The Quiet Ones

You know who we are. We’re the ones who sit in the back. In the corner. We don’t talk much. We don’t ask you how your weekend was. We don’t discuss the weather. We don’t care. You all know one, you’re thinking of them now. That person who sits behind you in class. That coworker in the corner desk who never talks to you. That neighbor who rarely comes out of their house. You all have one in your life.

Please do not confuse us with the other ones. The “creepy” ones. The ones who hit on you repeatedly. The awkward ones who try too hard to make you like them. They are not us. No, I’m talking about the people who you don’t even notice are there. You don’t notice when we’re there and you don’t notice when we’re not there. The invisible ones. We come and go as we please and you have no idea. We don’t talk to each other if that’s what you’re thinking. This isn’t some secret network or club. We don’t have meetings. We don’t send group emails. There isn’t a sub for us. We’re just here. We just watch. We just think. We just plan.

We do all know each other however. I don’t mean personally. I mean when we walk past each other in the street, in the hallway, in the office, we know. We recognize each other. There are no nods or winks. We don’t high five. We just look into each others’ eyes and know. Some of us team up, though most don’t. The ones who do, however, almost never make it through. We’re just better on our own. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re like this. I stopped thinking about it many years ago. After the first one. After that I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t need an explanation. After that moment, for the first time in my life, I liked being me.

I was 16. I had felt out of place my whole life. I had friends but I wasn’t interested in them and they weren’t interested in me. In school, I was invisible. I never got bullied but wasn’t a “popular kid” either. I was there physically, just not mentally. I was always off somewhere else in my head, having some grand horrid adventure. I lived in my head. I over thought everything; I worried about everything. I was giving myself cancer, I was sure of it.

My dad left before I met him. My mom was a secretary for a local Optometrist and made enough money for us to live comfortably. Our little life was fine and dandy except for thing. One large, sweaty thing...her boss Dr. Jeffery King. He liked my mom. A lot. Too much. More than she liked him. She made the mistake of dating him when she first started. A mistake both of them would eventually regret. Him more than her. When she broke it off, he started to get aggressive. It started with late night calls and texts. Then eventually he started showing up drunk, screaming in the front yard for my mom. Then our house was broken into and only my mother’s room was trashed. We knew it was him, but there was no proof. The next day my mom put in her two weeks’ notice. I begged for her to just not go back but she wanted to “do the right thing”. No one ever does the right thing. I started going to her office after school, in fear he might hurt her. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

He never looked at me while I was there. He only looked at her. One day, while my mom to getting ready to go home after work, I broke into the filing cabinet. She was in the back room so I knew I had a few minutes. I found the names and numbers of several previous secretaries, and that night I called all of them. He had done this before. He liked to prey on his secretaries. They all told me similar stories. One ended much worse than the others. One woman ended up in the hospital after she was brutally raped on her way home from the office. She stated to the police that it was the good doctor but for some reason no charges were filed. Later, King told me he had done work for the chief of police and that they had become golfing buddies. The woman said she had always turned down his advances and the rape happened the last day of her two weeks’ notice. Tomorrow was my mom’s last day. The decision made itself.

About 24 hours after I hung up with the woman, I was sitting in King’s office. He wasn’t sitting though; I’m sure it would have been difficult to find a chair, since I had burned out his eyes with his own LASIK machine. That one was funny. I taped him to the bench, and pried his eyelids open using fishing hooks. The hooks were attached to wire, which I stapled to the back of his head so his eyes would stay open. I taped down his head down too; didn’t want that laser to burn anything other than those baby blues. Then I turned on the machine and took a seat. The shrieking started very quickly. I had to tape his mouth shut so he would stay quiet. Surprisingly, he managed to get the tape off before I could sit back down. After taping all around his head, I took a seat and began to explain myself. He didn’t recognize me apparently, so I explained who my mother was, about the women I talked to, blah blah blah. Let’s just say by the end of it, he knew why this was happening. I adjusted his head so the other eye was in the beam. After a few more minutes I turned off the machine. I didn’t want his eyes to get infected so I poured a bottle of rubbing alcohol in them. He didn’t like that either. Delaying the inevitable, I ripped the tape off his mouth and asked him a few questions, to which he had some very interesting answers. Through sobs, he described the things he’d done to women in the past. It sounded like a confession. A confession only a monster would ever tell a priest.

I had been fantasizing about what was to come next all my life, yet I was nervous. My heart was racing now. I was sweating and my hands were shaking. Don’t judge me - it was my first time. I didn’t have any of my tools yet, and all I had with me was an old military bayonet I had found in our garage a few years back. My mom never said where it came from, but I knew it was my father’s. For a moment, while the good doctor spoke, I studied the blade. There was a small triangle scratched into the base, and there was something black that had drooled down from the tip and dried. Mid confession, I stabbed Dr. Jeffrey in the throat, just to the right of his jugular. He bled a lot, and kept trying to take deep breaths. As he squirmed and gurgled, I dug the blade in even deeper, until I felt his spine. After watching him pour all over the floor, I went home. My heart wasn’t racing. I wasn’t sweating. My hands weren’t shaking. I became me that night.

Good stuff huh? You should take comfort in the fact that not all of us are like me. We’re all different. We don’t all kill or torture or rape or maim or stab or shoot or kidnap. We all have our own thing. We all have our own needs. Some of us just feed them in different, less “murdery” ways. Some find comfort in drugs or alcohol. Some of us like to steal. Some like to unscrew the handrails on handicap ramps and sit back and watch. I once saw a story on the news about a janitor who worked the night shift at a small Catholic church. Every night he would clean the bathrooms, wipe down the pews, and masturbate into the holy water. You see: we all have our own thing.

If this is all news to you, rest assured, you’re not one of us. Be thankful for that. Consider yourself lucky. Cherish your “normal” life. Do not take it for granted. We sure don’t. We don’t want to be like you. Maybe before our Firsts we did, but not after. No, after we considered ourselves lucky to not be like the rest of you. “Blessed” is the word I think you people use quite often. Some of us don’t feel the same way however. Some of us hate being us. They just haven’t had their First yet and that’s very understandable. Some of us are late bloomers, some never bloom at all. It’s very sad when they don’t understand what they are and don’t understand how to reach their full potential. They must feel so lost and hopeless inside; a feeling that probably never goes away. They try to fill their lives with something “meaningful”, but nothing ever sticks. They look for their calling in traditional careers but they hate their job. They look for love but love always leaves them. They turn to the superficial. Maybe lots of followers on Twitter or lots of friends on Facebook. None of those people are real friends though, but they know that. They end up staying home, where it’s safe. They can’t get hurt at home. They stop trying. Stop letting people in. People just hurt you and leave you. This is the stage where most will remain until they die. Whether it be naturally and alone or by their own hands and alone. If this is at all hitting very close to home and describes your life, congratulations, you’re one of us. Welcome. The water is warm. Just jump.

To the rest of you, all I can say is this: Watch. That person who sits behind you in class, that coworker in the corner desk who never talks to you, that neighbor who rarely comes out of their house...watch them. Watch them because they may be like me, or they may be much worse. They may not be a bloomer, in which case you’ll never have to be that person on the news after a horrific event saying: “He was such nice guy. Very quiet.” And most importantly of all, watch them, because they are watching you.

always_through