Prey

What I Am

Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a dream.

- Ted Bundy

I blame my dad for my condition. If he hadn't tried so hard to form a bond with me, if he hadn't tried so hard to relate to me, if he hadn't insisted on my explicit participation in father-son activities, things may have turned out differently. Maybe I would have been one of the many that fantasized about it rather than doing it. Maybe I would have chosen a different outlet, a different release, spent my days writing sick and twisted manuscripts or screenplays or poetry or painting repulsive images on a bleached canvas or designing violent video games for testosterone-driven men who adored pixelated violence yet shuddered at the real thing.

Alas, these alternate outcomes were not meant to be.

I was what I was and there was no changing that now. It was an addiction, an awful appetite that could not be sated, it could not be nourished; a voracious hunger forever lingered at the boundaries of my senses, taunting me, telling me I needed it again, telling me it was time for more, reminding me that I needed to feed the beast inside.

I never slept much, not even as a child. The night was a lonesome time for me, when everyone dozed and I was left alone with nothing but my thoughts and grisly imagination. Sometimes I would dawdle outside of my parents' bedroom and eavesdrop on their conversations. I would often hear my father say there was something off about me, there was something not right. He'd say I wasn't like other children. I didn't laugh or play, I didn't show affection, I didn't show signs of forming relationships, I didn't express a willingness to participate in activities with other children, I didn't cry, I didn't show empathy, and that I couldn't connect with anyone or anything-he said I was a power cord that was unplugged from the rest of the world. He said I frightened him; he never knew what was going on in my brain, he never knew what I was thinking. My mom would always tell him he was being ridiculous, but I could hear it in her voice that she believed it too, she was just in denial; she didn't want to admit that there was something seriously wrong with the psychology of her only child.

After they had fallen asleep, I would sometimes stand in the bedroom and stare at them in slumber. I would think of all the things I could do to them in their sleep, the power I would have over them. I thought about tying them up, hands clasped to the headboard and their feet bound to the footboard, gags in their mouths, eyes wild with panic and fear, completely bent to my will. I pictured myself soaking them in lighter fluid, setting them ablaze and standing there calmly, watching them burn. The thought of it aroused me before I was old enough to understand what arousal really was. All I knew was that I liked it; that was all it took, that was enough.

I started out small: ripping the legs and wings off of grasshoppers before slowly crushing them, immolating beetles and earwigs with a lighter I'd stolen from my mom, coating anthills with insect killer until every last ant lay still, slicing earthworms in half with a pair of dirty scissors and watching them wriggle feverishly on the pavement, knocking frogs out with a flick from my middle finger and then stuffing their mouths full of firecrackers, dropping spiders into the toilet and watching them drown, and many other forms of various torture and death.

I was content with it until the day I found a Morning Dove that had flown into the glass sliding door that led into the kitchen. It had knocked itself unconscious; twitching pathetically with a tiny stream of blood leaking from its beak, emitting anemic chirps and hisses, its eyes fluttering. I picked it up and gently cradled it in my hands; it wasn't yet capable of flying away. I retrieved a pair of wire cutters from the garage and drifted into the shed in the backyard, bordering the trees. The shed was thick with cobwebs and the scent of damp wood and gasoline. I took an oil-stained towel that was hanging from a nail in the wall and laid it across my father's workbench. I laid the Morning Dove on the towel and watched its wings flutter lazily as it began to come to. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears. Blood rushed to my member. I began to pant. Delight. Pure elation.

I took the wire cutters and clipped one of its feet off. It chirped wildly in protest as blood squirted from the wound onto the towel and splattered across my shirt. I clipped the other foot off before it could regain its composure and attempt to fly. It flopped around in a piteous manner and cried out madly, yet I felt no remorse, I felt not a shred of poignant regret. Even at that young age, I understood that I was a predator and this was my prey. A lion felt no remorse for the antelope. A spider felt no remorse for the fly. A snake felt no remorse for the mouse. It was nature in its most pure and visceral and primal form. This bird was nothing to love or care for or nurse back to health; it was prey, beautiful, wondrous prey.

I clipped off its wings next leaving it rolling around like a quadriplegic that had fallen from a wheelchair. Its shrieks became shriller, more desperate, but the sounds had begun to lose strength. It was starting to give in. It was beginning to accept its fate. By the time I clipped off its beak it was barely audible, just hisses and muffled squeaks. I pulled a box of sewing pins that I had swiped from my mother's sewing room out of my pocket and began slowly inserting them into the bird's head and torso: one in each eye (which burst like a squeezed grape), one through the mouth, one through the neck, through the top of the head and then the breast and stomach and back and groin. After it had died, I stepped back to appreciate the beautiful disaster I had created, my sanguinary masterpiece-a murderous form of acupuncture.

I wrapped it up in the towel and stuffed it on a shelf behind a plastic gas can my dad used for the riding lawnmower. I should have disposed of it, but I wanted to see it again, I wanted to watch it decompose. I wasn't ready to let it go. In a way, it was like a pet to me. Kids loved their pets.

My dad found it, a week later when he was out doing yard work. I remember the look of concern on his face, the deep lines of worry, and a frown that was more melancholy than anything else. He was disturbed. As soon as he asked me to accompany him to the shed, I knew he'd discovered my alluring jewel, my magnificent massacre. I remember feeling only discomfort at the thought of my father glimpsing behind my mask and getting an eyeful of my real face, my real head. I did not feel fear or shame or doubt-only disquiet.

"What is this?" He asked, his eyes wide in disbelief, his face fraught with misgiving. "Did you do this?"

I didn't answer him. I just stared at the ruined bird and thought of its squeaks of pain-music to my ears, joy to my rotten soul. What did he expect me to say? My actions were enigmatic, an undecipherable language that could only be comprehended by me. It wouldn't make any sense to him. None of it would.

"Answer me!" He demanded. He gripped my shoulder so tightly they bruised. I felt twinges of pain course through my arm as he shook me. "I asked you a question Cameron. Answer me." His voice had shrunk from a yell to a sputtered whisper. He was starting to cry-an emotion which I found the most peculiar of any in the broad spectrum of human emotions. I couldn't understand what made a person somber. I couldn't imagine anything that would cause me to weep.

He hugged me tightly and buried his face into my chest as he began to bawl, moistening my t-shirt with salty tears and shaking me as his shoulders heaved. I knew then that my father knew what I was, which eased my discomfort. I realized that it didn't matter, that I could manipulate him by appealing to his emotions. He was going to attempt to fix me, to rehabilitate me, and all I had to do was play along. I didn't hug him back-I kept my arms to my sides until his cries became choked sobs and then soft sniffles.

"Promise me something son," he said as he combed my hair away from my face with a calloused hand so large it resembled a bear paw. I stared into his watery, bloodshot eyes and smelled the scent of freshly cut grass wafting from his clothes. "Never tell your mother about this." I never answered him, I just nodded my head. That was the moment my father became my enabler, my personal apologist. He had seen what lurked beneath the mask, though it was just a glimpse, and he decided to ignore it. I knew then that I could lie, cheat, and steal from this man and he would do nothing but hide away in the comfortable little closet of denial.