Condemned

Chapter 3

Hannah asks if she can use my laptop.

            Hell no, Leslie shakes her head, continuing to read up on contracts and signing them to get into her destined place. Of course, Hannah starts screaming and whining.

            Of course, Leslie Hale mutters under her breath. Such a typical four year old.

            I’d like to thank my parents for being such bastards and making this demon child. Isn’t it easy to keep it in your pants? Or at least wear a condom. Pull out. Birth control. There’s so many ways to not end up with a bratty child that thinks she’s the queen of the world. Or, is treated like one and doesn’t understand why.

            I could snap her neck right now. I could pull out a pin from one of Mr. Hale’s dress shirts and plunge it into the back of her neck. Push her out the window. Strangle her. Stab her. Drown her.

            There’s too many options to choose from. The brat’s already stomping away into the kitchen to have a hissy fit on the tile floor.

            Pathetic, Leslie Hale thinks, searching up sinners from all over the world. Searching up people that have successfully made it to Hell with their consent or not. It didn’t really matter, anyway.

            A man slit a baby’s throat and killed himself right after. It’s no doubt he’s in Hell at this very moment. I’m jealous. That should be me in his spot. My skin should be burning off and eyes should be melting from my skull from the intense heat. Lemon juice should be being poured on my skin as someone cuts me multiple times. Dipping me in a salt bath. Letting be bleed out and die, only to revive and continue the process over and over and over.

            A woman by the age of thirty killed her cocaine dealer and ended up dying because of the cocaine itself; an overdose. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Some people die in the most idiotic of ways, and it’s funny. Tragic to some, hilarious and joke-worthy to another. And I don’t find things tragic. It’s rare that I do. And when I find something to bawl about, it’s over in minutes.

            It’s no wonder that the other children at school avoid my group. We’re fucking insane. And I’m not even sure that Briana and Noah are aware of it. To them, speaking of murder is a casual topic. Cutting out biological male’s spleen. Dissecting a toddler and inspecting their heart. Tying down your math teacher and using a chef’s knife to make their skin look like pages of a book that you can turn, but much more bloody.

            To us, this is normal. To others, this is psychotic. Crazy. Mental. Whatever you prefer. I really don’t give a damn.

            A smash from the kitchen. Continued crying.

            Having to leave the laptop, an article about a man brutally killing his parents blaring on the screen, I go into the kitchen. Hannah broke a plate. Goddammit, Hannah. This is why I should murder you.

            She’s bleeding from the web of her finger. It’s hanging off like a flap that you could lift up on the back of a pair of old pajamas, except gruesome. Bloody. I could easily just let her bleed out. Cut a little deeper. Remove a finger or two.

            But, Mr. Hale will be home soon, and Mrs. Hale is in Tokyo.

            So I have to bandage Hannah up.

            What a bummer.

            She’s still crying when I go back to reading an article about a man that gouged out someone’s eyeballs and left them to die in the middle of a forest in Ohio. Suck it up, I want to say. She’ll tell Mr. Hale. He’ll just yell at me.

            Amazing, Leslie couldn’t help but let out a laugh. I love my life.

            A teenager murdered his father. Cut him up into pieces. Cooked and ate his liver and heart. Found tearing skin off of his father’s muscles after police were called in complaining about the horrible stench rising from the neighboring house after two weeks. Teenager put on death row, now serving time in prison.

            There’s no doubt that he’s in hell right now. Getting cut up into pieces slowly with a butter knife. Someone blinding him by sticking toothpicks in his pupils. Cutting off his penis and watching him bleed out as he cries and pleads for it to stop. Death, and repeat. Death, and repeat.

            And I’m jealous. That should be me, you twisted son of a bitch. I should have slaughtered my father and let him rot. Ate him for dinner and fed him to Hannah. Maybe I should have slaughtered her, too. Slow. Torture her. Cut off her cheek fat. Saw off her baby fat. Pull fingernails and toenails.

            Put her in as much pain as possible before she finally dies of exhaustion and blood loss.

            Mr. Hale isn’t due home for the next eight hours at least. Maybe I could just grab a knife from the kitchen and slit her throat.

            No, no. I have to wait for the right time. Drag it out and enjoy it. Not just some quick fix of gore and leave Hannah lifeless on the floor. Boring, too boring. But it would boost my chance of landing myself in hell. Maybe if I gutted  her. Pulled out her nails. Gouged out her eyes. Scalped her and wore her ratty hair like a grotesque wig. Sewed her mouth shut.

            And when she finally died, I would finally wait for Mr. Hale to return home and I’d do the same thing to him. Bye-bye, Father. It was nice knowing you. Oh, you don’t love me. I’m just Leslie Hale, your first daughter. Pushed out of Mrs. Hale’s vagina. Caused her to be burdened with ugly stretch marks and made her throw up every morning for nine months.

            But this plan would have to wait for another time, because the front door swings open, and the tap of my father’s cheap, faux leather shoes tap irritatingly against the wood tiling.

            “I’m home,” he calls out. Hannah responds with a sob and a blubbering noise.

            Leslie simply continues reading about sinners.