Brian
Rosenberger

Arlene
Ang

Stephen
Collicoat

Christopher
Brown

Tim
Johnson

Ben
Farmer

They say that self discovery lies on the road to madness. That to know oneself is to know both sanity and insanity. The human mind cannot fathom the coin and the flip side. It's either heads or tails. We don't live in the Twilight Zone where the coin can land on its thin edge, both faces staring out at the world. As a species, we're capable of higher thought and deed than any other. One side is under constant pressure to stay hidden.

Some people blame their parents, others a teacher or a sibling. They blame society. While I can concur with society's function in creating our own dysfunction, it is still our personal choice how we act. Or better yet, how we react. Our reactions are nothing but preconceived notions of behavior that are encoded into us from the day we're born. We're taught how to speak, walk, eat, shit, piss, and fuck. And so it goes that we're taught how to behave. What to do and more importantly, what not to do. 'You'll get in trouble for that, Johnnie, don't do it.' So little Johnnie doesn't do it, whatever it was, and that urge gets suppressed, but never eliminated.

When you can take away an animal's instincts; you domesticate it. There are some animals where domestication isn't possible. Look at your average pit bull. It's the same way with humans; there are some of us you just can't tame. You try but nothing works. No choke collars, no lack of food or money or home. Look at your Dahmers, Starkweathers, Bundys and even Charles Manson's of the world. Though, Manson was something special. He was a leader, but all of them were untamable. All of them were beautiful. Wild animals running free in their natural habitat. It was society that said they were wrong, judged them, and then put them down in one way or another.

But they were only acting upon instinct, doing that which came naturally. Perhaps if they had grown up when I did, some doctor could have caught their tendencies earlier, put them on Ritalin or Adderall, calmed their asses down. Put them in therapy like they did me. Would it have helped? It's a possibility. It's helped me some. I no longer fight with my instincts. I just hide the after effects.

My name is John George and my therapist's name is Dr. Good. When I was twelve, he told my mother that I suffered from a low anger threshold, or as he called it L.A.T. This was after I soundly thrashed a schoolmate with a tetherball chain for kicking the ball I was playing with across the playground. I started both therapy and medication the following day. Part of my therapy was writing when I felt my anger slipping. I have notebooks full of things, feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Some would say full of my heart and soul.

The writing worked for a while, but eventually, more cathartic means were needed. So I lashed out in small, private ways. I had fish, snakes, mice. They never lasted long. Then it was on to other relievers, cats or dogs, all of them neighborhood pets. They were all concealable, and spaced out over time. Not enough to cause any real alarm or suspicion. Those small acts took me through high school and by then I was out of therapy and off the medicine. There were a few bar fights in college, nothing serious. And by serious I mean jail time or court appearances. However, the hurt I put on people was very serious, I just never got hurt.

I also found that I enjoyed beating people. That was a serious problem and so back to therapy I went, voluntarily this time. Dr. Good remembered me. I was flattered. But it was back to more medicine, more writing, and more couch time. I have to confess, though, that it didn't work as well this time. I'm glad I learned long ago to hide my problem. I suppose I'm glad, too, that the trunk of my Taurus is big enough to hold a human body. Ample storage in that car. I might have to buy another when it's time.

The owner of this body was Frank K. Burgess. Frank was my neighbor, my instigator, and my superior. He made more money than I did, drove a flashier car (a new Lexus), had a bigger house. These things normally don't bother me. There are a lot of men who have more than I do. They just don't live next door to me and rub it in my face. It's a shame, but Frank will be missed. Fortunately, it'll be some time before he's found.

"John," he would say to me. "Can I fuck your wife?"

I can still see the smirk on his face every time he said that. He thought it was his own inside joke with me. He'd been asking me that same question for the past three years. Incidentally, it was the very first question he ever asked me. The sticky bastard had eyeballed my wife the entire day that we moved in. When we were done, he had come over and introduced himself while my wife was in the shower.

I also recognized in him a caged creature that wouldn't come out. He suppressed his natural instincts and supplemented them with money, material objects, women, crude language. He tried to shock you. Frank was an ill-gotten product of society. Maybe I wanted to be him and that's why I killed him. He could blend in, disappear, and never be found. I would always stick out. But motives are never solitary, are they? They're multidimensional, like personalities, the truth and lies.

Nothing is ever perfect.

A five-foot strip of grass connected our yards. In the middle of this grass line were small hedges that reached up to my waist. You could easily look over them and talk to your neighbor. Our driveways ran parallel to each other and Frank and I would see each other every morning on the way to work.

"When are you going to buy a real car?" he would ask. "You know what Ford stands for, right?"

"No."

Cheshire grin. He had scored points in some game he was playing. "Fucked On Race Day. Found On Road Dead. Or, my personal favorite; Fixed or Repaired Daily."

I just stared.

"That car cost less money than my pinkie ring, John. I'd have to take it back." They have a term for people like Frank. Alpha-Male. The one who has to be first, foremost. The best, most powerful. To use a cliché; the leader of the pack.

Frank owned Burgess Communications. His company specialized in internet access and wireless communication. They serviced nearly everyone in the county, including myself. It was obvious that he chose the correct path for his life. I work at the local glass plant, shaping bowls and cups and plates. It was menial work, but the pay wasn't bad and my interactions with other people were almost nil.

"John. John. John." That same condescending tone as always. "We want our property values to rise. It's a common goal among homeowners."

"What's your point?" I asked.

"Trim your hedges. Paint your gutters. And for God's sake, get rid of that pink and white fairy wind chime on your front porch."

"My wife likes that wind chime."

Frank snorted. "She's great to look at, John, but not much for decorating."

My wife, along with her wind chime, keeps perennial flowers along the walkway to our front door. Some of them are her pride and joy. Duke, Frank's little white poodle, enjoyed digging through them everyday, before its morning shit. Then every weekend, my wife would be in the front yard, bending over those mauled flowers, replanting and resoiling. She'd wear her gardening outfit, nothing Martha Stewart approved here, of white shorts, white tank top. No bra, naturally. Nipples like gumdrops perky against the fabric, long tan legs slick with dirt and sweat. On those days my neighbor washed his car or trimmed his hedges, usually the same hedge, for hours.

I came out this morning like I did every other morning before work. I had my lunch pail in one hand, cup of coffee in the other. Frank was there, a sausage forearm resting on the top of his Lexus. When he saw me, he looked at his watch and tapped the face.

"You're late."

"I didn't know we had a date," I said.

"Sure we did," Frank told me. "I need my daily ego boost. Watching you walk to your menial car, to head off to your hourly job, wearing one of your three pair of Dickie work pants is all I need. Now I can go out, fuck beautiful woman, make a lot more money than you, and feel good about it."

A familiar twitch passed through my face. "You need me for all that?"

"Absolutely, John. My mother, bitch that she was, always said: 'Frank, when you go out, take a look around and see all the losers and people less fortunate than you. Then be thankful you're not one of them.'"

I had a dozen sarcastic comments fly into mind like angry bees and all were rejected for "She sounds like a smart woman."

"She was a greedy woman," he told me.

I said, "It runs in the family."

"Was that a crack? Did you just cast a dispersion at me, Johnnie?" He was smiling, obviously enjoying our little tête-à-tête.

I wasn't.

"Oh, hey, John," he called to me. "Can I come over after dinner and fuck your wife?"

"Sure, Frank," I smiled. "Come on over and we'll tag team her. We can get her from every angle, seven ways from Sunday."

Apparently I had shocked him. He stood flat-footed, mouth nearly hanging open. He could only mutter the word what.

"You can come fuck my wife tonight," I repeated and walked to the back of my Taurus. I set my lunch on the roof and opened the trunk. "I got something to show you, though. Come here."

He walked over and I reached in, pulled a plastic bag full of empty oil bottles toward me. Frank leaned in to get a better look.

"Well?" he asked.

"In the bag," I said and moved aside so he could see. His hands went for the bag and pushed aside the empty oil bottles and rags.

"Is this a joke?" he spat out, turned his head to look at me.

Like a hunter, I had waited. I wanted to see his eyes. They were wide with surprise the first time the trunk hit him. He showed me fury the second time, and fear on the third. He was dead after the fourth strike. His body slumped half in the trunk, like an old carpet, toes dragging on the concrete. I wasn't even breathing hard. I had expected him to fight, to kick and scream, retaliate. There had been very little. Frank Burgess had died quietly and without fanfare, quite unlike how he had lived.

His legs were tossed into the trunk and the body shoved back up against the rear seat. Like I said earlier, lots of room. I shut the trunk and went back into the house. My wife was in the kitchen, drinking her morning coffee.

"You feel okay?" she asked.

"No," I said. "I'm taking the day off."

I went upstairs, called my menial job, and lay down on the freshly made bed, remembering the kill. The latch had made a small, neat triangular hole in his forehead. There was very little blood at first and then a good deal later, once he had been pushed against the seat. The trunk carpet would need to be discarded. Of course, so would the body, but that was another can of worms.

Hours later, back in the kitchen, I found my lunch pail on the counter. I had left it on the car and my wife must have brought it back in. I sat at the kitchen table, ate my lunch, and thought about Frank. Something had to be done with him.

I grabbed my gloves, went out to the driveway, and used the hose to spray down the outside of my car and the driveway. Back into the house for a towel to wipe down the car. That towel was tossed into the front seat. Black tarp, rope, and duct tape was purchased from the local hardware store. Then, an hour drive, up into the hills.

There was an old dirt road, an American version of the Ho Chi Minh trail, pockmarked and decayed, which led to a fishing hole that had long been empty of fish. Frank was bundled up in the tarp, taped for safety. The towel I had used to clean my car was draped over Frank's face. The rope was used to tie him to the spare tire from my Taurus. When he was put into the water, Frank's shroud emitted a chorus of bubbles and gurgles, and then sank without another sound. On my way home, I stopped and washed the Taurus from the tires to the roof. I pulled out the trunk mat, hosed it down, and then hosed down the inside of the trunk.

The mat was stuffed into one of the dumpsters on the side of the road by the car wash. The whole job only took me about three hours, most of which was spent driving.

My wife should be home soon. I think I'm going to take some neighborly advice and fuck her when she gets here. I know now that my coin has landed on its edge. That both of my faces are staring out at the world.

I am sane and insane. I have instincts, which are neither good nor bad, but important to survival. I, John George, am a modern man, a product of society. I have discovered self and walked the path of madness.

© 2003 Christopher Brown