It seemed to be a normal day in Death Valley, California. Yeah, that’s where I lived. Ironic, right? It wasn’t all that bad, though. There’s plenty of kids that would die to live in Death Valley, not knowing that the days here are just as normal as the days elsewhere.

However, this day was nothing even close to normal. Sure, the birds were chirping and the sun seemed to be shining. But nature didn’t have a clue, nor could it warn us about what was to come. It was out of their hands, and inadvertently out of mine.

I was walking to school that morning, halfway down my block whilst veering off the sidewalk a little to step on an extra crunchy looking leaf. But of course, everyone remembered where and what they were doing when they heard the news. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t hear it. I saw it. “It” being one of those things that we wouldn’t be able to forget, some of us for a few weeks, months maybe. And then some of us, like me; the rest of our lives. Our short, little, insignificant and paranoid lives.

As I was about to stomp onto said “extra crunchy looking leaf”, I heard the shriek. It continued on, shrill and high pitched, getting louder and louder with every passing second. Should I run? Get help? I didn’t know. I couldn’t even tell where it was coming from, until something caught the corner of my eye. I glanced over, and to my horror, watched as a bloody hand slowly slid down a glass window, begging to be freed from the old rundown house it was trapped in. The curtains were quickly shut by a man in all black. I knew this man had gotten a glimpse of me. It was only fair though, as I had gotten a glimpse of him, too.

Needless to say, I never made it to school that day; I never made it anywhere after that. I was too scared to tell anyone about the man in all black, and too afraid to admit to myself what I had seen. Over the next few years the memory faded, but never disappeared completely. Details became jumbled in my brain; I wasn’t sure what I had or hadn’t seen. All I knew was that I never wanted to see anything again. That notion was my reasoning for stabbing my eyes out two years later.

My mother had been knitting that day, and coincidentally I had “forgotten” to take my medicine again. When she left to get the mail, I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching for her knitting needle and turning it on myself. Just like I was unable to stop the blood seeping from my eyes, causing the blindness. I couldn’t control her screaming as she entered the room and saw me on the floor. I couldn’t control my other senses, (and what little sight I had left), from taking over and hitting her over the head with the lamp. I couldn’t stop myself from finishing her off with an old hunting knife. And after that, I had no one. I was completely alone.
The next few hours were just a blur. I remember being admitted into the mental ward a few days later. Before that, they had tried to put me in a few foster homes. They soon found out that was a major mistake. About a $40,000 mistake (in funeral costs, anyway).

“I wasn’t allowed to go to my mother’s funeral” I said dully to my issued therapist. She didn’t care what I had to say. She just hoped I could keep talking for a few more hours so that she’d get paid more. “I didn’t really want to though. Flowers, music, family. The whole thing makes me feel sick.” I watched as she dozed off every couple seconds but managed to keep eye contact with me. “Mourning over such a small, unneeded life. Psh. There isn’t anything wrong with my thinking, it’s everyone else’s. Isn’t it?” She didn’t respond. I continued rambling, “or maybe, no one’s thinking is right. Maybe we’re all just caught in a big storm of different opinions, statistics, theories…” As I continued talking, my thoughts slowly became stars that I couldn’t fathom into constellations. Then, it hit me. My mind broke through everything, and I figured out that I indeed was the man in all black.

A deeper look:
The glimpse that the narrator gets of the man in all black is actually the reflection of himself that he sees after his first murder.
The narrator being “too scared” to tell anyone what he saw was him pleading innocent in court.
The narrator’s mother “getting the mail” right before her untimely demise is a symbol of all the distractions his brain had to create not to think about his previous murder.
He was indeed allowed to go to his mother’s funeral. The therapist he was talking to was actually the other funeral attendees. He admits to both of the murders here.