I’VE KILLED FIVE

By Jacob D’Lallo

 

I’m not here to push blame onto others. My life is exactly the way it is due to my own choices. I am an honest to goodness, scum of the Earth, shit head. I know for a fact that I’m going to Hell and I’ve known for as long as I can remember. I’m not going to push my troubles out of my life and onto some higher power that I may or may not admit to believe in. That’s the easy way out; the A.A. way out, no wonder that shit never worked for anyone in my family.

The thing is that I was just sentenced to death. There is a surprise in this story; I’m not going to shock you at the end of this written confession by leaving you out of that loop. I will say that I can’t disagree with the end of my life’s unique form of poetic justice. As you entered this room, I’m sure you have already realized that I would at least like to do something good with my life before I die. You could call it guilt. I just hope my pulse lasts long enough… before anything happens.

I’ll let you stew in that information for a while.

Most of you have already judged me and perhaps you’re right. The problem with being judged is that most people don’t agree with how everyone else sees them; they believe that the people around them aren’t credible if the opinion is negative, but if the judgment from another is shining in educated moral positives then they’ll put that person in close friendship and character witness lists. They may even marry, I’m sure that’ll be when the negatives would finally show through for most people.

The room that you’ve just found me in was supposed to be where my sixth’s final breath took place, but my first… my first was beautiful. I watched her for a few months but, before you get it into your head, it wasn’t stalking by any means. The truth is I was afraid of her, absolutely terrified, yet still intrigued by her mannerisms. She would deny the world the charms of her personality but she never denied me a glimpse into her magnificent mind. She was so incredibly gifted and I envied her talented intellect; I wanted to see inside it; use it for myself.

The minds of the young are always so fresh, with newly formed idealistic depths that are so incredibly naïve, and I was no exception. I truly believed she was mine and I acted as such. I even set the mood to a sort of romantic flow before inviting her over. I knew she’d enjoy it. Red candles, long flowing cloth and the scent of flowers throughout. You can imagine my surprise when she never showed up.

I went to her house with the intention of romancing her, winning her affection. It worked. It turned out her chronic depression got the better of her before she was due at my place. She started the process with a couple bottles of sleep aids. I was only guilty of letting it happen. I was guilty of not calling for help or even trying to help her myself. In fact, I went home and watched the Discovery Channel for a few hours. I was guilty of waiting for the end of her slow death, to crack open her head for the cherished gray matter within.

It was my first taste of truth. I felt I had absorbed her knowledge and creativity. My youth’s limited absolution felt revived and recharged for the first time in my entire life. Though, I wasn’t stupid, I was planning on this for months, she just slowed down the process. I moved the next day, just as planed.

When the cops came to ask me a few questions about the girl that lived down the hall, I told them the truth, we never had a relationship; she was quiet and reserved. When they asked me where I was when she died, I also told the truth, I was at home watching television. I figured it was the most popular alibi in the building and I was right. No one had anyone else to confirm their stories.

The second one was two years later. After that length of time I started feeling older, less intuitive, I needed another charge up. At that point I had been dating her for three months and I knew that she was the next one I needed. She was strong spirited, tough minded and had an irresistibly tempting heart; twenty two years old with the soul of a sixteen year old. She was absolutely perfect.

I dressed the room the same way I did for the first one, with the candles and drapes and everything. I set it up to coincide with our third month anniversary together. I needed her thoughts to consume me. I needed her.

When she entered it was simple enough. The food, filled with tranquilizers and mild narcotics. As the soft music played in the background our eyes would meet and our hands would fallow. She didn’t understand why three months should mean so much for a couple of our years but that complaint gradually made its way to her feelings of light headedness and the way the room was getting blurred and her speech slurred.

My only crime here was putting the drugs in the food. I never forced her to eat it. I don’t believe there’s an enforceable law against consuming another being. It could have easily been as though I was masticating the brain of a boar. Savoring it. Then letting it fill me.

For the second time in my life, I felt young. Energized.

I felt I finally knew myself for who I really was.

Call it a miracle or just dumb luck that the police were too incompetent to ever catch up to me. My fingerprints were all over her apartment. They even had phone records, saved e-mails and letters. I’m sure my DNA was all over the bed sheets if they had bothered to look. My toothbrush was still in the bathroom holster by the sink.

Besides all that, she didn’t have a picture of me. Not one. I always turned away at the last moment, before the flash, right at the peak of the charges hum.

I’ve come to learn over the years that people, smart people, will do stupid shit most of the time but, unlike their dumb brethren, they’re able to make up for it with something spectacular enough to allow the masses to forgive their follies.

What can a murderer do?

Stanley Tookie Williams, an ex-gang member, wrote children’s books while on death row and spoke out against gang violence. That worked for him. Many people spoke out against his execution as I watched the clock and smiled at the midnight cross over, knowing full well that one day someone could do the same for me.

My hypocritical stances on violence are the issue here, I suppose. Richard didn’t think so.

Richard became my partner after the third one, the suicide girl I nudged slightly off the balcony to give her a little help, died. The noose, tightly gripping her fragile neck, snapped her body into a rag doll just before hitting the damp, infested ally concrete below. Richard witnessed my act of callous inhumanity from a neighboring window and threatened to turn me in but wouldn’t under one condition, if I were willing to let him join me.

I guess evil attracts evil.

If you wonder why drama follows you everywhere you go, you should probably change whatever you’re doing. If you want a little more excitement in your life, you don’t just sit at home and go to work forever. It’s these people who complain about how their lives are going, these people that are so oblivious to the way they act themselves that truly get to me. Richard wasn’t one of them.

For the first time in my life I admitted all three of my previous misdeeds to another. I described they way they looked, smelled and ultimately tasted. His eyes grew with anticipation, his wants and his needs also had to be fulfilled.

Unlike me, he, Richard, is a fucking pervert. His wants and needs were to be quenched after, and only after, I removed the brain from the next victim, not at any time before. My need was to consume the soul and free my own mind; his was to pillage the remains.

My death will be a true blessing to this world.

My forth, Richard’s first, was to be a perfectly executed plan of liberation.

It was.

It was almost too perfect. She was young. Richard had been watching her for a long time before meeting me. His fantasies always reached the most extreme points before he was ever able to get off.

Torcher.

Sodomy.

Death.

A snuff film would make a hundred G’s on the black market.

She had long golden hair reaching down past her back to where it gently brushed the top of her ass when she walked, brushing it back and forth. Her eyes were as black as night, not so safe behind the comfort of two eyeglass frames without the lenses. She wasn’t everything I had dreamed of but, in order to truly scope out Richards talents for the job needed, I had to sacrifice someone.

Her mind was sour. It disgusted me from the moment I laid eyes on her. In her house, fully sprawled upon the bed, she lay naked before me as I took only one bite of her already deformed brain. With it I could tell she never read, she never educated herself beyond her own looks, she only ate take out and her exorcize schedule was grueling.

Her right leg twitched and I ran to her kitchen and threw up in the garbage disposal, letting the evidence I was there drain out of existence.

Richard had already locked the door when I went back to the room so I entertained myself by exploring her former home. Photos of herself and friends were evenly placed throughout. The only picture that indicated any kind of family was the framed 8” x 10” hidden in a dark corner of her living room; of her as a small child being held by whom I could only assume was her mother and father with a Christmas tree backdrop.

I went back to the room and knocked on the door. Richard couldn’t hear me over his own quick, deep breaths. I knocked harder and he stopped for a second then continued. I warned him that we had to get going quickly.

On the way home I asked if he made sure to wear a condom, kept his hair net on, wore his gloves the entire time and didn’t kiss the corpse. He assured me everything was fine. He even showed me how his pubic area was shaved before hand.

I didn’t care to see it.

I told him then that we were to get out of town and I would find him the next time. It was going to be my turn to pick the woman, one that wouldn’t make me feverish. He agreed with the condition that he were to pick the one after that. And, a pact was made.

For about a year I stayed low and completely out of sight of the publics prying eyes. My need hadn’t been fulfilled that last time so my paranoia was higher than usual, my gibbering and jabbering grew on paper for days. The constant threat of DNA evidence at each scene began to consume me. I followed each case intently as they progressed; each time a police siren would ring out in the distance I was for sure it was for me, that my time was finally up, the suffering that is life would finally end. Then the sirens would fade into the distance and my gut would drop half pleased that I would have a second chance, half disappointed that I didn’t get to finally lift the weight of my shoulders.

I finally found my fifth in the bookstore reading to himself. Reading Dante’s inferno, it seems, for the first time. He was striking in every way I could possibly imagine, young, full of spirit, entangled by his own imagination and completely unaware of those around him. That’s what I needed then. I needed his mind to encompass my own. After the last death, I truly needed his piece of mind.

I called Richard and told him all about it. How I finally found my fifth. And he was more than excited to except my offer to finally come back out of hiding for one night.

The boy was a student, and not a very good one, but that didn’t matter. His intellect wasn’t what I needed.

I followed him home and phoned Richard to meet me at the address.

He met up with me two hours later.

My folly was truthfully in my comfort level at this point. The boy had never met me, he had barely seen me once before. Why was I to expect he’d let me into his home without question? I couldn’t try romance, he wasn’t gay. Neither was I. Supposedly, neither was Richard.

After we rushed him and knocked him out Richard searched the house for the girl. In my own hurry I hadn’t mentioned that my target was male. When he came back bitching about how she may have gotten away is when he saw me preparing the boy. Washing his hair with my gloves on, shaving off the back section of his scalp and gently cracking open the same area with a hammer and ice pick. The blood barely dripped.

Richard yelled at me. His complaints being that he was not gay. He didn’t want a corpse with a penis. His bizarre romantic abnormalities made it so the specimen had to be female. It was some sort of dominance fetish to prove to himself that he was above all those who rejected him. He could control their lives if he so chose.

My argument was that his last choice made me vomit.

Live with it.

And he did.

After that day, once more I was free. I could once again accept my role in the social hierarchy and, once again, the sirens in the distance didn’t bother me. Richard claimed he couldn’t forgive me after that day, though, I think he actually couldn’t forgive himself for actually enjoying the anus of a dead young man.

Those days became weeks, weeks quickened into months and months drudged into the years that followed. Why it took him so long to find another, I don’t know. It was beginning to take its toll on my psyche again. I needed another. Perhaps it was his way to punish me.

Just today he called me up for the first time in three years about how he had found his next pick of the litter and, he had hoped that I would like her, too. I was all too grateful at the prospect of another youthful indulgence. My being thirty seven now, I don’t think I’ll be able to pull it off much longer.

He told me that he had already taken care of the hard part and she’s waiting in his cheap motel room waiting for my delicate touch of ending her life and transfusing it to me.

When I arrived at this very motel just around three in the afternoon I could tell it was Richards sort of breeding ground. Probably built in the late sixties and never washed since. Its elderly hippie roots were still intertwined with some of the wagons parked in front.

Richard must have noticed my disgust because he smiled at me from just outside the door of room 9, on the second story over hang, this very room, after I turned off the engine. I met him up at the paint chipped door and he promised that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the room, carrying my tools in a handbag, was the stench. It already smelled like someone had been having sex for years in the bed. The drapes were closed and the television in the second room was running. It had two rooms so I assumed it must have been the honeymoon suite for couples who can’t afford a marriage.

He directed me to the next room with a smile and turned the lights on. As they flickered forth my heart dropped hard and sudden, chills ran down from the top of my head to the bottom of my legs and I nearly collapsed of pure adrenaline induced rage. That was the exact moment my life flashed before my eyes and I had realized what kind of evil, wickedness I am upon this planet.

“Leave me alone with her,” I say trying to disguise my voice so he couldn’t read anything out of its tone.

He left with a grin a closed the door behind him.

I locked it and looked at the fragile form upon the bed. She was asleep beneath the covers, turned away on the far side of the king sized bed. Tears filled my eyes as I approached in a slow panic; perhaps my first glance was wrong. I didn’t want to see but I wanted to make sure.

She was angelic.

She was so pure.

She was a child.

Her sleeping was so sound it was only to be heard up close. Her hair was soft and brown but I feared to touch it. Her skin was soft and unspoiled by our world of sin and demons.

Where did she come from? Where was her family? How did Richard come about acquiring her into this hell raised motel? How was I going to get her back?

I raised the comforter off her gently and pulled back in subtle tears at her naked body beneath; her wrists fresh with rope burns and the smell of Richard already on her.

He tapped on the door lightly and I told him he had to give me some time.

Minutes had passed. The ceiling fan spun. I stared at its hypnotic rhythms of light and shadow. I reflected my own life… My own terrible needs and compared them to this newly found out perversion of Richards. Were we all that different? I wasn’t sure, I’m still not sure; the only one thing I’m sure of about is that opposites don’t attract when it comes to humans. People attract their own kind. That’s why cliques exist. That’s why so many believe so much of the same things. When you go onto dating sites, do they try to put you with someone who has the exact opposite likes then you? What is the exact opposite of “Likes To Surf”?

I finally built up enough courage to except that Richard and I are one in the same. I hated that, I hated him and I hated myself. I’ve always wanted to kill myself, here was my final chance.

I walked back into the main room where Richard sat, doing the “New York Times” crossword puzzle.

He looked up at me and asked me what I thought of her. If I thought she was tasty. If he picked one out youthful enough for me. Full enough of that little spark that got me going that maybe she was young enough to get me through another five without a problem.

I simply said, “No.”

He asked me what the problem was.

“I’m the problem,” I told him. “I’m the problem.” I began to laugh. I could tell he didn’t understand what I was saying to him so I continued. “I’m the problem! I’m the fucking problem! Without me, you wouldn’t be here right now. Without me, five others wouldn’t be dead. Without my excessive devil given desires to feed on the very minds of those around me, there wouldn’t be an eight year old little girl in that room, unwittingly waiting for death after she had been raped by a butt fucking faggot like you!”

His mouth dropped. He turned his head slightly and he got up quick, grabbed a knife, I couldn’t tell you from where, and plunged it into my right side, directly into my kidney. The pain shook me and stole my breath for a few moments. My mouth now gaping he started spitting reason into my face.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. That girl in the other room is completely your fault and I’ll be sure you take the blame for it. I’ll make it so you and her lay together until they find you. You know what?” He smiled and his eyes grew wide as two fish mouths gasping on the deck. “I’m going to kill you.” He taunted. “I’m going to fucking…” He stabs again… “Kill you!” And, again.

I suppose it was my turn again, so I laughed.

She peaked out of the room holding a bear in one arm and the door in the other. I stopped laughing as I looked at her.

“Get back in that bed!” He yelled at her, with a knife in me. She closed the door quickly and I could hear her footsteps shuffle back and the springs bounce under her weight.

“She’s mine now,” he continued. “She’s MINE!”

Then he started on some sort of strange rant I don’t really remember. All I could remember was how I convinced myself that he was me. I just stabbed myself in the sides. I just raped and yelled at a naked little girl. Now it was time to do what I’ve always wanted to do. I was going to kill myself. Rid the world of my wickedness.

I did the only thing that came to mind at the time. After all these years I’ve been eating these poor souls and where have they been going? I had a strange feeling they wanted to help. As he yelled and spit in my face, knife splitting my side, I head-butted him, not once, or twice, or even three times. I slammed my forehead into his face twenty five times, took the knife from out of my own side and stuck it into his.

The little girl peaked out again.

“The bad man’s not here anymore,” I told her as Richard lay unconscious and bloody on the motel room floor. “You go back into the room and get some clothes on.”

She told me in her beautiful, young, pixie voice that she didn’t know where they were, that the man hid them from her.

“Wrap yourself up in blankets and just wait for the police to arrive, alright?”

She nodded and went back into the room and shut the door.

 

Now I’m bleeding to death. The girl’s in the other room and you can think whatever you want of me. As long as I fade to nothing after you arrive but before you read this long confession. I have to stay alive long enough to make sure she’s safe. I have to stay awake before the man in the bathroom… well… the half a man in the bathroom wakes up. I left just enough matter within his skull to lobotomize the part of me he had stolen, the part of me that needed to die, the rest was too rancid to ingest.

As I’ve said, and keep saying, I don’t care what you think of me. I’m an evil piece of shit that is going to Hell. There’s one thing I’m sure of… I’m headed there with a smile.