Daniel scooped out her eyes with a spoon. According to him, as a souvenir. The girl was already dead, and that pissed him off because he felt he should have done it sooner. Back when she kicked and cried and pissed herself. Our debut in the art of snatching life was like an unpolished poem; it didn't shine bright enough to satisfy my accomplice. I know he's itching for a second try.
We borrowed the van from a friend of Daniel's, some guy named Chuck, a guacamole and Doritos-loving pig. The guy owed Daniel a favor for giving him an alibi after he raped a Girl Scout. Chuck dodged the law, and now he waits on his living room couch for more girls selling cookies to ring the doorbell of his burrow.
I threw my head back. The ceiling fan spins and spins. I sniffed my fingers; they still smell like cheese and blood, and with the metallic scent, the memories waft up. I tilted my head toward the shelf, at the jar.
Violet eyes floating in formaldehyde, do they see the world differently? I thought so. That's why I followed her after choir practice and stalked her for days. I even apologized to her when I deliberately bumped into her on the sidewalk. She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. I remembered that smile when I cut her.
The blood gushes. Violet eyes twitch, trembling, they cry. The gagged mouth is unable to scream. They look at me, recognize me from the sidewalk, silently begging for mercy. Can you read the plea for pity in someone else's gaze? Yes, it's a singular gleam, a quiver in the pupil, the exact dilation to convey the most absolute horror. I kept cutting.
I traced lines from the forearm to the elbow. Cheek. Forehead. I moved up her abdomen ending at the left breast. The chest rose and fell to the rhythm of her frantic breathing. She sweat terror. I sliced off the nipple. My hands dressed themselves in red and gloss, rust and the stench of Doritos. Goddamn it, Chuck, clean your car.
Daniel kept himself busy with the mallet. He nailed the femur, then the knee, which crunched, and on the third blow a bone popped out to say Hello. Daniel bashed it back in with a fresh swing. The guest thrashed around and I had to tighten the bindings. My friend dropped his pants. I told him I forgot to buy condoms. He cursed and took out his frustration with a hammer blow to her stomach. Coca-Cola and half-digested popcorn erupted through the gag.
What a night.
I stepped out of the bedroom and found a surprise guest in the dining room. He reminded me of the kid from the other night, but it's not him. He's paler, younger, blond hair, small nose, wearing a white little sailor suit. Duct tape keeps him from falling off the chair.
"How's Tiara?" Daniel asks, facing the sink with his back to me.
"I don't know. I barely see her anymore."
"I've got an itch to sink my teeth into her. She's a bit older, yeah, but she's still hot. Reminds me of my mom… Don't forget the condoms this time."
"Should we go now?"
"Sorry. Busy."
"Where did you get the kid?"
"Rescued him from a hole. What kind of bastard buries a perfectly usable kid? The world gets crazier every day."
Daniel put some oil to heat up in a pan. He's cooking. He never cooks.
"I'm going to go see someone," I revealed.
"Not your weird internet friend?"
"No. He lives in Venezuela."
"Well… I'll save you some lunch. And get some good hand soap, my fingers reek of Doritos."
I nodded and left the apartment, my mind drifting through my ideas.
Why do we admire someone else? It's common for a man or a woman to have a role model to follow or praise. It could be a teacher, doctor, scientist, composer, writer, film director, et cetera. Generally, they are people with ideas or histories that managed to bury themselves deep in the sentimental vein of those who look at them with hope. They have something that the drooling, clapping spectator lacks. Call it intellect, money, or power.
Admiration is envy's pretty sister, because when we can't be anything more than mediocre, all we have left is to cling to our superior. It's not our fault. From the moment you're born, you're told and instructed to be the best version of yourself, and that version of you is, let's say, practically unattainable. Besides, how can you be sure of what it means to be "better" and "good"? Such a definition shifts with eras and societies. A decent man in the conservative Middle East stones an adulteress. A decent man in the progressive West applauds the adulteress.
My case is a different matter, because when everything looks opaque and morality is of little interest, you have to dig deeper in the mud to find the person who will push you and force you to ask questions. In the same way many praise Gandhi or Martin Luther King, another majority applaud the names Stalin or Fidel Castro.
Press down. Cut.
Pulse. She cries. GO TO SLEEP, a voice whispers in my head.
A week ago I found a tribute website to Jeff the Killer. The page is called Tell Me Jeff. I hit it off with the site admin. One night, drowsy from five hours of nonstop chatting, I confessed that my friend and I gouged out the neighbor's puppy's eyes. She asked me how much I enjoyed it. I answered, a lot. Nina was happy for me and sent me the address where the group meets.
The place is right here in La Crosse, but I won't give the exact address to avoid snoops. I headed down the stairs at the back of the building. On the metal door leading to the basement, the website's name is scrawled in savage strokes, red letters weeping like sockets where a spoon is inserted.
I reminded Daniel of Jeff's phrase; he thought it was funny to scribble it on the warehouse wall. GO TO SLEEP… Because at this hour bad children play, and a white face stalks my every step. GO TO SLEEP… Because the specter wants to take your place.
A ring of twelve chairs, only five people, six counting me. Nina takes the 12 o'clock spot; some random guy to my right in a cheap office suit; the veteran in military uniform two chairs to the left; my geography teacher sits to Nina's left and acted like we were strangers, a gesture I mirrored; a fat guy with a dark beard takes a seat two spots to the right of the hostess.
Nina is my age. She wears a lot of makeup, not to look pretty but to get closer to her idol, her face leaves behind an otherworldly pallor and dives into the style of black-and-white photographs, with thin red lips like rose petals breaking the monochrome; her hair ends in an ink-black ponytail; she wears loud purple clothes and long stockings with orange stripes. Nina flashes a wide smile, unnatural but genuine.
"We begin meeting number 32 of the Jeff Club. Welcome, my princes," It was an affectionate nickname. Her shrill, tinkling voice reminds me of a babysitter's tone. "Today we have a new guest. Say hello to Josh."
The others greet me in sync, none of them sounding enthusiastic.
"Josh contacted me about ten days ago. We chatted a lot, learned quite a bit about each other. I could almost swear we're soulmates," She looks at me. Everyone looks at me. Including the pale face floating in the back that no one else seems to see. "You know I'm very careful when it comes to bringing in new companions, so don't be suspicious and be open. He is like us, a nonconformist. About what exactly? You know it tends to vary."
Her gaze travels clockwise.
"Work. Society. The country. Family. Even the simple fact of being alive is often a cause for dissatisfaction. We are unhappy, that is a mistake. Jeff was the same way. But he found the answer in suffering, his own path to being happy. There is an answer! That is the key phrase! Repeat after me. There is an answer!" I chanted along with the others, feeling like an idiot. But Nina had a point that we are a society of unhappy people.
"To understand what I say, it is necessary to listen and learn the story of Jeff," she says, then looks at me. "Do you understand, Josh? Little is known about him, the police want little to be known. Thanks to some friends of my father's I was able to get insider information. Pay attention."
I nodded.
She begins to tell the story.
Jeffrey Allen Woods. Birth: April 3, 1986. Son of a conventional marriage. Brother to Liu. A middle-class family with no great joys or sorrows. The father got a promotion and was transferred to Wisconsin, a fact that led the family to move to a suburb in the county.
Jeffrey's school record reveals he had good grades, though he constantly got into fights with bullies. An event that set off several alarms was when a kid ended up stabbed in the arm during a brawl that included him and his brother. The police investigated, and Liu decided to take all the blame. The prosecution took Liu's age and clean record into account, they were lenient, handing down a half-year sentence in juvie. The event affected Jeff deeply, feeling guilty, saying he was the one who stabbed the bully and beat up the rest. He seemed distracted in class or sometimes fell asleep mid-conversation, hinting at insomnia problems.
Fifteen days later, a party was held for a kid in the suburb. Jeff was invited. His mother urged him to go, believing it might improve his mood. According to witnesses, Jeff got along well with the other kids. Until the same trio from the fight with Liu crashed the backyard. One brought a gun. There was a shootout, though no one died from bullet wounds. The ringleader of the group died from blunt force trauma to the chest area, Jeff's knuckles left imprinted on his skin. Another bully was knocked unconscious. The last one got into a brawl with Jeff that led them into the house's bathroom.
"A shower of alcohol and bleach rained down on them from the shelves!" She exclaims as if recounting a biblical event, jumping up to stand on her chair. "But..." She lowers her face and her voice, simultaneously placing both hands over her chest. "One had a lighter and the other didn't... My prince ended up being the lucky one. The suffering burned the veil away and he was able to see the truth, he was able to be free."
I imagined the scene. The alcohol catches fire and the chemical seeps into the craters opened by the heat. Desperate screams. Faces of shock. The son of alcohol and bleach is born from a wave of fire.
"Jeffrey ended up admitted to the ER at The Sacred Heart Hospital, in Tomahawk," Nina continues the tale. "He remained unconscious until the end of the year," She adds and orders a rolling cart with a TV and a VHS player to be brought in. "I got the tapes a couple of months ago. Don't ask how. A girl has her contacts and secrets."
"Is it legal to record the patients?" I wanted to know.
"Because of the problems the country has with the socialist threat and the terrorist wave, everything is recorded here. Secretly, of course, so as not to spook those who think we live in a free society."
Socialist threat... At this point, it sounds like something Mr. Burns would say to Smithers.
They shove the tape in and the monochrome image dances with static before stabilizing. There is no sound. It shows a patient sitting on a hospital bed, his face bandaged up to his neck. A nurse and a woman Nina points out as Jeff's mother are sitting and waiting.
Jeff keeps his head down, his body hunched and his hands balled into fists. He stays in that position for long minutes. Not much else happens, just the sight of a shattered young man.
Nina swaps the tape for one from a week later. The family (except Liu) gathers to see the condition of Jeff's face.
As soon as the bandages are cut and fall away, the horror becomes evident on the visitors' expressions. His burned lips are a pair of shadows; his skin as immaculate as a blank sheet of paper; his straight brown hair mutated into a tangled mess of black locks; the flat face and the terrible quality of the video turn his face into a white blur alien to all that is human.
The mother bursts into tears on the father's shoulder, the father in turn starts trembling. The nurses look in disbelief at what they see, exchanging glances, one of them runs to call a doctor, another hands a hand mirror to the boy who insisted on seeing how he looked. Facing his reflection, Jeff shudders, then throws his head back, his shoulders rising and falling, his mouth wide open to the rhythm of mute laughter due to the lack of audio. Nina pauses the video right on the frame where his face looks the most inhuman.
Is it normal that he ended up like that? I asked, and Nina said no, that it's a miracle, and continues explaining.
"He went insane. He needed urgent psychiatric attention... Maybe even to be institutionalized. But the father said no, and bribed the hospital to take Jeff away. Disfigured and demented, the Woods wanted their little boy back. So sweet... That very night my prince used a knife to carve a smile from ear to ear, burned off his eyelids with a lighter, and finally murdered his entire family. He sent them to sleep forever."
"Why did he do it?" I asked.
"Do what?" Nina blinks rapidly, as if bewildered at being questioned.
"Everything."
"The smile? Perhaps to always appear joyful. The eyelids? Maybe he loved his new face too much and yearned to admire it without interruption. The murder? There are starving demons in the human heart that cannot and should not be controlled. But in the end... What do I know? I'm just a fan."
The big bearded guy wheels away the cart with the TV. Nina resumes her speech.
"It is normal that little by little a strange sensation invades us, one that almost seems random and leaves you with many doubts. Call it emptiness, call it impulse, call it the need to feel satisfied and content with your life. Be born, grow, reproduce, and die. We are not animals; it takes more than that to complete us. Sometimes what we need is not pleasant for the world. But it doesn't have to be; the important thing is that we feel good and free with ourselves."
Everyone took their turn to voice their dissatisfaction, and explain the answer they believe is ideal and unique to finally quench the thirst that blackens their days and cannot be quenched with water. The veteran yearns to kill immigrants and their defenders, labeling them leeches fleeing ruined countries to suck the blood from his own from the inside... Surely if he met Daniel he'd look at him with bad eyes because of his Latino heritage, and even more so my friend from Venezuela. The veteran is planning a massacre at a Walmart, and we all wish him luck.
The wage slave complains about work, comments that he was transformed into a machine without the capacity to think or opine, trapped by the shackles of a salary and debt, those that sink their teeth in as soon as adult life begins. Rent, bills, taxes. Pigeonholed in a cubicle until his eyes melt from monitor radiation and arthritis causes him to be replaced by another younger, equally disposable robot. He wants to shoot himself, so the veteran gifts him a glock.
It is my teacher's turn.
"I can't resist it. The images fly into my head, in my dreams, when I walk through the park, while I eat lunch or shower. It tends to vary... Sometimes it's a car, or in bed in my apartment, even where I work. It could be a coworker, or my sister, or my aunt. I smile, satisfied... I want to be happy... But it's so... Inappropriate. It's a sin. I don't... I don't feel ready."
"No pressure. It will come out when it's supposed to," Nina says, and sweeps us with her gaze again, preparing to deliver a new sermon. "What we do is not corruption. It is filtration. Assimilation and liberation of our inner demons to achieve well-being. Enough hiding behind masks of morality imposed by people no more talented or better than us. Let us abandon the emptiness, let us feel full. Purification, enlightenment, Nirvana... That is the answer we must achieve at any cost. Only then will you be happy. Happy like Jeff. And when your time comes to sleep forever, you will leave this plane without regrets."
The meeting ends.
I arrived at Daniel's apartment. The scent of freshly served beef and vegetable stew greets me. The little sailor boy from the morning is gone, replaced by a bald, pot-bellied little man with a broken nose, wearing a t-shirt with a dark sweat-stained collar and boxers reeking of semen. Duct tape keeps him still in the chair.
"Hey, Chuck," I greeted the fatso.
"We're going to burn the van with him," Daniel announces while handing me a plate with mashed potatoes and broth with little cubes of meat. He wipes the blood off his knuckles onto an apron. "Not with his help, with him. Inside."
"I got it the first time. Did he talk to the cops?"
"Not yet. But would you trust this piece of trash?"
"I only trust you," I affirmed, speared a little cube of meat with my fork, and brought it to my mouth. I chew... Greasy, soft, and bitter. It tastes awful. I glanced around. "Where did you put the kid?"
"Bon Appétit," he replies with a magazine smile.
The police didn't take long to drop the case of a pedophile turned to charcoal. They probably even applauded after finding out. On the other hand, the case of the student decapitated with a paper guillotine received more attention. They caught the culprit, and the school needed to find a substitute for my geography class.