ext. play (brallon)

2_absinthe

Dallon's Handy Psychopathy Rulebook: Five Ways To Act Less Like A Decent Human Being, And More Like An Emotionless, Unmoral Asshole (important note: my twelve year old self did not plan this out detail by detail sat at his desk in his gloomy bedroom - no psychopath ever wants to be a psychopath - but it's always useful to note these things down as you go along).

Rule Number One: Distance yourself from humanity young.

Unbelievably enough, though I was raised by the finest royalty, I wasn't actually born into it.

At the age of two, when I took a newfound interest in the concerning activity of capturing daddy long leg spiders and ripping their legs off of their bodies while they were still alive, my birth parents decided to take me to see a therapist. When the therapist asked me how I'd felt as I dismembered these innocent arachnids, I replied: "Nothing. Lots of people are scared of spiders, anyway, so if they die then people won't be scared of them anymore."

The therapist had quickly jotted something down into his little notebook before asking my parents, very explicitly, if I had trouble maintaining social relationships, or if I had any issues with my temper. My mother had nodded far too eagerly, disregarding my presence entirely as she proceeded to tell the therapist about the time I managed to break the guinea pig hutch into a million pieces after repeatedly dragging it up to the top of the garden hill, and rolling it into the concrete wall of the house at the bottom, all the while I screeched bloody murder because she wouldn't let me have "not even the whole cookie, mommy, just one more chocolate chip!" Two days later we'd found the decapitated guinea pig under the rose bush next to a dollop of fox poo.

Having gathered this information, the therapist soon concluded that I "probably" had antisocial personality disorder, but that we couldn't really do anything about it until I was much older, since legally a person can only be diagnosed if they are at least eighteen years of age.

After that, my parents disowned me.

Rule Number Two: It helps to be filthy rich.

I have no memories of my orphaned childhood, or of my adoption process - why on Earth one of the richest families in America would adopt any child is beyond me - which is why I'm 98 percent certain I was never adopted in the first place. In my head, the story goes like this: I was told by my mother to "stay put, and I'll be back in a moment" on the bottom step of a country house porch. The housemaid who had found me sitting there three hours later was kind enough to introduce me to my brand new family. They'd wrinkled their noses in disgust at the thin, dusty boy ruining their tunisian rugs with his sooty footprints, but reluctantly accepted me as one of their own. I despised them, and they despised me, and not a day rolled by when I didn't think about gouging their eyeballs out of their sockets with a spoon.

But, it is them I have to thank for the way my life has turned out today. If I'd been raised by a family any less ignorant, I'd be serving custodial sentences every other week, under the constant watchful eye of the looney bin - it is a tormenting place where I more than deserve to be right now, but with a lack of criminal record, my warranted future there is looking more and more fanciful by the day. It really is a rather brilliant victory to live by, and I shan't be making plans to stop living any time soon.

Rule Number Three: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a given.

You could go as far as to say that I have an obsession with my own desires.

The fantasy of killing, to a psychopath, is like absinthe to an alcohol addict. Each person that I see perish will come back to haunt me, but these are the spirits that will remain trapped within the walls of my head like it is their prison. Even after their deaths, I make sure that they suffer. Their screams rattle my skull, torturing me away from sleep, but their lips mouth wordlessly, "need more, need more, need MORE," and for each new spirit that I welcome, my heart grows a fraction warmer.

Rule Number Four: There is no off switch.

I will steal away your lovers, your brothers and your sisters, your sons and your daughters. I do not care for your hollow pleas; the rules state that if you so much as irritate me, you're going to wind up dead on the ground. So, if I were you, I would refrain from speaking a single word, 'lest you wish to become a dead man walking.

Unless, by some futile chance, you can prove yourself to be a worthy accomplice. I've never really thought to consider the idea. Companionship has never been up there on my list of expertise. Lust, however, is a beginners lesson in all shapes and forms of relationships. One does not require the emotion of love to be capable of lust, therefore only lust is needed to ensure a successful seduction process. And seduce, I can. However, you must always be aware that I do not believe in such companionship, lustful or otherwise, and until the witches I've told you to burn have been burned, your name will stay in its place at the very top of my kill list.

Rule Number Five: Never take a sip from a glass that somebody else has bought for you.

That one is for the rest of you normal beings. Nothing more than common sense, really. But, of course, you'll be drinking it down anyway, because you were taught to be grateful for the things that aren't truly yours.

I wasn't.

Don't you know that absinthe makes the heart grow fonder?