Winter is quickly closing in and the days are growing shorter. I look forward to shorter days all year. Less daylight and more darkness, the darkness trumps the light in the winter. I gaze out the window and watch the sun sink lower and lower in the sky. As it sinks my heart beats faster and faster. The sun is hazy and red on this foggy evening. The image quickly twists and morphs to a cold corpse in a red pool of blood. Her throat is sliced and that is the only wound I inflicted upon her. However, fate was not so kind to her, she was born with a narrow spine and always experienced severe pain. I helped her, I ended her suffering, and she would thank me if she could. I have devoted my life to ending suffering. Animals kill the old, the lame, and the weak, and so do I.

Now that the body is cut up, the meat is stored in the freezer, and the rest has been properly disposed of, I can sleep for a couple hours before I have to head back to the locker plant I own. I help feed the healthy families of Jackson, Michigan. I walk to my room, slide off my boots, lie down in bed, close my heavy eyes, and wait to dream.

I am ten years old again. My mother is driving us to the doctor’s office. She hasn’t been eating and she always says her stomach hurts. I do a lot of medical research on my own. My friends say it’s weird so I stopped talking about it around them. I think mom has anorexia, doctors can fix anorexia.

The doctors let me go in with my mom for a little while. I was looking at all of the doctor’s tools when they told me I should go back out in the waiting room and that the nurse would watch me. I think they were just upset because I was getting my germs all over their fancy tools. I’m staring into the bright light on the ceiling and my eyes are starting to get heavy as it gets later and later. I’m starting worry, but I’m too tired to get up. Nothing bad could ever happen to my mom.

My eyes fly wide open and I’m at home. I silently tiptoe to my mother’s bedroom and I can hear her crying. She is on the phone with my dad. She says that she has pancreatic cancer and that the doctors can’t do anything for her.

The next year is hard as I watch my mother slowly suffer and die before my eyes. Her funeral is held on my eleventh birthday. Then I am sent to live with my dad and we move from Florida to Michigan. It takes forever to get used to the bitter cold weather and the snow. I make a lot of friends at school and I never tell anyone what happened to my mom so it’s like it never happened, even though I know it did. I watched it happen. When I graduate from high school I don’t pursue my dream to be a doctor, I make a promise to my mother that I won’t sit back and watch anyone else suffer.

I wake up to the sound of rain at four in the morning and wonder if it’s raining on my mother’s grave back in Florida. I sit up and look around my lonely house. It feels like forever since I had someone to keep me company.

The bell above the store’s front door chimes as I am talking to a customer and I turn to see my friend Paul. He’s wearing his police uniform and is holding a newspaper. He walks over and slams the newspaper down on the counter in front of me.

“There are always people getting killed in Jackson. You would think they would learn to lock their doors before they go to bed,” Paul grumbles.

“It’s really a shame, isn’t it?” I say shaking my head slightly.

The customer I was talking to before picks up the newspaper and skims it briefly. “Looks like she was born with a narrow spine, whoever killed her did her a favor,” he says while chewing on a toothpick.

“Did her a favor? A favor you say? This is the third murder this month and if we don’t find out who is responsible, it is going to keep happening. People are going to keep dying. People who don’t deserve to die are dying. So you don’t mind coming to the station to explain why you have this sick opinion?” Paul growls at the shocked customer, who has almost swallowed his toothpick. Paul takes away the customer in the back of the police car. They are getting desperate for a suspect and if you say a few suspicious words they will question you for hours.

That weekend I saw a little boy, about five years old; he’s autistic and lives in a house a few miles from mine. After tonight he won’t have to suffer from autism anymore. I grab the bag with all of my supplies in it, sling it over my shoulder, and walk to my car. I drive slowly and silently around to the back of the house with the headlights switched off. I park my black car in the shadowy cover of the tall trees. Everyone in the house is sleeping and the silence is welcoming.

I silently cut the screen and lift the window open just enough so I can slip through. I quickly slide the window shut again so that the breeze doesn’t awaken the sleeping child. I slowly tiptoe over to his bedside with the knife in my right hand. With one skillful and swift movement I make a deep, long, painless, cut across the boy’s throat. His eyes only open for a second before the light leaves them. He finally looks at peace and he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. I pick up the boy’s light body carefully. We silently exit through the window leaving nothing but the blood on his sheets behind.

As I am closing up the store, I am thinking about how very lucky I am. I have committed many mercy killings and have not been sent in for questioning once. No one suspects me. I am also very surprised that this community hasn’t found out what they have been eating all this time. If someone were to ever find a human fingernail or tooth in their meat, then I would have issues, but no, I’m careful.

The next few days go by slow and the snow doesn’t stop. I am shoveling out my driveway every morning. I am reading a book when she walks through the door. She has sparkling, sapphire blue eyes and long, flowing, blonde hair. She shyly walks up to me and asks me, with a voice as soft and gentle as bells, if I could give her directions to the nearest gas station. I tell her there is one about a mile down the road and she gives a soft sigh of relief. I ask her if she is from around here because I haven’t seen her before. She smiles and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“It’s probably because I’m a vegetarian,” she says on her way to the door. I almost watch her walk away but I go after her and ask her if she’d like to have dinner sometime.



It’s been a year since I first saw her and we have been spending every moment together. I no longer care about the suffering of others, as long as we are together nothing else matters. I have been selling regular meat now at the locker plant and I don’t have to worry about the health inspectors anymore. I am also studying to be a doctor like I’ve always wanted.

We are driving to her favorite restaurant for our anniversary and I have an engagement ring in my pocket. She says she loves me and I kiss her hand as we drive through the four way intersection. A semi-truck drives through at the same time and crashes into the passenger’s side of my car and glass from the window cuts into her perfect skin.

I sit by her side in the hospital all night, she is going to live, but she’ll never be the same. She has a ruptured disk and she cried three times that night from the pain. It breaks my heart and I blame myself because I was driving. She had to have glass removed from her skin and I sat there with her and held her hand the whole time.

I take her to my house and while she is lying down I sit in the other room and hold my head in my hands. I know she is in severe pain and that she will have to take those pain pills for the rest of her life. I know that with a ruptured disk the pain can be severe and debilitating. It will also get worse as time goes by. I know I can’t watch her suffer and I know I can’t live with the guilt.

She has taken such strong pain medication that she cannot function properly. She is passed out in my bed and I am sitting in the living room, writing her suicide note, in her handwriting that I know and can duplicate very well. There is an aching, stabbing, twisting, pain in my chest and I am losing the ability to breathe. I pick up a cloth and then wrap it around my pistol and carry it to the bedroom. I set the note on the bedside table and set the pistol down. I sit next to her and stroke her hair for a while. Then I pick up the gun, move her hand so she is holding it, hold it to the back of her head, whisper “I love you” in her ear, and both of our fingers pull the trigger as tears silently run down my cheeks.

Now that I have tried my best to end everyone else’s suffering, it’s time I ended mine. I burn her foraged suicide note and write my own true story. This is the tale of my suffering and how I tried to save others from theirs. This is my story and we are drawing near to the end. Now that I have confessed to what would be classified as murders, but are really just mercy killings. I hope you all will understand. Her body is getting stiff now. I pull her body to mine hold the gun to my head and hope her, and my mother, will be waiting for me on the other side. I also hope that my mother will be proud of me as I squeeze the trigger.