Corruption

I guess you could say that I was a little bit of a bastard growing up. Not the kind with the parents who never got married or anything like that; my parents tied the knot a full year before I was born, so you couldn’t even make the argument that I was a secret bastard. No, I was the kind of bastard who ignored those parents.

There are a lot of good kids out there. They were brought up properly by their parents and were taught right and wrong. They made it through high school, maybe went to college, got a girlfriend, got married, and then became those same parents who brought them up in the first place. Full circle, right? Circle of life or whatever.

Then there are bad kids. Most bad kids you can look at their life stories and find some event that made them do whatever bad shit that they did. Their folks split up and the trauma of seeing their family ripped apart sent them down the wrong path. Their mom died, so they went into a fog, blindly going through the motions of life, eventually turning to the bottle and fucking up their life. Or maybe their dad bailed before they were even born, and they grew up without a father figure, forced to be tougher than the other kids, ultimately cracking some idiot’s skull and spending some time. Yep, most bad kids have excuses.

Then there are those kids that are just born bad. Maybe dad was planting some bad seed or something went wrong when mom was cultivating the garden. Either way, those kids don’t have any excuses. Their parents tried their best to raise him, referencing Dr. Phil books, teaching him lessons, disciplining when they needed to, but nothing worked. The kid just wasn’t a good one, and it didn’t matter how many fables you read him, he just wasn’t going to learn any morals.

I wasn’t any of those kids. Those parents with the kids that rebel for no reason? They praise gods that they don’t even believe in that I wasn’t their kid. Too bad those gods aren’t listening to them.

I was, and I guess I still am, blessed with as impossibly perfect a memory as ever existed. I remember each and every scene from my life. My mind’s hard drive has infinite capacity, and I swear I’ve got DVD like playback for every single moment that I’ve experienced.

Anyway, I was born on a Friday—not the thirteenth, the eleventh—just a typical Friday. Only, who would have known that the worst thing since the Antichrist was about to be born?

* * * * *

I was bad from the second I left that womb, and more than likely, while I was in it. I came out thrashing like a hurricane, unleashed fury coming straight from its origin. If there were ever an eye of my storm, it was there; everything since has spiraled outward from those first moments of life.

The first months of my life weren’t anything that could be classified as horrific, but they certainly weren’t the stories of blissful infancy. Hell, I take it back—they were borderline horrific.

I cried like a bitch the instant they brought me home and no combination of breast milk, classical music, cheap plastic toys, or jolly purple dinosaurs was about to calm me down. The only thing that could get me to shut up every once in a while was myself and my desire to drive people to depths they couldn’t even imagine. I’d cry for hours straight, stopping only to nibble at my mom’s tit every once in a while. A baby’s got to keep up his strength, you know. Then after I was sure that my parents were on the brink of insanity, I’d stop. I’d lull them into a trance where they would both sigh the most audible sounds of relief you ever heard and lay down to finally get the sleep that had seemed so unattainable only moments before. I’d let them approach the brink of sleep, that moment where your still aware of your surroundings, but you can feel sleep slowly shrouding your senses, blanketing you in its greedy little clutches. Trust me, sleep is the cousin of death. And he is one envious cousin. Letting sleep envelop you like that is dangerous shit. You’re lucky you’re a born a pussy because if you ever made it all the way through that nightmare—well, let’s just say you wouldn’t be getting out of it anytime soon.

So I’d let them get to that point, allow my parents to feel the strains of my burden begin to loosen off of their shoulders. Allow them one sweet taste of that bliss that is rest. And then I’d scream. I’d scream bloody murder like no serial killer’s ever even dreamed of. I’d wake up the neighbors, I’d shatter windows, I’d rupture eardrums. I still remember the first time I made my father’s ears bleed. I think that that was the first time he ever truly realized that his son wasn’t like other babies.

* * * * *

When I turned 9 years old, I had already accumulated a rap sheet that was longer than most cons. I’d been kicked out of four schools, excommunicated from two churches, killed three puppies, and though no one knew it yet, recruited over sixty men to my cause.

My parents did everything they could think of and then some in trying to help me. If only they know that there was no help for me. They should have thrown me into a lake with stones tied to me, or saved some time and just bashed me in the head with those stones instead. Not that that would have stopped me, but it certainly would have spared them.

But I’ve got them some credit, my parents were resilient. I almost find myself impressed by their actions. I don’t know if it was my father’s pride, my mother’s inability to believe that her son could be so rotten, or something else, but damn it if they didn’t do everything in their power to try to fix me. But trying to fix me was like trying to lasso the moon for your lover: It might happen in a movie, but you’re not doing it in the real world. So try as they might, my parents’ mission remained unfulfilled, the only thing stemming from their attempts was the slow destruction of their wills to exist.

* * * * *

Eventually, they gave up. I came home late one night, and my mother wasn’t waiting for me in the armchair of the living room. Good thing, too, because the bloodstains on my shirt probably would have made for awkward conversation. I have to admit I was disheartened though. There was no one there to lecture me, to tell me that I shouldn’t be out at 2 AM on a Wednesday night. That I was only 14 years old and that I had to go to school in the morning. Right then, in the closest thing I had ever shed to a tear up until that point in my life, my eyes drooped. I had pushed away the only two people in the world who loved me.

I rushed up the stairs, taking three at a time, and skidded into my parents’ bedroom. My mother was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, knitting a scarf. It was blood red, and I remember thinking that it was a peculiar color to wear around your neck. My dad was in the bed, his back against the headboard, staring me right in the eyes. It was as if they were waiting for me.

Then I saw the gun in his hand. He pointed it at my chest and pulled the trigger. As I lay in a growing poodle of my blood, my father kneels down beside me. He brushes aside my unkempt hair, and says, “I know you’re not going to heaven, but maybe since you died while you were feeling compassion and remorse, you’ll be forgiven for some of your sins.”

I contemplated what he said carefully as life left me, but forgiveness wasn’t on my mind. No, there would be no heaven for me. I looked forward to my rebirth and my chance at destroying another set of parents. A smile crept onto the dead lips as my blackened soul sank from my corpse, flowing throw the floorboards, and making its way back to its master.