I Kill Killers

by S.T. Ashman

At a time when a human’s life meant close to nothing, Hitler passed some of the strictest animal protection laws ever written. He introduced penalties for animal cruelty and banned free hunting rights.

on most days, I simply felt nothing—as if my inner world was a merciless desert devoid of even the slightest hint of life. Feeling that warm flicker inside me meant everything. Eventually I realized what it was: It was hope.

He conveniently didn’t address his own looks—or more the lack of them when compared to his pictures. Many of his kind were like this. Manipulative, dishonest, and yet with an air of entitlement, always prepared with an excuse to justify their self-serving actions.

Then my eyes settled on a very familiar five-gallon white-and-blue bucket of Fixx. The cleaning detergent used oxygen instead of chlorine. It was a fairly new cleaning product that erased all traces of hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein in blood that was crucial in forensic tests.

“It’s amusing that most of your kind share the same traits. Not one of you keeps going when I laugh. You need the screaming to feel powerful, don’t you? But the truth is, there’s nothing powerful about you.”

“You didn’t bring enough tape. So I had to cut through your lumbar spine intervertebral space, leaving you paralyzed from the waist down.”

the elegant man applauding from the private balcony on the first floor. Luca Domizio. One of my biggest admirers.

The audience was under my spell, completely immersed in the witchcraft of my music. I played in Boston—nowhere else—and my concerts were sold out two full years in advance.

I could stab a murderer without flinching, but the thought of clutter made me physically ill.

Here at BAU, we respect every man, every woman, and everything in between, you hear me?”

“Damn,” Cowboy muttered. “Larsen is literally the only person on this planet who could make a grown man wet his pants.”

And we all know how Larsen gets when one of the bad guys might walk.” “Like a starving grizzly finding a campsite filled with Girl Scout cookies,” Tony said.

Tony could put a bullet into a serial killer’s chest and never lose a night of sleep over it. But delivering such devastating news to an elderly woman would gnaw at him for weeks to come.

Handwriting is a lost art. Keyboards and phones have deprived us of the ability to write or spell properly. And with the advent of AI, soon we won’t even need to form our own sentences in our minds. Humans, by nature, will always seek shortcuts. I doubt there are more than a handful of people in this entire building right now who could handwrite a full-length page without misspellings or poor penmanship.”

“Perhaps, but research has linked handwriting to cognitive development and information retention. I would argue it’s important for people to maintain the ability to communicate and think independently without assistance. Otherwise, who’s to say that we are the ones controlling AI and not the other way around?”

From a young age, I could understand that my parents genuinely perceived me as a mistake, a faulty model that should never have left the factory. And with my limited capacity to fit in, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help but wonder the same thing.

“There you go,” Emanuel said. “What if the next obstacle is a crazy pervert? You should let me walk ahead.” “To perpetuate the conventional belief that navigating through uncertain times is a responsibility designated primarily to men?” “No. Because I can punch harder than you. Not to be stereotypical.” “And that’s why you’ll be more useful from behind. Men usually are.”

“We humans have gravitated toward darkness since the beginning of our existence,” I remarked, closing the phone with a strong snap. “We are too afraid to admit what we truly are. People pretend it’s the lack of humanity that is responsible for the atrocities we’re capable of when, in fact, humanity is the root of it.”

“Parents these days are terrified of sugar, but they let their kids post videos of themselves in bikinis on TikTok,”

“Well, then tell me everything you got.” “You might think I’m nuts.” “I already think that. Have for some time, actually.”

He had to see her. His villain. His nightmare. His salvation. His doom. His promise of a new beginning or worthy end.