iamom | fiction experiment

I'm a serious fan of short mystery stories, and I've been reading so many lately (along with full-length novels) that I was finally inspired to try something of my own. B is upstairs sleeping, but I had an idea and wanted to come down and try something with it. I'll re-read it in the morning. And again for the record, the following text is purely a work of fiction. And it's meant to be a bit twisted, and cold. I hope it ultimately comes across that way.

Killing appears to have come naturally to me. My first murder, if you could call it that, was executed without preparation. When I left the house that afternoon, I didn't know what I would end up doing at the end of the night. But when I returned to the house early the next morning, I wore my regular personality like a comfortable shirt. I passed that morning with my wife and our only son uneventfully: made them each their favourite breakfasts, sent them off to work and to school with their lunch bags. I even made love to my wife the next night to prove to myself that I could act normally after taking someone's life. And then, once the days turned into weeks without her suspecting that anything was different about me, I realized that I was prepared to do it again. And again, and again, and again.

Now to tell you the truth, I think that I'm doing a public service. I don't kill anyone who isn't already on the road to killing someone else at some point. These poor saps are just too ignorant to do anything to prevent it ahead of time. I consider my actions to be pre-emptive defense strikes, like the Americans in Iraq. I figure I need to remove these guys from circulation before they do some real harm to somebody innocent.

I own a bar on a secondary road near the airport. It's part of a motel that used to cater to tourists, but after they built a four-lane express highway that bypasses this road, the motel was foreclosed and I bought the place for a song. I had been itching for a change of pace for awhile, anxious to leave the tedious career that I'd found tedious since my second year into it. The bar provided a perfect place for me to settle, having always been a night owl who enjoyed meeting new people. I never did re-open the motel.

Business is certainly not brisk, but my wife's salary and bonuses as a partner in a downtown law firm help considerably to offset my operating costs. Actually, it's ironic that the place is still afloat, given the fact that I've killed several of my customers and will likely kill several more.

Like any bar, mine has its regulars. In my case, mainly men who work without neckties in a nearby industrial park. But I also get an assortment of plaid shirts from the country who don't appreciate the atmosphere of the bars in the city. The first one I killed was one of these. So was the second, and also the third.

The fourth one though, was different. He was a sales executive for the makers of Choco-Delite candy bars who really thought he was the cat's ass. He first arrived just after I opened the bar at four o'clock, and by the time the six o'clock news was on he had already demonstrated his considerable prowess as a drinker and all-round bullshit artist. I was considering my options when he suddenly left for a dinner meeting. I thought I might not ever see him again.

I wasn't unpleasantly surprised when he returned around 11 that night to pick up where he had left off. Like the previous three customers I'd killed, this one was a career drinker who obviously felt that he couldn't function properly without several drinks on board. He carried himself a bit more carefully than the others, but every time he headed for the can I could detect the telltale stumble-and-recover, the signs that he was too impaired for most other activities, including driving or carrying on an intelligent conversation.

But you see, it's always been that driving part that gets to me. It's the prospect of these guys driving away drunk that makes me do what I do. And it's not like I don't come by it honestly. After a drunk driver killed my daughter two years ago, I've never given these killings a second thought.

This sales executive was my last customer as I prepared to close at 1:00 AM. He was seriously impaired now, but I had let him continue drinking to see what he was going to do at the end of the night. When he confirmed that he was going to drive his rental car back to his hotel at the airport and that as usual, he felt as good as ever, I felt a familiar shiver of apprehension flutter through me. It intensified as I prepared what would be his very last drink.

As with the others, that feeling of apprehension only disappeared a couple hours later, after I had effectively disposed of his body. And as with the others, a familiar sense of peace settled over me as I returned home to my warm bed. I slept dreamlessly with my arms around my wife until her alarm went off two hours later and I rose to prepare breakfast for her and my only son. They were each surprised to find a Choco-Delite candy bar in their lunches that day, each wrapped with a note telling them that I loved them.