I slipped back into my old ways… I don’t like listening to pain. I turn it off like I would a dial. Hearing it does something to me. Makes me feel enfeebled. The sound of tears fallin’ from the woman I love. She ain’t crying on the outside right now, but I know she is on the inside. She feels helpless and enraged. She’s afraid to even admit she’s afraid… What a shame.
I hated the sound of my mama sobbing because she didn’t know how she was going to pay the rent, or explain to us that our daddy wasn’t coming to pick us up and take us out to eat, like he promised. Instead, he was drunk somewhere, with a woman, taking care of her kids instead.
I hated the sound of my sister yellin’ and screamin’ that don’t nothing ever go right in her life because she don’t know how to love nobody, and when she takes a chance, it always blows up in her face. Those are cutting things to hear. Soul drainers.
Ms. Florence, I have been forced to become someone I never wanted to be. A disregarder of life. Now, I have to hear that truth, too. I have to hear myself break souls, stop breaths. I stole the breath of four men… made it so they’d never inhale or exhale again.
Life is precious. That’s what you told me. That’s what I believe. Despite how many dead bodies I’ve seen over my career and life as a whole, I know this to be true, but I must be deaf or dead, and don’t even know it. I don’t feel nothing when death comes whispering in my ear. I don’t feel a damn thing when I walk into a place, my uniform on, ready to work in the bloody muck and guts that the recently deceased left behind. Maybe everything that’s happened to me over my lifetime, my own pain and resentments, my detachment from death, helped fashion me into some type of monster. While people are throwing up at a crime scene, I’m humming a song…
Or perhaps I’m looking at this wrong… maybe my respect for life is what compels me to make sure Master never bothers her again. Maybe my respect for life made me not think twice ’bout killin’ that first man, then the second, and the third and fourth? I needed to preserve my OWN life first, and respect for life needs to start at home. It don’t even phase me now. I’ve done four of ’em. What’s one more?
I can try to rationalize it, to tell myself those were bad people who deserved it. I’d be right about that. Maybe I’m justifying it right now, but I just don’t feel no ill way about it.
I sit here next to my baby, and she’s lying on me, looking at the TV. Her hair is soaking wet, and I hope she don’t catch cold. She’s curled up in a ball, a million thoughts racing through her mind, I’m sure… I ’magine she’s gonna finish the rest of that bottle of wine by herself, then grab another. I ’magine she’s going to want me to fuck her until she goes deaf, dumb, and blind. I’ll do it. I’ll turn the music on, touch her all over, and fuck her clean out of her mind, and I’ll give her peace of mind, too. I’ll kill for this woman, Ms. Florence, and won’t think twice about it. That’s why I imagine you’re not too pleased with me. I can’t change that, though. I am who I am. I can sit here and pontificate about how I became this way until the cows come home. It won’t change a damn thing. You and I both know it.
I’ve fallen for her hard. We don’t have to say it to each other all day—we just know how we feel about one another. It’s real. It’s for grown up folks, and I’m here for the long haul. She’s fallen in love with a cold-hearted, deaf-to-pain killer…
I don’t want my baby to have to live that way though. Once you kill someone, you ain’t never the same, Ms. Florence. You can’t ever go back. Legend refuses to tell anyone how many folks he put down like sick dogs, but I know the number is something out of this world. We killed for different reasons, but there’s more than one way to do it, and sometimes, it don’t involve no gun, no knife, no weapon—except the mind.
Sometimes, all you gotta do to kill somebody is set their world on fire with obsessions, lies, neglect, mind games and manipulation. Then, once they’re good and burning, you sit back, laugh, and refuse to let them dance in the rain…
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s burnt, honey, but if you put enough butter on it, you won’t be able to tell.”