Chapter 4

A picture in the living room sat on top of the television set. The couple in the photograph was overweight and middle-aged. The woman, MJ’s mother, stood to the left holding a spatula. His father, I surmised, was positioned on the right. Neither smiled and proved how hard of a life they had lived together, unable to survive with each other.

I kissed the kid goodbye on his forehead and brushed a hand through his reddish hair. I thought about strangling him with my bare hands, suffocating him with a pillow, or punching him to death. None of those violent actions occurred, though. Instead, I had decided that I had wanted MJ to live. I wasn’t going to hurt him. He was just a kid, I realized, and I wasn’t into murdering children—ever.

Thereafter, I left the cabin and headed through the woods, back to the highway, a blurred future, and recalled in my memory that MJ was only one of four men that I didn’t murder.Part 2: Damian Truth

6: The Witchdoctor