What Faith Is

Audio version available from Morgan Scorpion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVPZgRLjaU0

I am a killer. Always have been. I realized it when I was seven, sitting in Santa’s lap. He fixed his jaundiced eyes on me and croaked out his starchy line. “What’cha want for Christmas, little girl?” spittle, graying teeth, breath like old bread. I knew this man, this imposter. He worked at the tractor store outside of town. My dad took me there, sometimes on Saturdays, to pick up parts and pieces needed to fix up old mowers and bicycles for re-sale, extra money, the college fund. I never made it to college.

Strangely enough, my formative studies began at that same little tractor store, a home and garden type business, hardware, etc. So, picture me, a child, pink and blue clothes, sucking a slush drink in the long-blade and axes aisle, studying. Machetes, sling blades, hatchets, spades--I didn’t know what these sharp, pointy things did, but when the store man (pre-Santa) rounded the corner, dull yellow eyeballs wandering, overweight and out of breath, I had a few wicked ideas. He managed a crooked smile that said things to me, instinctual prickliness in my mind.

He wants to hurt you.

All the blades, points, and shiny metal edges stood tall, at attention, soldiers ready. I’d yet to realize I was the commanding officer and would go on to a great campaign of slashing and killing. It was bound to start somewhere. And so it did, months later, at Christmas, on Santa’s lap, expected to go along with this fat-buckled, red-hatted charade, the voice came back.

You want to hurt him too.

I pinched him. I snuck my seven-year-old fingers under his stringy, fake beard and latched on to a blood vessel in his neck. Thumb and three fingers, my jaggly little nails cut deep. I clenched hard, like a dog in a fight, an alligator or shark, twisting, pulling, tugging until shreds of meat came off in my hand. I’m a killer, not a cannibal, but evidence is evidence, and the quickest thing was to shove it through my missing front teeth, swallow it whole, and turn on the tears while “Santa” writhed and gasped on the hard floor in front of me. He bled out and died. It’s hard to get an emergency medical team through a crowded mall three days before Christmas. And even after taking him away, the blood still pooled on the tiles and zig-zagged in the grout.

A circular drain caught some of that blood. And within that drain, small red eyes peered through the grid. My killer voice had come to life, made real by violence, my first offering. I could hear it scratching around in the drainpipe, sucking and slurping blood drops, satiated.

And now, umpteen years later, after special schools and facilities, parents walking away—from me, and from each other, only to die slow deaths with new families gathered at their bedsides--here’s me, a thousand miles away, alone, living in the bathroom of an abandoned office building, face pressed hard to the gritty drain grates, still looking for those eyes. I haven’t seen them since my seventh Christmas; they were everywhere that year. I couldn’t even brush my teeth without seeing a glowing, red peeper, glaring back from the sink drain. But despite countless offerings, almost monthly since then, they never come back. Oh, the blood I’ve poured down these dirty old drains. I drank some myself once to understand the allure. But, still, in the end, I’m a killer, not a vampire. It’s not my place to imbibe. I am the worker, the commanding officer, and I’ve stolen and salvaged an enviable collection of blades, knives, and axes. They hang and sway from hooks in the ceiling along with the drained/dead/dried husks of victims I’ve picked from large crowds.

Have you ever thought you might have the face of someone who needs to be killed?

I’ve studied them all, the faces of my dead and dying. I cannot find a pattern or objective reason for why I select the people I select, why I’m so sure this one should be sacrificed to the blood suckers. Deep down, I just know, in my heart, in my bones, an overwhelming gush of certainty and completeness. I guess that’s what faith is?

Maybe not. I overthink it. I need to kill. I’m a killer. I realize that the satisfaction of making perfect pin-stripe lacerations on someone’s legs or back is the same both with or without a sense of purpose. Some things simply do it for me. Symmetry. Precision. Carefully measuring out teaspoons of pain in tempered doses to mitigate shock, screeching, and flailing. I decide when you go. And until then, just hang there and bleed steadily, like a good citizen. You did this to yourself by looking the way you look, walking the way you walk, talking, smiling, breathing.

No, wait, that’s not quite right either, too prosaic. I did this too. I found you. I killed you. For the thrill of it? Feeding the pipe dwellers is only a bonus? Now where the hell are they?

I’m tired. I’m confused. I’m frustrated. I’m ripping up the drain grate with a crowbar and plunging my bare arm down there. I’ll get that little sucker. Deeper. Deeper. Ugh, what a buildup of gunk and slime, sliding under my nails, oozing over my knuckles. Anything solid? Nothing. I dig out a handful of mess and go back in for more. The suction is fantastic. And I’m wiggled in, shoulder deep. And stuck. And laughing, maniacal cackles. Well, don’t this beat all!

And just before I lose all feeling in my arm, a pricking down below, pinholes on the tip of my middle finger. Then sucking. It was your blood we wanted.

©2021 J. Brian Reed