Little Angel

Ethan Triche

Luckily my mother was the one to pick up the call from school. She kept it from my father. I felt bad. She knew why I acted out. She couldn’t do anything about it though. She couldn’t even punish me, like she should. She’d never punish me for anything. I had to learn to punish myself. I had to learn morals on my own. I was doing okay, all things considered.
“I’m sorry, mom.”
She moved my hair out of my eyes and smiled. “It’s only three weeks. You’ll be back into action in no time.”
“What am I supposed to do? Dad is here most days.”
“Go out and play. You like playing at the pond, right?”
“Yeah…”
“I’m sure you can find something to do. Only three weeks. Then you can join your friends back at school.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“Then you’ll find some.”
“People don’t like me, mom. They think I’m strange. A doofus, to be exact.”
“We can all find friends. Everyone isn’t meant to like everyone else. You just gotta find other doofus’s.”
That made me smile. “I love you, mom.”
She kissed my forehead. “I love you too, little angel.”


The next day I went to the pond. There were three police cars and two people in suits near where I liked to play. They were near where I buried my knife. I was going to get into even more trouble. Fuck. My life was going to be ruined.
A black van pulled up and two men jumped out. They opened the back of the van and started putting on scuba gear. What the fuck are they doing?
I watched as they submerged themselves for over thirty minutes. The suits stood around like dumbasses. The police actually were dumbasses. One of the suits looked too big to be real. The other looked like she was trying too hard; searching the tree lines, pushing brush aside, looking up into the trees, sifting through the grass with her foot. This try hard bitch was going to find my knife. She was going to find it and fingerprint it. I would fucking kill her. I swear I would.
The scuba divers surfaced and shrugged their shoulders. I wanted to cut them like I cut open the frogs. I wanted them to bleed into the water the same way. Why? Stop it. They didn’t do anything except waste their time. It was the woman. That fucking woman in the fucking suit that I should be worried about.


They only spent a day in my spot. I returned and ran to the branches under the tree nearby. I pushed them aside. My knife was still there.
I spent the next two weeks playing at the pond. I played in an entirely different area. I walked over the stone bridge to the other side. It was more difficult to find muskrats. The land sloped so they built their tunnels really deep, too far to dig. I had to lay down on my stomach near the bank, over the side. I watched as muskrats ran across the bottom of the water, in and out of their den. I raised my arm, knife in it, and timed it perfectly. As the muskrat ran into its den I stabbed into the water. The murky water turned red, and I felt it squirming on the blade, cutting its insides up. I smiled. When the squirming stopped, I upturned the knife and had myself a rat-kabob.
I had never caught an adult before. It was much bigger than the babies. Shame it was already dead, I would have liked to torture it a little more. I stabbed it multiple times. The blood really spurted out of it. Shit. I got some on my shirt. I dipped my hand into the water and put it to my shirt, rubbing hard. It would have to be good enough. I returned to the muskrat and stabbed it some more, slower now so I didn’t ruin my clothes.
I got carried away and lost track of time. It was dark. I had to get home. I didn’t cross the stone bridge, even though it was the shortest way. I didn’t want to be seen anywhere near my old spot. I walked up the steep hill and through the trees. I heard rustling leaves to my right and turned. More rustling. I walked forward, squinted, then hid behind a tree.
There were two people, shadows, silhouettes in the darkness, fighting. No not fighting. One was slumped over a log and the other was stabbing it in the back, over and over. They picked up an arm and slammed it down on the log, then raised their arm high into the air and cleaved down onto the log, into the wrist of the one on the log. A hand fell to the ground. They repeated the same thing on the other hand. It was fascinating. I got front row seats to the best show in town.
The figure turned quickly toward me; I made a sound. I’m not one to get scared easily, hardened over time, but that’s one scary psycho that I’m not willing to stick around and learn a thing or two from, even though I wanted to more than anything. I ran as fast as I could. I ran through the forest and onto the road. I ran down the road to my house. As I reached the door and was about to open it, I realized I had dropped my knife. Fuck. I ran back to the kill-site. I couldn’t find my knife anywhere. I walked to the slumped over body. I saw the blood-soaked log. I saw the amputated hands on the ground. I circled around to the other side of the log and saw the man’s dead eyes. Still open. So cool!
I looked for the knife some more, but it was too dark. I gave up. I headed home.