Hannah Dukkha Nirvana: First Book of Trinity, Set 2, #2

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Set 2 #2: The child murderer’s tale …

Let’s play guess who and guess what? [looking at you, distant, detached look]

I would, like, sometimes check under the bed?

You do that, or, you know, uhm, open the shower curtain to make sure no one is standing there.  That is silly. Like who is going to be lying under your bed or just standing there in a shower waiting for you?

Not even dogs do that, and no one loves people, like, as much as dogs do. If Isaac were a dog, there’d be no religion, huh. [tapping her chin inquisitively]

A murderous psychopath will do that, what Abraham did, because he cannot love another like himself. Do you know that most psychopaths don’t kill people? They just, like, get angry if their kid gets sick because they will miss the ballgame. Or, like, they take your money because they don’t want to spend their own. Or, uhm, like, they become CEOs or leaders of nation states. You all love a psychopath, you, a daddy in the sky.  Occasionally, one murders. That is why you have Greek and Roman gods and celebrate them so. You all like “bad” people when they are bad to people you don’t like.

Love and hate are like the faith and the faithless. The evangelical believes absolutely and the scientist believes absolutely not, so they are the same: too arrogant to be humble, so you will not see, well, my face. [poses, pretty, beautiful, with flashing eyes]. God is an artist not a scientist because creation, well, comes before thought.

Oh, oh, do you know who Lady Liberty is? The Roman Goddess Libertas, the only cool one. She was the goddess of freedom, and had like a temple built for her in 238 BC. I think the French had the last laugh. She is, well [giggles] the goddess of night and nightly things, of prostitutes, too, and all that were tossed to the sea. But she speaks truth. Here is the poem, the full poem dedicated to Lady Liberty and for those, like, um, approaching the United States. Here stands your God in contrast to your “God”:

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I think girls would be gods, the torch, heaven’s gate, huh? Does this sound like your God?

Remember the cute, uhm, little Nursery Rhyme, where the old man does not say his prayers, so “I grabbed him by the neck and threw him down the stairs.” Now, saints shall be killers, sadists with wings; sweet mommies instructing little ‘uns to be murderous ones. No one thinks, like, their kid will murder children, though.  Who cares about old people, like; it’s not as if they know anything? Maybe he was just an old man. Maybe he was not a Christian? Maybe he was having a bad day? Could all of you, like, see Jesus doing that? Grabbing and old man by the neck and pushing down the stairs?

Maybe dogs hate you and you silly little humans love them because they are slaves? [opening mouth wide, has an idea] Oh, I see, it’s your way to be silly-little-human gods. Oh, OMG, another acronym, you humans like those as much as you like putdowns, SLHG! [disobedient little-girl look, sticks tongue out at you when pronouncing SLHG]

[Imitating strong male voice, putting hands on hips] You say to them, like, “What have you done for me lately?”

You all, like spend so much time thinking of heaven but put so little thought into it. So, like OMG, you fly around without bodies somehow, like, eating fruit, yet no sexes at all unless we are naked babies with wings; like, we won’t have penises or vaginas because, like, sex is a marker for DEATH. So what fun is it? Singing to THAT God. That makes you happy? Or are you the dog that licks its master for fear of abuse? Are we dogs! That bliss will last a week because, well, uhm, because your heaven, how you see it, is HELL. What sits behind those gates is an inferno, a fire pit, a good dream gone bad because you put yourselves ahead. Earth is but a lifelong holding pattern where my daddy said—if I had a daddy, daddy, “We haul wood, eat, and fuck” … I’ll stop. You’ll see.

Oh, the dogs, back to the dogs. Unless, uhm, you are those pitbulls that mauled a six-year-old girl to death, but that, like, doesn’t count, unless Abraham is a pitbull and only-daughters mattered to your, uhm, god.

[Silent, starts to shake and cry]

I, I mean I was just riding my bike, and I saw those mean dogs.

They started barking at me [sniffling, crying] and I was so scared [uncontrollably crying, struggling to speak].

I, I tried to … get … to … the alley … to … hide. [crying, sniffling]

But, my … legs … froze … my voice … too

They knocked me down-ah! [crying] It hurt a lot.

I felt … them biting my neck … warm liquid, and I fell … asleep.

[Coming to] Well, like most pitbull owners, the guy was repeatedly, like, warned, but he thinks he is more of a man with vicious, abused dogs. Uhm, he did not listen, so the girl gets to die. He is locked up now. Sometimes, humans are such buttholes. They NEVER listen!

They all, all the rest, are wandering ghosts now.

Oh, you want to know if the pitbulls are still alive? [looking at you with disgust] They are ghosts. Two of them forever nipping at that child’s neck like a media loop [flipping her hair, nonchalantly]. But this time they cannot kill her because, like, she is already dead and laughing at them with a big smile and terrified eyes. They, now, like, whine like puppies, wanting to go home-ha. [looking sad, watery but revengeful eyes]

Guess who? Who am I chattering about, huh?

But you, like, really pissed her off right now. She is tapping her foot and puffing, like, the thing little girls do, that makes their bangs blow up in the air when they pout.

Who, you ask? The girl, butthole! You care about dogs that kill innocent kids, except, anger and death make girls despise innocence. Living little girls are innocent, so you think? But dead ones are … demonic? [looks scared, grabs your shoulders] I think, uhm, we’re human.

When I tried that, it was very uncomfortable. What’s that? That? The “that” you choose shapes you and blinds you.

Guess who? [Smiling at you, excited, devilish eyes]

[Scolding you, shaking index finger at you] You’ve got to pay attention. Who’s who? It will be scary, maybe fun, uhm, or horrid? We’ll see depending on your level of empathy.

Like, sometimes, at night, when it is really dark, like OMG! Did you try to look out your window? Did you pull the curtains back? Or were you, like, too afraid to see what was behind them?

Like, when you are little, or is it big, and you pull the blanket over yourself as if it were armor, the soft fleece, an Iron Maiden.  It’s the blanket that will suffocate you.

Remember the lonely man that likes girls, red-headed ones, too? Never mind! We will get to that. We are playing guess who? You get to guess who is in the room with you. [becomes serious, lowers voice]

It’s tough. But, uhm, like all things, even horrible things, get easier.

Killing the first time is tough, uhm, but after a few, it’s like eating a sandwich, you know, progress. But some kill never to kill again … a mistake. Killing, though, is always a mistake.

It’s like being two girls at a mall. That is safe, uhm, you know, because you are together. There is no one standing in a shower waiting for you at the mall. No one peeps into windows there watching you change or dance to Disney, or pick lint out of your bellybutton. Or, like, no one fanaticizes, uhm, to you doing splits or wishing they could sniff your socks or those little black nylon socks, or underwear. They’d watch YouTube for that anyway. Like the dogs wanting to sink their teeth into a virgin’s neck. At some point, uhm, we all want contact.

Sniffing a thing can be desiring a person to hold, caress, but for so many, like, reasons, you cannot have them.

Our private spaces have become, like, public places. Now, we can hide in our homes and watch others. It’s safer that way. Like, gotta love social media! We get to see our innards of body and mind, huh. We are real now, no more playing pretend. Humanity is a stew of horrors while being your favorite dish; Bon Appetit!

Don’t worry, even when you feel most alone, there are many in the room with you. The truth is that [leans close to you, lips almost touching yours] you all see so little.

But, what if, like, what if all those people you hurt or were torn from you come for you? They move in. Uhm, what if they watch you sleeping through the window pane, like the girls watch the lonely man? They are not curious, though, like his girls are, nor complimented. You know, his little girls, the ones hanging on the wall. The ones that love you; well, you have to put in an effort, you know, like he does, the lonely man, to see them, but when you harm, like, uhm, if you harm, they seek you. They come for you, like the dogs biting at necks. But these doggies know better. They are good doggies. [imitating 5-year-old]

I am not talking about them. These are the other girls.

They come for you, pending, pending, pausing, and watching for your agony.

What if your child or childhood pet visits you at the blackest moment of the night, or, you know, like the cat you killed when you were little? It comes for you, watching, eyes glaring, waiting patiently for your every discomfort, sadness, and pain? It watches; they do, intently.

What if the only way you’d be forgiven, like, is if you dig up the grave and hug the corpse of your enemy, or the one you killed but did not mean to?

But that is not the same as, like, [pauses] really standing too close to you!

Do you hear me? [getting more scared]

Wake up! It’s standing too close to you.

Who is that behind you! [screams]

Guess who? [cruel laugh]

No worries. It’s them. They were merged, well, she was, but two of them are here. Where is the other? [shrugs shoulders]. We will have to guess, won’t we?  [pauses, shivers] They tortured me awful when I did not want to see them after they died.  [jolts upward] Like, OMG!

Oh, oh, a hint, a verbatim quote: you can be a thing if you know a thing well enough.

No, uhm, there are others, like the doggies! [makes doggie gesture with hands, puffs with tongue out]. But since they, like the girls, have taken to you, let’s talk about them, and then you can do more guess who and guess what?

You wouldn’t be afraid of two little girls now, would you? [looking at you judgmental, dangerous-looking demeanor]

No one can rape girls at a mall.

Oh, oh, like, one wants to speak to you. It’s kinda funny because she is yelling at you, but you cannot hear her. Do you want to hear little Libertas speak, open her lips to you? [seductive, but guarded look]

She is saying she is sorry. Look at her. No, butthole! Look to your left. Shut out the lights. Now, look to your left. Look up and shake your head YES. [gestures, moving head up and down] You may have to close your eyes to see better. She is crying now, but with some relief. She says she is sorry that she went to the mall with her sister. She said that she wants you to tell her parents that. That she is sorry.

You understand? It’s you she wants to speak to, not me because she always is with me. She is sorry she listened to that security guard. He looked like a police officer.

She says, “I never talked with strangers. I, I thought it was okay to talk to security guards, to police. I, [sniffling and crying] was bad. I should have taken my sister and run away. My parents thought we’d be safe, two of us together.”

Her sister is here with her now. [emotional, teary-eyed]

Tell mommy and daddy that we are okay now. [sniffling and crying] It’s not their faults. I feel I am bad, too, but even my sister, see my sister, she is the one standing next to you. She is shy. She says it’s not my fault. We are little, kids. We can go home-ha, if you tell them and say white pony. They will know what you mean, white pony with a brown tale and mane. [cries silently, wiping her tears]

[Reading your mind, intellectualizing] It is not, like, important to know the details but to know we were abducted, sexually assaulted. One died during the assault, the other killed later. I felt bad that I died first and could not be there for my sister [sniffling but mostly intellectualizing]. We were never found. We were put in a duffle bag, drove up, up, up and up, and thrown in an infernal for being, I guess, little girls.

[Pauses, looks at you patiently, sincerely] Guess who?

[Demeanor changes, calm, starts to speak]

My father raped my brother and then me. My dad killed my mother, too, leaving her to die. This brutality was normal. It is normal to be raped and to rape. It is normal to play around with little girls. You know, deep down, it is wrong, but people, even you, are hypocrites. We like things we say we hate. It is too painful now. I do not like talking about this. It pisses me off.

Sometimes, I tell so many lies that I forget what the truth is. To try and think about what really happened, so long ago? I was threatened never to tell the truth, so I made lies. You know, I am still afraid of … him.  I am too worried, you know, all that pain scares me. I was never hugged by my father. I did not participate in the rape. No, no, no! I did not. I cannot go there. I lured the girls out by telling them their parents wanted me to get them. We put them in the trunk and drove home, away from theirs. After, they forced me to put the girls in a duffle bag and drive them to the pit, you know, the fire pit. It was very hot. I threw the bodies in the fire. They never found them.

I got caught molesting other girls. I would never kill anyone. People do change. After that one time, never again. No, never that. I think what I learned is that my family took the wrong turn. I guess. I did, too.

I think it would be good to raise a child with love. All I knew how to do is hurt those I love without being able to recognize that I did actually love them. Love, when you are me, is very angering. Love makes anger in me. If I had kids now, I think I’d love them. I would try to. But I cannot think of the past. It’s too painful. [flushed face, a pause]

Guess who and what? [looking girlish again]

Who am I?

I am.

Like, I saw the male horse go back to the burning barn to save his baby. I saw the lioness, give the baby baboon back to the father after she killed the mother. There was mercy when the baby looked at her and cried. When the male lion went to attack the baby, the lioness would not have it. It was moving.

I once heard a rather old but kind man say, “Just when you think human beings hit rock bottom, the bottom drops out, and you find that there is many, many more bottoms to come.”

Stalkers cannot hide in showers because, well, because, they don’t need to. No one can fit under your bed, unless it’s a little boy or girl, or a sweet little puppy.  [imitates puppy]

You, like, uhm, you have to make good in this world. Good does not just happen, nor does evil. Nature happens. Floods happen. Hurricanes, uhm, like, happen. Births happen; dying happens; the cycles happen. God is. You are. In a few years, you will never have existed here, but our actions will for generations. Unless, [looking at you in a sinister way] you need to dig up a corpse and say you are sorry.

There is good in you there is. There is good in him, too. But I do think there is much dukkha in this world.

You all have to trust. Use your minds well but also the mercy found in your hearts. Why the pain? So that you can practice at making happiness, like, uhm, you know, Nirvana.

So, we are playing guess who and guess what?

No! [scolding you] It’s not about you guessing who I am. I know what I am.

Who are you?

What are you?

 

Editor’s Note: Please read the other chapters of this serial novel here.