Here is the first story I'd like to share with you. Enjoy. It is called Territorial.
For
the first time in my life I actually felt something. It was strange to feel an
emotion, any emotion; it was so very foreign to me that it sent me reeling. I
was used to pretending, to putting on the perfect façade of pseudo-normality
and smiling and laughing along with all the other kids my age. Even when their
laughter and smiles disgusted me, I kept up the charade. But here I was at
eighteen years old feeling for the very first time a genuine emotion. It was
not beautiful, or amazing, or awesome, it was terrible, like trying to force
air through the lungs of a corpse. I had been dead to the world for so long, as
long as I could remember, that I didn’t know how to really breathe, I hadn’t
need to, I hadn’t bothered to, and here I was, gasping for breath.
It
wasn’t a particularly nice emotion to feel either. What I felt as I was gasping
for breath with my long-dead lungs was fear. I had never been afraid before.
There had never been any need. I was the one others needed to fear. I was “mentally
unstable” as the doctors would have said if they’d been able to see through my
ruse. People are so very stupid. Could you blame me for pretending? For hiding
my deadness from the world? It was for the best. What could they have done
anyway? Try and pump me full of drugs? Study me like some kind of lab rat?
Dissect me? They would bind these hands and slow this unfeeling heart and take
away the only thing I enjoyed in my madness: killing.
How
could I be afraid? I was a monster; I was an instrument of death, a simple
student in the macabre arts. Death touched me, it was all over my hands, but it
could not claim me. Until now… As I saw him lunge towards me with the knife I
felt crippling fear, or perhaps my fear was crippling only because I had never
felt it before. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind, mentally cursing
myself for the weakness of fear. I looked up again at the crazed man coming
towards me with the knife. Think, I
told myself, how would you do this? What
is his mistake? What is his weakness? I studied him. He was about five-five,
mid-thirties to early forties, medium-length curly brown hair starting to go
gray at the edges. He was wearing gloves, latex ones like surgeons use, and the
knife in his hand was a good six inches—three
of them serrated—and had a nice, slick coating of fresh blood in it
making the blade gleam in the florescent lights. There was a gleam of madness in his dark eyes
and he slashed at the air in front of us. If only this had happened anywhere
else, I could have made short work of him and been on my way with none the
wiser and one less idiot on the streets. No I wasn’t afraid of him, I was
afraid of what I’d have to do here in front of so many people, of what I’d have
to reveal, of my obvious skill. I was going to have to kill him, that was for
sure, but how to do it in front of so many witnesses without looking like a
professional, without making them look too deep into me. Because that idiot had
walked into a crowded school on a Monday and decided to go on a killing spree,
and not a very cleanly one either. What an amateur. So here in front of a class
of thirty or so people who had known me since preschool, but were still
clueless, I would have to dispose of this trash. This was my territory after all.
I
noticed he had a small hand gun tucked into the waistband of his pants
gangster-style. I noticed too that
there were dark bruises on the inside of the elbow that held the knife, a druggie, this day just keeps getting
better and better. I stood up; my hands held palms-up in front of me, the picture
of submission. I threw him off with my behavior and he half lunged half fell
towards me, and I let him. I felt the knife make a thin slice above my elbow as
he clumsily tried to make me sit back down, I didn’t flinch.
“Calm
down,” I said, my voice soothing, “I’m sure we can talk this out without anyone
else having to get hurt.” He stared at me. As did everyone else. Was I crazy?
Trying to talk down a junkie with a knife, he’d already killed one girl,
although that was more dumb luck than anything else, it had taken her ages to
finally die. The junkie tried to lunge towards me again, but I was too fast for
him. In one solid movement I had both evaded his attack and wrested the knife
from his grip. I pulled on of his feet out from under him and let him fall to
the ground, stunned. As he tried to scramble back to his feet I bent down
expertly, like I was about to kiss his forehead or whisper into his ear, and
made a single, perfect cut across his throat, from ear to ear. His eyes widened
with fear as his blood began to flow and his throat started gurgling. The
arterial spray had made a beautiful pattern on my face and hands and all over
my formerly crisp, clean white shirt. I watched as the light left the druggie’s
eyes and he crumpled in on himself before falling to the floor.
“What
filth,” I muttered under my breath as I threw the knife away, “anything for a
fix. How was killing an innocent girl going to get you what you needed? What
made you thing that this was a good idea?
How was any of this getting you what you needed? What made you thing
that this was a good idea? You deserved to die.” I looked over at my teacher, a
little bit of blood had splattered onto her too, staining her ghostly pale skin
with crimson, it looked good on her.
“It’s
all over,” I motioned to him, “he’s dead; he won’t be hurting anyone
anymore.” I took a step towards where I
had been sitting and the entire class scooted away. Great. “Uh, guys? Did you hear me? I said it was over, he’s dead;
he can’t hurt you.” To prove my point I nudged his head with my foot, making it
roll limply on the floor. “See? Dead.” That didn’t comfort them; instead it
made them move even further away from me. I sighed and picked up the knife from
where I’d thrown it. I wiped the bloody blade against the fabric of the
junkie’s shirt and neatly folded it back up.
“What
are you doing?” The teacher finally asked.
“Cleaning
up a bit,” I replied and bent to search the junkie’s body. All I found was an
empty wallet, the gun I’d noticed earlier and a pack of unopened gum. I opened
the gum and began chewing a piece, the class watched me, horror and disgust
clear on their faces. But I had just saved them, they may be confused and
scared, but they understood that. I took the gun and looked at the clip, empty;
just like his brain…
The
police showed up soon, guns held out before them, shouting to stay calm, that
help had arrived. Too bad they’d gotten there too late. They surveyed the
damage, asked me a bunch of questions and led me away to a squad car. I smiled
at them from the backseat.
After
all it was my territory, I couldn’t let such an incident to go unanswered and
unchecked. So I’d made sure everyone knew exactly whose territory it was… The
only way I knew how…
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