Understanding Reality

John had always thought about silly it was that people moped about death, and let it disrupt their insignificant, tiny lives. Whenever someone 'passed' (or so it was called- passing meant that you were going somewhere, which was not coherent with reaching the end of the line, John thought), he had noticed how much people complained about it, dishing out thousands of pounds on a funeral, and for what? Really, there was no reason. This, John believed more than anything.

He thought that medicine was useless too. It was another thing many men and women wasted spend their lives creating. Why use your one, miniature gift to help sustain others? John didn't understand this, although he lacked empathy on many scales; he had very little realisation of that, though, just as a man who is trapped his whole life cannot perceive the outside world, or what it brings. Expanding your meaningless, insignificant life with the use of unnatural drugs was stupid. This is a life that would end soon, anyway.

John had vocalised these thoughts only once, this being to his mother. She had been shocked. How could her wonderful son be having these sorts of thoughts?

She hadn't said anything. She'd just walked away. John was only 15 at the time, and so she had thought it was just him being moody, or something of that sort. Really, she didn't believe this at all, but she forced herself to. She couldn't face the fact that perhaps her son wasn't... Normal.

Although she didn't tell the police, nor want to believe it herself, she wasn't surprised when he had killed his first victim. He wasn't secretive about it either. He'd happily trotted down to the station to boast about what he'd just done. Who he'd just shot.

"I was doing her a favour," He had said, really believing it tone true. "She was just a dinner lady. Just a stupid, worthless dinner lady that nobody cared for. Just a dinner lady."

His mother had been surprised by just a single part of the story, told to her by a woman who had been in the room at the time of the killing. This person was a dinner lady, who had admittedly run out, crying after such an awful affair.

This chunk of the tellings was how she had spoken of when John ate the body, or at least part of it- he hadn't been able to finish.

John's mother questioned him on this the day after, during her weekly visit. During these, he usually just rambled on about the meaningless of life. She acted as though she was listening, but usually did not. This was at least what she thought, but would later realise that she was taking in more than she realised.

"I ate what I could," He told her. "I didn't want her body to go to waste, not that there is such thing as waste, really. In a universe of infinite time, the earth will be destroyed in less than a microsecond." He laughed at this, and she hadn't brought herself to ask him more. Even the thought of her son doing something so horrific had, at the time, almost brought tears to her eyes. He worthless, little eyes.

One day, on a visit, she had caught one of the prison guards doing something he wasn't supposed to do; he was hitting her son.

Well, he wasn't hitting him at that moment. She had seen the man's hand was recoiling from it, John sitting on a chair beside the table, face lying down in front of him, smiling, but with a hollow darkness in his eyes.

"You little-" She was walking forward, towards them. There was no one else in the room, besides her, the guard and her son, a trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth now. The guard was standing, staring at the palm of his hand, as if mesmerised, seeming to hold back a smile. She stepped even closer, until she was but a meter away, and then stopped.

If you ask her now, she'll tell you the same thing: she can't remember what happened. She can remember his cries of pain as he was attacked by her. She can remember her son shouting enthusiastically to 'kick harder'. She can remember the prison guard's lifeless body, staring up at the sky, surrounded by a pool of copper blood. She can remember laughing- maybe the shock, or maybe a sign of things to come. And that's all. Just little snapshots of time.

Sometimes adrenaline wipes your memory a little, she says, if anybody in the prison gathers the nerve to ask about her first murder.

Sometimes things turn out that way, though. Even the nicest people can change. They can afford to hate and kill, as really, what stops them?

These are people who couldn't care less about life or death. People who understand about insignificance. About the eternity of time. People who understand reality.