The Taste of Death

Chapter 4

              I was always good at what I did, if I wasn't I would've gotten caught. I killed Violet and would've done it a hundred times over. I succeeded at everything to that point, since her death some things started to drift away or fall apart, a bit like everything that ages. My clientele has still been well in the sense of reaching new clients, helping those clients, and finding murderers via said clients, without their knowledge of course. Sometimes I thought I was too good at what I did, I didn't want to feel stuck killing for the rest of my life, but it felt like that was what I needed rather than what I wanted. Killing completed me, to say the least.

               Jamie Skies, a 17-year old loner that most likely got bullied and acted like he had a girlfriend but clearly didn't, lived with his father, Oliver Skies, and his step-mother, Karen Young. I saw a lot of potential in this kid but there was always something bothering him a lot greater than what he would put out. This kid obviously wasn't a killer, he wouldn't hurt a fly. Jamie visited me for four months before he even came close to telling me what really happened to him at home behind closed doors. Karen Young, a young and beautiful model, married a middle-aged billionaire that has awful social skills, it seemed like the classic gold-digging game to me, but I kept my mouth shut about that. Jamie was very straightforward with his hatred towards his step-mother, but he knew that blaming her for his own problems was going to do him no good, or so he thought. After constant digging which took months, Jamie started to open up about his real reasoning for wanting to see a professional. "Karen never cooked, she never cleaned, and she never cared about me. She and I can't stand one another and my father saw that but still chose her over me." Jamie stated, with his emotion built and his eyes about to water. "She actually cooked for me... she hated me and even told me that, so why would she cook for me?," Jamie rhetorically asked, I knew at the time he was going to say something out of line due to his anger and sadness being built up but I didn't even understand what the problem was at that point. "Jamie... I want you to understand that you don't have to say anything you don't want to, but you must know that if there is something that you feel is greater than you, you need to let it out," I told the troubled boy, in an effort to try to explain that he didn't have to say anything more, he continued with no hesitation. "Karen never cooked but when she did it was horrible, but the day she made food specifically for me, the atmosphere was different. I was sitting at the island in the kitchen and she sat a plate of food in front of me, it actually looked really good, but I knew something was up." Jamie knew how to get out of a conversation that he didn't want to be in but he also knew how to stay in a conversation that was going to benefit him in some way, if he was emotionally invested in it of course. "She walked away after talking to me like she cared, asking about my day and how school was, but it was just so... robotic." Jamie had stopped all his crying and all of his emotion was gone like he wasn't mad or upset anymore, he was just... there. "I happened to look around me and see this little Ziploc bag with some little seed or bean in it, and I knew it was suspicious because Karen came back in looking for it in a rush like she didn't want me to see it. Before she got them I took a picture of them using my phone and went upstairs," Jamie said, calm but with a little bit of nervousness in his voice like I wasn't an understanding person, although understanding people was my job. "I used an image search where you paste a photo on the internet and it'll show you what it is and other things related to it... it said it was ricin." Out of all the younger clients I've had, this one actually made me think. It was the first time I've ever had that type of client at that age. "Are you sure that's what it was? You can't always rely on technology, I'm not saying that I don't believe you but you want to be certain when you make an accusation such as this one," I told Jamie. I didn't want him to think I was trying to push him off the subject but I didn't believe him at first, which was undeniably reasonable. "Trust me, it was. I've done enough research and I've talked to enough people to know. I mean I'm a kid that's basically invisible to everyone around him, I've been a learner and an observer my whole life," said Jamie. That was the first time Jamie spoke about himself as a person, rather than being in a metaphorical state. It was the end of our session and I knew that in the end, someone such as Karen Young was a perfect fit to be my 10th, I just had to be smart about it to keep Jamie from knowing.

                "If you ever come around here again, you won't be able to go home to cry to your mommy ever again," said a voice that was in the darkness, as it held me down and the only thing I could do was get red with rage and feel my body heat up as if my anger was literally boiling my blood and I was about to pop like a balloon losing resistance. Suddenly everything dropped, I was floating in nothing, it was an abyss. I couldn't speak and I didn't have any emotion within me anymore, it was like I was taken out of the universe, and put into an empty sky, with nothing to lean on. After what felt like minutes, I ended up in a hallway of some sort, almost like a high school. I couldn't make out what I was doing but it seemed like I wasn't living my life, I was just watching what I was going to do. I looked down and saw that both my fists were clenched and there was a group of teenagers at the other end of the hallway, talking and laughing. I heard my teeth grind and my hands pulse as I walked towards the group and punched one of the people that was standing within it. It was a familiar face, one that I remembered nothing but pain corresponding with it, one that I erased from the face of the earth. I was fed up with the torment and the pain, as I took my spot in the world back. I shot up and looked around, I was laying in my bed and my alarm clock was ringing, I couldn't remember anything past that last moment, almost as if I never got to fully live it. Everything in that dream felt too real, I lived that exact moment before but couldn't pinpoint it. Joe looked at me from the foot of my bed and walked toward me, to do nothing but stare, as if he wanted to say something. "Let me guess, you gotta go pee, huh?" I asked Joe, I picked him up and walked out of the bedroom to take it to him to his "pee-pad." The only thing I didn't like about my apartment was that I couldn't take Joe outside all the time. Sometimes early in the morning or late at night, it makes life easier to allow Joe to use the pads and just dispose of them afterward, I excelled at disposing of things anyway, so it all worked out. The dream I had started to come back to me as I progressed through my daily routine, but I couldn't tell what was going on, it was obviously a moment in my past, but it was like it was trying to tell me something. I rarely felt exhausted due to getting such a well amount of sleep... and from the adrenaline, I got from killing, so I was confused as to why I was so tired that particular morning as if I ran a marathon beforehand. I took my shower and got dressed for another day of deciding who to kill when all my tiredness rose, it hit me. The person in my dream was almost killed... By me, and that wasn't just any other person either... that was the first person I ever killed.