X Marks the Spot

3 - Nature versus Nurture

Joel's routine of the next morning wouldn't suggest anything unusual. He woke up at eight o'clock, showered, dressed; nothing that he wouldn't do every day before walking the five minute journey to school.

He stepped outside, his breath appearing before him. The snow had begun to stick several weeks ago. His school had closed for a couple of days, until it became clear that the weather wasn't going to improve for a considerably long stretch of time. Joel didn't mind; he liked school. Not that he would ever admit that.

Joel liked many things, as he was fairly easy-going. He liked his classmates, he liked to learn, he liked playing the drums. He liked life, which was rare for many students who attended his school. I believe that at some point, at least once in a lifetime, everybody just gets to a point when it isn't worth it - life isn't worth it. Sometimes for no reason at all. You just hit rock bottom, and are no longer willing to entertain the notion that things will get better. The problem with many people of Joel's age, I have found, is that they are too self-conscious; they don't understand the concept that they are not the only one.

Joel didn't have this problem. Not yet, anyway. He'd had a reasonably good life. He'd always had money, and parents who, although separated, loved him unconditionally. For all of his mother's nagging, and his father's unavailability due to taking trips out of town regularly, Joel still cared for them. He'd never been bullied. He could have been, easily. He could have been bullied for being short, or being black, or being an enormous geek. However, he'd never been a target. His classmates respected and liked him, but this wasn't the problem.

Despite all this, Joel found his life so... tedious. His fellow students liked him, yes, but they weren't friends. Joel enjoyed video games, and music, and even studying to an extent. But they made him almost robotic; he needed the spark that human company made him feel, he wanted someone that made him feel genuinely happy. It could be a friend, a girlfriend, even just a study partner. He didn't mind. There was just something missing from his 'privileged' life, as his mother had called it. According to her, he was extremely lucky to have grown up without a background of poverty. But you couldn't buy friends.

Joel arrived in school, taking off his coat and shaking the snow out of his hair. Walking to psychology class, he often wondered if students wondered the same things he did - whether they needed more from life too. It was hard to tell; they never seemed to be actual people, just another face in a group of three or four.

He opened the door to his psychology classroom, just on time.

"Morning, Mr Cassidy," he said brightly as he strolled to his seat. It wasn't just the students who liked Joel. Staff liked him too, mainly due to his optimistic approach to studying - no "I can't do it"s from this kid.

When Joel had prepared for the lesson with pen and paper and the latecomers had sauntered in, met with reproachful stares from one gaggle of students with the "know-it-all" label, the teacher stood up at the front of the class and began to talk.

During these lessons, Joel would either doodle or take notes in his notebook, but today, his thoughts won dominance over his entire body and he entered a trance-like state, only capable of thinking about one thing:

What the hell happened last night?

He couldn't think. Who would be after him?

"Joel?"

Mr Cassidy called his name and he looked up, snapped out of his daze.

"Hm?"

"Everything okay?"

"Fine, Mr Cassidy."

"So, I'll ask the question again. What is the name of the debate that draws upon whether a person's development is caused by DNA or situational factors?"

Joel knew the answer. "Nature versus Nurture." Mr Cassidy was satisfied with his answer and wrote it on the blackboard in capital letters. Joel returned his attention to his thoughts, keeping his head down to avoid unintentional eye contact. What were the man's intentions? And was he just following Joel for the sake of it, or was there more to it than that?

That was stupid. He was just jumping to conclusions. He tried to put it out of his mind and focus on the lesson. The teacher proceeded to talk about a well-known study involving MRI scans. Joel suddenly found himself interested.

I remember a time when I was once like Joel; full of wonder and curiosity for the things we could neither see nor comprehend, such as the unconscious mind. This passion for human psychology was what led me to be a professor of the subject at a prestigious university. For all of the research I have conducted, all of the books and academic papers I have read, I still have so many questions that I suspect may never be answered. There is one in particular:

Is anybody naturally good?

Realistically, the world is so much better at eradicating the good in the world than the evil. We live on a blighted star, which is full of so much beauty - the Northern Lights, the town square of Krakow at night, sunset. But for every single good thing out there, there is a thousand bad things infinitely more powerful and destructive - greed, poverty, war, injustice, terrorism, to name a few.

But maybe some of that beauty is born in people. Something invisible, something incomprehensible, something unconscious. Maybe it is in the nature of some people to act benevolently without a second thought. Maybe some people are naturally good.

If they are, I really hope they do something about the current state of humanity. Without them, we will crumble. Not immediately, but inevitably.

Most of Joel's class were sneaking looks at their phones under the desk, but Joel himself was entirely engrossed in what Mr Cassidy was saying.

"- so by testing the brains of murderers and non-murderers, he was actually able to identify a correlation between brain damage and their status as a felon. Any questions?"

"Have there been many studies on killers, sir?" One of the girls who would have usually been opening a compact mirror in her pencil case in this lesson actually seemed interested in what her teacher had to say.

"Absolutely. Some raised the question of ethics, whether it was safe to have criminals in a lab and how it might affect the other participants, but -"

"What about that X Killer, sir?" Mr Cassidy showed no objection to being interrupted by his students, merely bemused that they were taking an interest in his lesson for once. "Anyone know what's going on in his head?"

"I wish someone did," Mr Cassidy said sorrowfully. "Perhaps we'll know one day. After all, murderers have been studied before, but we know nothing of his motives or why his modus operandi is so specific every time he... claims a victim." He looked around at his students to see if anyone was bored, which the majority of them often were in his lessons. However, he was pleasantly surprised to see that he held the attention of the entire class.

"The X Killer... he could be a psychopath, although that would be unlikely, considering how he doesn't leave any traces of himself behind. He could just get a kick out of it. Or, in my opinion, most likely he actually has a reason for killing the victims. They could symbolise something to him. My personal theory is that he targets teenagers due to some trauma he went through during his adolescence, but that can't be known for certain.

"As for his methods... well, that's just as obscure. He always stabs them in the back, possibly symbolising betrayal. Always leaves an 'X' in blood on the forearm. The murders could be spontaneous, or could be planned in advance. It's even possible that X stalks his victims before their untimely demise -"

And that was when Joel was hit by a thought as though it was lightning; it was unsettling, shocking, and he didn't know how he hadn't seen it coming.

"- It's even possible that X stalks his victims before their untimely demise -"

Understandably, Joel was no longer engaged with the rest of the class. It couldn't be...

But it was. Joel wasn't willing to deceive himself just to sugarcoat his quite possibly fatal situation. This was one of the moments when Joel wasn't being a typical teenager; he had the exact right amount of self-consciousness, because alas, he was the only one this time. He was the only target of the notorious X Killer who was still alive.