WARNING: This one is really disturbing. I’m not even kidding a little bit. But besides that ENJOY!
For the Sake of the Children
We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it. – Maxim Gorky
I was thirteen when it happened, nearly ten years ago now. It replays in my head day after day like a horror film on loop at the Ioka theater downtown. I still see him at family functions–eyeing others who can’t see him for what he really is. I live in the shadows now. I’ve prided myself of being completely invisible. It’s a gift really, a gift I never wanted to receive.
I miss who I was before, before this, before he killed my soul and made me into nothing. I could have been something, I had plans once. I could have made my parents proud; but he took my ability to succeed. I could have been a star volleyball player; I was good, really good, but he made me quit sophomore year. I could have been a teacher like I wanted to be. I loved to have an impact on other people’s lives, but he took my trust of others. Now I can barely be around other people. I can’t stand to be touched or even be looked at. I’ve become nothing, and no one saw what was happening. No one bothered to see the warning signs.
I watch him whenever I see him, which is far too often, I see they way he looks at my cousins, all three thirteen now like I was. They’re his new target.
I need to protect them. But I can’t do that without telling, something I still am not ready for, no one would believe me anyway. For the sake of Melissa, Abigail, and Sarah I have to rid the world of him. I have to save them. If I do it this way, I will never have to tell the secrets. This is the best choice for all involved. I’ll rid the world of a monster and protect the innocence left in my little cousins. I will save them, because no one was there to save me.
I’ve decided it will have to be at night, for the cover of darkness will be the best way to cover my tracks. No one would find it odd for me to be at that house after dark; after all, he is my uncle. I could need money, a car ride, or something mundane. Who would ever expect a niece could do such a thing to such a loving uncle? I can make it look like a robbery. I watch enough CSI and Law and Order to fake that one. I would have to really take things though. I can always throw them in the Exeter River. They’d wash to the Atlantic and no one would ever find them. All I need is to choose my weapon. A gun is way hard to obtain. Poison takes too long and is way too easy to trace. I want this to hurt him, like he hurt me; every moment of his death needs to be agonizing. I want to hear him scream for his life, the way I screamed… cry the way I cried.
The night I killed my uncle, there was a new moon. I wore all black, like I always did, but I carried a bag with other clothes inside–nursing scrubs that I could throw into a dumpster at the hospital when I was finished. I also carried a large steak knife, purchased at the Good Will store in Portsmouth along with a hat with a large red feather for my little brother, and some bowling shoes so not to make the knife stand out.
I wanted to duct tape a flashlight to the front of my bicycle, but that would only bring attention to me, and I hate attention. I crept slowly up the walkway, leaving my bike by the unlocked doorway. I was careful not to allow the screen door to slam behind me; this would have awoken not only my intended victim but his landlords downstairs, and I couldn’t let that happen. I took off my shoes and left them by the doorway. I opened my back-pack, removed my nursing scrubs, and pulled them on over my black outfit. I placed the shoe covering that carpenters use when they don’t want to leave footprints on new floors over my stocking feet, and then pulled out the knife. I stared at my own reflection on the shinny metal. I smiled. This was the first time I had felt a positive emotion in nearly ten years. I was almost happy; I had nearly forgotten what happiness felt like.
I crept silently into his bedroom–knife in hand ready to strike. He snored loudly, and I jumped backwards–afraid that the sound may have awoken him.
I had paid enough attention in anatomy to know where to cut first. I whispered, “This is for the children,” into his ear and pulled the steak knife across his throat severing his vocal cords. He awoke as the knife entered. It moved as smoothly as spreading cream cheese across my morning bagel. He looked into my eyes. I saw his fear and grew from it. The power he had taken away from me in that same room ten years ago rushed back into my body, I felt whole for the first time in a very long time.
There was a shitload of blood, but he wasn’t even close to dead yet. I was going to make the last moments of his life as horrible and painful as he had left the last ten years of mine. I pulled back the sheets, he tried to grab my arm, but I sliced him. I then took a small piece of twine from my bag and tied his hands together to the bed post, so he couldn’t try to stop me again.
I ran the knife down his stomach, toward the piece of him that had hurt me the most. I grabbed it squeezing. “Do you like that Uncle Marty?” I asked the same way he had asked me, as if what I was doing to him was as everyday as tying my shoes.
I shoved the knife through the base, he winced in pain, but he couldn’t make a sound. He lay silent, this was better than I had imagined it. I held the knife close to his face as his blood spilled onto the bed sheets; the nice white linens had turned a deep rose, the same color as my parent’s kitchen. I placed my uncle’s penis into his mouth. “Just like that, right Uncle Marty?”
Then, I stabbed him forty-seven times in the chest. It may have been over kill, but it was nothing to the pain he had caused onto me. With each stab I felt the energy releasing from my soul, all the pain and hatred I had toward myself was dissolving. “You will never hurt anyone again!” I whispered with each stab. Tears started to fall from my eyes as I pictured Melissa, Abigail, and Sarah living the lives they planed for themselves. They’ll have boyfriends, eat lunch in high school cafeterias, be cheerleaders, go to prom, graduate college, be loved, all because I killed the son-of-a-bitch that took that all away from me.
I stood above his body, dripping with sweat and blood, a mixture of mine and his own. Now came the messy part.
I wrapped the body in the blood soaked bed sheet and pulled it into the bathroom. In the tub with the water running, I cut my uncle into pieces that would easily fit into my back-pack. His head however was going to be the difficult part; I’d have to make a special trip for that one.
I washed the bedroom with the steam cleaner and scrubbed the trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom, changed out of the scrubs, then loaded about a third of my uncle into my bag. I rode the three miles to the ocean on my bike, waded out a little bit and dumped him out to sea.
Then I repeated the process.
It’s been two weeks, and Uncle Marty was just reported missing by his landlord, when he went up to collect late rent. Any evidence that I was there has been removed. Hopefully his body doesn’t wash ashore; I can’t really see that happening now though. The knife and the clothes are long gone by now, in a landfill in Greenland. Even if I do get caught, I saved my cousins and hopefully others from having to live with the shame and guilt of something that wasn’t even their fault.
