Dementia

Dementia
by Isa Gonzales

The walls were painted a dull gray, and the overheard lights were stark yellow and ugly. The air-conditioner, which always seemed to be broken in Hollywood movies due to the criminals perspiring heavily, blew freezing filtered air into the interrogation room. It sickened me, the thought of confinement.

Due to the obnoxiously extensive media coverage of my case and trial, I presumed the press, resembling hungry, snarling, ill-mannered wild dogs, wanted to get one last chance to delve deeper into the mind of a psychopath.

A final, chilling interview with the century’s most infamous serial killer.

You might want to get a bucket if you have weak stomach, because here comes the part that I boldly announce that I’m proud to say that title belongs to me. That is, if you hadn’t guessed already.

The news reporter sat across me. A woman, with blonde extensions, blue eyes that gleamed hollow, teeth bleached white, fake-tanned skin and an overly curvaceous body that threatened to bust open the buttons of her revealing blazer.

She was beautiful, I suppose, for the average man. Since I have no right to call myself that, I’d be honest and tell the whole truth. I actually would have preferred the underneath of her eyes traced with dark shadows, her full mouth free from color and very much pale, all from the nylon cord knotted tightly around her pretty little neck. The length of her gold-spun hair would be put to use as they splay from her head like an angel’s halo, decorated with flecks of red from the blood which spurted from a wound caused by the penknife imbedded in her chest.

I licked my lips slowly at the exquisite and very much tempting thought. I have to admit it wasn’t very original, as I had already done the same to one of my victims (from three, five, ten years ago? I can’t recall) but I was certain I would be able to come up with a more fitting, lovely murder for her before the session ends.

Forgive me if I’m getting too detailed; it’s just one of the few non-brutal ways I can amuse myself.

By the way, all this time that she had been talking endlessly, I merely watched them with a half-glaring, half-demented frown plastered on my face. Apparently, the world thought that was the proper expression for a crazed man such as myself. I didn’t really mind and obliged to this stereotyping, because then you didn’t have to answer any of their questions (for some reason, they are satisfied with a scowl. I have yet to know why). But then again, they’d be wrong when they say I wasn’t a very happy person.

On the contrary, it didn’t really take much to please me. The sight of fear igniting in a paper boy’s eyes… the gasping, dying breaths of the counterman as he writhed while I emptied his cashier solely for the thrill of it (it was shallow, but give me a break, won’t you?)… the bullets buried in the flesh of a random woman’s half-naked corpse… All these and much, much more can make me smile on occasion.

Of course, I wasn’t getting any of that in this accursed room. I was agitated and restless. I didn’t fidget for I had simply outgrown that, but I was growing terribly bored. In addition, the interviewer was sucking my patience dry with her relentless inquiries. I loathed her voice as well, which was shrill and probing and all too irritating.

I can’t take it anymore. I have to make it stop…

I lunged across the wooden table, making perfect use of my balance, and threw myself on her sprawled frame, knocking us and the chair over. I bound her throat with the icy silver chain of my handcuffs.

All this happened in less than two seconds. I was an expert on the surprise attack, have I mentioned that?

I could hear the loud, panicked commotion of the crewmen and the police around us, but the woman (her nametag said Helen? Or was that Elena? Did it matter?) was silent, eyes widened and mouth agape to the fullest, the effects of shock which I was all too familiar with.

I could feel a chuckle erupt from my stomach, and my lips twisted into a vicious, maniacal grin as I pulled hard, ceasing only when her neck bone audibly snapped.

I didn’t know if she was dead or not. I didn’t care.

The moment I finished with my task something hard and blunt battered into my nape, and I could feel my consciousness fading.

If I had an opportunity to look back on this scene I’d have remembered assuming I’d never wake up again after that, and that it was such a pity I wouldn’t be able to eat my last meal…

I would have shrugged too. Maybe they knocked me out and injected me while I was out cold because they thought I’ll try to kill everyone around me.

And they’re probably right.