I’d started cutting myself again. I’d done it as a kid, and during my time in prison, just to feel something other than the pain caused by everyone else around me. How fucking sick is a world that you get to the fucking top of a mountain, and the same little shit you were as a kid is still there. Matter of fact, I did it worse now than before. Made some pretty rows like speed bumps down my forearms. Unless you looked real close, they weren’t as noticeable as the tattoos. I wasn’t showing off.

I just didn’t give a fuck about hiding things anymore. I had nothing to hide, I am a flawed creature right? A sick fucking puppy? But I’ve tasted purity, and I’ve made myself whole. Killing the kid had twisted me up, and I was having a hard time putting things back into the neat little order that allowed me to get out there and help those poor fucking kids with their schoolwork. To help guide them through their all too banal existences. Remember me saying about…finding the right ones. There just weren’t enough to keep me occupied honestly. I was hungry, really fucking hungry. It was a hunger I couldn’t sate.

It was a moment of self doubt. And I was trapped in that fucking 9 x 9 square concrete cage on campus when it happened, wearing a stupid fucking tie and looking like some preppie asshole out of a fucking catalog. It felt like someone else’s skin. Staring down at the shitty PC with the green monochrome screen they’d given me and then taking a deep breath…leaning back in the fucking piece of shit faux leather chair, and sending my boot into the monitor, crashing it into the wall.

Couldn’t tell you why I had tears in my eyes, but fuck you for asking. Fuck you for noticing. Planting both feet and standing….my body moved in jerks as I grabbed the bookshelf and shoved it to the floor, filled with worthless shit about “finding an idiots cheesy golden parachute for dummies”

At the time, I thought I needed to FEEL something. But when I look back, really, it was about not feeling THIS. I’d tipped the balance just a little bit the wrong way. There were going to be consequences for vengeance. …

The more I moved towards some righteous pompous place in my head the angry things had gotten inside, the more they stirred inside pushing at the newly built walls for cracks. Maybe the boy hadn’t come out of the trunk at all, maybe something new had bottled them all in. It was hard to know. You tell enough lies and you can make someone believe anything. If you get really good at telling lies and you can even make yourself believe them.

What was I supposed to expect? Change isn’t a rosy fucking proposition. Change was painful and there was no denying what I was and what I did no matter how much metaphor or parable I built to justify what I was. A pig, a monster, an asshole, a snake….I’d never be anything else no matter how I dress it up. Which was the lie….it made me laugh, hard and crazy. I hadn’t laughed like that…ever…and it scared me. It was like my personality fractured just enough to where my right hand didn’t know my left. I could smell the adrenaline, the fear, the shudder, the laugh turned into a wail and a sob.

I’d collapsed again down to the floor to my knees in a strewn room full of books and papers, a smashed computers and a filmed over dirty window. Reaching over and taking the box cutter and slicing my palms open quick and easy. I wanted to feel the sting for days, I wanted to take months to heal. I wanted it OUT. Get the FUCK out of me, god damn it…the blood, pooling and I pushed my hands into fists, letting it drip down to the floor. I wanted to calm down, I wanted the pain to quiet me. And god I wanted to fuck so bad. I needed to feel powerful, in control again and I needed someone to need it, to give it to me. I needed a fix, like a junkie in my own way. I needed to get off and find balance, a wave of pain jostled loose by killing the kid….

I took some gauze from a first aid kit in the security office, wrapping it around my palms and sighing softly, they were immediately caked in blood, and I clenched my hands to keep them from scabbing over. I took a second stop in the bathroom, running my hand through my hair, trying to calm down, and did something I hadn’t done in….well
The day before I conned that family out of their money, promising their son’s cancer could be cured…I took a long look in the mirror. Just like this.

“Yeah…you fucking bastard…smile it up. Eat it you, piece of shit, you fucking weak bastard. You god damn scum fuck, you aren’t worth getting up tomorrow, better live your last fucking day on this god damn earth, you better go out and make something of yourself. You’re a god damn mistake and you’re damned to hell… “

As I talked I could watch the grin widen just a bit, hands gripping the porcelain of the sink and hunkered over it, like I was giving myself the great sell. I repeated every word, every time, and as I finished, my eyes closed and I took a breath. And there it was again, calm, collected, open soft eyes. I took a long breath, and chuckled. Even when I repeated those words, I never heard my own voice, I heard my Mothers….they were her last words before I killed the bitch.

Fuck her, and fuck the world. … and with that…he wandered into the night of the university, a weak jackal cowering in the shadows, fingers running along brick, waiting for something to remind him, he was powerful again.