Tense: conditional
POV: 2nd
The origin of today's story traces back to the first. There is a line about kneeling in church with "alcoholics and pedophiles, madmen, psychopaths, and parents too free with the paddle." We've got the paedophiles, madmen, and some mention of the alcoholics and the parents too free with the paddle, but we were missing the psychopath. So that's what you've got here.
It's also an expereiment in pov (second) and tense (conditional, "maybe"). This might be disorienting. Perghaps you will feel confused. Maybe you won't be able to stand it.
(I apologise for the above paragraph, there's enough of that in the story.)
Anyway, get ready for some crazed murderous rampages!
Maybe there is a moment when the light leaves the eyes. When the body, once alive, flickers out, when the soul, the life force, the potency that differentiates some configuration of arbitrary alive atoms from that same configuration, dead. Maybe Rick feels that life force as he drives the knife in deeper. Maybe he soaks it up, into himself, in an endless struggle to fill the emptiness within himself. Maybe a little of the potency escapes with each stroke – in a gasp! Maybe each death prolongs a life, maybe they die for a purpose, those victims, those murders, those martyrs.
Perhaps Rick is a determinist. Perhaps he believes that the future of the entire world was set from the moment of the Big Bang. Maybe he does not believe in chance or possibility. Will, or will not, and no mortal force has power to stop the chain of events once they begin to unfold. Maybe Rick doesn’t believe in a god, or a soul. Maybe he believes only in a primordial order in the chaos, and he kills to show the pointlessness of life. Maybe he kills to show some measure of control over his parents’ pretense of free will.
You will never know, so go with what theory you may, make your own. And maybe it’s all in vain, maybe there is no point, exactly, or maybe it’s nothing more, nothing less, than that rush he feels when he sees that light leaving the eyes.
Maybe Rick is restless tonight. Maybe some part of his skeptical soul drains life force. Maybe the part that disbelieves tries so hard to eradicate from itself the very force it denies. Maybe that leaves a longing that is unfulfilled, that drives the man to take up his knife, don his black coat, tophat, and his suave dark trousers, and shut off the lights.
Maybe he will head out tonight. Maybe he will meticulously lock the door, checking the knob thrice before he turns to the task before him. Maybe he will check all the windows, and the back door. It wouldn’t make much sense to a true determinist – whatever man or monster he wishes to keep out has either broken in, or not, and the future will not change for the present – but would that stop him?
Maybe he will turn on his porch, and begin walking, delicately, but slowly. Maybe he will turn left on El Cañon, circle around Forest to Main. Maybe that’s the path he takes each other morning to the grocer. Or maybe he’s headed to the butcher, just two blocks down. Or maybe he knows the path where the streetlamps are out, ever-changing, but not elusive. Maybe he knows it by heart, even can predict its alteration – he is a night prowler.
Maybe he will head up Main, maybe he will take a smaller street. No one ever sees him move through the night. Maybe he can turn invisible, or turn into a bat, and glide silently into the necks of his victims. You will not know – I doubt you will even see his face before the knife has entered your ribcage, maybe just below the heart.
Perhaps he pauses, sensing something. Perhaps a grandmother passes by. Maybe he wonders what she is doing out at this hour. She is alone, and maybe he considers it, briefly, the sense of the knife cutting into her flesh, her aged heart protesting against its final beats. Perhaps he considers this, and lets her past. Maybe you wonder why – you cannot know. Maybe there is less pleasure, somehow, in killing the old. Life will catch up with them, soon, and fate will deprive them of that beating heart, that coursing blood. Maybe Rick does not like how she walks, peacefully, at ease with the mystery of life and death. Maybe he needs to see the shock in the moment before the death, the horror, and the rebellion.
Maybe he skulks in the shadows of the Mexican quarter, watching the late-night prowlers pass. He hesitates, perhaps. Why? – perhaps he is afraid. Or maybe he does not enjoy these types of victims: drug dealers, and those hooked by the drugs. Maybe he wants someone less weak, or less malicious, to be his sport. Maybe he moves on.
Maybe he locks onto you, for reasons you will never know. Why were you out, alone? Maybe you were enjoying the air, or perhaps you had forgotten something at a friend’s house or a bar. Perhaps you have a dog, a little child, a romantic partner, and you wanted to take them for a walk. Perhaps you were lost in our town, there only by unfortunate happenstance. How you arrived should not matter – Rick would believe the universe brought you there, in the past, present, and future, and you cannot escape your destiny.
Maybe he sneaks up behind you, silent. Maybe you feel a swish of wind on your neck, and start. Maybe you pat your chest and tell yourself you’re being silly. Maybe you turn, and maybe you don’t see him, lurking in the shadows, black against the wall just beyond the halo of the golden streetlight. Maybe he waits until your heart stops pounding, you convince yourself your imagination has lost control, you settle and resume your walk, at perhaps a faster pace. Maybe you should have run – Maybe Rick would not risk chasing you, maybe he would have found another. But you do not know why – he has chosen you.
Maybe he pauses, just outside the light. Maybe his heart yearns. Maybe it isn’t fear, but some sort of pity. Perhaps hatred, or possibly some conflict within. Maybe Rick does not want to be a killer. Maybe there are urges that come, deep in the night, that drive him, a force a mortal fights with a futile but determined heart, always losing, always being dragged out into the soft silent night. Maybe the better part of that emptiness of a soul stays his hand, now, at the moment of truth.
And maybe it overwhelms him, as it had so many years ago, first with the ants in the magnifying-glass, then the squirrels he would entice and train to come to him, bang over the head with a hammer, grab and strangle the neck with his bare hands, feel the bones snap, the arteries burst. Maybe he sees Socks, his kitten, in the fauxfur coat you wear against the cold night, and maybe the memories overwhelm him, those impulses he tried to resist, but never could, and that night in the closet, a broken bulb shining down, when cold hands had the rein of a dark and enlivening will. Maybe he remembers that night he found a child abandoned in the brush that lines the hills o the east, bawling. Maybe he remembers the sudden, uncontrollable impulse, the ultimate task, and ultimate triumph. Maybe the remnants of a soul fight, but in vain!
Maybe his rough hand turns you, his other clasping over your throat. Maybe the element of surprise conquers what strength you had. Maybe the knife slides into your chest, and you feel the pain, and you feel your heart rushing desperately, trying to cram as many beats as possible into its last seconds of life. Maybe you stare into his eyes, now, and see the spark enter them as it leaves your own. Maybe, as your own world becomes blackness, you feel yourself merging with him, perhaps you feel the thrill. Maybe those urges were in your own heart, suppressed by reason, society, or a conscience. Maybe they are free now.
Or maybe he stands there, breathing silently down your neck, and imagines. You would not sense him, he is silent, like the wind. Maybe h stands there a moment, feeling the thrill, knowing he has the power. Maybe it relieves him.
Perhaps he is better now. Perhaps he will go home, and leave you to finish your walk. You will find your home, and return safely. You will never know how Rick stood behind you, poised. You will never realize how precious your life was, that night, under that streetlamp. Perhaps Rick will forget, too, until the urges come again. Perhaps he can never be rid of them, and they frighten him, and he will seek you out, again, for solace. It is love, possibly, or something more like it.
Maybe he is praying, now, in church. Maybe he is in the pew just before yours, and you stare into the back of his crew cut, unknowing. Maybe you catch a few words, generic. “Lord, lead me not into temptation, and deliver me from evil.” It is the Lord’s Prayer, but perhaps he has made it his own. Perhaps the words take on new meaning. Perhaps the tone makes you think, makes you suddenly afraid. Maybe you pray, now, silently: Lord, forgive me my sins, and save me from those who would sin against me.
Maybe Rick will be caught, one time. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, another human will walk outside, under that same streetlamp, turn, and see Rick hovering there, with the knife. Maybe this human knows karate or judo, maybe s/he disarms him, pins him to the ground, and calls the police. Maybe they charge him for assault.
Or maybe he hears your prayer, hears the same prayer in the mind of every human around him. Maybe the urge comes over him, then, before the gilded statue of his Savior. Maybe it is too much, he cries aloud, runs out of the building, possibly, and perhaps he rushes into the police station. But maybe he heads home, first. Maybe he opens the closet, where he has stored in plastic bags the skeletons of countless ants, twenty squirrels, one cat and one human child. Maybe he walks into the police station, the carrion hanging from limp palms, maybe he walks right into jail where the urges pound terribly against unfeeling bars. Maybe they will overwhelm him, eventually, become him, and maybe that last spark of soul will vanish, but he is sequestered from society, and he will do no harm.
There is one thing you should know: Rick has never killed a grown human. He only killed the one child, the cat, the ants, and the squirrels. He didn’t feel much while killing the child – it would have died anyway, he figured, abandoned as he found it. He didn’t feel much for the ants, because he hardly knew them. But he felt for each of the squirrels, whom he trained individually. He got to know them, their quirks, fears, and the desires that drove them forward. He named them, Acorn, Fast, Nutty, Tiny, Darkie. He betrayed them each, one by one, feeling their surprise each time, and the pain. He cried terribly.
Rick did not stuff Socks in the closet; she came willingly. She would come each night, and cuddle softly. He would read to her, child’s books, but dark, always. One day the urge came over him. His hands began to move, coaxing her easily into his arms, and the grip tightened, and she began purring. She was warm in his arms, against his beating cold heart. His hands set to work. He felt her soft protest, her disbelief, her love, her trust, even through the pain, that there was a greater cause. She died leaning into his chest.
It is not that Rick liked killing, only that, perhaps, it fascinated him. Maybe he believes that the past has no effect on the future. He was raised Calvinist. He is a physicist who graduated from USC. He works with computers. Fate could not be avoided, and he scorned anyone who tried.
But rewind to that night, that streetlamp. Maybe Rick raises the knife over your neck. Maybe his eyes are livid. But his hand stops. His heart calms. He walks away. In that moment, he is master.
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