Wicked

Jake 1

Jake

Sitting on a wall-shelf above my bed is a book with a pentagram on its cover, the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. It's the only book I own that I couldn't get through, unlike the stacks of other crime thrillers. I have a very short attention span and nothing maintains my interest for very long. Nothing except reading about murderers. I always get a thrill and imagine myself as the killer, getting off to the sadistic violence, everyone in the story so obsessed with finding me. When the killer gets caught at the end of the book I lay my head back after the thrilling, enrapturing journey... and consider how the killer got caught and what they could have done differently to evade the police.

At the end of the books – when I'm caught – the immersive story ends as if it was nothing more than a dream. No consequences, I go back to my day comfortably moving about in my apartment alone. I consume these books, and have a long mental list of every mistake they made to get caught and for the killings to stop. It is no longer I when the story ends, and each story feels like a trial run for the real thing.

In the kitchen I flick the latch to boil the jug, move around the breakfast counter of my small kitchen and sit on a stool. I look around at my small living space while I wait. Everything is neat and tidy. Nobody ever told me to clean up and I'm the only person who lives here, so I keep it clean myself. Self-sufficiency. I'd relied on myself for most of my life anyway.

With a twisted scowl I recalled my childhood. In the wake of such cruel circumstances, morality was never a concept I dwelled on. I was angry and bitter. To this day I never thought about right or wrong, or the lives of people that seemed to combust or unhinge at point of contact with mine. I only thought about having fun and what I wanted, with a fierce righteous insistence.

After a moment the jug trigger popped up, steam rising from the spout. I got up to pour myself coffee and replayed my life story, re-watched the past in my head as I did so, so often. Twisting a bolted screw even tighter.

I never knew my Dad. My Mum got pregnant with me when she was only eighteen and her traditionalist parents kicked her out of home immediately. Even so she refused to give up on me. With an all-consuming determination, perhaps in an effort to prove her parents wrong about her responsibility somehow, she exerted every effort to give me the best life she could despite the fact we had nothing. I was her single focus, her reason for living, and even when we were in squalid housing or homeless she did everything she could to spoil me. Wreaking of guilt at being unable to give me a better life, she endeavored to fulfill my every wish.

Even as a teenager my mother was very beautiful. And so am I: full lips, pink cheeks, glassy eyes and fine hair. I felt like the fair-faced young men from the Victorian era who turned the famous poets gay. The reason why people debated whether William Shakespeare was a homosexual. An attractiveness that was almost not masculine. The type of unquestionable beauty that could arouse bi-curiousity and attention from whomever, should I choose to experiment in pressing buttons or playing games.

From my birth we were on the streets. My beautiful mother found a man to take care of us until I was three. I remember his place the least, I think it was a normal suburban home. I only get flashes of standing in a cot and my mother coming into the room. The man I never recall seeing except at a distance, he was probably a weird type.

Between the ages of four to five we lived with another man who was distant with me. But Mum could afford to buy me whatever toys I wanted and teach me to swim in the backyard pool.

"You're my little prince." She often said to me at night, kissing my forehead after reading a bedtime story. I remember being demanding of her nightly tales and affection. We both understood she felt wholly responsible for my happiness.