His hands were shaking as he began typing on his computer. Drops of blood falling from his hands were painting the keyboard crimson. He clenched his fists to make his hands steady. What just happened? Was it just a dream? He looked behind him to see if it were real. The pool of fresh blood confirmed that it was. He shut his eyes and took long deep breaths. So this is what they always talked about. This is what they were like. He opened his eyes, his hands were getting steadier. The stench of blood was getting stronger every second. He knew he had to get away from here. He needed a plan, and a good one too or else he would lose this, he would lose everything.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”
(Helen Keller)
(Helen Keller)
Simon Baker looked in the big mirror in his room. A skinny naked boy looked back at him. On his entire body, there were multiple scars, some fresh, others healed. He took out a sharp edged stone from his pocket and cut his right arm with it. Another one to go in the collection. He looked at the bright red line of blood, trickling from his arm into the floor but like every other time, he felt nothing. Simon was different than everybody he had met in his life, ‘unique’ as his mother liked to put it. He could not feel most of the normal human emotions. He could not feel pain, love, lust, sadness, happiness or any other feeling. His mother was the only one who stood by him and took care of him. Everyone else, even his father, thought that he was a freak, a mutation of the nature. But that meant nothing to him. He didn’t feel the sadness at being left alone, nor the love that his mother had for him. He was feelingless. His life was one big hole that he neither understood, nor wanted to understand. When he was a little kid, his father would come home drunk with his buddies, after his mom had gone to work her night shift. Then, he would cut Simon using sharp blades. “Can’t feel a damn thing!”, and then they would all laugh like it was the best joke they had ever heard. And then afterwards, he would threaten him not to tell any one about it. Though Simon didn’t ‘feel’ threatened by his old man’s words he didn’t say anything to anyone because he never ‘wanted’ to tell anyone about it. That was his life. He never ‘wanted’ anything. He never had a longing for anything. He never loved anything or anyone. Never hated too. He was a feelingless, heartless bastard, his father’s words for him.
Then as he grew up, he started feeling something. He became curious. How did others live? What do they feel? What are feelings? So he started to cut himself like his old man used to do. He wanted to feel it, feel anything. Anything that would make him understand the reason everyone at his school called him a freak. The reason why his old man had left them. Not that he was affected by these things in any way, it’s just that he was… he was curious. He didn’t know how else he could define what he felt. All his life he had heard this word getting used over and over again. ‘Feelings’. And now he wanted to know what it meant. Soon this became his obsession. The one thing that he actually felt, took over him completely. There wasn’t a single place on his body where there weren’t any scars or cuts or lacerations. He had seen people feel pain when they get hurt. He wanted to feel it too. But it was all in vain. He couldn’t feel a damn thing, except for this ever growing, ever intensifying curiosity.
He came to know about Dr. Robert when he attended the doctor’s lecture on Human Emotions. He didn’t understand much of it but the man had a lot of degrees written next to his name. That night Simon emailed the doctor. They talked for a while. Simon told the doctor about his condition. Robert took great interest in his case. They talked for hours.
“The thing about emotions is that they are a tricky thing”, the doctor said, “it’s never the same with two people. Different people have different ways of dealing with them, of feeling them. But one thing is for sure, you feel the deepest when you lose somebody close to you. You may not know it yet, but you’ll see..”
Who was close to him, Simon thought? Naturally, he had no idea. But if anyone had ever taken his side, it was his mom. Although to him she was just another human being but he knew he meant a lot to her. She had said so herself. At that time his obsession had completely taken over. He wanted nothing more than to satiate it. He went to the kitchen where his mother was cooking something.
“Mom..?’
As she turned around, he plunged a large butcher’s knife into her chest.
It was very bloody. That was his first thought as the blood spurted all over his hands. She was in pain, he could tell that too. For a while there was nothing else. Just her mother gasping and moaning with pain and a lot of blood. Then after a while, there was something else too. He couldn’t quite tell what it was in the beginning but it was slowly replacing that rapidly escalating curiosity with… with.. calm? It kept on increasing. The more carefully he looked at the dying woman in his hands, the more calm he got. He didn’t know how he knew that he getting calm, he had never felt like this, but somehow he knew. He drove the knife further inside her, she cried out in pain. And he… he.. loved it? What was happening to him? He wanted it to last forever. He felt … good!There was terror and pain in her eyes. And more deeply he looked, more alive he felt. It was amazing! He lowered his hands into the pool of blood that had gathered around him, the beautiful red blood, and rubbed it all over him. It felt out of this world. He couldn’t even fully understand what he felt. The calm turned into happiness and joy and so many other 'feelings' he had no idea about. It was all new to him. He started shaking. He had never felt anything in his life. And now it was hitting him with full force. Every good feeling he had observed in the people, every good thing he had read in the books, things that once felt so strange and foreign to him, he was feeling them all. He owned them. It was ecstasy! A smile crept over lips. He had never smiled in his life before. Her mother was taking her last breaths now. He pulled the big blade out of her and charged it one more time into her body. She gave a tiny shriek as more blood gushed out. He raked his eyes all over it, taking it all in. He wanted to fully grasp what he was feeling, but he failed. It was beyond anything he had imagined it to be. And then she was gone.
He sat on the floor beside her corpse, his back against the wall and desperately tried to cling onto everything that he felt, but it was fading away now. He was slowly getting back to normal. His excited breathing and racing heart were calming down. The intensity of his emotions was decreasing. Excitement replaced ecstasy and happiness replaced excitement. And then slowly, it was all over. He had been to heaven, if there were one, and back.
He came back to his computer. It was all gone now, except for the shaking in his hands. Only twenty minutes had gone since the doctor sent him the last email. So much had happened in those twenty minutes. So much that it all felt like a dream. He clenched his fists to make his hands steady and looked behind him to see if it were real. The pool of fresh blood confirmed that it was. He shut his eyes and took long deep breaths. So this is what they always talked about. This is what they were like. He opened his eyes, his hands were getting steadier. The stench of blood was getting stronger every second. He knew he had to get away from here. He needed a plan, and a good one too or else he would lose this, he would lose everything. He typed his last email to Doctor Robert
“You were right doc. I felt it, just like you said I would.”
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Years later, the world got to know him as “The poker face killer” , the most feared serial killer of the century.
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(Ahmad Jalil)
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(Ahmad Jalil)
