To Kill It

I wake up and slowly get out of bed, as I usually feel I must at 10:00. I go to the kitchen and get a knife from a wooden block specifically made to hold them. This is simple; this is routine. The next part will be more difficult.

I am too young to be up so late. But I am homeschooled, and my parents are fine with me staying up late and being sleepy the next day. I had always been a strange little child to some extent. When I had first started school, I hadn’t understood the fine line between physical and verbal violence. I had beaten up the other children when they insulted my honor, instead of insulting them. Now I understand that the reaction must fit the situation, but I still don’t like children of my age much. I would rather gaze upon the entrails of a mouse than talk to a child my own age.

The only people that I can say I really like are my mother and father. My mother works as a computer programmer and my father teaches me things. They took me out of school and bought me the necessary equipment to stay on or ahead of the curve. I chose the latter, and they are still proud of me. I also have a sibling who is somewhere near a year old. That is the reason why we bought a new house. That is the reason why I am creeping to the room the brat sleeps in, with a sharp knife held in both hands. It is causing problems, and I know that there is only one way to fix them.

My mother and father do not like when I try to kill it. I don’t think that they understand. It will cause this family to tear itself apart. Ever since the brat had caused us to move from our old house into this newer, larger one, I had known that either we would have to move out or it would have to die. I liked the older house. That house was comforting and objectively better. This one is foreboding. I know that to stop the sense of danger that I feel, I must go to my toothless little sibling’s room and kill it.

I open the door and see it. The daft little sibling is only good for wailing, but those wails almost never come at the right time. The brat does not wail at the exact time there is danger, and all signs of danger disappear when my mother and father come, leaving only a few marks in the weakling’s soft flesh. I think that they have an inkling in their minds that I am the one hurting my sibling, but I am not sure whether or not they wish to take real action. They used to trust me before we all moved into this house.

I quietly slide the door open (because all the doors slide in this house – maybe that’s so it can open the door) and step into the room. It doesn’t see me. The little baby lies sleeping in the crib that my parents bought. I ready the knife; no light reflects off of its cold steel. I wait for it to relax, and then I run to the crib and bring the knife down upon it. The brat wails as I slash its flesh with a knife, but the wails stop almost as quickly as they started.

How strange; for six months I have tried to kill it. I had to do it once every month, and every month was an agonizing wait to finally get in that killing strike. And only now has the brat stopped wailing. Maybe the noisy thing has finally realized that its wails are futile, and I can finally do this correctly.

It is weak; it is no match for me, despite my own lack of strength and an equal lack of skill with the knife. It is dead and bleeding when my parents slide open the door so hard that it makes me jump.

They survey my handiwork with shock on their faces, and for a second, I really think that they can finally see it. But they leave the room and shout at me, telling me that my act was wrong, asking me why I had to kill my "beloved sibling". I think they're wasting their breath, trying to treat the thing like an otherworldly being.

They ask me why I keep doing this, and I reply with my default answer of wanting to visit her. If they knew the real reason, they'd have me tagged with psychosis and taken to some institution. Then I hear my sister crying, and my parents go to check. I know that it must be some strange and reasonless thing. The time has passed for when I try to kill it. It has been twenty minutes, right?

No. The clock reads 10:10. It's no wonder that I couldn't kill it; even with the miracle of my sibling not wailing like a banshee at the death of thousands, I hadn't been able to kill it because I hadn't had enough time. I now notice it grinning at me from a longer shadow. But then again, it's always grinning. It has no lips. Its eyes are completely black, as is the entirety of its humanoid frame. Its hands are pointed and it stabbed, or tried to stab, my little sibling with them, once every month. I can hear my parents wailing that my sister died in her sleep. There are no stab wounds, no wounds at all; its pointed limbs are too pointed for that. At least they know I couldn't have done it. But it is a hollow victory to think of that.

Maybe we can finally leave this house, and this thing that kills little babies. But it is a hollow victory, because there was a couple down the street who were interested, and they have a wee tyke, too small to stand any chance. Strange how this horrid, horrid place seems to attract only people with little babies.