SYNTHESIS

[HERE'S ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE WRITING EXERCISES THAT SOUNDED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.  STILL, THERE'S SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME SMILE ABOUT THIS TALE.  MAYBE IT'LL GET YOU A GIGGLE OR TWO.]


They told me I was special, but I wasn’t. Just ask Ed Gein.




The government found me in elementary school, from one of those pointless tests they periodically give kids. When they approached my parents about recruiting me, my father didn’t want to do it. My father, he, well, he got upset. He tried to resist.



So they shot him.



Mom, she cried a lot, but she didn’t fight back when they secured her with handcuffs. She, well, she screamed when the government agent cut my father open and started throwing his insides at me. He made me drink Dad’s blood.



At first, I didn’t like it, but a taste for blood grows on you.



They took me to some sterile facility, where they put me in a sensory deprivation tank until I developed telekinetic abilities. When I was in there, I wanted to die, but now I’m glad I can read people’s minds. Henry Lee Lucas knows.



When they let me out ten years later, they sent a whore to me, so she could seduce me. As soon as she’d succeeded at getting me off, she, well, she beat my stomach with a blackjack.



My father told me not to hit girls, but his voice was gone. I pounded the cunt’s face in and would have killed her if they hadn’t stopped me. Why did they, um, why did they stay my hand? I don’t know. Probably because she was used to government work, and they didn’t want to train a new prostitute. I don’t know. How the hell should I know? They don’t tell me everything. I just do a lot of, you know, guessing.



I’m not sorry I thrashed her. I just wish I’d killed her. She would’ve been my first at the tender age of sixteen.



They brought me a spider. (They started me out small.) When I killed it, they weren’t, you know, happy. They whipped me and made me eat the squished body. Then, they gave me another. After pulling its legs off and stabbing it with an unfolded paper clip over the course of a day, it finally died, and the government doctors were, you know, happy. Next, they gave me a bird. Then, a squirrel. Then, a cat. And so on. The lust for killing is incremental. John Wayne Gacy could tell you that.



One day, they gave me a baby. This time, it was me that was, you know, happy. I had fun for days, and when I was done, I requested to eat the squished body. It tasted like, mmm, pork.



Everyone was pleased with my progress. The fact that I could kill, not just with efficiency, but also with great joy, made me one of their most promising students.



Then came my final exam. They brought my mother to me. She’d been in a cage for, like, years and didn’t resemble my memory of her. I was told what to do, so I did it. I, um, I raped her, tortured her, killed her, and ate her. Not necessarily in that order. It was a blast. The BTK Killer is very familiar with these things.



I passed with flying colors. They released me into the world with brief instructions: kill, and kill often. So I did. I killed here, I killed there, I killed everywhere. I probably killed someone you know. You fear me, and we don’t even know each other. That’s a powerful thing. I think Richard Speck would agree.



But I, um, got caught. We all do, eventually. Don’t ask Jack the Ripper about that, though. He wouldn’t understand what that’s like. But most of us do. I was sloppy, and I got a bad lawyer, so I’m here, waiting to die with my brethren.



It’s okay. My goal was achieved. You’re scared, and the government’s there to help with a bunch of new laws that might make you safer but will never let you be free. Not free like I had been. Not free like the rest of my kind.



We all know each other. We’re kind of like a secret society, but we’ve never met. Our minds are open books, at least to us, but they’re not very creative reads, since all the stories are the same. Ted Bundy would freely admit this.



I nod knowingly across the corridor to my fellow prisoner, and he smiles back. You can always tell a government man.