Punishment aka What Is Mine

EIGHT

A child doesn’t know when it’s going to die. It has no concept of death. Instinctively it fights for life, like a lizard that’s willing to give up its tail when threatened with extermination. All beings are genetically programmed to fight for survival. Children as well. But they have no concept of death. A child is frightened of real things. The dark. Strangers, perhaps, being separated from its family, pain, scary noises and the loss of objects. Death, on the other hand, is incomprehensible for a mind that is not yet mature.

A child does not know that it is going to die.

That is what the man was thinking as he got everything ready.

He poured some Coke into an ordinary glass and wondered why he was bothering with such thoughts. Even though the boy had not been picked at random, there were no emotional ties between them. The boy was a total stranger, emotionally, a pawn in an important game. He wouldn’t feel anything. In that sense, he was better served by dying. He missed his parents, a pain that was both understandable and to be expected in a boy of five, and surely that was worse than a swift, painless death.

The man crushed the Valium pill and sprinkled the pieces into the glass. It was a small dose; he just wanted the boy to fall asleep. It was important that he was asleep when he died. It was easiest. Practical. Injecting children is hard enough without them shouting and kicking.

The Coke made him thirsty. He moistened his lips slowly with his tongue. A shiver ran through the muscles in his back; in a way he was looking forward to it. To completing his detailed plan.

It would take six weeks and four days, if everything went according to schedule.