"So that sort of thing makes a difference."
My final conventional act as a free man was to murder my family.
This is how I figured it out: My good friend Mitchell had a wife named Brenda and three daughters who no one ever heard a word from anymore as they were all in attendance at colleges and universities out of state. As a couple of two decades or so, Mitchell and his wife got along-for all anyone else could tell (including Mitchell)-rather well. There were spats every here and there about the lawn and the television being left on, or something silly like that, but of her Mitchell had no substantial dislikes, and in turn she had pretty much the same feelings about him. They were still attracted enough to one another to keep the bedroom hours on the clock at the right times. They attended all the neighborhood parties and get-togethers, and even hosted a few of their own on occasion, such as late last April when the kidnapped child of one of our neighbors was found after six months of disappearance, returned to the family by police, and the whole neighborhood partied at Mitchell’s house in the backyard by the pool in honor and celebration of the little girl’s safe homecoming.
In Mitchell’s heart there seemed little room for anything else outside of love and respect for his friends and his family. He liked fishing a great deal, and he did happen to like watching bicycle races on the television. He retained sensitive fondness for barbeques, chatting with his father about hunting, and betting on dog races . . . but his greatest passions in life were always pretty simple: Seeing his wife smile, having a beer with friends on the back patio and getting drunk to the national anthem on patriotic holidays even though he wasn’t very much of a patriot and admittedly turned his nose down to voting.
It came as both a horror and a heartstopping shock to the both of us when we skipped out of work early on a Friday one week and went back to his house with some beer and chips, only to find his wife Brenda naked on the couch under the postman.
I excused myself immediately and Mitchell said nothing of it for almost two whole weeks.
“I had a long talk with Brenda,” he said, getting into my car one morning (we carpooled).
“And how’d it go?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
He didn’t look all too gloomy, but the way he spoke betrayed the hurt inside him. Flicking a lit cigarette out the window as we pulled out onto the main road, Mitchell chuckled out loud in the type of manner someone might react in when they’ve just found out they’d been had by a clever joke from a sneaky friend. That was the saddest thing I ever saw Mitchell do.
“Well, I don’t necessarily recall when it was she claims she started to feel a bit anxious-as she called it-but well, to make a long dreary story short and to the point: She’s fucked Kevin Riley from down the street, and two of her co-workers ‘that don’t work there anymore.’ Oh yeah, and the postman. His name is Kevin too.”
At that I kept a cautious silence, and Mitchell didn’t seem like he wanted to follow up his story any, so we left it at that. What could I have said anyway? You should fuck somebody to get back at her? That would have been dumb. How about, well what were the other two guys’ names? That would have been wrong.
From that moment on, Mitchell’s mental and emotional disposition followed a rapid decline. He became cynical of everything. He registered to vote and gave his ballot check to the guy he thought was the biggest crook.
One afternoon over drinks at the Brave Gentleman Pub, he asked me if I slept with Brenda on the ski trip our families took to the Abble Mountains two years previous. Looking down into my drink and marveling at how sensitive the tinier cubes of ice were to the warm rye, I wondered if Mitchell had always suspected that, or if it were just his newfound and constant paranoia speaking. At the Abble Mountains, in a very private resort booked for five months out of every year for employees of our company, Mitchell hit a tree his first time skiing and it put him in a hospital bed for two weeks while the rest of us partied.
For Mitchell’s inquiry into the non-existent adulterous exploits between myself and his wife I had no semblance of an answer. I just collected my hat and coat, placed a tip on the bar and caught the bus home (my sad colleague was the carpool driver that day, unfortunately).
The next morning at work (we took separate cars), he apologized for suspecting me of having slept with his wife, which I do admit was something that truly hurt my feelings. In turn, I too apologized, for walking out on him when he’d clearly been at a hard place in his life. I should have been more on my toes and I just flaked out at a bad time for my friend.
I decided he needed a holiday. I took him on a weekend trip to Las Vegas. Just the two of us-and about a thousand drunk strippers.
Mitchell showed barely any interest in the strippers at any of the eight or nine bars we got sloshed at. He told me after maybe the sixth bar that there was no real point in having sex with another woman to get back at Brenda or to alleviate what he felt for how things had turned out with her.
After that trip he started with constant vocal declarations of his desires to see Brenda dead. “I can’t leave her, you know?” That was his provocation. He didn’t know what else to do. “Well? I can’t leave her, now can I?” So he’d just talk about running her over with the car to try to forget about it.
After two weeks of hearing Mitchell run through these ludicrous plans of execution and even sillier modes of escaping arrest, he hung himself in the garage of his home while Brenda was out to lunch with my wife Annie.
I could hear Annie’s scream out-piercing Brenda’s from next door when they found him.
And it’s this: Mitchell’s wife sleeps around on him and it’s Mitchell who has to carry the consequences of that?
Not on my time.
As a free man, bearing in heart and hand the freedom to choose how my history will be played out instead of just leaving it in the hands of somebody I just kind of hope to be able to trust, I shot Annie in the face with a pistol while she slept, and then I shot my son Calvin in the heart because I didn’t want him to have to grow up thinking it was his fault and going crazy over it for the rest of his doomed life. The bullet went through Calvin’s back, through the mattress, and was later pried out of a floorboard by a forensics investigator from the pathology lab. (That last part alone made the jury give me the kind of eagle eyes you can actually feel like talons in your chest.)
I was arrested two days later eating pancakes at a restaurant a few states over. I’d stuffed myself with pancakes for two days straight, at more low-key out-of-the-way diners than I ever thought could possibly exist. Pancakes have been a favorite of mine since marriage, I think, and I had a feeling I’d get none in prison. So there you go. Planning ahead.
My short flight from consequence lasted me enough time, though. I don’t want anything anymore, anyway, so I’m fine.
Murder by electrocution. That will be my epitaph; that’s how it will be because my lawyer is getting paid well to see things out after I’m gone supposedly next year in July.
This is how I figured it out: My good friend Mitchell had a wife named Brenda and three daughters who no one ever heard a word from anymore as they were all in attendance at colleges and universities out of state. As a couple of two decades or so, Mitchell and his wife got along-for all anyone else could tell (including Mitchell)-rather well. There were spats every here and there about the lawn and the television being left on, or something silly like that, but of her Mitchell had no substantial dislikes, and in turn she had pretty much the same feelings about him. They were still attracted enough to one another to keep the bedroom hours on the clock at the right times. They attended all the neighborhood parties and get-togethers, and even hosted a few of their own on occasion, such as late last April when the kidnapped child of one of our neighbors was found after six months of disappearance, returned to the family by police, and the whole neighborhood partied at Mitchell’s house in the backyard by the pool in honor and celebration of the little girl’s safe homecoming.
In Mitchell’s heart there seemed little room for anything else outside of love and respect for his friends and his family. He liked fishing a great deal, and he did happen to like watching bicycle races on the television. He retained sensitive fondness for barbeques, chatting with his father about hunting, and betting on dog races . . . but his greatest passions in life were always pretty simple: Seeing his wife smile, having a beer with friends on the back patio and getting drunk to the national anthem on patriotic holidays even though he wasn’t very much of a patriot and admittedly turned his nose down to voting.
It came as both a horror and a heartstopping shock to the both of us when we skipped out of work early on a Friday one week and went back to his house with some beer and chips, only to find his wife Brenda naked on the couch under the postman.
I excused myself immediately and Mitchell said nothing of it for almost two whole weeks.
“I had a long talk with Brenda,” he said, getting into my car one morning (we carpooled).
“And how’d it go?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
He didn’t look all too gloomy, but the way he spoke betrayed the hurt inside him. Flicking a lit cigarette out the window as we pulled out onto the main road, Mitchell chuckled out loud in the type of manner someone might react in when they’ve just found out they’d been had by a clever joke from a sneaky friend. That was the saddest thing I ever saw Mitchell do.
“Well, I don’t necessarily recall when it was she claims she started to feel a bit anxious-as she called it-but well, to make a long dreary story short and to the point: She’s fucked Kevin Riley from down the street, and two of her co-workers ‘that don’t work there anymore.’ Oh yeah, and the postman. His name is Kevin too.”
At that I kept a cautious silence, and Mitchell didn’t seem like he wanted to follow up his story any, so we left it at that. What could I have said anyway? You should fuck somebody to get back at her? That would have been dumb. How about, well what were the other two guys’ names? That would have been wrong.
From that moment on, Mitchell’s mental and emotional disposition followed a rapid decline. He became cynical of everything. He registered to vote and gave his ballot check to the guy he thought was the biggest crook.
One afternoon over drinks at the Brave Gentleman Pub, he asked me if I slept with Brenda on the ski trip our families took to the Abble Mountains two years previous. Looking down into my drink and marveling at how sensitive the tinier cubes of ice were to the warm rye, I wondered if Mitchell had always suspected that, or if it were just his newfound and constant paranoia speaking. At the Abble Mountains, in a very private resort booked for five months out of every year for employees of our company, Mitchell hit a tree his first time skiing and it put him in a hospital bed for two weeks while the rest of us partied.
For Mitchell’s inquiry into the non-existent adulterous exploits between myself and his wife I had no semblance of an answer. I just collected my hat and coat, placed a tip on the bar and caught the bus home (my sad colleague was the carpool driver that day, unfortunately).
The next morning at work (we took separate cars), he apologized for suspecting me of having slept with his wife, which I do admit was something that truly hurt my feelings. In turn, I too apologized, for walking out on him when he’d clearly been at a hard place in his life. I should have been more on my toes and I just flaked out at a bad time for my friend.
I decided he needed a holiday. I took him on a weekend trip to Las Vegas. Just the two of us-and about a thousand drunk strippers.
Mitchell showed barely any interest in the strippers at any of the eight or nine bars we got sloshed at. He told me after maybe the sixth bar that there was no real point in having sex with another woman to get back at Brenda or to alleviate what he felt for how things had turned out with her.
After that trip he started with constant vocal declarations of his desires to see Brenda dead. “I can’t leave her, you know?” That was his provocation. He didn’t know what else to do. “Well? I can’t leave her, now can I?” So he’d just talk about running her over with the car to try to forget about it.
After two weeks of hearing Mitchell run through these ludicrous plans of execution and even sillier modes of escaping arrest, he hung himself in the garage of his home while Brenda was out to lunch with my wife Annie.
I could hear Annie’s scream out-piercing Brenda’s from next door when they found him.
And it’s this: Mitchell’s wife sleeps around on him and it’s Mitchell who has to carry the consequences of that?
Not on my time.
As a free man, bearing in heart and hand the freedom to choose how my history will be played out instead of just leaving it in the hands of somebody I just kind of hope to be able to trust, I shot Annie in the face with a pistol while she slept, and then I shot my son Calvin in the heart because I didn’t want him to have to grow up thinking it was his fault and going crazy over it for the rest of his doomed life. The bullet went through Calvin’s back, through the mattress, and was later pried out of a floorboard by a forensics investigator from the pathology lab. (That last part alone made the jury give me the kind of eagle eyes you can actually feel like talons in your chest.)
I was arrested two days later eating pancakes at a restaurant a few states over. I’d stuffed myself with pancakes for two days straight, at more low-key out-of-the-way diners than I ever thought could possibly exist. Pancakes have been a favorite of mine since marriage, I think, and I had a feeling I’d get none in prison. So there you go. Planning ahead.
My short flight from consequence lasted me enough time, though. I don’t want anything anymore, anyway, so I’m fine.
Murder by electrocution. That will be my epitaph; that’s how it will be because my lawyer is getting paid well to see things out after I’m gone supposedly next year in July.