The night was at its deepest, and I drove fast, faster than was safe, but there were few other cars on the road. Jack’s face loomed ever larger in my mind’s eye, snatches of conversations he’d had with his father—about medical school, about obtaining his degree, and going to Africa and Southeast Asia to help. His girlfriend, they had made love to each other for the first time this past Christmas Eve . . . the Christmas Eve I had spent murdering Joshua in his shop window. Jack’s sports triumphs, his cleanliness, his idealism, they were all reminders of the poisonous beast I had become and I had to be rid of these reminders of it, rid of all of them, rid of them before I went mad.

There must be a way to keep from dwelling on him, I thought, and no sooner had I the thought than I had the answer.

Kill again.

I took the next freeway exit and slowed down, driving automatically as if by directional finder, toward the seedier side of town.

There I found a wino, a single wino, sitting next to a lamp pole, feet in the gutter, brown paper bag clutched in a greasy glove. Here was a person with no aspirations; here was a person who would give me nary a moment of guilt. Here was a waste of humanity that the world would be better off without.

I opened the car door and began to play for him. He left his bottle in the gutter, and unsteadily made his way to the car. The stench of him was sickening, but I knew I had to do this or go blind with internal rage. He sat next to me, entranced, and I leaned across his disgusting lap to close the door, then I drove to the warehouse district, sure to be deserted at this time.

I parked behind a bulldozer and, anxious beyond caution, ran around the car and opened the drunk’s door. I dumped him onto the ground and fixed myself onto his neck, sucking furiously, ripping when the blood would not come fast enough to erase the echoing memories of Jack. The blood was poisoned, the bum was sick to his death with something in addition to drink, and I knew I would be sick from it later, but for now it was still blood, and I chewed and chewed, feeling his spirit weaken and his body give up the ghost.

I sat up, panting from the exertion, smelling his fouled clothes mixed with the oily heat of the engine and the tar of the construction site, and in one gigantic heave, all that I had drunk spewed forth in a gush that splattered the car door and lay in a puddle next to the dead man.