I found him in the gutter, a bottle of booze hanging from his lip. He asked me for spare change, so I killed him. It was all the spare change I could muster. I left him in pieces in the gutter.
She asked me if I wanted to dance. I didn’t. So I told her a joke. “What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in water?” She shrugged. “Bob,” I said. “Ho, ho,” she said, “Is that all? I thought you were a killer.” So I killed her. I slaughtered her. I left her, robbed of breath, on the floor.
The man that came to the door wanted my time. I couldn’t give it to him. He insisted, so I killed him. His convulsing body stood a long time. I said goodbye. But he wouldn’t leave. He asked if he could come in. I gave him a shot that would have leveled most men, but he pushed by me and entered my home. He sat in one of my chairs, breathed my air, and shot it back out in foul smelling stories about the fall of the modern man and the need for his faith and his book. He smiled. He said he was so tired of people who wouldn’t listen. He said I was a man with a truly open mind.
I plotted his death. I sledged his brain with a baseball bat, but he merely chuckled. I aimed knives at his chest, but his skin was thick. I ranted about him, tearing out my hair. I knocked myself out. His mouth continued and he would not die.
So I sat, weak, as he smiled and talked, victorious in his humorlessness. And I waited for him to leave.
David Hammond 