7 Chapter 7: SERIAL AM I, Part 3

Unlike most kids who endured years of embarrassing hugs at school plays by mommy and daddy or an overabundance of presents on Christmas morning, my parents enjoyed showering me with hot scalding water and beating me in the basement with two by fours.Each special event, whether birthday, Christmas or Fourth of July came with another disappointing day of holiday expectations.Instead, birthdays were celebrated with spankings, sometimes with the back of large, strong hand and sometimes with a long, black, leather belt.While other children opened presents Christmas morning and celebrated a jolly fat man climbing down their chimney, I endured hours of pain, reflected by the cigarette burns on the nape of my neck.The Fourth of July fireworks in my house was made up of being tied to a chair, forced to watch any toys I did have being blown to bits with M-80s and packs of Black Cats.

Yes, it was then as the bits of flesh spun round and round, painting the beige sink red like a frantic paintbrush, that I realized that I had become numb to what I had been doing and in fact, there are just two people who earned the right to be next on the list.An elite list, that once these two-people joined, I could finally be free.

Yes, mom and dad, I mean you.I know, I know.To you it sounds like I have been rambling on and on.Me free and wandering this room and waving my large knife in the air.You both, gagged and tied down to the dining room table.It was important, to me, that you heard my story.You didn't raise a son who one day would become a doctor, saving lives late at night in the ER.You didn't raise a son with a wall of degrees and palaces around the world.In fact, you didn't raise a son at all.To raise a son requires love and nurturing.You raised a monster, feeding off your years of torture and pain.

The tables have turned on you finally, mom and dad, literally, as you are tied down to this table.My years of field experience together with years of pain brought on by both of you is what brought me here, brought us here.Whatever you did today, you did for the last time.When you went to the grocery store, did you realize that it would be for the last time?But who, you moan under the gag of Pine Sol-soaked rags in your mouth, goes first.Should it be the man who, instead of teaching me how to play catch or drive a car, bonded with his son through regular beatings.Or should it be you mom, who instead of attending school music concerts or providing soup when I was sick, basked in watching me cry with a whack with your wooden spoon.

No, wriggling won't help you father.You look like a marlin flopping around, begging for the warm embrace of the ocean.And no mother, your tears will not loosen the rope across your neck.Soon, soon it will all be over.You both will be dead and I will disappear, start a new life.No one will ever know it was me, never know it was because of you and no one will ever know where I went.I know who I was, who I am, a man who takes lives for the sport, for the revenge against you, because of the pain you caused me.Serial am I.

I have special plans for you father so just hang tight.

Now, don't try to scream out too loud mother as I slide this knife deep into your sternum toward your cold, black heart.I may be a killer but after-all, I am a gentleman and as always, ladies first.

If These Walls Could Talk, Part 1

I am the creak on the stairs, the cold breeze on the back of your ankle and the witness to lives that are not mine.I am not here to harm you.As a matter of fact, I am not sure why I am still here; trapped within the horse hair, plaster and lathe that has been my prison for over a century.

My eternal clothes look nothing like yours.I am a silent witness to the world that keeps spinning, a shell of the person I once was, soulless.

I don't remember what it means to feel my own pain, love or happiness.But I do feel the heat of your hate when you argue over finances; I feel the warmth of your passion when you caress each other in bed; I feel the coolness when you are ill and I feel the chill when another one of you cease to exist and join me in my prison.

You don't see me.I don't want you to.But you know that I am there.The light in the room that you didn't turn on. The chilling feeling of not being alone in the basement. Your dog stirs and stares at something beyond your sight for no reason.The faint orb protecting your sleeping baby in his crib.

I am not alone.A century of souls share your home, my home.Each with a story of how they got here yet with no memory of it.How did I get here?Why am I not where I was told I would go- heaven?Is it not real?Hell?Is this it? Or, are we somewhere in between?Trapped and intertwined in your life, observing everything, knowing everything.

On an endless loop, day after day and year after year, I watch you sleep, gripping your blanket and holding it close to your chin.Is this for warmth or protection?I watch as you eat, over-indulging in foods that never seem to fill your appetite.I see you everywhere.In the yard where I cannot go, the third floor where the darkest of us all waits, just waits.No space is off limits to my eternal surveillance.Even in the bathroom, privacy is not an option in a house cramped with lost souls.

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