A couple of short stories

— 1 —

Blood ran down the handle of the knife and onto his hand. The warm, wet feeling pulled him out of a funk. He looked down at the horror he had wrought. Girl’s body at his feet. Pool of blood. His mother’s old paring knife. The textbook she had brought with her, pages already starting to warp from the liquid. A lot of blood.

He couldn’t explain why he had done it. Disconnected thoughts shot through his mind as he cleaned up. One thing was sure: he felt no remorse for what he had done. He felt the same as if he had just swatted a fly or stepped on a cockroach. He first used a couple of towels to collect the blood and wipe himself off. Then he removed his bloody shirt and put on a clean one. A quick trip to the bathroom followed. He washed his hands and face and cleaned the knife. Back in his room, he lined his huge plastic storage bin with sheets, then stuffed the girl and the towels in. He secured the lid. Mopping the floor took only a few more minutes, and then his room looked completely normal. He would have to do a more thorough cleaning after he disposed of the body, but this was sufficient for now.

I’m a killer.

Although he felt no different, and his room now looked the same as it had before, something fundamental had changed. He finally knew what he was capable of.

***

He sat before another woman holding a clipboard in her hand. The scene, however, was otherwise much different from the one fourteen years before. He was under guard and in restraints. She was a reporter, not a student.

“And at last that brings me to the most obvious question: why did you do it?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no real reason. You could say that I did it because I could. You know, today is the fourteenth anniversary of my first murder? I still remember that day. She came to me to ask for help on her homework. I was in the middle of cooking dinner. She was standing there with her clipboard, just like that one you have there, and asking me how to do some problem. I was holding the knife. I suddenly thought, ‘it would be really easy to kill her. I could probably get away with it.’ That’s all. No sick story of abuse by my parents. I didn’t torture small animals when I was a kid. One day I just killed someone on a whim, like another man might pick his nose. You know you shouldn’t do it, but if no one is looking, you can get away with it. It becomes a habit.”

Forty minutes later, the guard and the interviewer were dead. They were the twentieth and twenty-first people he had killed since had been imprisoned.

— 2 —

Two men sat together on the ledge. Their feet dangled over the side. They had not met before, but they felt a strong sense of camaraderie. This was because they knew they were there for the same purpose. Without even speaking to each other, they somehow came to an agreement that they would spend a few hours together before departing.

Finally, one of them spoke.

“What brings you here, my friend?”

The obvious question. What else would one ask in these circumstances? For these two men, their respective answers to this question were the only things that mattered.

“Well, it’s like this. I’ve always been a driven man. I moved from one goal to the next, fulfilling one purpose and the next. When I was in school, all that mattered was that I got good grades. School was everything, it was my life. I excelled at it. When I graduated, I went to work, and I took this same mentality there. I spent all of my time working, and I was very successful. Then, one day, I met a lady. She was a real lady! In short order, she became everything for me. I married her. We had a family. My family was my world, my reason for living, just as material success had been before that.

“Then there was the car accident. There was no one to blame. Not that this mattered to me. All that mattered to me was that my family was gone. It seemed that my life was over. I talked to my friends. I talked to therapists. I tried to cope. But none of their comforting, none of their suggestions helped. My only recourse was to come here to seek the solution. And here I sit! What of you, good man?”

Not an unusual story to be told in a place like this. The first man reflected for a moment on the second man’s story. After a long silence, he finally replied,

“I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t think I could explain. I know it’s quite rude of me. I’m afraid there’s simply no way for me to put my feelings into words. Suffice it to say that I came here looking for the same answer that you did, although my circumstances are quite different.”

The second man was not upset. In a place like this, why get angry over such small things? In turn, he reflected on the first man’s mysterious statement. At length, he spoke again.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, I am ready.”

The two men shook hands. There was nothing more for them to say or do. It was not long after this that they had their answer.