As I begin my own tale I am not quite sure how or where I am supposed to begin. Do I start at the very beginning, when I was a mere half squat gurgling incoherent messages of love and affection for a gruesome world that couldn't come close to comprehending me? Or do I merely begin at the first time I took the life of another human being. It seems an apt a place as any. Before I begin I would also like to preface that all of the names including my own, which I will disclose to you throughout my personal story, are entirely made up and merely the product of an overactive imagination.
The first time that I met that other more primal side of myself was on a warm June night in the fine city of Midway. The boards on the fence were dry from the summer heat and cackled with a sardonic laughter as I pried them from their resting places. The air smelled of the broken dreams of an entire city and of infidelity and lust. As I looked at the small hole in front of me I asked myself: What exactly are you doing? Your life is beautiful and full of people who love you and who care for you. Your job is perfect and you're due for a promotion.
Those voices were week and only succeeded in holding me back from my true potential. Too long had I sat in the darkness of my own mind suppressing the urges that leapt out on me from every subway car window. My own mind had become a prison for my emotions, and it was time for me to break out.
Before I delve into the events that transpired after I crawled through the hole in the fence, I must first inform you of a story that transpired sometime in my early childhood. I am unsure of the exact age, but as a safe middle ground I am going to guess eleven.
My neighbor's house was quiet as I crept around the back to check on his faithful dog that always lazed on the porch on these long summer nights. I watched him carefully as I slipped the pipe from beneath my jacket. I had found it previously lining the trash bin in the alleyway next to my house.
That morning I had spent my time waiting on my porch for my friend to arrive so that we could take part in "normal" activities, such as hot wheels and burning bugs to the pavement. I had been flooded by a particularly horrible image only a few seconds prior. As Hank walked by with his dog to the mailbox at the end at the end of the street, I saw the pipe from earlier. It was no longer lining the bottom of the waste bin. It now adorned the mans faithful dog's head as an ornamental hat and he lay next to it mouth gaping in horror as a singled streak of blood trickled through the edge of his tight mouth on to the unforgiving pavement.
From the look that Hank gave me as he passed by again with the mail I can imagine I must have looked rather strange. My mind was transfixed and I couldn't take my mind off the image in my mind. It was torturous and I spent all of my energy trying to keep it inside worrying that it might escape and get into the heads of others poisoning them with the same disease that plagued me. My mother deranged as she was, noticed for the first time in her pitiful life that something was the matter.
"What's the matter hon?" She remarked casually, almost as if the years prior had, had no effect on my personal psyche, and I had suddenly caught amnesia of the recent sort.
"I'm Fine" Was all I replied through the strain of keeping my mind intact. In all reality I was far from fine. I was about seven blocks east past the greasy diner that marked the end of suburbia, and well into what we call so lovingly The Ghetto from fine.
Mind spinning I ran quickly into my room and shut the door as surreptitiously as I could. Locking my makeshift bolt I collapsed onto my bed with the force of an anvil. I walked cautiously over to my mirror, eying the beads of sweat that were now adorning my forehead. Next to the glass was a pair of scissors which my mother used to cut my hair on a monthly basis, but that's another story entirely.
If I was going to synopsize it into a small one paragraph story, I would do so as such: Every month my mother would grab me by my "Overgrown Thicket of a head", and then she would drag me to my room. Then still holding me by my hair, she would take the scissors that she so often left on my bedside mirror and lop off the biggest chunks of hair she could find. I often came out looking worse than the dog of the blind man across the street (Imagine a Sheltie with fur shaved off on half of it's body, but the other half has been left to grow for many years on its own.), which as you can imagine is pretty bad.
In any case why the scissors were there is really of no consequence. All that truly matters is that they were there. As I looked at my face in the mirror I saw no change. It was only me, but then slowly the space around me began to blur. More faces now adorned the mirror. It was the faces of everyone who was close to me killed in brutal ways. My mind spun and I can barely remember what happened next. At some point my hands slipped to the scissors in front of me, and they were jabbed into the center of the mirror causing glass to rain down upon my desk and feet.
Not long after the sound of shattering stopped there were footsteps in the hallway. My mother came crashing in eyes ablaze with fury and hatred. All I could do was look at her with glazed eyes in fear of what might happen next. I will never be sure as to why she turned away at that point, but all I know for sure is that; she walked into the kitchen picked up a cigarette and continued walking right out the front door, never to return. There re days when I wish to think that she is still walking to this very day, and that here feet are blistered and cracked from the road, but to be honest I have no clue.
That night I spent alone in my room looking into the freshly broken glass and looking into the faces of my fears and despair. It happened all at once. I couldn't take the faces judging me any longer and I walked outside into the cold street. With as much emotional detachment as humanly possible in such a situation, I walked to the alley picked up the pipe and went over to hanks house and buried that pipe in his faithful dog's head.
Tears escaped me at that point. I was purely numb from the act I had just committed. I could hear hank's muffled snores as he slept away unknowing of the event that had transpired. I was at a loss for feeling and all I could muster was the following: "I'm sorry, I had no choice." I do not know why I chose these exact words, but at the time it seemed like the only thing that fit. Did I have a choice? I do not believe so. Unfortunately that isn't what the police believed. I heard them come the next morning and was out of my window before they even had a chance to knock.