Sitting on the counter, I let my feet swing and poured the water into the glass before chugging the cool liquid down. As I was pouring myself a second glass, I noticed the block of knives that was pushed to the back of the counter. The deer memory came to mind again, and I wondered what my father would look like hanging upside down with his throat cut. Pulling the largest knife out, I stared at the metal blade that looked like a sword in my small hand. As I turned it from side to side, the metal glinted in the moonlight streaming through the window.

I took a deep breath as I remembered clearly the first night the dark thoughts of blood and pain entered my dreams. I hadn’t been out of diapers, and every time she changed my smelly white diaper, she’d make these weird noises and smile down at me. When you get bigger, I’ll show you how to do this or that. She’d ramble on as if I cared, but all I wanted to do was to rip her pretty blue eyes out of her head. The sound of her screaming was loud in my mind as I imagined my mother’s fear while she cowered in a corner as I cut her over and over again.

Hopping off the counter, I walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs toward the bedrooms. I noticed Abel looking at me from the crack of his doorway. I didn’t look his way or acknowledge that he wasn’t hiding as well as he thought. Even at seven, I knew that if Abel wanted to be like me, he needed to come to me, not the other way around, and if not…

Well, then he’d have to be taken care of at some point, but of all the humans I’d met, the boy that occupied the same woman’s womb with me for nine months was the only person I had any connection with on this planet.

My feet were no louder than a mouse. The kids at school would say dark basements and hallways had monsters hiding. I didn’t know what lies they were being fed, but there were no monsters in this house, except maybe for me.

Stopping at my parent’s door, I stared up at the gold-colored knob of the handle. New energy I’d never experienced before was going through my body and excited me as I reached for the handle. I liked this new feeling. I turned the knob so slowly. It never made its normal squeak sound as I quietly pushed open the door.