Lumberjack

He hadnt grown up in hillbilly country. He threw the papers away in disgust as he waited for them to come for him. He had run for a few days, and then he had returned home, to await his trial. To clear up, well, not his name, but to clear up his motivations. He had not grown up in hillbilly country. He had perfect reasons for doing what he had done. Two in fact.

The clarity had come to him when he had been on the run, crashing at a friend’s place. He had been lying on the moth eaten red sofa, blanket over him. Staring at the ceiling, his friend didnt have a television, didnt read papers, he knew how that looked, but his friend had perfect reasons: he didnt want to read about all the terror happening in the world. He was sick of this endless cycle of tragedies that paraded as news. His friend was one of a growing collective of people who wanted good news, and since the outdated fake news still thought that good news didnt sell, this collective stopped buying bullshit, pardon the language, from them.

The curtains had been drawn, it was dark. Nothing but him and his thoughts. His friend had gone out hunting. He imagined the cars outside his house, there would be four. His friend might not follow the news, but the copycat did. There were four outside his house, taped yellow all around. The neighbors would be telling them how he was a normal man, didnt seem like anything was off, “but just goes to show, you never know.” Mrs Smith would shake her head, and nod seriously. It was her favorite phrase, “but just goes to show, you never know.” they would surround the house, they would go inside, they would find nothing to indicate that he had any personality, or any terrible tendencies. He had thrown his cellphone away, they could not track him with that. He hadnt used his cards. He had no friends that his neighbors or any of the databases would know about.

When they called him a copycat, he got mad. So what, it was a coincidence. Her name wasnt Kitty, the lake was. Didnt mean that’s what he meant. By then, he had accepted what had happened. By then, he had wanted credit. Not to be known as a murderer.

He had always been a proud man. Which was why this hurt him so much, the fact that they called him dumb, unoriginal, copycat. Those words were like axes to his head. He smiled a little. An axe. That was pretty original.

He had always been a proud man. So when he found out that his girlfriend had been seeing some other man, he took her to the lake, accosted her with the accusations, she had broken down crying. That was when he took the axe out of the trunk. The gleam in her eyes as she realized what he was going to do, it still brought chills up his spine. Gave him a shot of adrenaline. He burst out laughing on the red sofa, in the dark room, with that one sliver of light running across the dusty carpet.

He had always been a proud man. So he went back to his house and waited, all the lights turned on, like it was Christmas.