case 143 | lee felix

8. first kill

UNKNOWN

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

I watch my lighter as the flame ignites and then disappears. Another one of the many odd things that gave me comfort.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? I'll kill you!"

"Not before I do it first."

It was one of those melancholic nights where I felt relatively calm but empty inside. Millions of thoughts ranging from nothing to everything float about in my head, giving me a headache.

"I'm giving you one last chance, boy. Show your father some respect!"

"Oh, but you were never my father."

That was my first crime. My first kill. I remember it as clear as day. I was eleven.

While other boys my age went out after school, made new friends and hung out together, I went straight to my house. That wretched house in which blood and screaming were normal things. I'd open the door to my mother lying against the kitchen wall, cuts and bruises decorating her skin. She was always exhausted out of her wits, always at the brink of letting it all go. It was hell.

My mother. Even though scars draped her skin from head to toe, she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me. When Dad wasn't home, we'd get a few moments of happiness together. We'd bake cookies and she would tell me stories from her childhood. She taught me to always be positive and keep smiling, no matter how tough things were. Towards the last few years of her life, the childlike spark in her eyes slowly faded away.  She was the most precious thing to me and that monster took her away from me.

My father was an alcoholic. He'd come home drunk out of his mind and pick up the first thing he saw as his weapon of assault. If I dared to open my mouth in that span of time, I wouldn't be able to go to school for a week from the torture. If he was feeling extra adventurous, he'd even tie me up and make me watch him beat the poor life out of my mother helplessly. But the torment I faced was nothing compared to what Mom went through. 

One night, almost a year after her death, I snapped. I crept out of my sheets in the middle of the night, knife and rope in hand as I snuck into my father's bedroom. He had the audacity to snore peacefully as if he hadn't wreaked havoc in his own son's life.

I brought the rope around his wrists and feet and tied them as tight as my feeble arms could manage. I had also tied him to the bed frame for extra measure. Being a child of physical abuse, bodily strength wasn't something I could rely on. After all that hassle, I stabbed him.

In the blink of an eye, he was up and screeching in pain. I paid no attention to it, rather enjoying the taste of karma that he was about to face. I brought the cans of gasoline I had found in the garage to the bed room. He was screaming at me again, but by that point I was immune to his voice.

Within minutes, I had doused him in gasoline. I grabbed his lighter from the side drawer and flicked it, letting the fabric on his shirt catch the flames.

"How does it feel to be the one crying and begging? How does it feel to be in her shoes?"

I remember repeatedly stabbing him, not giving an ounce of thought about the fire that was burning my skin. I was going to finish him, and I was going to finish him right.

I sat comfortably on his hammock outside that night, watching through the window till his skin and soul disintegrated into nothing but ashes. And at sunrise,