Cherubs

You may call me insane, or that I am a depraved man worthy of nothing more than the cold, unfeelingness of death. If there was ever a time where I could reverse time to wipe these bloodstains off my hands, it has since passed and been forgotten. I know what I am. I am the Lord’s Venom; his right hand on Earth sent to exert his judgment. I am the only righteous man in a world set in disarray. For this reason, killing makes me feel closer to God. In fact, if God can commit these acts, then I am a god in my own mind and so is everyone else. It’s just that some people are too squeamish to realize this.

Before you suggest anything, no, I was never abused at home, nor were my parents constantly at each other’s throats arguing until the middle of the night. I came up as a relatively normal little pint-sized squirt. My mommy spoiled me, my dad taught me things, the usual humdrum routine. I received my first “thrill” when my pet dog Max was pulverized by a semi-truck. I’m more than certain that you’d expect I would be sad by this turn of events. But I can assure you to the contrary.

After that truck did its business with Max, I was mesmerized by the contents of what was my former dog. Inside, I saw his heart. I inspected it and by the looks of it, it burst like a balloon the moment the truck contacted my dog. His eyes glazed over, sending vibes up my spine. I marveled at each organ that were displaced because of the accident, taking mental notes of each one. Thinking back, this incident was what fueled my obsession.

That summer, I went to my uncle’s butcher shop and he taught me the ropes of the trade. He owned a small farm where I received the satisfaction of watching him kill his livestock to prepare them for distribution. I skinned pigs, cattle, chickens. I slit their throats in the same method. This gave me that sense of variety that I desperately desired. After the end of summer vacation, I returned home and the same mundane life I had lived returned in full swing.

My father was a man in the ministry business. It is from him, my other passion developed. Stories about God and his justice soaked into my mind like a sponge. I became convinced that the world was a corrupt place but at the same time, I was the messenger of God’s wrath. I viewed everyone with the utmost contempt, including my parents. I staunchly believed I was at the same wavelength as God and that I was the only one who was awakened to the notion. Whatever anyone else may’ve said, I dismissed them because I saw that I was the only person who truly mattered and they were only there to service me, or more fittingly, I was there to condemn them as the disgusting piles of human filth before the eyes of God.

I became a pastor at a small-scale church in my neighborhood, but I was by no means your posterity preacher, nor did I talk the sugary fluff of there being rest and peace in Heaven, I instead taught them my truth. That they all deserved no forgiveness; how they were all blots in God’s eyes and worthy of nothing more than the eternal flames of Hell. I always held my congregation in fear. Words cannot describe how this feeling amused me. They were the live bait, and I was the fisherman ready to cast them into the flames at any minute.

Despite all of this, somehow, I managed to find myself tied down to a woman that I can’t even give the slightest glance towards, and three kids. My wife always disappointed me. She wouldn’t give into my dominion, especially when I desired the feeling of her skin against mine. Whenever that happened…I disciplined her. My kids were like little parasitic worms that fed on my time and life. The first one shouldn’t have been born, but because of some…mishaps so to speak, this became so. My first child, I called an abomination. It led to further scuffles with my wife, but she clearly could not see the world as I saw it. You may call me inconsiderate, but I am a righteous man.

The first murder I remember happened on a program we had on Sunday. After the congregation was sent out single file, I remained by myself, secluded to my office. As I was crafting a draft of my next sermon, I heard a knock coming from the front door. I was irritated that there was a disturbance, especially at a nightly time, but I endured it and I made for the door. What was waiting for me determined the remainder of my life.

Outside was a prostitute. Just looking at her filled me with an animalistic rage. She was of unsightly visage. Her hair was a tangled travesty, her blouse hardly being on straight. Her eyes were bloodshot, most likely with the help of drugs, I would think cocaine, that Devil’s weed. She asked for shelter that night as her encounter with one of her clients didn’t end well. I denied her three times, but she kept insisting.

I gave into her demands and allowed her entry into the sanctuary. I cursed under my breath about how I was going against my virtue with allowing this harlot entry into the most holy of places. She scurried to a bench, and I saw just exactly why her client turned her away. As she sprawled herself out on the bench, her engorged tummy was exposed. My eyes widened in shock: she was pregnant. This woman sullied the name of my church, and now she was going to bring more sin into the world. I could not have that. Not knowing what I was doing, I found my hands clasping the woman’s throat, slowly draining the life out of her. Nerves formed in the woman’s eyes when she desperately grasped for air. Her neck turned a shade of purple by the time I finished on her. The last thing she saw in her pathetic life was me glaring down at her with sheer hatred.

I regained composure to process what I had just done. My hands trembled the further the realization that I had taken a human life crossed my mind. But strangely enough, my eyes scanned the dead body before me, and her womb. From the looks of it, the woman was approaching her time of delivery. Memories of my childhood helping my uncle reentered my mind. I fumbled around my office for a sharp tool before dashing towards the kitchen to retrieve a knife. I returned to the corpse and made small incisions around the abdomen and uterus. I tentatively pulled open the flap of meat, and I ripped into it retrieving the unborn child. I was amazed by it. That feeling of being in the process of life and death sent chills down my body. Whatever happened next, I didn’t care. All I knew was that I wanted more.

I hacked away at the prostitute’s body and disposed of them in the dumpster at the back of the church. With the fetus, I sought a way to preserve it. It was my little cherub. I researched ways to preserve bodies on the internet. From the websites I visited, the answer was formaldehyde. I secretly ordered a few vials of the chemical and cleared my search history. When I received formaldehyde in the mail, I found a jar and I tossed the fetus into it before submerging it up to the tip with the formaldehyde. I then stored it away in my study which was off limits to my family.

You may consider me a monster for having ended that woman’s life, but I’d counter that as the lightning rod for God’s wrath, this was her punishment for using her body in ways not pleasing to the Lord. No one would miss that woman. And I had thoroughly made sure to clean up the mess she made that night. Shortly afterward, I conducted research into whether more women approaching their delivery dates lived around me in my neighborhood. I also skimmed social networks like Facebook and Twitter for victims. The method was always the same: I pretended to be a mother that was expecting and looking for friendship or followers. The first few months proved to be unfruitful, but soon I saw that I was receiving some messages.

The first woman I can’t for the life of me remember her name aside from maybe Gertrude or Cleo. From what I recall, she was a brunette who was childless prior until she had sex with her boyfriend. We became instant friends on Facebook, and soon came time for me to lure her. I suggested we see a movie together. She agreed, and I gave her the coordinates to where we could meet up. What she failed to realize was I was leading her to an abandoned alleyway. She never knew what hit her. I manifested before her wearing a dark trench coat and I slit her in the chest. She proved to be hard to put down, so I next slit her throat and stabbed her an additional time in the chest for good measure. Placing on my gloves, I removed her child and immediately stowed it away in a jar of formaldehyde. I felt that I didn’t need to repeat the same process of removal, so I left Gertrude’s body to rot.

Another woman I met when she broke up with her boyfriend. I gained her trust by claiming that I was in the same boat as her. The look on her face when she saw the utter betrayal and hurt before she joined the others was one, I would never forget. One was kicked out of her house by her uptight parents and didn’t receive any support from her parents or extended family. For that one, I didn’t even feel the obligation to fake my gender. Instead, I appeared to her as the benevolent preacher and took her into the church. She never left those doors. If I recall, she was around 16. Can’t bet my life on that one.

To make a long story short, I killed. And I killed. My early days as a killer were rusty at best, but dozens of women fell in my hand. I added onto my sweet little cherub collection, but it was nearly impossible to hold all my prized possessions. From there, I decided to invest in constructing a new shelf dedicated to my toys.

But what was this? A new development, perhaps? When I was attending a program at a neighboring church, my wife and kids remained at home. My firstborn allowed curiosity to cloud her judgment, and she saw that I had left my door unlocked and slightly skewed. She wormed her way into my room and saw my little cherubs in full display. Sure, she didn’t realize what they were, regardless, she was fascinated by them. She took my chair and propped it against my shelf and grabbed one of my precious jars with her ugly, muddy hands. It wasn’t too long when my firstborn showed my wife my hobby that I felt that tingle that something may’ve gone horribly wrong. Something convinced me that I should not return home. So, I trekked through the town after the program was over to bide my time. I was on the edge of the seat of my pants. What I felt wasn’t a twinge of remorse but of the thought that I would be exposed for these crimes. I grew anxious and I tried to hide myself by wearing a scarf, shades, and a fedora I bought from a supermarket.

I may’ve imagined hearing my name being called, I do not know. All I remember was jumping into my car and flooring it. I ignored any bystanders who wisely jumped out of the way of my vehicle. I was going seventy miles an hour, my mind now imagining the cherubs appearing before me, but they were no longer the beautiful creatures I have beheld them as. Instead, they were ghastly rotting mounds of flesh with razor sharp teeth and glowing eyes. They spun around my head in a feverish dreamlike manner repeatedly shouting the word “Sinner! Sinner! Sinner!”

I batted my hands towards these illusions like swatting flies. That was my blunder. Before I collided with a minivan and was promptly taken out of commission. I regained consciousness in a medical bed. My wife held a look of disgust and sorrow towards me contrasted with the looks of confusion my children had. Two police officers were also in the room. They said nothing obviously, but they had scowls from ear to ear. I had broken a few of my ribs and my right arm and leg. Some stitches were applied to my face, my lower body quaked. After some time for the sedatives to run their course, I ended up confessing to everything. The dozens of murders of young, pregnant women which funnily enough earned me the title of Jack the Ripper of the Twentieth Century. I must’ve had something in common with ol’ Jack, maybe genetics.

At court, I laughed at the families of all those women I had killed and before I was sentenced to life, I ranted about how I was much more superior to them because I was the decider of who lived and died. They wheeled me out of the court because they assumed, I was having an “episode,” and so I have resigned myself to spending the rest of my days alone in this cell.

With all this being left out in the open, you may still fashion me as insane. I exist on a different level of reasoning than you do. Like God, you could say I work in mysterious ways. Even after confessing to the murders, I still hold myself as being superior to those women because they lived their entire lives in sin and wretchedness. I am a martyr and am now being punished as one. If there is one thing that you still need confirmation on, I am insistent that I am a righteous man.

I am a righteous man.

I am a righteous man.