Short Mysterious Stories

My Hobby

By: Tom Fabian

Top of the morning to you. I hope whoever is reading this is enjoying their day. I, on the other hand, have had better days—you see I haven't been feeling too well lately. But poor health and all, there comes a time in every man's life when he must sum up, and that's what I'm doing.

I suppose I should start by saying I was always a loving husband and father, and that those objects of love were taken away from me much too soon. That, however, is not an aspect of my life I wish to go into at the moment—if you are really interested in finding out my full story, you'll have to take a trip to the nether world and ask my wife and son. It's the other facets of my story, my character—which I'd kept hidden from those nearest me, hidden even from my dear Stella—that come to mind as I sit here with little to do but think about the past.

Dear Stella, who loved me because I was dependable and, yes, maybe even because I was boring. Stella needed stability in her life and found it with me. I had to keep certain things hidden from her. I was the family man who would come home from work and take care of the usual mundane tasks, then after dinner settle down with the paper or watch the game on television. As far as my wife and son were concerned, the days went by in a quiet uneventful fashion. And we were happy like that. "George has no interests, no hobbies even ..." I once overheard my wife saying quite happily. And a neighbor once: "George's as empty as a shell." It didn't bother me a bit.

The fact of the matter was, I did have a hobby—a very special hobby. One I could only share with a select few. You see, I kill people. Or I should say, I used to kill people. I know what you're thinking: thrill-killer. Those nasty reprobates Leopold and Loeb come to mind. The bastards should have been sent to military school at an early age. Not enough parental discipline! Or you might be thinking I'm a killer in the vein of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley, a sociopath who kills to get ahead. No, I used to kill in order to help people; it was sort of like charity with me. I would see people having a hard time and I'd use my talents to get rid of, say, a nasty father, a vicious wife, an exploitive uncle. You're probably thinking I'm some kind of a maniac who is making his vice sound like a philanthropic enterprise ...

Truthfully my hobby went both ways—it is, after all, as important to give, as it is to receive. There was always a beneficiary to the crime, and, in that alone, I always took the greatest satisfaction. But the challenge, the planning, the calculation, the anticipation, the peculiar sensation of looking into the eyes of my prospect and sizing them up—that's where the real thrill was. And, of course, the knowledge that I had rid the world of a particular vermin. The actual killing? There was really no joy in that.

I've written only a page, yet I feel I've come across poorly. So maybe I should explain a few things about myself. Ask anyone about George Blake and they'll tell you he's a gem of a man. He never ran a red light, was quick to lend money to his friends, never looked at another woman while he was married, went to church every Sunday, and was always willing to talk a colleague out of divorcing his wife or having an affair. In short, by most standards I was a model citizen.
But I digress; back to the task at hand. I took on my hobby just short of my 29th birthday. I used to stop off at a bakery on 3rd Avenue every morning on the way to work. The owner was a squinty-eyed Belgian who used his wife and children as indentured servants. A few times, I caught him bellowing at his wife for making a mistake on the register, and once from where I was standing at the counter I saw him slapping her around in the backroom.

I'll never forget going in there the morning after I was fired from my job. I'd been up all night, hadn't showered or shaved and walked in completely disheveled. Mrs. Gruen was behind the counter. She took one look at me, and the next thing I knew I was sitting at one of the tables with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Danish in the other, telling her of my troubles. Then her husband came out and spoke roughly to her in Flemish. She quickly got up and returned to her work.