A red balloon, flying peacefully through the sky. I watch it, following only with my eyes as it lands upon my grassy front yard. I watch as each blade of grass skims the innocent red balloon until it eventually bursts into a red mess of plastic covering my lawn.
If only that were the truth. “It just burst into a flood of red and plastic onto my lawn,” I try to tell the psychologist analyzing my every word as if he has found a new element. He knows the truth about my mass killings, the red that coated my body and changed my life, one blade at a time as each victim got coated in a plastic cover. Each body so ungodly misshapen that none of the seven John Does’ could stand at the fiery gates of hell without having to speak their name to the devil himself.
“Why did you kill those seven people?” The question catches me off guard as the officer stands beside my shackles, threatening to drag me by my hands and feet at the slightest twitch. So I sit in a silent, meditative state as I search for the proper answer to the psychologist’s question. I know well that each word I speak, each breathe I decide to steal must be strategically gone about, for this is my future. Either life in prison, or death at noon.
I decide to answer his question with one of my own, hoping that I may be able to make him fault with a question so personal, so vastly debated that he shall have no choice but to contemplate how to go about answering. “Do you believe in God?”
He just glares at me. I can sense the gears turning in his head, each one making a tick sound as the clock passes the time in a trance of man’s making. Time itself can stop at the will of one person, but will it ever start again if no one wishes it? Eventually he has to answer my question, so I just sit here and count the clicks coming from within his cranium; One, two, three… Time goes on.
“Are you referring to… the Seven Deadly Sins? Is that why you killed those seven men and women?” The psychologist almost seems to be speaking to himself now.
“Have I enlightened you yet?” At that remark, the psychologist calmly stands up out of his chair, having only one statement left to say as he exits the stone cell. “May God have mercy on you.”