The fact of the matter was that I never really liked him. He never helped. When he would come in the room, he would just sit there. It did not start out as loathing. There just wasn't something right with his calm demeanor, the fact that he never smiled. He would walk into the room, and would watch me through his eyelashes until he was called out to the hallway by the person who told me "He's here to help." The lack of ability to relate. The loathing, it started as imperceptible, but as he would sit there, with that calm air about him, the conflagration inside of me would burn even more.
When he sat on the chair across from me in the room, I would stare at the floor or stand up, and turn away from him, my mind racing as I planned my escape from the whispers. That was when I noticed the loose nail sticking up from the floorboard next to the chair cemented to the floor. That was when I decided, I was going to kill him. I was not worried. I had killed before. The fear of being caught didn't concern me. It was the fact of doing it again that scared me. I admit, I was frightened, but I began to pull up the nail holding the board to the floor.
Why they use wooden floors in this place, I have no idea. Now, however, I know that they use cement for only the maddest of us. The maddest of us, though, we all have our stories. Some of us made bad choices, but most of us, we are here because of what they did to us. Would not you think that you would go absolutely insane, had you been subject to the same ritual every day? Without variation?
I had to be ever so careful. Had I not been careful, they surely would have caught me before the deed was done. The air of calm would walk in everyday, and try to help in that non-talking way of his. He would leave, and I would get to work on the nail.
The first nail was up in the first week. My carefulness and my compulsive personality, made sure that there was no difference in the board after the nail was out. On the last day of the first week, I had finally pulled the nail, completely free of its bounds that had held it there for decades. Realizing my success, I looked up quickly to check that no one was outside looking in at me. Seeing no one, I proceeded to insert the nail back into the hole which it had made when it had bound the board to the scantlings. Smoothly and slowly, the board looked like it had once been.
The next week began, and I started working on the second nail. Using the utmost discretion, I raised the second nail in half the time as the first. The visits from the calmness began to enrage me even more.
By the time the third nail came around, I was pretty confident in my crazed mind that I would succeed in my mission, especially because I was halving the time that it took me to pull up the second nail. I was becoming more efficient in my work. The only incident that plagued me during my work was that I was so involved, that, having been working early in the morning, I lost track of time and was almost caught, prematurely, by the calm.
As the weeks wore on, the calm broke me down even further. I was soon desperate to finish the job. I became sloppier on the last two nails than I had ever been on the first.
Finally, after about a month of grueling secrecy and hard work, the last nail came out. There was only one more incident where I was almost caught, but that was it.
I then needed to find the most opportune moment to carry out the deed. I waited and watched the calm's every move to pinpoint the exact second when I would avenge the torture of my soul. I soon found the perfect time and I soon had everything planned out.
The day before the day my mind had planned the deed for, I made sure that, at my selected time, nobody would be outside my door when the atrocious deed was committed.
All the gods that are worshiped, all the fates that everyone seems to talk about, they all seemed to be on my side that day. The first sign of good fortune was the fact that the calm seemed tired. He had apparently had a rough night and his day was not about to get any better. Throughout his interview that day, my face never betrayed my vehement emotions towards him. Never once did I express any aversion to him. I smiled. I talked casually. I asked him about his life. I asked him how his children were. I tried to make the last possible seconds of his life, somewhat happy for him. I believe he suspected something, however, for he did seem rather curious about my sudden interest in the one-sided talks we usually had. Half way through the conversation, I stood. It was not an unusual thing. During our talks I would stand up. I would go to the door, sit on the bed, wash my hands. This time however, I actually had a purpose. I was checking to make sure that no one was going to walk in on us when the docile atmosphere of the room suddenly changed. I then walked behind the chair the calm was sitting on. This was not unusual either. It was my room. I had free reign of it. I could go wherever I wanted. While I was walking around, I continued to talk with him. About his dog, about his parents, about his childhood. That was when I knelt down beside the chair, quickly straightened up and, using the floor board I had taken up as a weapon, I smashed his head forward, breaking his neck. I looked up for a moment to make sure that the deed had gone unwitnessed. Knowing that we had not been seen, I heaved the heavy body into the hole the floorboard had left. Working quickly, I replaced the board and made sure that the hole had been dissimilated well enough to not be noticed. I then set about getting my alibi ready for when the questions came.
"Where did you last see him?"
"Right here in my room"
"Do you know where he went?"
"He said he was going to the bathroom"
My mind made them begin to see that I wasn't lying. I was telling the truth, and there was no more information about the missing man that I could give them. I never doubted my actions. I had finally achieved a peace, which I never would have found had the calm still plagued me.
The next few weeks proved uneventful. They never did find me another calm. It seemed that my calm didn't have any brothers. It also seemed I had done a favor to the rest of my own brothers. At night, I could hear laughter ring through the building.
Almost a month after the deed, the search had almost ceased, but I began to wake in the night. I began to hear noises of a most disconcerting nature. A tapping in the floor which woke my mind at night.
This insignificant little sound, proved to be just as infuriating as the calm. It kept me up at night. The sound soon drove me to the ground. Almost as much as the calm. I soon needed to destroy the sound, as I had the calm. I needed to take up the floorboard once more and slam the noise across the back of the neck.
The noise drove my mind deeper into itself. I screamed at the noise. I stamped my feet on the floor where the noise was coming from. They began to notice, and that was my fatal mistake.
Soon, I couldn't take the noise anymore. I ripped the weapon up off the floor, and looked into the hole. It seems that the fates have a sense of humor because when I fell to my knees beside the hole in the floor, I saw the torture of my life staring back at me, I saw that his flesh had been torn off by the rodents that lived in the walls and floors and ceilings of the building I had trusted to hide my felony.