07/19/2006

Here is all you need to know to understand. Kill them three times, and they're dead. Kill them two times and you're dead. Kill them one time, and you never know.

I.
Sister Martha gave me a ham and cheese sandwich that came from the back of her food service van. I killed her once and I never did know. Simple as that.

II.
We called him Scoots because he rolled on a stretcher when he went out. It was a big scam too, the bastard could walk, but he was a regular on those T.V. evangelist shows. They'd wheel him in and say veteran, war hero, madman and then the man in the suit would push him off the stretcher, just dump him on the floor like the trash he was and old Scoots would roll and bound up, screeching, on his own two naked legs. They gave him a cut from the prayer donations. Some shanker from out of town heard all this and came to kill Scoots for his donation money and Scoots killed him first, slice, and then killed him second, splash.
  Of course you see, he didn't kill him enough, they found the shanker and they found Scoots. He didn't know any better, but few do.

III.
Killing a person three times is hard if they're not really a person after two, if they're just cut and skin and eyes after two. An animal is those things. You can't kill after that, only a madman kills after that and few are.
  Here's the trick.
  My own mother. I go to war, I kill her. I come back out in pieces, I kill her. The pieces hated her, anyway. We lose touch, she dies. I forget the sound of her voice and the feeling of her hands on my forehead, my head my hair and she dies a lonely death. She dies the death of martyred saints and her eyes are Sister Martha's and her legs are Scoots' fine-boned naked legs and she dies a hundred times.
  A hundred is too many. Three is enough. Fewer than three, you can't feel it on your skin.
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Amelia Gray lives and works in San Marcos, TX