A Chat After Evil
I looked across at the mess and felt my body surge with all the glory of being responsible for it.
“Shit, sir, I thought you might lose your nerve at the last moment. You don’t care, do you?”
I could have smiled at him or said something stern; a wink would have cut things down at that moment, but I wanted him to keep wondering. What makes a man so powerful?
“You don’t give a goddamn shit.”
This was more talking than he needed to convey.
“I give every shit, you dog! If there’s shit to give, I’m giving it. I’m making a mark here for everyone, and if you ever doubt that again, I can’t express how angry that will make me. If you want to find out what that anger means, then by all means, keep going with that mouth, and you will be eating shit. If you’re lucky.”
“Sir, you are my hero.” Clicked his heels, turns, goes. I shoot him in the back of the head.
There was someone watching. I don’t know who, but I know someone had their eyes on me, and if they heard his cheek… ha!
The sound of the shot echoed off the empty buildings and down through the field where I stood. It ricocheted around my head and sounded so much louder than the explosions earlier. Followed by another long silence.
I missed him then, my fabulous little second-in-command. Such a funny sod. Such a happy little fella. Fresh off the boat feel to him every time you had a little chat over cards, beer, or whatever passtime we passed with, in the long hours between things. Why did I kill him? I had already forgotten. After all, I’d be lonely now.
Then there was that someone again. Yes, someone else was here, and they would have heard and seen and knew that my little sidekick needed putting down a peg, or how would that make me seem?
But who? Out here? With nothing. Those buildings are empty of life. They are burning, and nothing would have stayed in and lived. The fields stretch flat for a hundred miles. There is no cover, no helicopter, and no dust trail of feet or tyres. Is it all post-event paranoia? That never bothered me before.
What is it? An animal low to the ground? A rat, a lizard, a fucking eager beaver cockroach? There! Stamp on him. Stamp! Agh, well, not him. “The bleeding bleeder still walks! Stay crippled, my dear cocky friend, I won’t mercifully finish you off, but you’ve given me an idea.”
I can see where the eyes must be coming from now. The mess. The lovely bloody mess.
The whole heap of bodies that had been a bunch of prisoners. I scour a while and see the eyes, open, alive, trapped between other dead friends and family.
“Hello,” I say, “How are you?”
He doesn’t answer, just stares. I didn’t expect him to; he’s probably dying slowly from the crush or the injuries we gave them. He’s probably too angry or scared to start a wee chat with me.
“Don’t worry, son, I can monologue with the best of them. I can do the talking. I’d like to finish you off and put you out of your misery. But really, it’s not for the best. What would that make me? A hypocrite, that’s what it would do. You see, I enjoyed the massacre, and I’ll enjoy the next one.
“If I stand here and say to you, ‘Nothing personal, it had to be done; I can stop your pain though,’ I’d feel awfully guilty, as it’s simply not true. Ok, I don’t know who you are, but believe me, it was personal enough. I was high as a kite as I slaughtered you all. Every moment was bliss. I can’t pretend anything else.
“I don’t care if you’re suffering, that’s the bloody point. I’m not about to make the charade of a conscience now. I care, but only for the violent beauty of it and the screams, and hell’s bells, son, the look of tormented anguish in your eyes. It’s invigorating for me.
“But I must depart now and look for more victims. It’s been a great day.”
Sorry to disappoint you, reader, but I now walk away, and he survives for at least another day on his own and in great pain. He doesn’t kill me in his last effort of life, and I go on to enjoy my evil for decades to come. I die a very old man in a comfy bed.
But let’s try it anyway, for old times’ sake…
And they all lived happily ever after.
