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  I intended to film myself, slowly destroying the man's body, for the future pleasure of Donnie's viewing at a later date. In fact I...

  A kaleidoscope of deafening sounds battered the inside of my mind. Masses of blurred images accompanied each sound. I couldn't make out any detail, nor did I want to. All I knew that gallons of congealed blood painted most of the pictures now dancing around my fucking mind.

  I managed to grab the bannister to avoid tumbling down the rest of the stairs. I sank to the floor. As the seconds crawled by, their grip upon my mind gradually receded. I might have stayed glued to that step for a minute or an hour, I do not know. I did not dare to move until I knew that whatever the fuck had just happened to me was not going to return.

  In the end, I think it was the sound of the boy dropping something on the floor which spurred me into action. I did not go and investigate but I did make my way down the rest of the stairs.

  I felt like some old woman struggling down a snowy hill. It was just shameful. Thankfully, nobody saw me reduced to such tragedy. After another few minutes of this embarrassing movement, I got to the bottom. My armchair beckoned but I dare not rest until I investigate what I suspected to be the cause of my fucking meltdown.

  There it was. My bag of tricks, hanging over the back of my dining room chair at the far side of the living room. I stumbled through the open door and landed heavily on the floorboards. I didn't care. All that mattered was to check that bag. I crawled over to the chair, snatched the bag off the chair and rifled through the contents until I found my prize.

  My hands shook badly but I still managed to press on my video player. The first image I saw was of a terrified woman staring at the camera. I then heard my voice.

  ---

  I have watched that video twice now. I do not believe that I'll be watching it for the third time. After the first one, I was able to walk to my armchair, where I watched it again. This sounds stupid, but I believe that the first viewing allowed the jumbled contents of my mind to realign. I can function as normal although, I think the influence is still there, waiting just beyond my horizon, getting ready to pounce again and fuck up my life.

  It is now paramount that I find some way to regain those missing moments, I just do not know how to attain this. The viewings haven't triggered them. Even after two viewings, my original memory of the incident refuses to return. All I have now, in their place, is of me watching this stupid thing.

  Even though I'm feeling so much better than earlier, I sit here in utter misery. A black cloud hangs heavy over my head as each minute passes, portions of that cloud's weight tunnels through me, to rest in my gut. The video player is by the side of the chair. It's been there for the past ten minutes now.

  My last recollection of that night ended with me approaching that front door. I am guessing that the time between that and of the video start wouldn't be more than a couple of minutes. That portion of memory didn't matter as I would have followed my standard procedure.

  Although the memory loss post-death lasted the longest, that did not concern me either, as again, I would have followed the same path as all the others I had slaughtered over the years. Sawing off their limbs and burying the torso and head in the garden. Bennie and the homeless who'd visited the soup kitchen that day had all dined upon limb meat.

  I left her in that position for seventy-three minutes. My thoughts slipped a gear when the front door slammed shut and I heard the key turning. Her frantic struggling for the next few minutes suggested that she was trying to escape. I wanted to tell the woman to stop as I knew that she wasn't going anywhere. The man in the video might have felt like a stranger but it certainly was me and I knew how to keep people in one place.

  It is one of my hidden talents, although right now, I would willing give that talent up along with all the others I possess just to find out why the fuck I left her.

  I planned to show Donnie this video, right now, I am not sure that this would be such a great idea. The boy's reaction doesn't worry me, it will traumatise Donnie, that isn't the issue. I am more concerned at what it will do to me without knowing what happened to me beforehand.

  The conditioning has to continue, I cannot allow my supposed mental anguish to delay the process any longer. This means that I have to go for Donnie's father tonight, despite my current mental state. It has to be tonight anyway, to postpone it would only give the idiot more time to find out that his son is no longer in the house. Him getting the police involved would unravel everything. I'm sure I clean up in both houses but police forensics were bound to find some trace. Human bodies are very messy.

  “Why did it have to be that amount of time?” I forced myself to get out of the armchair. I picked up the video player and put it back in my bag before approaching the bay window. The weeds and wild shrubs cover up a multitude of bodies that I've buried in the past couple of decades. Yet, I still remember when the extensive grounds looked more pleasing to the eye. There were once three rows of fruit trees to the far left of the gardens and a small lake and a collection of ancient playground equipment on the other side.

  Seventy-three minutes was the time that David and I spent in the garden whilst pretending to look for the girl and Tommy while our mum stayed in her bedroom. We spent ages playing on the swings, listening to her shriek and wail.

  We both thought it was utterly hilarious.

  I had wrapped up Tommy's body in his sheet. I ordered Davis to carry it out of the house. Once I had weighed the package down with some heavy stones, the pair of us dropped it into the lake. I remember watching it sink while listening to the sound of David munch on an apple that he'd stolen from the orchard.

  He was right about the girl though, she really had vanished. Not that I blamed her. After witnessing what we did to Tommy, the girl obviously thought that she would be next on our hit list. I almost admired her for having the guts to leave. Still, it did bring up the worrying prospect of what the pair of us were going to do for fun now.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He had cleaned all the crap off his sofa, by depositing the detritus over the carpet. His dirty clothing now shared the dirty fibres with crushed beer cans and their dregs as well as cigarette ash and bits of uneaten food. My initial worry about forensics finding traces of the old woman in here now seemed misplaced.

  In my house, just like my mind, everything has its place. The one exception to this rule is the area outside. I looked around the room with disgust, wondering how anybody could allow themselves to live in such vile conditions. This man is not far removed from the animals who frequent the soup kitchen. I could safely say that the chaos he generates is almost equal to the bedlam that nature has visited upon my garden.

  Considering the number of chemicals that I've employed over the years to render down the huge amount of bodies buried under the soil, I am honestly surprised that anything grows in there. It just proves to me that nature is indeed a most resourceful bitch.

  The man is in bed,,, snoring like the pig that he is. It did not shock me to discover that his bedroom was in a similar state to this room. What did piss me off was on my previous visit, I actually wasn't sure whose bedroom I had first entered. In retrospect, it should have been fucking obvious from the outset.

  Speaking of Donnie's old room, I did look in there as well. The place was just as I left it. I'm not sure if I should be relieved or be angered by this revelation. What kind of father does not check on his son for almost twelve hours? He does not deserve to have kids. The man is a monster.

  I stored away that feeling of anger as that was the type of emotion I needed to keep away the drowsing influence. My life would be over if that fucking thing suddenly jumped out on me while I was in here. Providence does not suffer fools or sloppiness.

  It is obvious to me now that, she has given me a second chance, another opportunity to get this done. This is why the man never checked on his son, why he decided to drink so much. She was looking out for me.

  I should have trusted Provi
dence.

  Back at the house, when my self-pity was in full motion, I did fear the man calling the police. I did fear a knock on the door. I also imagined a full squad of officers dressed I whites arriving at my property, armed with shovels, diggers and acres of white material.

  If I fuck this up and the man somehow escapes me, I know for a fact, the police will be paying me a call. I will have failed. This cannot happen.

  With the living room carpet so fill, I had to clear away enough rubbish in order for me to set up my gear. It truly was a disgusting job, I felt pity for Donnie's mum, having to live with such a slob, no wonder she told him to go. The woman must have felt like all her birthdays had come at once after he had left. It had been the best thing to happen to her.

  “And then you showed up,” I murmured. That was pretty funny. I reminded myself to tell that to Donnie, right after I made him watch me murder his mother. I'm sure that in time he would appreciate the joke.

  Before the games began, I checked through the rest of the house one more time, just to be sure that I was alone with Mr Untidy. As I entered the kitchen, I then started to ask myself if me finding somebody else in that woman's house could have explained my hurried departure. As strange as it sounded, the notion did have merits. One of them was not how this could explain my loss of memory.

  I pushed this troubling thought to one side, as I had no intention of giving that drowsing influence any more ammunition. The kitchen, unlike Donnie's old room, was not how I had left it. In his drunken stupor, the sleeping man upstairs had decided to make himself something to eat. The lid from the fryer perched precariously on the edge of the greasy counter. I pushed that further onto the surface to avoid it clattering on the floor. Judging from the empty bag of frozen chips and a crushed packet of chicken nuggets hiding down the side of the cooker, he had used the fryer. I lifted the basket and tried my hardest not to laugh out loud. I saw a few bits of shrivelled fur stuck to the side of the metal.

  It was time to set this in motion.

  I drew in a breath and screamed out the word daddy. Of course, I increased the pitch to make it sound more like his son. Thanks to my earlier intervention, I knew that next door neighbour wouldn't hear it, I guess her cats might pause from devouring the corpse.

  After a couple of seconds, the sound of something crashing onto his bedroom floor reached my ears. I guess that he must have fallen out of bed. His door flew open and the man charged down the stair. He ran into the living room and skidded to a halt at the sight of my video player on a tripod.

  “Behind you.”

  The man spun around, saw me grinned at his dishevelled form and opened his mouth wide. I pulled back my fist, waited for his alcohol soaked mind to adopt the suitable position before I booted him hard in the bollocks.

  The man folded up like a well-thumbed newspaper. I guess that the man wasn't expecting such a vicious assault. I never see the point of doing the manly fist fight rubbish. Stuff like that belongs in the movies. Before he could recover, I dropped down beside him punched him hard in the guts and then in the throat before securing his limbs with cable ties. I dragged his twitching body into the video player's view and kneeled beside his head. I gave the camera a thumbs up and a smile before lifting the groaning man's head. I pointed it in direction of the camera and pulled up both sides of his mouth.

  “There you go, Donnie. Even your daddy approves of my lessons.” The man jerked once, I guess that the sound of a stranger uttering the name of his son must have had some impact inside that pain-drenched mind.

  Before he got an idea, like call for help or say that he loved his son and begged him for forgiveness, I pressed a strip of carpet tape over his mouth. Then stood up, allowing the back of the man's head to hit the carpet.

  Donnie had his trauma video, he would now receive his instruction video. If the boy was to help me get rid of this town's plague of homeless, he needed to become more familiar with the inside of the human body. This was going to be so much fun. In fact, it took several attempts to straighten my face before I walked over to my bag and picked out the tools that I'd be using for the night.

  This showed, once more, that I was better evolved than any of my human counterparts. I only had to stand up and step back then gaze down at this man, to show what I was capable of even in my decrepit state. I did not do this. For one, I am not a narcissist, also, because I was sharing the room with such a vile, disgusting, messy individual, I had no idea what could be lurking behind my feet.

  It turned out to be yet another pizza container and a small pile of building blocks. This was just unreal. As Donnie was obviously too old for toys, those small pieces of plastic must have been lurking on that carpet for fucking years. I kicked away enough crap to leave me in the middle of a small circle of reasonably clean carpet.

  I hummed the theme from a well-known cartoon as I undressed. I will admit that I was a little uneasy about allowing Donnie to see my naked body as it brought back too many painful memories of my own childhood but in this case, it could not be helped. If I was going to instruct him then I had to do this properly. Besides, I rather liked this maroon jumper I had just taken off. I certainly had no wish to bin it just for the sake of this loser.

  Once all my clothes were sealed in a plastic bag and a pair of disposable slippers were upon my feet, I kicked a clear path to the man's body where I undressed him. As he would not need these clothes or any clothes for that matter, I simply sliced them off, he didn't seem to mind.

  “Okay. Let us begin.” I turned to the camera. "Right now, our friend is very frightened. The fear stems from his inability to comprehend his situation." I chose my pliers, selected his big toe, gripped the nail and pulled. There was hardly any effort involved in the act. That surprised me. I turned my prize around and resisted the urge to clean all the lumpy gunk from the nail's inner surface. "There. Now he has something else to focus on."

  I remember this rather horrible movie about a robbery or something. Halfway through this film, one of the robbers tied this guy up and cut off his ear with a straight edge razor. This man put on some music and started to dance around the victim. He really did dance. At the time I really wanted to reach through the TV screen, grab this clown and murder the fucker. Yet, here I am, holding my own razor and wondering if I too should put some music on in the background.

  It must be the camera. It changes you, turns you into an entertainer. I'm sure that if that camera hadn't been there in that movie, that man would not have danced around like an idiot. Oh no, the cunt would have done his job without any pissing about.

  I leant over the man's body and sliced open his chest, using the classic T-shape, adopted by morticians around the globe. This theory might explain why the sight of myself did not unblock the torrent of suppressed memories. How could it when I did not recognise the actions of my celluloid facsimile?

  I turned to the camera. “Donnie, in times past, criminals were Hung drawn and quartered. This involved hanging the person until they nearly choked then taking them down and pulling out all their internal organs." I smiled. "To save time I decided to skip the first stage."

  His intestine had already burst through the slit and had slivered down his side. This didn't surprise me. It made sense that a guy who didn't look after himself or his property wouldn't be able to control his internal organs either. I peeled back the two flaps and pushed my hand inside the warm, wet organs. I curled my fingers around something very slippery and pulled.

  Even with the tape, the man's abrupt muffled shriek caused me to pause. I guess that me fiddling about inside his body was more painful than a ripped off a toenail. I smiled to myself, who'd a thought that? After a brief struggle, I managed to pull out most of his steaming guts. Blood, bile, and other Unidentifiable fluids mixed in with the rubbish around the shuddering man's naked body.

  I stood up. It would be a complete bastard to clean this up but I had no intention of doing such a thing. I left the dying man and went back into the kitchen to grab som
ething that I noticed on my first trip to this house.

  “There you are!” I bent down and pulled out a large bottle of white spirit, hiding behind a large ceramic casserole dish which still contained the remains of the last meal. I hid my disgust. This man was beyond vile. My annoyance that people like him were allowed to breed quickly vanished when I discovered another plastic container right at the back of the cupboard. I had no clue as to the contents but that didn't matter. I unscrewed the white cap and gave it a cursory sniff. I still hadn't a clue what it was but those fumes did confirm that it was flammable.

  Laden with my goodies, I made my way across the tiles. Just like earlier, I found myself wanting to giggle like some naughty schoolboy up to no good. What was wrong with me? It had to be the camera that was doing it. Then again, maybe it was because for the first time in the past couple of days I actually felt happy and in control again.

  The elation lasted precisely up to the point where I walked out of the kitchen.

  I almost dropped the two cartons when the sound of footsteps drifted down the stairway. I jerk my head towards the ceiling. Whoever it was, they were right above my head, in Donnie's old bedroom. How could this be? There was nobody else in here. I checked.

  That drowsing influence raised its fucking head and I swear that I could now hear maniacal laughter at the back of my mind. My instinct was to leave the cartons on the floor, grab a carving knife and go gut the fucker who dared to interrupt my work.

  The footsteps above me faded away. Whoever was up there had gone into another room. My hands stayed around the handles and I made a point of turning away from one wicked looking knife with a leather handle just lying on the counter-top next to the sink full of filthy crockery.

  Fuck my instinct and fuck the person upstairs. I was here to complete one task and that was exactly what I intended to do. Walking past the stairs and back into the living room was probably one of the most difficult things I had done in my life.