knife out from my throat and jabbed it quickly into my right shoulder, turning it after it entered my body.. Another chunk was taken out of me, and I screamed.
“ Good. Now Let’s go. Get up Harvey, I took care of it for you of course. God, you make me sick sometimes” and he reached down to help his brother up. The three of them plus the dog turned their backs to me, and headed down the path.
I just laid there. The pain was crazy. I rolled to my back and felt the blood oozing from the knife wound. I could see my swollen left cheek without even looking down, and my tongue found the empty sockets where my two upper molars had once been.
I did a quick mental inventory. Everything hurt, but I was reasonably sure nothing was broken. My kidneys ached keenly, and I wondered if there was anything permanently wrong with them. Time would tell.
I also couldn’t clear my head and there was this odd ringing sound in my ears.
I laid there, beat up pretty badly, watching the sky and trying to claw through the fog that had buried my thoughts. The pain was bad, but the embarrassment was worse. Although I couldn’t figure out how, I knew I needed revenge.
Gradually, I began aware of a different sound than the low ringing in my ears. I was laying on my back in the dirt that constituted the path, getting dive bombed by flies and mosquitoes, and the noise I heard was a sharp dragging sound like something being pulled through the grass.
“Great…snake” I thought and painfully propped myself up on my elbow.
Out of the grass crawled…a painted box turtle.
The turtle saw me and froze, staring at me with that oddly geriatric- human face and sucking in air through those weird little slit nostrils.
There was a staredown between us, and he won. I moved towards him, dropping my gaze from his eyes, and upon my motion the turtle sucked his head back into the shell.
He now looked like a half turtle.
I picked him up, marvelling at how completely this odd animal could neatly fit in his shell.
You are thinking, probably, that I was about to do something terrible to the turtle- well terrible in your eyes- but I didn’t. I put him down in the path and moved behind him into the grass. I wanted to see how long it would take him to pop back out.
I would say about two minutes went by before that crazy little head slid out from under the shell again, and those clawed feet also re-emerged, and he began lugging his orange and green shell towards the grass on the other side of the path.
What a marvel a turtle is. I mean, here it is, slow as hell and lugging around that big shell. It’s only defense against predators is that shell , and most predators could crack the shell open with their teeth if they chose to do so. But it is not worth the effort. The turtle thrives despite having no offense and kind of in spite of its defense. The turtle wins by waiting out the predator and by being just a little too hard on the teeth to risk biting through them So, when confronted, the turtle withdraws into its shell and waits. When it feels safe, it pokes its head out, looks around and then continues on its path unscathed.
Before I go further, I suppose that most of you are wondering where my parents were in all of this. They were around, but they were useless. We lived in this abandoned shithole of a house with holes in the roof and rotting floors with a whole bunch of other derelicts and losers. My mother was a whimpering old sow who sipped rye whiskey from the moment her eyes open until the moment she shut them at night, and her daily routine consisted of weeping and whining and trying to get anyone who was willing to listen to feel sorry for her. When I came home all busted up, it presented her with a real problem. The problem wasn’t that she was concerned about me in any way, but that she was concerned that my injuries might dissuade someone inclined to pity her to pity me. She always had to be the gold medalist in suffering, and anyone else’s pain was considered an intrusion on her territory. When she caught sight of me after Jessie pummeled me she wailed and lamented the fact that she was burdened by a son who couldn’t behave. “On top of all the other things I have to do,” She exclaimed while slugging down her rot got and blubbering while squeezing out huge crocodile tears “ now I guess I have to take you to the doctor because you are just always in trouble”. And with that, she let out a long, decibel level tiered wail of sorrow and collapsed face down like a baby tantruming, only looking up to see if anyone was going to come console her. I sure as hell wasn’t about to do anything of the sort.
My father was a philandering drunk who would imbibe anything he could get his hands on. He rarely spoke to me , frequently hit me, and I was just generally happier when he wasn’t around, which was quite a bit. He would stay late at taverns or with drinking buddies chasing women and dodging any kind of responsibility. I didn’t see him after the beating for probably a week, and when I did see him neither of us said a word to each other. It was just better that way. Back in the day, he probably would have just kicked the shit out of me out of boredom, but during one of his attacks I finally shoved him back and he went sprawling into one of the other losers living in that hellhole. I told him that he had touched me for the last time, and if he wanted to test it i would be happy to slit his useless throat for him. I would have too, and he must’ve know it because he just looked up at me from the floor with his bloodshot, jaundiced eyes and got up and walked away.
I know what you are thinking. Of course I turned out the way I was with parents like that. However, I really don’t think it would have mattered if I had had the Virgin Mary and Joseph as parents. I am just wired differently. I remember walking with some other kids once and a farmer was about to put down a horse that was lame or had just broken a leg or something. The other kids were horrified and ran by, desperate to avoid seeing the end of the animal. Not me. I stood and watched as he put the gun to the horse’s head and blew it away. I saw skull fragmenst go flying, and I saw the horse teeter for a few seconds, somehow remaining upright for a surprisingly long time before the front legs buckled and the body tilted sideways, smacking the ground with a thud. I watched the blood run from the wound and watched as the farmer, unmoved, hitched the animal up to a cart before whipping his brethren into whisking him away. I was almost sexually aroused by it. I think you just have to be wired a certain way for something like that, and while your parents might provide the genes they will be unable to override the personality they imbue no matter how nice and loving they are. Of course, my parents were assholes, so I guess I will never know for sure huh?
I was so captivated by the lessons of the turtle that I forgot about the pain for a bit, though my shoulder and mouth bled profusely. I had learned a lesson alright, but it wasn’t about paying for what I did to Angela. It was about how to pay them, all of them, back.
That was it for school for me. I know as you read this in modern times you think “you cannot do that” but then you could. People moved, died, and needed children to work on farms. There weren’t phones and certainly not computers or internet. The police were way too busy to be chasing down kids who were absent from school only to find out that their parents kept them home to help with the harvest or birth animals or something. Besides, a missing child had to be reported, and I doubt Ms Stewart missed me enough to turn me in. For my part, I couldn’t bear to look at Angela’s smirk as she reminded me that her brother had beat my ass proper.
Instead, I took what the turtle had taught me and quietly began observing the movements of the Barnett family.
They lived on a tidy property that looked right homey. I saw Jesse the most, only really glimpsing Harvey and Angela when they went to school. The dog, Old Dusty, had the run of the fields during the day , and Jesse was most nearly always working. The house stood on a hill, so that if Jesse was working on one side of the yard, i could pretty much walk freely on the other because he couldn’t see through the hill.
I generally stayed in the cover of the woods though. What I was planning didn’t require me to get into the house. Actually, I didn’t HAVE a plan as of yet, but as a few days went by, I started to get kind of familiar with the house. I would approach from the south ,generally around 7 am. At that time, Jesse was generally on the north side of the hill working with the cows or the pigs.
That idiot dog would run all over and bark at me through the fence, but the barking never bothered Jesse, who must have figured Old Dusty had scared up a deer or a rabbit or something. After a while, the dog stopped barking at me though because I was feeding him.
During the course of the day, I would either walk into town and pilfer a few small treats or swipe them from a window sill. I would leave the treats in the southern field, and I gradually moved closer until Old Dusty would come right to the fence and eat from my hand, responding to a low whistling noise I made, his snow white tail wagging as I fought the urge to just break his fucking neck. That wouldn’t do though: for one thing it lacked style, but I also didn’t want the corpse to alert anyone that there was anyone watching them.But, I would kill Old Dusty. It was a matter of time. For right now, I was just poking my head out of the shell, having a look around.
I got so accustomed to the movements of the family and my routine with the dog that I lapsed into comfort and one day, as I walked to the Barnett southern pasture, I damn near walked smack into Jesse. He was standing, resting his arms on the inside of the fence, and if his head hadn’t been cocked to the right, staring down the path, he would have seen me. But, he didn’t and I slowly retreated to a safer position behind a thatch of oaks.
There was something…different about him. He looked anxious…not scared…just jumpy and excited. All of a sudden, he unbuttoned his work shirt and took it off, folding it neatly over the fence rail. He milled around the area for a little while, then walked back to the house and down the hill to the north pasture.
This was odd behavior. Jesse liked routines. I could almost always bet on exactly where he would be. He seemed to organize his chores so he worked in a counterclockwise manner around the property. His presence on the south side this early was odd as was his jaunty mannerism. Also, it wasn’t hot. Jesse commonly took off his shirt, but not early in the morning when the sun was still low and dew soaked the fields.
There was something significant happening, and a half hour later, I found out what it was. A girl of about 18 came walking down the path, slowly making her way to where Jesse’s shirt hung on the fence. She stopped and looked at it, and a smile broke out on her very plain face. Her body was plain, her clothes were plain, and her mannerisms were plain. But, that shirt meant something to her. Once I found out what, it just may get me closer to my goal. The girl gently stroked the shirt, then continued on her way down the path.
A few hours went by. I milled around the woods keeping an eye on the property. I knew something was different, and around lunch time, I finally got to find out what it was. Jesse took off out of the front door and made a bee line to the east, running at such a fast clip that had I not had a tactical angle, he would have outrun me and I would have lost him.
I felt free to move through the brush behind him because he wasn’t thinking about anything other than that towards which he was running. There could have been a mariachi band playing in the woods and Jesse would have run right by it. The footing was a bit tricky as we were going through the woods, and I did move between the trees just in case, but for a good ten minutes we plowed through the woods- guys on a mission.
Jesse skipped a little creek and then finally I saw where he was going. In the gloom of the woods there was a clearing, and on the clearing sat an abandoned farmhouse.
If there is one thing I love, it is an old abandoned farm house.
They creep people out a bit, but I have always found them to be rife with opportunity: at the very least they provide shelter, but there is almost always old tools and even machinery lying around.
This one was a beauty, the natural gray of the wood was battling with a fading red paint job, but there were intact windows, animal stalls, pens, tools, and a huge loft about twenty five feet up. From the mouth of the hay loft , a long rope ran through a pulley: back in the day, it was used to hoist the heavy bales up into the loft, but now it just hung like a gnarled umbilical cord, anchoring the skeletal house to the ground. Jesse ran into the barn, disappeared, and a few moments later appeared in the loft. He grabbed the rope stepped back inside the house, then swung out over the grounds, “yahooing!” as he flew over the yard.
I stood in the woods watching and thinking. No fuckin’ way Jesse came out here to swing, though it did look fun.
All of a sudden, I heard someone coming up behind me.
SHIT!
I wasn’t sure if I would have enough time to hide myself before whoever was coming came up the hill arrived. From the sounds of the footsteps, I had about ten seconds.
In desperation, I threw myself on to the ground. Whoever it was might have seen or heard me, but all I could do was wait.
As it turns out, It was longer than ten seconds. I got lucky. When the visitor emerged, it was none other than old Plain Jane from the fence. I have never seen a more nondescript, generic human being in my life. Honestly, I would describe her, but just think of the most generic white chick you can think of and pow, ya got her.
Once Plain Jane cleared the little rise and saw the house, she picked up her pace a little and as a consequence she teetered sideways on the uneven ground. She almost put her plain shoe right on my head.
Slowly, I started to get it. Jesse and Plain Jane met up here for some reason, and my bet was the reason had something to do with playing hide the salami.
“Jesse!” she cried out, and Jesse poked his head around the corner of the loft where he was sitting with his feet dangling over the edge.
“Howdy Jane!” exclaimed Jesse, a smile taking over his face.
Holy shit! Her fucking name was REALLY Jane. For as much fear that I had that Jesse would whip my ass again, I couldn’t stop from letting out an audible laugh. It got swallowed up by the forest sounds though, and by the elation that the two love birds felt in just seeing each other.
I circled around so that I was behind the loft, completely hidden from their view by the interior of the barn now, and ran across the field so that I could get in a better position to hear them. I snuck through the partially destroyed door and walked towards the ladder to the loft with my back against the wall, so that the floor would obscure any possible sight of me from where I knew they were currently standing in the loft.
“…know this isn’t ideal. But since Harvey got his face busted he has been even more useless than normal. I have to pick up his share of the chores too…at least some of them.
“ I just miss you, “ said Plain Jane “It was so much better over the summer”.
“Well yah, Ang is a workhorse and Harvey can’t hide forever when he has a whole day ahead of him without school,” Jesse said “ But since my Paw bought the extra cattle things have been non-stop and Ang and Harvey are in school on top of Harvey having a busted face”.
I couldn’t help but shudder with pride knowing I had bestowed that injury upon Harvey and, therefore, made Jesse’s life harder.
“Besides,” Jesse continued “ We could be together a lot more often if your old man would just come ‘round and see I am not a bad guy.”
“Oh, he knows you are a good guy, he just doesn’t want me takin’ up with a farmer,” countered Plain Jane.
“Yeah but HE is a FUCKING FARMER,” said Jesse, “Besides, he should see how you takeup with me already!”
“Not a great…” Plain Jane broke off then, because Jesse had moved forward and kissed her Idea”.
“This is a great idea” said Jesse.
Cue the fucking sounds. They were pretty loud. Then they were finished.
“Maybe we should stop doing this here, what if somebody sees or hears us?” said Plain Jane.
Jesse moved to the edge of the loft and grabbed the rope. He chuckled “Ain’t nobody gonna see us, nobody pays this place any mind and as far as someone hearing us …” Jesse swung out over the yard on the rope and shouted “ Jane Anderson and I just made love!!!” as loudly as he could. The sounds ricocheted around in the trees and then died.
“See?” continued Jesse “ Nobody can hear ya gettin’ fucked”.
Plain Jane chuckled and I heard Jesse’s feet return to the floorboards of the loft.
“Wow , what a charmer you are. No wonder my daddy isn’t so sweet on ya “ she said “But I hope that I make up for it! So, can we meet up next Friday as well?”
“ I don’t know. If my shirt is on the fence, you will know that I can meet you here. No shirt- no me. Next Friday is gonna be tough to swing , I can tell ya that right now, but I obviously want to be here. If Friday doesn’t work out, there will be an opportunity on Monday and Tuesday because they are school holidays and Ang and Harv will be around to help.Ang knows about this …”
“OH MY GOD, SHE DOES?” exclaimed Plain Jane, and I could picture a blush adding at least some distinction to her bland face.
“Sure, but that’s good. She will cover for me. So, look for the shirt. If it isn’t there Friday, look for it on Monday and Tuesday on your way into town”.
They continued babbling, but I didn’t care anymore. I had my plan, and patience was gonna make it a thing of beauty.
The next Friday, I was watching as Jesse ran through the fields by his house. He must have been working gangbusters because off came his shirt, and I watched him sling it over the fence and run back up the hill to the other side. As soon as he was gone, I ran down and pulled the shirt off the fence. Plain Jane came by, looked at the fence, even looked under the fence boards as if the fucking shirt could burrow into the ground, then left with a look of ultimate dejection on the simpleton mug of hers.
When she disappeared down the path, I snuck back down and replaced the shirt. Then, I ran like hell for the house in the woods.
I stood pressed up against the back wall of the loft, holding the heavy shovel that I had located amongst the farm detritus that the owner must have purchased before he kicked the bucket.
When Jesse climbed the ladder and emerged into the loft, he didn’t hear a thing before I brought the flat end of the shovel crashing down on the back of his head.
I meant to hit him hard, but I didn’t want for him to die. Not yet. I guess I don’t know my own strength though, because he dropped to the dusty floorboards of the barn convulsing and making the most glorious loud snoring/ grunting noise. Blood dripped from the back of his head, and I could see blood in his ears.
While he was in this state, I turned the shovel sideways and brought the sharp edge of the blade down hard on his right leg. I heard the glorious sound of the bones snapping as I danced around and pounded his left leg, breaking the bones in the lower leg there too.
Jesse, still not fully conscious and still making the lovely sound of the soon to be dead, instinctively drew his legs up and encircled them with his arms. I couldn’t talk to him THIS way, so I sat back and waited.
I would say an hour went by when all of a sudden Jesse’s brain came back online. I am pretty sure he had a skull fracture already, but it was the pain in his legs that made him howl. And howl he did. He thrashed and writhed, and his legs flopped agonizingly loosely, only attached to the body by muscle and sinew now.
Then, he saw me.
“Hello fuckstick,” I said “looks like you shoulda used this on me (here I flashed his own knife at him, the one engraved with the initials JRB) when you had the chance”.
“Oh My God,” Jesse said. I love it when they realize they are finished.
“Well, yes, I suppose I am your God, because I am gonna decide when you die, and it is coming very soon” I replied.
“HELP, HELP!” screamed Jesse so loudly that the sound waves actually pushed me back a step. His face, contorted with agony , was also infused with rage, but it was too late for that now.
“ Go ahead and scream,” I taunted “ You are now just like that mutt girlfriend of yours- you’re gonna get fucked up here, and ain’t nobody gonna hear”.
“How did you know about — — Oh please man, PLEASE. I didn’t mean all that shit, you just hurt my sister…what did you expect?” and with that, he actually started crying and whimpering. I leaned down and spat in his face.
“ Hey man, look on the bright side. In a few minutes, whether Jane’s daddy likes you or not isn’t gonna make a lick of difference” I calmly rationalized.
More whining and whimpering and supplication from the tough guy.
“ And, you get to know how you are gonna die. Wanna know how?” I said, flicking open the blade of Jesse’s own knife.
“Oh NO! NO!” he squealed.
“Relax man, I ain’t gonna stab ya! “ I continued “ I strolled over to the rope that had functioned as a loft swing just last week when Jesse hadn’t had a care in the world. Using his knife, I sawed through it.
“See man, if you show up dead with a bunch of stab wounds, the cops will coming looking for whoever did it, and I am sure that faggot brother and bitch sister of yours might have a few ideas as to who did it…I can’t have that” I said.
Jesse’s eyes got even wider with terror and they followed me as I folded the knife back up, picked up the shovel , and walked back towards him.
“But..” WHACK his right arm snapped as I drove the shovel into it . Screams.
“If you fell off the loft swing…” WHACK , left arm broken as well now “it looks like an accident!”
Screams, glorious screams. I let the shovel fall all over his body, wrecking bones and shredding organs, but I didn’t hit his head. He had to be awake.
After ten , maybe fifteen smacks with the shovel, I grabbed him by his wasted legs and pulled him towards the ledge of the loft.
“No, please, please” he said softly, clinging to consciousness through the flood of agony.
It was too late for that though. Moving to his head, I placed my hands on his shoulders and shoved him over the edge. His body tipped forward during the 25 foot fall, and he landed on his face. His legs and back arched over his broken neck, then settled with a thud on to the ground.
I tossed down the rope and went down to check him out.
He was deader than hell, his eyes already drained of any semblance of a spark and his head a bloody mess. He lay at an impossible angle, and all of the busted bones made him look like some kind of macabre jigsaw puzzle.
I pooled the frayed rope around him…what a shame.
I wanted to stay and admire my handiwork, but I had things to do.
The fact that this murder happened on a Friday and one that was on the front end of a four day break from school was just magic.
I didn’t fear the police , but I decided to get the hell out. I gathered my meager belongings and hopped a train.
That night, as the train bumped along and I drifted towards sleep on the wooden floor of an empty cargo car, I triumphantly relived the events of the last few weeks.
Ms. Stuart was, undoubtedly, going to worry herself to death about Angela’s wellbeing after her big brother was found splayed all over the ground, the victim of a hellish accident. She would wonder what she could and couldn’t say, and would torture herself that whatever words she uttered would be the exact wrong thing to say.
Angela ,who had had the balls to step up to me, just didn’t have any idea what she was getting herself into by fucking with me. She should have just endured my torments until I got bored or distracted by some other victim. Of course, it would have been a while- the very looks that helped afford her so much happiness also attracted me and therefore, even more misery.
Harvey, who lived his life with a mangled nose as a remembrance of me, had the right idea. He was a sniveling, rotten coward, but he had been content with that knowledge. He would have drifted through life as his brother’s punching bag and as the victim of many others who would see him as a spineless urchin (and be right), but at least he knew who he was.Now, he had lost his brother , and I wasn’t done with his sister yet.
Jesse had once said that my tormenting his sister had caused her to cry harder than he had thought it possible for her to cry. And maybe that was so — then. But when she heard her big brother had died, she had dropped to the ground as though all her bones had been simultaneously vaporized and she shrieked and wailed. I wasn’t there to see it , of course, but I just know that the loss of such a glorious brother coupled with the knowledge that she would now have to go through life dragging her crap brother along broke her heart.
But , she would cry still harder. When she came to school on Wednesday, or whenever she came back, she would lift up the top of her desk to access her school supplies. There, she would find the stump of that fucking dog’s black paw wrapped up along with her brother’s bloody knife that I had used to execute it. Taped to those lovely items was my farewell note “ Just wanted to take this Pernity to say goodbye!”.
She would be destroyed, and Ms. Stuart, unable to view someone’s pain without getting sucked into it herself, would join her in the trip to rock bottom.
Two for one.
I suppose most of you have heard the parable of the frog and the scorpion, but just in case you were born in a barn here is how it goes: There’s this scorpion, see, and he wants to cross a river, but he can’t swim right? So he asks this frog to swim him across. Now, the frog isn’t too jazzed to do it because he is worried that the scorpion is gonna sting him. The scorpion though says “Now why the hell would I do that? If I sting you and you die, I die too.”. For whatever reason, this logic enticed the frog into doing it and, sure enough, when they get half way across the river the fucking scorpion stings him anyway. The frog says “What the fuck man? I ‘m dying and you are gonna drown” to which the scorpion replies “Hey, it’s just my nature. I can’t help it”. When most people hear that parable they empathize with the frog and think the scorpion is the asshole. I beg to differ. If the frog had any sense it would have told the scorpion to go fuck itself as soon as he asked. Barring that, the frog should have dumped the bastard off his back and into the drink as soon as they hit the water. But no, what does he do? He trusts a goddamn scorpion. His death is HIS own fault. When Jessie had a problem with me, he should have solved it , but it wasn’t his nature. He messed with the wrong character, simply believing that him beating the shit out of me would deter me. He and his bitch sister and that cunting sad sack brother whose nose will forever remind him of who brought the hammer down on his family just didn’t understand the nature of the person they decided to mess with.
Parables and shit aside, after this I had made a decision. I wasn’t gonna live like the scorpion because as much as I appreciate him, his approach was too riky and limited the time he had for fun. I knew I was wired differently from most people, sure, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have the right to my own form of happiness now did it? I needed a change of scenery though. Look, it was a golden time to be a degenerate. There was no fingerprint science, certainly no DNA- no helicopters, no way to communicate quickly across long distances, and plenty of places to hide. There were bloodhounds, sure, but they weren’t too big of a deal- you could find ways to get them off your trail if you had half a brain, which I did.
I thought about my turtle buddy- slow and steady. Normal, yet weird. I was going to go where the action was, where there were more people to pick from. I would hide in plain sight. I would be a regular Joe. It wouldn’t serve my purpose to be a stranger and thereby attract attention. I would infuse myself into the environment and simply bide my time. There would be plenty of opportunities.
Satisfied, I hunkered down in the green and orange shell of my cargo car, slowly moving along the tracks to Northern Virginia. There, I would rape and murder Eva Roy and there I would make my mark on history.