Smolder

1

You're hesitating.

There was no reason to argue with the voice in my head. I knew it was right.

I myself very well knew I was hesitating on the matter, and I very well knew it was going to turn into a pressing concern if I didn't act soon. I wasn't pulling off murder without some dusty rationale peeking its way through the dark depths of my mind now, was I? No. God, how annoying. I thought I'd already burnt that moral bridge a while ago.

My hand shook around my forearm. I squeezed hard and grit my teeth, letting the blade of the kitchen knife strapped underneath dig into my hand for some reassurance. Despite the elementary weapon, it was no elementary plan I was about to execute. It was a year of research I was about to put to use, hours of horror movies, weeks spent looking up news articles on the perfect homicide. Thirty-one billion seconds dreaming of blood.

With a deep breath, I took out the knife and weighed it carefully in my hands. On the other side of the building, I would drag the blade across his neck and leave. Simple as that. It was simple, so, so unbelievably simple. It was redemption. It was revenge. No, no...it was a catharsis.

And I knew it wouldn't bring her home. I knew it wouldn't get me out of that desolate excuse for a town. I knew it wouldn't break me away from my fake parents or the Rapunzel-like life they made me live. Every factor of probable sociopathy that my isolation had amplified couldn't be revoked that October evening, and certainly not by murderous means.

Killing the black-haired, gray-eyed, teenage smoker on the other side of that building would not solve one physical problem of mine. Don't think I didn't know that.

Yet I just couldn't help myself.

I'd always inclined towards violence in my youth, but couldn't exactly act upon it. Being an only child adopted by older parents with more money than they knew what to do with would theoretically serve me well, correct? Give me a nurturing environment to go out and make the world a better place with my socioeconomic advantage? I thought all of this too. What I didn't foresee was being essentially homeschooled my entire life and confined to that damn mansion for sixteen years.

Sixteen. Years.

Despite how luxurious the reputable Frank and Lynette Strauss's three-story architectural masterpiece was, looking at the same insides for so long doesn't make you stir crazy; it makes you sociopathic. And it doesn't produce simple cabin fever either-it's a motherfucking terminal illness.

I heard the boy tiredly exhale around the corner, tainting the air with his cigarette smoke. I curled my nose up in disgust, yet it reminded me of why I chose him as my target. He walked the street alone, he held his head up too high, and he smoked. I followed him for a few blocks and watched him sling his backpack off his shoulder, leaf through a wad of green in the front pocket, and then hastily zip it back up and disappear down the alley where I was currently staked out. Undoubtedly, I had a drug dealer on my hands. And therefore, I was doing my minuscule town a favor by ridding it of that scum.

Closing my eyes I pressed up against the building again, same as before, but just a few blocks down the road. The thought of his spilled blood on the wet pavement started to excite me. The whole prospect of pulling it off did. Hesitation was fading fast, adrenaline was pumping through my veins, life was pulsating within my bones. I wanted to kill him, and nothing more. Again, I knew that I was messed up beyond belief for thinking so. I was screwed up past any repair for salvation, but I didn't care because the absence of moral judgment simply came with the disorder.

Again, it was all bridges I'd passed long ago. I'm insane. Big deal.

If I thought about it, there were perhaps a few factors that could've contributed to my insanity: maybe the mom that denied my existence or the never-discovered father, my poetic longing for answers destroying the youthful innocence I once held. Or the severe isolation from the outside world could've done it, essentially just a side effect of living in the middle of nowhere. Some call it Elk City, Pennsylvania, a humble little village with crumbling small businesses in what we pathetically call "downtown". The houses spread out and up the surrounding hills, making the winters hell. It was home though. Disgusting, abhorrent, suffocating home.