I Am Death

Sixty-six

With his back flat against the wall, Squirm sat alone in the darkness of his cell. His knees were pulled up against his chest and his arms hugged his legs so tightly they were starting to go pale. The tips of his toes were moving up and down robotically, as if tapping to the beat of a slow song only he could hear. Despite the darkness, the boy kept his one good eye open, staring at nothing at all. The pain in his left eye was still there but Squirm simply didn’t care anymore.

‘The Monster’ had left soon after he had told Squirm how much money he’d been paid by the boy’s father to take him away.

‘Do you know what your father said to me?’ the man had asked Squirm back in the kitchen. ‘He told me that once I had taken “that plague” away from his life, I could do with you whatever I wished — kill you in whichever manner pleasured me most — as long as your body was never found. Now, what sort of father says something like that about his own child?’

Squirm had trembled at those words. Not because of the threat of death — in his own way he had already accepted that that was what was going to happen to him — but because he then knew that the story ‘The Monster’ had told him was true. That was exactly what his father used to call him — ‘plague’.

Immediately, an avalanche of memories came crashing down inside the boy’s mind.

All of them bad.

You’re like a fucking disease, you hear? A goddamn plague that torments my life.

You are the reason your mother left, did you know that? You are a plague. No wonder you have no friends. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you.

Get the hell out of my face, you fucking plague, or I will tear you a new asshole.

‘I would’ve done it for nothing, you know?’ ‘The Monster’ had said, bringing the boy back to reality. His next words, though delivered in a chillingly cold voice, were overflowing with what could only be described as a morbid passion.

‘What can I say? I like killing people. I like looking into their eyes as life leaves them. I like to savor every drop of their fear. I like how they beg me for mercy... not God... me. I like how they cry. How they promise to do whatever I want. Yes, I like it all, Squirm, but most of all I like the way it makes me feel.’

The man had paused for a moment. Just talking about it had filled him with such exhilaration he was practically shaking.

‘Do you know how killing someone makes you feel, Squirm? Powerful... strong... special. No one can ever again tell you that you don’t matter because right at that moment you know that you matter more than God.’ ‘The Monster’ moved his head from left to right and as he did so he shivered in a creepy sort of way. ‘You are their God.’

‘The Monster’ had laughed at how spooked Squirm looked.

After that, ‘The Monster’ had locked Squirm back in his cell, telling him that he would see him later that night. That had been hours ago. Squirm had then sat down on his dirty mattress, hugged his legs and not moved from that position since.

The boy’s rational mind didn’t want to believe it but the more he thought about it, the more it all made sense.

Due to his father’s inability to hold down a job, brought on by his struggle with alcohol, they had moved five times in the past three years. Eight times in the past five years, which made making friends a very difficult task and keeping them damn right impossible. That fact alone placed Squirm in a not very desirable category — the category of ‘loner’. He had no friends and, since his mother left them, no family either, with the exception of his father. No one really knew who he was because he’d learned to play the ‘loner’ part terribly well. He kept himself to himself as much as he could, especially in school. He was, in everyone’s eyes, the proverbial ‘invisible boy’ and that fitted his father’s plan like a glove. All he had to do was drop by Squirm’s school to let them know that they had to move again. That was it. Problem solved.

No one would find that odd due to the family history.

No one would ask any questions.

And no one would miss him.

His father could then move to a different city and start a new life as a single, childless man, because ‘the plague’ had finally been removed from his life.

The emptiness Squirm felt inside was so devastating it made him break his promise to himself. Tears came to the boy’s eyes and, alone in his cell, he cried.

Now he knew that no one was coming to save him, because no one was looking for him.

No one had ever been.