About now i would like to relay to you the story of my first kill. What is that you say, you’ve already heard about that? Well that isn’t entirely true, you have heard about the first person i have caused to die, my first kill was a different situation entirely.
As far as childhoods go, mine wasn’t actually all that bad. Sure it had the normal ups and downs, but no norman bates esque mother, no abusive father, and no secret adoption from a long line of killers. In fact, i can state for the record that my current state of mind didn’t start until about age 13 or so. I can’t pinpoint any incident that caused it, but there have been a few moments throughout my life that i feel opened the floodgates, for lack of a better term.
It was the summer of 1993 and i was 11 years old. When you live in a state like texas, being a kid is like living in a fantasy novel. Hidden caverns, endless deserts, and creatures of all types just waiting around to be discovered. All and all a pretty happy time for me.
While other kids were playing ball, and other serial killers were mutilating cats, i had a different hobby. Wandering the desert has always been soothing to me. The isolation has always just felt, right. I wish i had some way of explaining this, but it is simply an immutable fact, like the sun rising, or a piece of meat going rotten. But being with myself wasn’t the only reason i liked to search the caverns and rocks, i have always, to a greater or lesser extent wanted to make my mark on the world. Something that would say, in no uncertain terms “ i was here”. And in those days i found a rather novel approach to this.
Back in those days a kid could easily buy a can of spray paint. Either idiots hadn’t started inhaling them yet, or people just didn’t care, take your pick. But i found nothing more satisfying on a summer night than finding a secluded place and decorating it exactly as i saw fit. Don’t misunderstand me, i have never been a great artist, never found drawing interesting, but placing a series of smudges, lines and doodles on a cliff face, or in a cave has held a certain tribal allure to me. And with countless miles of desert no one ever complained.
Do you ever hear someone tell a story, and they start it off with “ I knew something weird was going to happen.”? Those people are lying, when something weird happens, the reason it is weird is that it is unexpected. If one expected it, it would cease to be weird.
So, needless to say, i was ready for another in a long line of nights under the stars, and scrambling back to my house at the stroke of ten o clock. I packed up the can of paint ( dark purple in case your interested) a few sandwiches, and of course, plenty of bottled water. When your traversing a desert, that goes from a convenience item to a survival item.
The day was like.... well any other summer day in Texas, hot. By the time i had opened my gate and started my trek my back was already soaked in sweat.
But the sky was clear and i had nothing else to do, the joys of being a child.
The more i walked that day, the more i wanted to walk. I passed many sites of my previous adventures in non urban graffiti and something kept pushing me farther. By 3 o clock i passed a cave with bright green around the entrance, the farthest ( but not last) place i had been to. Whether it was out of nostalgia or hunger i decided to stop and dip into the ration of sandwiches, gummy worms and water i had brought with me.
As i downed the third sandwich i spotted something in the distance. Something, that until now i had never noticed, a large almost perfectly dome like rock just before the horizon.
One of the major problems with a desert is the fact that your sight range is greatly extended. What you think is a 20 minute schlep is more than likely 2 hours of walking. No matter how much experience you have with this, your ability to judge distances out in the wasteland is compromised. I can only imagine the amount of bleached skeletons that were people thinking “ i am sure i could get there.”
That being said by the time i reached the rock it was nearing 6 o clock. Much past my “ point of no return “ time. Which is to say the distance i could walk and still be home at the appropriate time. But the day was feeling epic ( If you forced me to guess i might conclude this was because of sunstroke. ) and i could deal with the beating with a nail studded belt, while i was forced to wear my dead brothers favorite shirt that i would get when i got home late.
You really did think i was serious there didn’t you?
I was breathing heavily, and mindful that i did need to hurry up , while i wouldn’t get beaten with the aforementioned belt, i still didn’t want to worry my parents. So in a flurry of vandalistic activity i started to cover the rock with sweeping lines, and imperfect circles, zig zags and filled in squares. And it was the last of these that got me in trouble.
There was about a quarter of the can left, and i had the thought to simply empty it in one area , make a solid color patch, and this went fairly well, until i noticed a piece of the colored patch move slightly. For a moment i thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me, that is until i felt three pinpricks on my hand and instinctively dropped the can.
I felt a sudden flush come to my face, and the world started to spin. I shook my head to try and clear away the feeling of floating i was getting. And with my last moment of lucidity, managed to put together what happened. Standing in front of me was a raised patch of purple, a raised patch with a curled stinger and two nasty looking claws.
My breathing started to get labored and a sense of irrational fear came over me. As i turned my head i saw the world sort of bleed together, and every step i took felt like it was on legs that were not my own. I had no plan in mind, but my poison addled 11 year old brain was screaming at me to run, and run i did.
To balance out my commentary on people lying i would like to point to something that people generally consider a lie , but that is actually %100 true. When you push your body to the limits you trigger your fight or flight reflex. One part of this that very few people think of is the vomit reflex. Sure crapping yourself, or pissing yourself in terror are more common. But when your body knows it is fighting ( or thinks it is fighting.) versus running away a completely different action takes place, you vomit. The reason for this is that you are constantly expending energy to digest food, and in most cases this is good, because one needs food to live. But in certain situations even that small percentage of your bodies energy could mean the difference between life and death. Next time someone tells you that they ran till they puked, you can be pretty sure they are telling you the truth.
Now i cannot say that my plan was to get back to the cave, but on some level, some instinctual level i must have known that it offered the best chance of survival. But it was a long run to get there.
During the last hour i found myself vomiting every 30 feet or so, this sent me into some tumbles that opened up a few nasty cuts on my body. But running, running in any direction seemed much more important than worrying about being encrusted with puke, blood and sand, so i simply sprang back to my feet every time and kept up my sprint to ......somewhere.
I hit the wall of the cave before i noticed i was anywhere near it. My vision was plagued with blotches of color, and things that may or may not have been alive watching me. My hearing was no better, for 10 minutes i found myself having a conversation with my mother about how sorry i was for staying out so late, but slamming face first into solid rock brought me back to my senses , for a moment anyway.
The opening no longer looked friendly, in fact the first image the bright green colored cave entrance brought to mind was of the mouth of a giant snake. I started to back up, thinking maybe to run , but a moment of lucidity hit me, if i didn’t stay here , i would die. And this, truly was my first moment of understanding death. Sure i had seen my grandfather in his best suit sitting in a pine box. ( and for the record, i did cry. ) But when your a kid, this doesn’t really click. However, having poison surging through your veins in some of the most unforgiving territory in america does a lot for your maturity level.
What i remember was not entering the cave, the image that will always stay with me is sitting at the back and looking into the fading daylight outside. And seeing him, i have always just called him the man. He was huge, in height and girth, nothing overly sinister about him, just what one would describe as a typical farmer , a red checkered shirt, some blue overalls and a beard that could use a trim. But the sense of dread he instilled in me, the sense of absolute doom has never left me. I had never seen him before, and have never seen him since, but that man, just standing there will stay with me till the day they slip the lethal injection needle into my arm.
I don’t know how much time passed, but it felt like years, a symphony of my own nightmares swirling around me as the poison tried to run its course. Nothing specific, no goblins or giant spiders ( ironically i am sure there was some fairly large ones in the cave) just pure emotion and fear hitting me like a wave as my vision would shift to a perfectly opaque color, colors, i will also always remember. Red for fear, yellow for sadness, and a shimmering sickly green as despair hit me like a kick to the stomach. I could hear everyone i ever knew dying in one moment, and the same group laughing at me the next. I have a feeling whomever thought up the idea of hell, was bit by a scorpion.
But as every user will tell you, no high lasts forever. And i finally came back to reality. One would expect me to be scared, to desperately want to get home, to cry on my mothers shoulder. But that couldn’t be farther from my state of mind.
This was the first time in my life i can remember ever wanting to kill something. Not in the way that a kid wants to see what happens if he throws a firecracker at a frog, not in the way a kid wishes his brother would die because he broke his nintendo, but in the way that a jilted husband wants to kill the guy sleeping with his wife. I knew the consequences, i knew it was stupid, but that insect tried to kill me.
My mouth tasted like sugar and mushrooms, and my entire body ached. I couldn’t run, and by my guess it was about 2 in the morning. But that feeling, that anger.... no, anger is not quite the right word. It was more a feeling of challenge, something from that hunter gatherer part of me that wants to do nothing more than thump its chest and show it is the best carnivore on the block, kept me going.
I dragged the stick the entire way, which took 3 hours, all the while thinking of the horrendous things i was going to do , once i found the scorpion. I could go into detail, but i am sure most of you have lives to get to, let’s just say if it involved a scorpion and anything found in your average house, i thought of it.
I’ve never been a lucky person, and my childhood was no different. But one thing i can say is that even at 5 am in the creeping morning light, a purple scorpion is pretty easy to spot. It stood on the rock, facing me, like it had been there the entire time, just waiting for this squishy bi-ped to return for round two. As i approached it lowered itself slightly, and i didn’t give it time to react.
That isn’t to say i hit.
The stick hit to the left of the creature and splintered, wood in a desert isn’t exactly the strongest stuff out there. I don’t know if the scorpion recognized me , or for that matter if a scorpion can recognize anything other than prey and rocks, but it is my opinion that it knew, as far as scorpions can be said to know anything, that we were now playing for keeps. The high noon bell had rung and we were in a duel between man and beast. Fighting a scorpion the way one fights a man may seem silly as an adult, but as a child it was my first serious experience.
As the stick shattered the thing bent low, and was ready to spring. My hand was at it’s mercy, but my other was free, i had one shot, and truth be told, not a very good one.
He scuttled toward me in a purple flash, something about a creature so deadly in such a garish shade made its intimidation factor worse, but to my credit i didn’t shake, i didn’t miss and i didn’t get stung again, ever.
I caught it by the tail, and in that instant, it was over. The scorpion was still alive, but now, it was at my mercy. I cocked back my hand as the creature tried in vein to sting, or claw, or anything it could to get away from me. I stared at the rock, the place i would watch the creature explode as it hit, and something hit me.
Watching disney movies makes a child give animals too much credit. Every bunny has a happy go lucky personality, every cat thinks about how great it would be to eat a bird, and every crocodile is out to eat the toes of little children who wander too close to a swamp. Or, in my case, every scorpion is a purposeful killer. And by this logic, this death was too easy.
I wanted it to go through what i had been through, literally. I sighed and got a better grip on the tail.
The walk home was a horror, but the worse it got, the better i felt, the more joy i was getting out of dragging the six legged bastard with me. Every degree it rose made me laugh a little harder, taunt it a little more, and stop more and more often to bury it’s body in the sand then rudely yank it back up to earth. I had lost a shoe at some point and when i stepped on a rock and gashed my foot, i simply sat down and let my blood pour over the thing’s face.
Eventually i did get home, my parents must have realized something was wrong, because they were no where to be found. Only a note on the backdoor saying that they were at the police station, and they wern’t mad at me.
I got over the incident, rather quickly actually, a bath, a soda and a brief talk to my parents later, i was right as rain. Of course i told them that i had fallen asleep at 8 o clock, and then hurt myself trying to get back in the middle of the night.
Want to know what else i did? I tore the claws and stinger off of that prick with a pair of pliers, gave it a quick soak in a glass full of vinegar, and put it in a shoebox filled with flies. For the next 3 weeks i watched maggots slowly eat the scorpion starting with the unimportant parts, and leaving nothing more than a shell. It moved up until day 20.
While i can’t say this was the one incident that changed me, it is the first time i can remember taking delight in the suffering of another creature ( and yes i do understand insects don’t suffer, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying at the time.) . And more importantly the first day i realized that the world had two categories, the things i pity, and everything else.
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